Preface: After seeing multiple other small indie devs making their own physical media, I wanted to see if I could do the same or a similar thing, with the purpose not to make a big profit but to prove that it can be done relatively easily and cost-effectively (per production run of ~100). I wanted to do something unique, so I ended up ordering custom-printed USB thumb drives from an overseas manufacturer and the experience went pretty smoothly for me.
As of August 2025 I put together some physical media for sale, containing all of the Mangotronics games. I handed out a few at PAX West, and also gave a batch to the Indiepocalypse booth. All of the materials were ordered and received in the mail back at the end of Summer 2024, and it took me a while to get to (mostly since I worked at a full-time job) so I do not know what prices would look like now.
For people interested in doing physical media for their games- this is what I've learned after the first production run of custom USB thumb drives:
So, in total I purchased: 100 of each, thumb drives, charm hooks, and squishy mango stress ball things.
Overall total price came out to about $204.10 including shipping, taxes, and fees. So that would be about $2.05/per unit.
I'm selling this first batch at $15 each just to get it into peoples' hands, with a total margin of $12.95.
There are 4 games on my drives so revenue split 4 ways =~$3.23 per dev team.
If I did another production run, I would probably get a multi-USB writer as an investment, since it took roughly 25 minutes to load up the games on one of the thumb drives- it took me about 2 whole days just to copy everything over to 30 drives. I was also experimenting with changing the block size, but didn't notice a huge difference.
Of note, it also took a couple days to get everything prepped on the PC side of things. I created a folder with a README.txt, and a Steam and itch key for the games, so I could easily copy-paste from my list of keys, and just drag-n-drop everything from the "copy me" folder over to the root of each drive.
I also want to add more feelies (stickers, buttons and things) and have a nice cardstock or paper box to put everything in without increasing my asking price for each unit. I haven't looked at exact pricing yet, but I luckily already have a button-press and Cricut sticker cutter, so I would not factor those prices in, only the paper box and printing costs, which based on what I've seen could be anywhere from $50-$150 depending on the materials.
