🗂 Overview

Do you find yourself captivated by the twists and turns of true crime podcasts? Ever been on the edge of your seat during a horror movie? Or perhaps spent a night with friends, feverishly trying to figure out whodunnit while playing a game of Cluedo?

The popularity of true crime podcasts, horror movies, and detective board games like Cluedo, has been soaring in recent times. It seems that people are more intrigued by mysteries and the idea of solving them than ever before.

Today we’re going to look at how we can turn this seemingly ever-increasing obsession into a business by making murder mystery games, kits, accessories and media.

📈 Stats

• Overall, 34% of U.S. adults who have listened to a podcast in the past year say they regularly listen to podcasts about true crime, according to a 2022 Center survey.

• Among U.S. podcast listeners, women are almost twice as likely as men to regularly listen to true crime podcasts (44% vs. 23%. (source)

• 61% of the Top 25 True Crime podcast listeners are women. (source)

• Younger podcast listeners are more likely than the oldest listeners to report tuning in to shows about true crime. (source)

• Cluedo has sold over 200 million copies since 1949.

• The horror movie genre is massive with the total gross of all horror movies in 2022 being $644,774,976. (source)

🧮 Trends

⭐️ Examples

• Murder mystery kits on Etsy aren’t particularly oversaturated with 1000+ listings. They can either be digital downloads or physical kits.

• Companies like Red Herring Games, Masters of Mystery and The Digital Murder Mystery Co have become established brands in this space selling kits and party accessories.

• YouTube channels like Criminal Core and Mysterious Hook create faceless YouTube videos deep-diving into true crime mysteries. The Nosleep podcast is also super popular for mystery and horror stories.

• This unsolved crime kit on Amazon has over 15k reviews

💡 Opportunities

• Murder Mystery Party Kits - Create party kits for unsolved cases, murder mysteries, paranormal mysteries, etc.
  
  Based on reviews customers tend to like these kits to be challenging. If they complete it in under 2 hours it doesn’t seem worth the price. So make them difficult and aim for the 3-4 hours mark.
  
  Get ChatGPT to help write these but also work with freelancers on sites like Upwork or Fiverr. Play the games with friends and family to ensure it’s challenging enough and keep adapting based on reviews.

• Murder Mystery Content - Faceless YouTube and TikTok channels are becoming more and more popular with the rise of AI. You can create insanely realistic voice clones using ElevenLabs and ChatGPT can write scripts or even full stories for you.
  
  So if you don’t want to sell your own products, at least to begin with, try creating content on YouTube, TikTok, as a podcast or even in a weekly newsletter. Build an audience with your content and make money through sponsorships, subscriptions to gated content or through releasing products.
  

• Host Events or Interactive Games - You could also run events like these. They seem a little bit more effort to set up but you can start small and work your way up to more extravagant events.
  
  In the beginning, you could offer to come to people’s houses dressed as characters and run the murder mystery party for them.
  
  You can also do city-wide mysteries and get participants to go to different locations around your local city, drip-feeding them clues based on answers to questions, riddles and observations along the way. Hidden City does this very well throughout London. Can you adapt this to your local city?
  
  These city-wide interactive games are great because their margins are amazing. They work with automated WhatsApp messages which you set up once. You also only need to provide a handful of props/notebooks. Hidden City costs around £25 per person per game and it probably costs them less than £2 per person to run.
  
  You can try escape rooms - they have an average 75% profit margin.
  

• Mystery Board Games - Alternatively, you can design a mystery board game similar to Cluedo.

I think doing a mix of these would work really well. Start with the ktis and the content and then work your way up to city-wide interactive games, events and escape rooms.

🛠 How to build it

• Before you can do anything, you need to write the mysteries or create the games. Use ChatGPT and ghostwriters to help with this (or if you’re good enough do it yourself). If you’re making events, parties or escape rooms - make sure you try some for yourself first and work with people who know what they’re doing.

• If you’re selling products sell on Amazon, Etsy and your own store (using Shopify). I’d suggest starting on 1 and then moving to the others as you can momentum.

• Make sure your branding isn’t corny and make your website sleek. A lot of the brands (but not all) I’ve seen whilst researching for this newsletter seem quite old-fashioned and their graphics and content are a bit rubbish.

 🚀 How to grow it

• TikTok & YouTube Content - This type of content is perfect for going down “rabbit holes” on YouTube and TikTok. It can be quite addictive to keep watching more and more videos and generally, this type of content gets a lot of views whilst being quite easy to make. Check out the YouTube channels in the examples and these TikTok videos as examples.
  
  You don’t need to make videos only about your kits and products. Create videos about real-life cases or create fake horror stories and try crafting longer-form content on YouTube or podcasts.
  
  Create a content strategy that builds a world and story around your products. Get your audiences excited and involved in the process. Let them submit stories or ideas and build a relationship with them through content.
  

• Influencer Marketing - Find influencers or big accounts in this niche and work with them to market your products across their audience. Alternatively, you can even work with them to create a collaborative product.
  

• Sponsor Podcasts & YouTube channels - Similar to above, find big YouTubers or Podcasters and sponsor their content. Likewise, you can also collaborate further with them by releasing products together.
  

• Paid Ads - Create some content and run Meta & TikTok ads to your desired audience. This should mean much quicker results than creating organic content but does require upfront investment. You should also use Google ads - from my quick Google searches it doesn’t look like anyone is doing this all that much - so it could have some restrictions regarding the content or maybe competitors in this space haven’t taken advantage of it yet (at least in my geographic region).

👍 Tips

• Remember just because there are established competitors already in this space, it doesn’t mean you can’t succeed in this too. Competition just means the idea is validated and that there’s demand. You need to think differently. Look at their reviews and try out their products. What can you do better?

• Content will probably be one of the best ways to stand out from the crowd here. None of the companies I found selling kits or games in this space had good content.

• Paid ads on Google & Meta also seem to be underutilized and the ad creative seems pretty weak for murder mystery kits.

📚 Helpful resources

• Personalized murder mystery game builder

• How to write a murder mystery game for a dinner party

• How to make a board game

• Board Game Design Lab

• How to host your own murder mystery party

• How to create your own Murder Mystery Party

• How to start an escape room business: a step-by-step guide

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