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Ian MarshParticipantFighting 15s receives substantially more traffic from Google searches
I’m saying this more in regard to news updates than to advertising,
I don’t publish news on any wargames website either. Targeted forum posts and my own news page are more effective. News posts on wargames websites are in effect advertising, because no editor of a wargames website edits them for publication and for two sites at least you pay to post them through trader/supporting membership. Paid-for editorial is advertorial BTW, not news. 😁
I innocently assumed that the web address and contact email in my profile details on TWW would appear – but they don’t. They do on Lead Adventure, which is my usual haunt. TWW is only an occasional check-in.
Google, BTW, outperforms the next highest source (TMP’s manufacturers directory) by 20 to 1, and TMP’s directory outperformed advertising or news posts when I did them by 50 to 1. Referrals from news posts that have appeared on TWW, TMP, Beasts of War, and TGN were disappointing. Paying for advertising or for the right to publish “news” is therefore not cost effective.
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipantI can’t speak for everyone, but I have simply stopped advertising on wargames news websites because they simply do not generate enough traffic from paid-for advertising. Fighting 15s receives substantially more traffic from Google searches, and then TMP’s Manufacturer’s Directory, which does not cost a bean. After that come odd mentions on forums.
I recently pulled my last advertising from wargames magazines owing to distribution issues.
None the less, business is booming. 😁
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipantSweden, of course, is a lovely country with the concept of “lagom”, an enviable record on recycling, a generally social democratic outlook, and therefore has a population that can cope with the concept of sustainatopia.
Of course, wargaming has the potential to reduce use of new materials. Old metal figure collections can be melted down and cast into new figures, although with gradual contamination of the metal used. How many spouses have sent entire collections to the tip once their wargaming other half has gone?
Theremoplastics can be re-used. If only there was a widely available way of recycling those terribly wasteful sprues on plastic figures. There are only so many you can use for other projects. How many are simply binned? At least when casting metal figures the sprues go back into the pot, and they are therefore relatively low-wastage figures.
Can we be content with “just enough” figures. Well apart from the fact that I have a workshop full of stock for people who do not have a lagom collection 🙂 my actual wargaming needs are modest. Napoleonic armies up to about a division of figures because that’s a practical size to play with for an evening or afternoon. Enough for two sides of 28mm WWII to play Chain of Command. Two sets of Commands & Colors – the wargame in a box that existed pre-Perrys – for when time and space is tight. But then, I’m not like my customers.
If the worst comes to the worst, and plastics and metals vanish, we can all stick flags and symbols in kanelbullar, move them around the tabletop, and then eat the defeated. To the victor, the delicious, sustainable spoils.
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipantI talked to the owner yesterday. He is going to look at retrieving the moulds from his caster and potentially put them back in production with more efficient moulds, and I have offered to help. Don’t expect rapid movement on this.
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipantIf you are using normal cheap model knives i strongly suggest buying a metal scalpel with replaceable blades. It makes a massive difference although you do have to be more careful as they are very sharp! I got mine with a box of 100 blades on amazon.
Excellent as scalpel blades are for light work, they may snap when used for heavy-duty cutting (as will craft knife blades), with the result that something very sharp and pointy may ping off in the general direction of the user’s face and eyes. Flat-cut snips are far safer for heavy-duty work.
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipantFlat-cut sprue cutters, e.g. http://shop.princeaugust.ie/ac-ppl5703-super-snipper/ I use them for work to get troublesome figures off mould sprues (i.e. when the gate has been cut badly) or for neatly clipping other people’s figures. I was so impressed I bought two pairs: one for the casting room, one for the hobby table.
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipantOf course, having a company relentlessly appearing on a thread to boost its profile to readers in utter, shameful self-promotion may itself become a bit wearing. 🙂
There are also snags to appearing in a public forum. The owner may take an irrational dislike to a business, banning it and leading it to set up its own lines of communication with hobbyists. Or a member of a forum may be a self-confessed pirate who sees no wrong in copying products if they feel they themselves can justify it on an ethical whim. Both may lead to a company pulling out of supporting what some might see as a vital means of communication with customers. I don’t advertise on two major wargames sites for those reasons, and engage with them only infrequently: on one of them you’ll often see posts wondering why certain companies don’t read, or have a presence on, the site, the answer to which is the owner is a five-star cuckoo-bananas loon (it’s OK Michael, it’s not you).
I run a Facebook page where anyone can engage with me if they so choose, and evidently I moderate it. As I said above, there are lots of forums and groups and it is impossible to run a busy business full-time and stay on top of all of them; I think it is unrealistic to expect to find a particular business active on every single one.
You’ll usually find me on Lead Adventure or The Guild, BTW – and I don’t check in every day.
Coffee break over. 🙂
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipantDouble irony Ian, you’ve just sold me fifty quids worth of stuff because of your connection with Col Bills, whose staff I’ve come to know and like having chatted to them at several shows. Lost track of the number of times I’ve put together potential orders for your 3mm stuff and backed out at the last moment but the connection with Col Bill finally sold me on it!
You’ll have the chance to see me on Colonel Bill’s at a number of shows this year and next, getting me out for more face to face meetings with customers. I prefer that to online: you meet the real person, not their tired and emotional online persona. 🙂
I also tend to prefer moderated forums – which obviously limits how much anyone ever sees of me online. And I’m very busy with Fighting 15s, so don’t often post unless something appetising comes up during a coffee break.
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipantIrony alert: Experience tells me it’s better just to get on with the job and keep customers happy by getting their orders out quickly rather than try to engage with customers across a vast number of forums, Facebook and Yahoo! groups. 🙂
Ian
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipantI know the chap who produces them. I’ll ask when I next see him – it might not be for a while , though.
Ian
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipantI understood Picoarmor were just US agents for 3mm Oddzial Osmy stuff, rather than making their own 3mm figures. Am I mistaken?
Picoarmor has consistently not made a feature of the Oddzial Osmy name on its site to the extent that it is quite common to see the range mentioned only as Picoarmor in the US.
Fighting 15s also stocks Oddzial Osmy in the UK, and has been doing so since 2005. Magister Militum is a relative newcomer. Richard at MM, however, has also moved into making his own 3mm figures for periods not covered by Oddzial Osmy, whereas I have simply produced a few Middle Eastern buildings to test the water.
It is literally a small market, and in my experience the internet talks it up substantially. Stockists come and go: the UK has lost KR Games/1to600miniatures, and various European sites have stocked and then dropped the range (for example, Adelbertus). I keep the faith with the range because I can support it through sales of AB and Eureka Miniatures, and have had the fortune to build up stocks gradually since the range’s inception rather than making one massive investment.
Ian
http://www.fighting15sshop.co.uk/1600th-scale-3mm-204-c.asp
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.com09/11/2016 at 09:45 in reply to: Practical question to American vendors about customs declarations #52095Ian MarshParticipantAlthough a customs declaration (CN22 or CN23) should just be for the value of the goods, if that value is greater than the import threshold for your country you will also get taxed on the shipping costs.
The risk of a vendor including the shipping cost in the customs declaration is that you may in effect get charged VAT on shipping twice.
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipantSo… Here is a link to UK copyright law. https://www.gov.uk/topic/intellectual-property/copyright I think we are all clear on where Ian Marsh and Thaddeus Blanchette stand on the issue. I don’t see anything positive coming from from two people locking horns and going back and forth about who is right and who is wrong, legally or morally. As long as people remain civil this topic will remain open.
Noted. Shutting up now. 🙂
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipantI can only remark that if you are honest about wargame groups, in many cases the rules are written or chosen by a single player and everyone else is mainly trying to succeed within the rules as written, and, particularly within a less traveled period, are willing to accept the rules effects as generally accurate representations of history. They may never read a book, other than an Osprey, to learn more about the history of that period.
They could do worse: they could read Waterloo New Perspectives: The Great Battle Reappraised. 😉
The worst thing about writing rules is having someone asking where is the historical justification for an effect when, if you’re like me, you’ve read a vast stack of books and come away with an impression of the effects you are trying to create. (As you’re aware, perhaps because of a certain person’s influence, I’m an effect-minded soul, not a procedurally minded one.) Trying to pin down the one source requires some memory, and alas that is going a bit fuzzy! I think that’s why rules need bibliographies to show what the author has looked, and so it’s possible to answer “look, I’ve read all these: go away and read them too”.
I’ve been very glad to see you on TWW. It has indeed been some time. You’ll doubtless be amused that I recently introduced pure Piquet with no heresies to my group. 🙂
Back to the original subject: it’s still possible to start wargaming with cheap Airfix or Airfix-like figures in 1/72nd scale, often using unpainted figures, and like I and I’m sure many others did add random metals without a care for difference in size and only later move towards consistency in that area. The real investment – or barrier – is time in painting an army, and that’s where the trend for boutique games using six to 10 figures a side makes entry easier (if not particularly cheap). But for myself, I find all the boutique games rather samey and I’m waiting for the world to tire of them.
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipantLike I said, I feel well covered by the fair use doctrine, ethically speaking.
And you are morally repugnant.
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipantAnd yes, copying for your own use is perfectly legal.
Myth.
Not in Brazil it ain’t Ian. Particularly if you use the copied components to make a new piece of artwork. But if Campbell’s Soup wants to try to sue the Warhol estate for trademark infringement, they can go right ahead.
Brazil is actually a signatory to a number of international copyright conventions. Copyright infringement, not trademark infringement, so poor example.
The exemption of copying for your own use applies to digital media, and it’s a comparatively recent change. To make a blanket statement that copying for your own use is perfectly legal, when it certainly isn’t, is irresponsible.
Whatever you choose to believe, you’re a self-confessed crook in my book. And I suddenly think far less of you. I don’t care whose stuff you’ve copied, the fact that you’ve done it makes you a crook. Where exactly do you plan on drawing the line on deciding whether a company is big enough for you to rip off their products? Why should anyone in the wargames business send you product if there’s a chance you’ll decide it’s too expensive to buy more genuine product and just make copies?
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipantMany historical wargamers get all of their history from other wargame rules, not from reading history.
I don’t think you can stack that one up, Bob. Most wargames rules in my experience do not contain any history for their period. For example, how much about the Napoleonic Wars did the original Piquet: Les Grognards contain? 😉 You have to read history books to get an understanding of a period because it can’t be obtained from rules alone.
There is, I admit, a tendency in some modern, glossy rulesets to include some history, but it’s not terribly well researched.
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipantAnd yes, copying for your own use is perfectly legal.
Myth.
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipantThere is also, of course, Fighting 15s, which does Napoleonic flags designed to fit neatly around the flagpoles of AB figures. Own trumpet blown 🙂
http://www.fighting15sshop.co.uk/flags-for-ab-333-c.asp
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipantActually, I find there is nothing worse than having a demonstrator, particularly one dressed in costume for the period, without invitation explain a demonstration game’s minutiae and, where they supposedly exist, jokes; I’d far rather just a look at and admire figures and scenery and, if I wanted to know any more, ask.
Demonstration games to me offer more scope to show off something big, and a really well crafted one with well done scenery and nicely painted figures can be inspirational; participation games, in comparison, need to be small and quick.
I’m sure everyone’s mileage varies. 🙂
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipantI discovered the cutters sold by Prince August to chop metal (they remove the bulky feed on their home-cast figures, and I found the cutters were essential for dealing with their 40mm SYW figures). It’s a fantastic tool. For some of the moulds I have for spin-casting, the cutters are great at removing figures where the kiss-gate hasn’t quite worked as intended.
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipantwhereas you obviously won’t sell any figures if you don’t bring any, you know your business best. Thoughn ote that Magister got £30 of my custom on figures I didn’t mean to buy simply because they were there and I had a rush of blood to the head….. But if all people are going to get on trade stands is wall-to wall resellers, why actually bother to attend?
The issue with a very large range is gauging what will sell to impulse buyers, and it changes from show to show.
The trouble with figures is that unless you are on-trend with what the locals are playing, you don’t sell many. I’ve been travelling to shows for 10 years with in effect a car load, and what sells, except at Salute, is far less than one box. In the past few years I haven’t even been able to sell 15mm AB at shows, although in the past they were the range that drove impulse buys. They still sell very strongly online, so the demand is there for them, but just not at shows. I can’t take everything to shows, and so I shifted to just advance orders for figures, and taking paint. Paint sales at the shows I did this at outstripped on-the-day figures sales from previous shows. Plus I had very fast set up and take down times. 🙂
Follow-on sales from shows are unquantifiable. It’s impossible to display everything that I sell, so browsers at shows get a very limited view of what’s available. Orders from an area following a show may or may not be a result of someone browsing at a show and ordering later. They may equally be driven by an advert or post in a forum. I get noticeable spikes in sales of items after forum posts about someone’s project (which are quantifiable because my website can see which from sites visitors are following links).
I do fear that shows will eventually just have resellers shifting the same products in shiny packages or boutique games (particularly boutique SF games). That’s the way the commercial side of wargaming is going.
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipantAnd yes, Ian, I’ve been looking at the AB stuff as well…. Had you been there I might have picked up a few bits, but I don’t spend a lot so I understand why you don’t attend. I’d say that to support the hobby and increase your business longevity you need to be seen – shows like Phalanx attract younger people, and I’m always telling the fledgling gamers from my local area to check it out. They don’t buy wargames magazines and so only know of the companies they see in our local stores.. this for them to find you, you need word of mouth from someone like me. But then again, I’m not the one whose mortgage relies on the bottom line in this instance.
For the last few shows I haven’t even taken figures as stock, just advance orders. Sales of 15mm at shows have nosedived. Salute 2015 for me did better selling paint, flags and playing cards on the day than it has ever done for me selling figures on the day. And yet, my last sales quarter is the best ever. Online sales of 15mm remain strong, so that size is clearly not dead commercially. My business comes from the internet, pure and simple, and currently is running at a level with which I find difficult to keep up. Like a number of other small figures businesses, I have more than enough work without attending wargames shows, and it shows every sign of continuing to grow.
I love Phalanx as a show: the organisers are great and the club members helpful; the venue is fine and loading and unloading isn’t a problem; all the poeple who buy stuff from me there have been good to talk to. But attending the show requires a two-night stay, and when all expenses are considered, I need substantial sales for a show to make it worthwhile for the three days taken out of the week to attend. I don’t get strong enough show sales nowadays: despite a broad range of periods and scales of high quality figures I can none the less miss what is on-trend at a particular show. That doesn’t mean I won’t at some point in the future attend Phalanx, or any other show, as a one-off to fly the flag, but it won’t be with any figures stock. It may simply be with an armchair, a bottle of single malt and some business cards. 🙂Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipantIn the last few years of Fighting 15s’ participation in the trade show circuit, I just got more and more depressed about the preponderance of stands selling the same boxed shiny products, and watching attendees just go to the stand that was offering the best deal. I have nothing against those retailers that attend shows with such product; I’m more disheartened by the fact that wargamers increasingly seem unable to think outside the shiny packaged box. It’s good news for those companies that package products commercially for retail, but for the small independent figures supplier that doesn’t, it’s tough to compete for the impulse purchase – it says something that at Salute this year, the one item that sold best on my stand was an attractively illustrated and packaged product (playing cards), and packaged paint products (triads) also contributed well. They were, obviously, easier to sell from my point of view, being neat packages handed over for reasonable sums of cash.
I’ve said it before here, but it’s a sad fact that wargames shows are not economic propositions for small figures companies, beyond the first few years of attending shows to get exposure. So many of us are just not attending shows, or have cut back, because it makes more economic sense to stay back at base. It would, for example, have been cheaper for me to post out every single advance order for Salute free of charge than to pay to attend Salute as a trader. The result is that we are indeed denying those customers who like to see products in real life the opportunity to do so. But such customers are clearly in the minority, at least in terms of my sales figures, because online purchases are growing. My least show-intensive year is proving to be my best trading year.
Ultimately, shiny packaged boxes and boutique games may be all that’s on offer at shows, not because organisers try their best to arrange a balanced mix of stands, but because small traders will not attend because of poor economics and thereby deny the show the variety that is sought.
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipantThanks for adding this Michael. It allows me to round up the usual suspects identified by Mr Motorcycle 🙂
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipantHeck, this is what I’ve let myself in for on Friday! 🙂
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipantNP. Avoids me taking it up with Richard, who is even taller and better built than I am:-) And who would in any case set the lovely Zoe on me, who is also taller and better built… 🙂
Richard has been buying 3mm Oddzial Osmy off me for several years. I guess he saw an opportunity in the ancients – Oddzial Osmy is still steadily working its way through horse and musket, while also trying to add to its existing starting points of modern and WWII.
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipant3mm is not a new size. Oddzial Osmy has been producing 3mm (1:600) infantry, vehicles and aircraft for seven years (well, that’s about the time that I’ve been selling them), and Tumbling Dice for even longer. Oddzial Osmy produces 3mm Napoleonics, ACW, SF, WWI, WWII and moderns, but not yet ancients. I’ve even had news releases published about them here on TWW. 🙂
There is a dedicated 3mm Yahoo group at https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/3mm_miniatures/info
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipantI am a big Hawkmoon fan – of all the Eternal Champion books, they were my favourites.
I will settle for a manly hug. 🙂
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipantNic Robson of Eureka had samples at Salute 2014. They will in due course be released, most probably when Nic has a substantial chunk of the range sculpted, and I’ll be bringing them into the UK in the due course of time.
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipantHi James,
I have limited stocks because the rights to produce them have transferred from Eureka to someone in the US (I don’t know to whom, and the range does not appear to have resurfaced as yet), so I just have what’s left in my stock boxes. Give me a call about what you want.
Best, Ian
PS. Yes, I’m here. Here and LAF only nowadays.
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipantIf you’re happy with casualties along with them, AB has French cuirassier and dragoon casualties, F70 (cuirassiers) and F71 (dragoons), and chasseur a cheval casualties, IFC25. I am biased, but they’re lovely dead horses.
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipantIt needs to be short, for instance:
My hobby, my world
A world of wargaming
No one will remember anything longer than six words – and six is pushing it 🙂
Currently, of course, it’s:
For strapping men and women 🙂
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipantI note with some sadness that TMP continues its vendetta against editor Michael by again purging a post and its replies of all mention of his show, Blast-tastic! I hope the show proves a success in spite of one corner of the internet being keen to deny its existence
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipantBifrost was the show run by the Society of Fantasy and Science Fiction Wargamers.
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipantI’m currently making moulds, and preparing and assembling figures for news items, but at present don’t have anything in a fit state to release. If you want some comparatively recent, old news that no one picked up on, you can have it. 🙂
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipantOn the avatar front we have an issue because of the software we are using to create and manage this site so tomorrow I will be adding a form for you to send us your avatars so we can get them added. No plugin will work at this point – I just did research.
You can use Gravatar to set your avatar for the email address used for the site. I discovered I didn’t have a Gravatar for my business email in the process. 🙂
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.comIan MarshParticipantHiya, thanks all for joining! We have not even promoted the site yet so word about us is out there somewhere? We had some unexpected bugs, a few of the more ‘advanced’ features have been removed until we get it sorted. Once these bugs are fixed the website will eventually have so many bells and whistles it will make your breakfast for you!
I’ve promoted it on my Facebook page. The site needs feeding so it looks big and strong come the full launch. 🙂
Ian
Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.com -
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