DTRPG Medals/Sales

[Morrus]

Out of curiosity, I decided to figure out how many sales equated to each 'medal' on DTRPG (I've never paid any attention to those medals, and in all these years and over 800 products, never known what they actually meant, so figured it was time to rectify that.)

DriveThruRPG.com

www.drivethrurpg.com

So I took a spreadsheet sales report of the 853 products from ENP on DTRPG, and sorted them in descending order by sales numbers and looked for the break points. I have no adamantine products, so can't speak to how many sales that is. But for the other medals, this is what they mean as best I can tell:

• Adamantine (0.12% of all products on DTRPG) -- ???
• Mithral (0.28% of all products on DTRPG) -- around 2216+ (somewhere between 2054 and 2378)
• Platinum (1.47% of all products on DTRPG) -- around 1193+ (somewhere between 1191 and 1194)
• Gold (3.77% of all products on DTRPG) -- around 483+ (somewhere between 474 and 492)
• Electrum (7.32% of all products on DTRPG) -- 244+
• Silver (15.05% of all products on DTRPG) -- 99+
• Copper (13.69% of all products on DTRPG) -- 61+

These are the lower bounds (so Silver is 99-244). Where it says 'around' it's because I have products just above and below, but not close enough together to narrow it down, so I took the mid-point. But it could be anywhere in that range. Where there's just a number, I have products exactly on the break points (ie for Silver I have products with 98 and 99 sales, so I know it's exactly 99).

I don't know whether DMs Guild uses the same scale as DTRPG, (I have no products on there).

Obviously, these change, as the rankings are based on % of overall products on DTRPG.

 

[Ath-kethin]

The Publisher Resources page has a bit where they tell you the badge ranking criteria.

They DID change the criteria a year-plus ago so that an item must have sold for at least $.2 (20 cents USD) to count as a "sale" for the purposes of earning a badge. The change was retroactive, so a bunch of products that had earned medals due to extremely low pricing lost them.

Common wisdom says anticipate earning a badge once you have exceeded its minimum sale count by 5-10%. That's held true in my experience and tracks pretty well with your own estimates above.

The thresholds are the same for DTRPG and DMSGuild, and it no longer matters which platform you check out on to earn them.

For example, if a customer adds an item on DTRPG to their cart then goes to DMSGuild, adds more items, then checks out (or vice versa), the sales still count. It used to be that a customer had to check out on DMSGuild for the sale to count toward a DMSGuild badge, and the same for DTRPG, but they changed that around the same time they instituted the 20-cent minimum rule.

https://onebookshelfpublisherservice.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360022135314-Bestseller-metals-and-how-to-earn-badges

 

[Morrus]

The Publisher Resources page has a bit where they tell you the badge ranking criteria.

They DID change the criteria a year-plus ago so that an item must have sold for at least $.2 (20 cents USD) to count as a "sale" for the purposes of earning a badge. The change was retroactive, so a bunch of products that had earned medals due to extremely low pricing lost them.

Common wisdom says anticipate earning a badge once you have exceeded its minimum sale count by 5-10%. That's held true in my experience and tracks pretty well with your own estimates above.

The thresholds are the same for DTRPG and DMSGuild, and it no longer matters which platform you check out on to earn them.

For example, if a customer adds an item on DTRPG to their cart then goes to DMSGuild, adds more items, then checks out (or vice versa), the sales still count. It used to be that a customer had to check out on DMSGuild for the sale to count toward a DMSGuild badge, and the same for DTRPG, but they changed that around the same time they instituted the 20-cent minimum rule.

https://onebookshelfpublisherservice.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360022135314-Bestseller-metals-and-how-to-earn-badges

So the table on that page says this:

• Copper: 51 units sold
• Silver: 101
• Electrum: 251
• Gold: 501
• Platinum: 1,001
• Mithral: 2,501
• Adamantine: 5,001

But that doesn't track exactly with my figures (I have Mithrals which definitely haven't sold 2.5K) so it's a bit confusing.

 

[Ath-kethin]

So the table on that page says this:

• Copper: 51 units sold
• Silver: 101
• Electrum: 251
• Gold: 501
• Platinum: 1,001
• Mithral: 2,501
• Adamantine: 5,001

But that doesn't track exactly with my figures (I have Mithrals which definitely haven't sold 2.5K) so it's a bit confusing.

Huh. Getting the medal BEFORE hitting the threshold is definitely weird. I honestly have no answer to that.

Funky.

 

[Burnside]

So the table on that page says this:

• Copper: 51 units sold
• Silver: 101
• Electrum: 251
• Gold: 501
• Platinum: 1,001
• Mithral: 2,501
• Adamantine: 5,001

But that doesn't track exactly with my figures (I have Mithrals which definitely haven't sold 2.5K) so it's a bit confusing.

Can confirm that these are definitely the metal numbers for DMsGuild. I think it's really odd that they'd be different on DTRPG.

 

[John Dallman]

But that doesn't track exactly with my figures (I have Mithrals which definitely haven't sold 2.5K) so it's a bit confusing.

Does DTRPG do refunds on items bought by mistake, or which customers are unhappy with? If they weren't deducting those from the counts for badge purposes, that would create a few illusionary sales. I think we can assume they aren't going to pay publishers for sales they had to refund.