Oooo a powderkeg topic
Well, let me put it to you this way; We could leave any of our partner sites tomorrow and it would have an insignificant impact on our bottom line.
Its no secret that we made our start in 2002 at RPGNow and we were constistently among their top 10 all time revenue generators. When policy changes made things a bit too tight and drove up commission rates in 2005, we left to put the focus purely on the WWG storefront. It turned out to be the best possible thing we could have done and things grew to a point where our security at our core store was basically assured. The gross majority of our traffic and revenue is generated right here.
So, is there an advantage to having our catalog elsewhere? One thing I've learned over the last 7 years is that there is absolutely a shared, niche crowd that frequents all of these markets. There is much more crossover than might be immediately apparent. The advantage is simply about being visible to avoid being walked over by copycats...its definetly not about the money. RPGNow's top 10 "best sellers" list is ultimately a perceptual problem that has almost no bearing on reality.