After 3+ years of sending press releases to the Kim Komando radio show w/o so much as a nibble, I learned that Dweep Gold is Kim Komando's show pick of the week (Oct 18-24):
http://www.komando.com/shareware.asp

I thought it was a long shot because I didn't think such a show would be interested in games, but it's nice to know I was wrong.

For the past 24 hours, this has caused a very noticeable spike in Dweep Gold sales. I guess with 8,000,000 listeners and 1,000,000 newsletter subscribers, she can really generate some traffic.

Now what's also interesting is that so far 80% of these sales are coming from "even" visitors in our A-B split test, meaning that these are people who aren't downloading the free demo first. If you don't know what I'm talking about, read "the great sales experiment" thread. Time will tell if the "odd" visitors catch up later.

Congratulations on being the pick of the week! And this goes to show that persistence is key to success!

Congrats Steve, but who's Kim Komando, and what's her show about?

Given that her site promotes a 'free trial', one might have expected even visitors to be confused and disappointed when no free trial was available.

Just goes to show how wrong gut instinct can be. Or perhaps people view your guarantee AS a free trial?

It makes me wonder if games could be sold like AOL free trials? "Sure, try out our game free for 30-days. But give us your credit card details first and if you haven't cancelled your purchase then we process the transaction."

SC

Originally posted by Dexterity
After 3+ years of sending press releases to the Kim Komando radio show w/o so much as a nibble, I learned that Dweep Gold is Kim Komando's show pick of the week (Oct 18-24):
Either she just has a REALLY long queue, or she got sick of hearing from you and wanted to shut you up :) Either way, congrats.

Regarding the 80%, I suppose that's to be expected since the other half are still trying their version. But that brings me to a thought...I don't know if you've ever mentioned this before, but do you have any figures on what percentage of people buy the game X days after downloading the demo? If only 25% of demo converters purchase on day 1, that would statisticly put you at about an even 50/50 A-B split (once those other 75% catch up).

Originally posted by LordKronos
Regarding the 80%, I suppose that's to be expected since the other half are still trying their version. But that brings me to a thought...I don't know if you've ever mentioned this before, but do you have any figures on what percentage of people buy the game X days after downloading the demo? If only 25% of demo converters purchase on day 1, that would statisticly put you at about an even 50/50 A-B split (once those other 75% catch up).

I haven't checked on this stat formally for a while, but the last time I checked it, I recall that more than half of visitors who downloaded a free demo ended up buying within the first 3 days if they were going to buy at all within the first 90 days. I think part of the reason though is that most of our game demos can be finished relatively quickly. The Dweep demo provides only 5 levels, which is maybe 30 minutes of gameplay and minimal replay value.

Congrats Steve!

I've been sending them releases as well in the hopes of getting Wonderland mentioned, but hasn't happened yet. I'll renew my efforts, I guess! :)

Can you give us some sort of indication as to # of visitors/download (or even sales... although I'm sure that's "confidential") you got from them? I'm thinking about advertising on her site, but the rates are through the roof.

Cheers,
Patrick

About 1000 visitors from komando.com so far, but the link has only been up for about a day, so it will be nice if this holds through the week.

Not being American, I'd never heard of Kim Komando, so I had a peek at the website. Very strange, from what I gather it's like a sort of sensitive and caring guide to the internet, accompanied by what seems to be a rather excessive number of pictures of Kim looking caring and sensitive in a variety of different settings. I was surprised to see that even the Dweep link was accompanied by yet another picture of Kim, rather than a screenshot of Dweep.

Is she a kind of Oprah of the internet, then? What's the radio show like?

I can only assume she's not going to be too interested in my graphically violent games ;)

That is interesting. I'm not sure it equates with regular random traffic where someone is just looking for a new game to play though since in this case people have already decided they're interested specifically in this game that was recommended to them by a trusted radio host. THat is... when they arrive they're looking specifically for Dweep because they heard it's good. Still it's pretty intreaguing... Maybe you're setting off a kind of revolution. Will all the indie sites lose their download links soon? And supposing they did? would the download.com's of this world suddenly take on a new level of importance for those people searching for demos?

Another thought just came to me....you mentioned you've been sending press releases to her for 3+ years. The fact that she is just now mentioning Dweep makes me think that you recently sent out a press release for Dweep (which, as far as I know, hasn't undergone any changes recently). That got me thinking, are you sending out duplicate press releases, or a press release for every little update/bug fix? I've always thought a press release was for something new you have to offer, and if you send it multiple times you are just asking to tick people off. What are you sending out that keeps you "in the news" without sounding repetitive?

We sent out press releases for Dweep, both exp packs, and Dweep Gold. But we don't send them for minor updates. However, we send out press releases for most of our published games too (as long as it isn't a Silver deal, which is only promoted via our own site). So Kim has probably received at least a dozen press releases from us over the past four years. The latest would have been earlier this year.

OK, that's what I expected they should be sent out for. I just thought maybe you were being over agressive with sending them out, but I guess Kim either just hung on to your press release for a while and finally got around to it, or she has a backlog of products she wants to promote each week. Thanks for the clarification.

Anthony Flack - I *am* amercian and have never even heard of Kim Komando...

I've lived in Washington state for 10 years and have never before herd her name.... so I'm in the same boat as you Uhf

I never heard of her show either until joining the ASP and hearing about the great results people got.

Originally posted by Anthony Flack
Not being American, I'd never heard of Kim Komando, so I had a peek at the website. Very strange, from what I gather it's like a sort of sensitive and caring guide to the internet, accompanied by what seems to be a rather excessive number of pictures of Kim looking caring and sensitive in a variety of different settings. I was surprised to see that even the Dweep link was accompanied by yet another picture of Kim, rather than a screenshot of Dweep.

Is she a kind of Oprah of the internet, then? What's the radio show like?

I can only assume she's not going to be too interested in my graphically violent games ;)

Well one of her "shareware picks of the week" was America's Army. Is that violent enough? I used to hear her show years ago and I thought her last name was a nickname or something. I always thought it started with a "C". I also found that she has a very high web rank too.

Oh, okay. So perhaps not quite as caring and sensitive as all those photos would suggest. So, as the only person so far who's actually heard her show... what's it like then?

From what I remember, people would phone in and ask her general questions about computers, software problems and the like. I would only hear the show while driving, as I had to do a lot of that in the career I had at the time. It was broadcast on Saturdays I think. I don't recall any details about the show except that she had an average sounding voice and seemed to handle the show alright. I've always wondered what she looks like though.