Towards A Hobbyist-Friendly Business Model, Part Two: The Value Of Removing Their Barriers To Enjoyment

Though he had no such intention when he stated the following on Twitter a few weeks ago, successful ghost writer Joshua Lisec gave the model that tabletop RPG publishers will find successful going forward. Summarized, from exerpts therefrom, it is thus:

Every book is a product funnel. For example: a $19 book leads to a $49 masterclass, which leads to a $199 video course, which leads to a $499/month program, which culminates in a $9,999 service.

It's a $9 sale VS $16,254 in sales.

What do writers think about? Writing. What do publishers think about? Selling that writing. Profitable publishing is 80% persuasion and 20% everything else. Put on your marketer's hat (or hire someone to) if you want to sell lots 'o books.

Let me translate this to tabletop RPG terms.

1. The Game: This is the cornerstone of your business and everything revolves around it. Do not skimp on this. Most of your casual revenue comes from this product alone, so it can't suck or be incomplete. Every other step is for increasingly exclusive cohorts of customers, those who are willing to pay you money to solve problems related to spending time. This stage should include, as a marketing expense, campaign reports--written on a blog or, preferably, done as a video series--complete with annotations on what mechanics got used and why adjudications went down as they did. You need only a rules manual, and you can get away with a setting manual; for everything else, curate what your audience creates and publicizes- #BROSR campaign blogs do far more to promote Real D&D than anything anyone else does, and they do it for free.
2. The Masterclass: Some folks are willing and able to pay you to teach them how to run campaigns, from start to finish. Let them pay you. This is where you add something like Patreon, Subscribestar, or Gumroad to your business. You don't want to make this cheap, and you don't want to make this a half-assed effort either; spend the time to nail the delivery and polish those course materials until you can use those course materials to reflect sunlight on to vampires and kill them. All that time, effort, and resources formerly wasted on Pop Cult consumerist product goes here instead- and the aim is to get your users to make their own stuff.
3. The Video Course: This is not a Let's Play--that's marketing--but rather an upsell on the Masterclass, and you should charge accordingly for the increase in your costs. Depending on your circumstances, you may just merge the two and charge the higher price point.
4. The Monthly Program: This is you running a campaign remotely for high value clients, and you are charging for not only the time you spend running the game but also for your availability. You will not be doing this (or what comes next) initially, if at all, nor should you be hustling for it; you should, however, keep this (and the next) in your back pocket should circumstances arise such to make it feasible.
5. The Service: This is you running games in person, and you should be charging a serious premium for this due to the demands this places upon you to travel with all that entails.

I will note here two things. The first is that the prices given are placeholders, cyphers set only to signal a general price schedule scheme, and not absolutes; these are prices set primarily on effort and secondarily on time and availability. The second is that the steps above the game itself are likewise not absolute, but rather are likely outcomes given the nature of the hobby and the past attempts at those seeking to make more of their business outcomes in this scene. Your specific business capacities and customer needs can and will vary, so change your decisions to meet those circumstances. You may find that just selling the game and using campaign blogs/vlogs to market is sufficient; if so, Godspeed and I will celebrate your success.

The one common theme here is that you want to get your customers to not have you spend your time on them, and thus enabling them as passive consumers, but get them confident about spending their time running and playing games on their own- and to talk about them. Whatever form you take with this model, that should be the outcome you desire; I wouldn't be willing to run games for paying clients, so I wouldn't offer that service, but others have tried that (with varying success) so it's a known option. You may find better options for your customers, and I would hope that you share what works for you with the rest of us.

You can do this as a self-sustaining hobby in itself; Chris Gonnerman of Basic Fantasy does this and only fools dog him for it. However, if you want to pay the bills or grow some wealth then that means find a better way to add value to a hobbyist business, and that ususally comes down to finding add-ons that address related matters such as hobby skills or player-matchmaking or whatever is in the way of playing the game and enjoying the hobby. Solve those, and people will pay you to use those solutions- that's what this model is actually addressing, and you should be paid for the time and effort you put into creating those solutions and making them user-friendly to employ.