This is, indeed, me soliciting advice on how to use itch.io.
The short of it: finance people are holding the tiny bit of money I have made on itch, and won’t send me my money unless they can send more than they’re currently holding. More detail below the jump.
The advice I need is how to write some copy that will encourage itch users to part with some more of their money for my things. My target: about a hundred bucks in sales to give me a bit of a buffer in case I’m wrong about the fifty buck threshold, and in case the fees are more than I expect and that affects their willingness to send me my money.
In the long run, I would like to have my items on itch available for free. Which, I know, I could do right now rather than typing this out.
But, I made a decision when I set up my itch account to ask for money, because that sounded like a good idea. Who doesn’t like getting money for the things they make?
Then, I realized that I’m not actually super interested in doing the things that encourage people to pay money for things on itch.
I also learned that the math involved in accepting money on itch is a little messy, and as part of creating my personal experience of that messiness, I made a decision to set up my account in a way that made the math even messier.
It was never a goal to get a big pile of money from my things on itch, and I always had ways for people to get things without paying, using either pay what you want, or offering community copies.
Now I have a small pile of money from sales on itch, which is so cool. Thank you to everyone who ever felt like what I produced was worth parting with your money. That is just fantastic, and feels really good.
The money is being held by finance people, because, the way I set myself up, I have to have a certain amount of money on hold with the finance people before they’ll send it along to me. I think that amount is $50. I suppose this makes some sort of sense when I look at it from their POV, what with all the costs they have being in finance and all. I don’t even particularly begrudge them the fees they’ll charge me when they release the funds.
But.
I don’t make much money on itch, and the amount of money I have to have on hold with them is not a huge amount of money, and it is not really important to my finances… But…
It is my money, and I’d like to have it, after all.
So, that’s the set up.
The advice I need is how to write something that will encourage itch users to part with their money for my things. My target: about a hundred bucks to give me a bit of a buffer in case I’m wrong about the fifty buck threshold, and in case the fees are more than I expect and that affects their willingness to send me my money. That is, indeed, me repeating myself. I think I need about eighty bucks in additional sales. Which, honestly, is a small number in absolute terms, and sound like a huge number at the scale I’m at.
Right now everything I have on itch is pay what you want, with the platform suggested default $2.00 “suggested donation.” Forest Outlaws also has a $5.00 print copy option. This is a Chair, Use it to Make Dreams is not pay what you want, it is for sale for $50, because I do not want people to buy it, I want them to either click-n-copy the page images, or copy-n-paste the full text from the item description, and it amuses me to put $50 for a price to encourage that sort of behavior from itch users.
Doing things because it amuses me might not be the best approach for the goal I’m asking for help on.
So: advice, please, on how to write up something to encourage a limited number sales so I can get my money from the finance people, after which I’ll reset my prices to free so I don’t have to fool around with money on itch any more.*
Would you suggest a reverse sale? Suggest avoiding a reverse sale? Are there other itch tools I should look at?
Thank you.
*Seriously. Anything I put on itch, I’ll want to be free. If my plan ever changes, and I want to charge money for something, I’ll take that thing to a different platform. I’ll take the lessons from the finance side of my itch experience, and apply them so I don’t give myself a pain in the neck about getting the money passed through the financial intermediaries, and be grateful to you for the help you offered now.
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