Our daily $100 winner is NewShape! You should also watch his movie, Undead Steel. I wouldn't have caught it if not for this daily drawing, so yay for that. Sorry it got missed the first time around!
We're giving away $100 per day from now until I leave for Comic-Con on July 20th. To participate in the raffle, all you need to do is vote on five submissions while logged in. Every day I run a raffle script based on activity from the previous day, and a winner is declared!
Today is the one year anniversary of the redesign launch!
Yesterday I made a post about some of the fun things that have occurred since, as well as the not-so-fun. Today I'll be talking about the developments on the back-end, and what to expect in the immediate future.
With the Flash Portal being the centerpiece of NG for the past nine years, we've seen a lot of talent come and go. Some have enjoyed great success, while others, not so much. The primary motivation for making Flash should always be the passion to create regardless of whether there is financial gain to be made; however, we recognize that a lot of artists dream of Flash being more than just a hobby.
We have already hired a number of NG regulars for full-time staff positions, but the reality is that in order to serve the ongoing flow of artists who come to the site, we need to work WITH them to generate revenue, rather than hiring them to work FOR Newgrounds. Realistically, a lot of people won't achieve the dream of making Flash for a living. There are, however, plenty of opportunities to supplement your income (and pay for gas), or fill in the gaps between your freelance gigs and have fun doing it.
To accomplish these goals, we've tackled some intimidating systems for transaction processing, fulfillment and large-scale payouts.
The existing store has made a lot of headway, in terms of inventory and fulfillment, which are handled by Bob and Tim right here in the NG office. When the new store launches, we'll be accepting payments through NG rather than Paypal, and royalties for third party merch sales will be available to artists in real-time. You will have the option to showcase the items you've bought, for bragging rights and as an extra incentive for people to BUY LOTS OF STUFF. Keep buying it and we'll keep making it.
While artists are currently unable to view their real-time store sales, they CAN view nearly real-time data for their Flash Ads. These stats have traditionally only been available to the owner of the submission but soon will be available to co-authors as well, split by owner-determined percentages. We will also allow artists to split revenue with the Audio Portal, so that musicians have the potential to accumulate earnings from the various games and movies that feature their music.
We've set up a system that allows us to process large numbers of payments via check or Paypal, whichever you prefer. We intend to build additional revenue streams to feed into this payment system, such as store referral commissions and other potential revshares.
It's been a heavy snowball, but we're gonna keep rolling it and see how big it gets. There is much more to come, but I'd rather manage all of our expectations by focusing on what's right around the corner. :)
