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membership
I see that the membership has been stuck on 21% for quite a long time and so it seems there’s about 1000 members(and maybe a few more) and hence little chance of getting anywhere near the 5000 required for the Horseman animated episode promised. Has Rippa spoken about this at all? It seems that the audience for the Rippaverse has reached its peak and so it’s simply the same people like me who are [happy]returning customers keeping the wheels turning. Has Rippa spoken about any plans to try and increase the base? Because I can see, that as much as every book makes money for the company, I’m not seeing growth, rather seeing sales flatten out and Yaira 3 is a good example of that. I enjoy the Rippaverse, but am wondering if it will have the capacity to live on in the future. in order to determine how popular the books are, I’d like to see how many backers each book has. At the moment, we see books sold and sales amount, but if everybody is like me and buying all the variants of every issue, that divides the books sold by four at least. Therefore, as well as total revenue and copies sold for every release, I’d like to see how many individuals are buying each book so as to gauge real interest via seeing if more buyers are coming into the rippaverse. Not sure if anybody is going to read it let alone answer, but it just seems the company has stagnated going by the fact that there has been no change in the membership figure for many, many, many months now- want the Rippaverse to succeed, but growth looks stagnant to me, but I could be wrong and was hoping Rippa might address it.
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5 Replies
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I too want it to succeed very much. I have been a $50 member for a very long time now but I’m not sure I’m seeing the value? I mean there are only so many T-shirts and Posters you can buy of the same thing. And I think that’s the problem with the membership at this point in time. The 30% off options has been getting slimmer and slimmer (and changed) on what you can apply it to. For example the Norfrica Vinyl, they even have it listed in the “merch pack” but won’t give the discount for loyal members. I mean I can’t even get Eric’s premium Youtube videos? To give $50 a month for what they offer seems very disheartening, like before on campaigns I could buy the T-shirts and posters separately and it would all break down to a little cheaper than the “I want it all pack,” and now it doesn’t. These I think are some issues of why it’s not growing in my opinion. I buy everything and two sets of every cover. I even purchased two sets of the Isom toys (Four figures). So yes, it would be interesting to see how many people are buying?
Also, I think it has flatlined because I think Eric needs to truly decide what he wants to do. Does he want to be a comic book publisher, a rock-star, or a political commentator? For one, when you have those many endeavors it’s very hard to do them all extremely well. And two, people are very polarized these days and when music speaks a certain way and you view and speak out on politics in a certain way you will not sell to everyone any longer these days. And potential, and also past customers will call it quits.
Eric can do all three very well. He is very talented. I met him twice now, I see no ego, he seems genuinely very grateful and humble (as well as the Twins and team). But when the company seemed to really crush it was when he completely focused on comic related issues and the company.
I’m here to stay. But some things and choices they have done have disappointed even me. Imagine what it will do to the person who is just dipping their feet in the water?
Thanks for listening, again it’s only one loyal life fan’s opinion.
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Yes, I too hope it keeps going but we’ll just have to wait and see. You’re a better customer than me that’s for sure. I’m a lower tier member and generally buy at least three covers of a release- bills, bills, bills even here in Australia. I was thinking of posing the question on the geeks and gamers live stream, but it might come across like I’m attacking Eric as opposed to simple interest in whether the Rippaverse is growing and what his plans are to make it grow. Obviously we all live in a bubble whether we like to admit it or not, so simply listening to the established audience telling you how much they appreciate your work can lead to a false sense of security, that’s why I’d like to see the number of backers for each book, because that will tell us how much interest there is. However, I’m sure the company knows exactly how many customers they have, of which what portion are majority return and who is new, and they must surely know that the guys like you who spend big, may not be able to forever and so they really need to grow the brand and get those one-book-purchase consistently returning customers in, because that has to be the basis on the business, not squeezing the loyal fans like you for every penny they can get, that’s the ugly side of corporate capitalism- reaching the limit and then cutting, cutting, cutting to keep profits going. If they realise the business has flattened out, then they need to find ways to expand the Rippaverse, that is, somehow reach out and draw new customers in so as to increase profit, not save money. In closing, in the humble opinion of a little 52year old italiano from Melbourne, my ignorant business and marketing suggestion would be, while they have Dean Kane on board, maybe they take the hit and produce the pilot animated episode of the Horseman and release that for free on youtube in order to hopefully generate new interest, cause if they are waiting to reach 5000 members, right now they’re at 21%, hence I’m sorry to say, it’s not going to happen, let alone 10,000 members for an animated series. Maybe even try to raise money for the series independently, because often people don’t like the idea of ongoing support, but may be willing to drop a one off $100 donation toward a project they might find interesting whilst you have Dean Kane on board. As a general capitalist I’m not seeing a willingness to try different things outside the model they have, but maybe I’m ignorant and just don’t understand how expensive things are. However, with AI today, it’s hard to believe the company can’t afford to apply the, ‘spend money to make money’, motto and produce a half hour animated episode for public release on youtube as an alternate avenue to increase interest. That’s my silly opinion anyway.
Sorry to bore you, but I suppose, finding someone out there who sees where I’m coming from gets me yapping, but don’t worry, I do have a life working six days a week and hence am not some poor friendless guy hanging about on the internet just waiting to pounce on someone who responds to me LOL- don’t worry, I do have a couple of mates and I wont stalk you 🤣
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Oh you’re not boring me. It’s an interesting thing to talk about. I have the bills too. I’m not a high roller it may seem that way cause I got everything but I sold my entire Spider-man collection to support them because I believe in them very much. So it’s going to run out at some point.
I’ll always support them. And I don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes. I just have a feeling some serious choices are going to have to be made soon cause I feel like we need more growth.
But Rippaverse has tremendous potential.
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Agreed. The potential is there certainly. Fingers crossed going forward- and on a brighter note, Yaira 3 has been sent to me, so looking forward to reading that. Take care and until next time. Mick
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I’m guessing people don’t have memberships because memberships don’t offer anything. I’ve been a member for over a year. I have yet to get a discount on “merch”, so I’m guessing “merch” doesn’t mean comics. And I have yet to get free shipping. I see that “free shipping” has been marked out on the membership page now, but it wasn’t when I signed up It could be lots of folks signed up for membership and then canceled it because they didn’t get anything from it. I just canceled mine for that reason.
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