Calculating Costs

When it comes to becoming a game designer, and wanting to create exciting, fun, replayable games for people across the world it is hard to take a step back and look at financials.  Alas, it is a necessary evil in order to make the long term plans work.

For my example, I need to develop not only awareness for FunDaMental Games, but also generate some kind of minimal profit while doing so in order to pay for the cost of game design (ie Photoshop/InDesign, printing tests, gamecrafter demos, professional playtests, etc).

I have looked into a few different options, and right now I think the best option is to keep developing a basic card game, with a strong theme and hook.  It is the cheapest way to design a game, the easiest to print/play and get playtesters, and the cheapest to ship post KS.

First estimates show that if I can develop Duel of the Dragons into a 36 to 45 card game (vs 18 cards) I can safely retail it for approx. $15 (including North American shipping), at an estimated cost of about $12 per game (packaging, content, and shipment costs, but could be less if high volume of backers).
This would equate to $3 profit per game, so if even 100 people backed the game that would generate $300 profit (off of $1,500 in sales).  That is pretty low margin, but at least its not a negative value.

I have to keep in mind this costs me time, and that is essentially free of charge.  Preparing and shipping 100 games would take a while, but definitely something I am wanting to do should the game show that kind of success.

The difficult part is what do you do if it is 5x more successful than you plan for, IE if I were to get 500 backers unexpectedly how would I manage the shipments/preparation of boxes?  I guess the answer is to either create a better in-house process using family members, or alternatively I could source a shipment co-ordinator (thus creating another expense).

Lots to think about there, I will be reading up a fair amount on this over the next month to try and be productive, cost efficient, and be a reliable creator for any backers who give a first time creator a try!