Another DMs Guild milestone: Platinum sellers


4th Edition


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Today, Additional Archetypes reached the level of platinum best-seller on the DMs Guild, the highest level on OBS. How big a deal is it? First, keep in mind that OBS medals only count the number of copies sold, so a $1 product reaching platinum isn't as big a deal as a $25 reaching platinum. They also don't tell us how may sales are required to reach each level. We can get a sense of the significance, however, by looking at other OBS sites. All OneBookShelf stores use the same system for best-seller medals, but they track sales separately across each site.
On the DrivethruRPG, which sells products from every RPG company except Paizo and Steve Jackson Games, there are 265 platinum sellers as of this writing. Almost all of them are core rulebooks, and most took years to reach platinum status. The fastest that I know of any product reaching platinum was Onyx Path's Chronicles of Darkness core rule book, which took about three weeks to hit platinum.
Supplements hit gold and platinum status much less frequently, and third party products do so even less frequently. For Pathfinder, for example, there are only two Platinum sellers in the entire store! Both of them (Kobold Press' Midgard Campaign Setting and Rite Publishing's Book of Monster Templates) are from well-recognized brands, and both took years to get there.
On the DMG, Additional Archetypes was written by an unknown author without any brand recognition, and it managed to reach platinum in just under two months. It is actually the third DMG product to reach platinum status, but the other two are free (and since the number of copies sold is the only thing being counted by the medal system, free products have an obvious advantage over non-free products). At any rate, the fact that we already have a new third party writer getting to platinum shows that there are a lot of people paying attention to the dmsguild, and the 5e third-party scene in general. While I am not personally invested or even really interested in 5e, I believe having more people involved in the indie-developer segment of this hobby is a good thing (and I suspect WotC is glad that they followed Apple's method of capitalizing on third party sales).


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

According to the guy the runs the worldbuilderblog, someone said they believe that Copper is 50, Silver is 100, Electrum is 250, Gold is 500, and Platinum is 1000. So, if that is anywhere near correct, that Additional Archetypes product (which has a selling price of $1.00) has sold over 1,000 copies, for $1,000 (or $500 for the author). Not bad for an unknown person.

Of course, it seems like the player option items sell better than DM option items. The top 10 most popular are all player option products.

Whether or not those numbers are correct, either way, it is pretty impressive. I do have a feeling that the lack of such things from WotC is the biggest reason why these player option products are doing rather well.


Ravenloft Archetypes: Nightmares of Barovia has become the second non-free DMG product to hit platinum, and the first setting-specific platinum DMG product.

I'm happy to see that the first platinum-selling campaign setting book is NOT Forgotten Realms! Ravenloft isn't my favorite WotC setting (it's probably tied for my third favorite), but I do enjoy Ravenloft even so, and I like it far more than WotC's current favorite setting. Maybe WotC will see the sales and open up my other three favorite settings to the dmsguild. I can only hope....

Also, Heroes of the Mists has joined the ranks of Gold best-sellers, and is the most expensive Gold or Platinum dmsguild product to date. It's also a Ravenloft supplement:)

Liberty's Edge

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Adjule wrote:
According to the guy the runs the worldbuilderblog, someone said they believe that Copper is 50, Silver is 100, Electrum is 250, Gold is 500, and Platinum is 1000.

Most of these numbers have been verified, especially as that author has hit Gold status with two products.

137ben wrote:
Also, Heroes of the Mists has joined the ranks of Gold best-sellers, and is the most expensive Gold or Platinum dmsguild product to date. It's also a Ravenloft supplement:)

That would be my product.

I'm very happy with its success and reception, as it was something I did for fun & personal use after the release of 5e.
Being able to give it a wider distribution let alone make money for it is an amazing feeling.


137ben wrote:
(and since the number of copies sold is the only thing being counted by the medal system, free products have an obvious advantage over non-free products).

FYI, free units "sold" do not count towards the best seller list. Only those that are paid.

My one free product has 84 units sold, and you'd suspect that would put it in copper status. But only 2 people have paid, and that's the key metric. As far as the ranking is concerned, I've only sold 2 copies.

Free products don't have an advantage over products with a cost as far as best sellers are concerned. This actually makes the free products on the best seller list even more impressive - they made that rank by people voluntarily paying more than they had to for the product!


Interesting, thanks for the information!
That also makes Evil Hat's "Blah: A World of Adventure for Fate Core" products (as well as the Fate Core rules themselves) more impressive, since they are all PWYW but most of them are platinum or gold.
So 8 DMsguild products have been payed for by at least 1000 people.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

While not as great as being "platinum", one of my product has made "copper". Copper isn't at 50, as I was at 52 units sold and it didn't go copper. Once it went past 55, it did.

Out of the 447 downloads, 57 of those were paid. It has surprised the heck out of me.

Sovereign Court

What is your product?


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Lorathorn wrote:
What is your product?

It's the Elementals Expanded.

Sovereign Court

Oh duh, I knew that once.

RPG Superstar 2009 Top 16, 2012 Top 32

If you don't mind my asking, what are the folks with "metal" bestsellers doing to promote their products?

I recently published a product through the DMs Guild to test the waters but I discovered that my usual promotional strategies aren't available there. When I publish products for Pathfinder, I rely heavily upon the DrivethruRPG publishing tools, and on the fact that Paizo has an official Compatible Products board where everyone goes when they want information about licensed products goes.

Given my lack of those go-to options, I'd be curious to hear what strategies successful sellers are using on the DMs Guild.

Sovereign Court

You might ask around on Google +. There is a vibrant cluster of communities with much experience to share on the matter.

RPG Superstar 2009 Top 16, 2012 Top 32

Lorathorn wrote:
You might ask around on Google +. There is a vibrant cluster of communities with much experience to share on the matter.

Thanks for the advice. Looks like I'll have to consider joining Google+.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

I can't comment about the others, but what I have done to reach Copper on my one product is: Nothing. The most "advertising" or "promoting" I have done is mention them on this board. I am terrible at self promotion, and am not really active in other places to where it wouldn't be seen as a type of "spam", such as Google+, Reddit, or other social media-esque places. Could be why it took a good 3+ months for my one product to go Copper.

Then you could also have a name like Matt Mercer to always get in the top 5 on DMsGuild, or make something that is intrinsically tied to the adventure (like Ravenloft this time around). I did neither of those, which could explain things. I made some things that aren't tied into Ravenloft, or really that tied to Forgotten Realms. I probably could have gotten more if I waited until they released a Planescape adventure, but who knows how long that would have taken? There's also not much demand for elementals, or really monsters as a whole, and more people want classes or other player options. Of course, if they would have released the DMsGuild when Princes of the Apocalypse was the newest adventure, my stuff could have possibly sold better. Who knows?

But that's just me and what I have done, and my thoughts on how to get better sales on the DMsGuild. Could also be why I haven't done anything since the end of March...

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