Your cost per active player?

[Blacklava]

For the ones buying traffic : What's your average cost per active player from your best traffic source?

For us on http://www.cityslaves.com it's for now about $5 which sounds high...
Let me define what I mean by active player in our math : An active player is a player who has logged in at least one time one week after his registration.
I don't mean those will stay active, it's just my base for our stats

[Chris]

$2-$3, but is was still too expensive so I stopped doing it anyway.

Check how many stay after one month... And then you really start crying when you calculate your per player cost

[ST-Mike]

Admins have ignored my deletion request - if you're not going to delete my account then don't have the option there please.

[jannesiera]

5$ sounds waaaaay to much to me! Marketing is really not about traffic (advertising is but should only be used as a part of marketing - in other words: if enough player stick around). You should be more creative in the ways to promote your game, much cheaper ways. Player references are a much more powerful and cheaper way of getting players. So you should put your money in building a strong community instead (in good community tools or holding contests with prizes, ... ). Be creative in finding other ways, because there is much more than expensive advertising!

[codestryke]

5$ sounds waaaaay to much to me!

Based on what experience from your side? Looking at the numbers and knowing our traffic pattern when we do put out an ad, it seems about correct. From what I know both Mike and Chris have games that are running so they can base there numbers on solid data. If you don't have solid data then "to much" is just a guess.

Marketing is really not about traffic (advertising is but should only be used as a part of marketing - in other words: if enough player stick around).

Sorry but marketing is ALL about traffic, period. Try to put a game online with no averts, no forum posts, just put the thing up and see what happens. I'll tell you what happens NOTHING. In this day in age with Facebook / MySpace games plus all the other web games out there marketing is the only way you are going to survive. The days of word-of-mouth are not dead, but they are no where near what you seem to expect them to be. My first game had a huge word-of-mouth and it worked very well for that game, I've never since had that type of response again for any other game. Same held true when I worked with the author of Legend of the Green Dragon, it worked at that time but now is a different story. Word of mouth these days are more about Facebook apps and such where the social network is already in place BEFORE a game.

You should be more creative in the ways to promote your game, much cheaper ways. Player references are a much more powerful and cheaper way of getting players. So you should put your money in building a strong community instead (in good community tools or holding contests with prizes, ... ). Be creative in finding other ways, because there is much more than expensive advertising!

Reminds me of a web-cast someone on Galaxy-News once produced about game making and ownership. This person wasn't a game creator (he hadn't produced a game yet) but was an avid player of a bunch of games and had a bit of programming knowledge so all his ideas and theories were coming from a player perspective. The ideas he gave were, at times, ludicrous. Running a game and more importantly trying to get traffic to that game is something that is easier said then done. Not all things work for all people, hell Chris said he had more signups or whatever based upon what he believed was his compatibility with IE. Am I going to argue, no, because I don't know any better. That right there is the real point of this matter if you don't know then don't preach about what you feel is to much or to little, because you just don't know.

I won't argue that building a good community is key to a good game but no game and I mean NO game starts off with a community first (well unless your Facebook). So then where do you get your community.... Marketing / Advertising at about $3-$6 a head ~

[Blacklava]

$2-$3, but is was still too expensive so I stopped doing it anyway.

Thanks for sharing Chris

Any number from your end CodeStryke?
Btw I agree with you about advertising : Community part can be achieved only after buying HUGE traffic or after months/years of work if you want to take the free way... Personnally I prefer to pay huge and work on the game instead.
And I think you can only reach an average sided game without using adverts all the way, all giant games got a positive ROI and are buying traffic, it's a math : You have to score more new addicts than the ones you're losing each day and even with SE top rankings, word of mouth, social networking and toplist traffic you will come to a step where only adverts can forward you more (and much much more).

Of course jannesiera is right too about the community need, not saying it's not an important part but mathematically you can have a huge game without community but you'll never see a huge one without adverts... Or do you know one?

[jannesiera]

Codestryker, I'm no marketing expert and I don't pretend to be one, but you are wrong in correcting me. I think you do that because I appear to be a very inexperienced person with little valid points. Well, I am unexperienced, but my points still are valid:

1.

5$ is too much because you can built a school in Africa for $12.500

So for 2.500 users who register and log in once before 7 days have past, you can built a school in Africa. How many players of that 2.500 will stick around? I would say max 500 but you are the expert here. 500 people playing your game (for how long?) or a future for 500 kids in Africa?

Just don't be silly and call me unexperienced because you are the one being naive. I didn't base my "5$ is waaaaay too much!" on the current advertising prices. I based it on what it is worth to have one player sign up once in exchange for 5$. I would never give that money, even if that would mean a player or two less.

So I am not saying you are not correct concerning current advertising prices and statistics. You are wrong in judging me though.

2.

Your marketing goal is to have as much players sign up and stick around to play your game (and buy a premium account or something like that). Marketing is about building a good relationship with your costumer (conversations, trust, etc). Advertising is only one aspect of marketing.

So when you are doing advertising (like all your examples of banners, forum posts, etc) your goal is to create traffic. Marketing is much more though (like building your community, having people involved, having conversations with other companies / individuals, etc).

I never said that advertising is not important but it is important to know that good marketing is about much more than expensive adverts. Again, I am no expert but this is only marketing basics. Open a good book about marketing and this is the first thing you'll learn. You are wrong in correcting me again.

3.

then don't preach about what you feel is to much or to little

Yes, I am no expert (again) and I am unexperienced. I am unexperienced in game development, business, marketing and life. Nobody needs to follow my advice, but I have the right to speak. I'm especially offended by the last part of your post. I'm not feeling hurt or anything but I have my pride. I've been around here for a long time and it makes me sad that I haven't made any impression on you at all during that time.

I appreciated it when you give me advice or add your own point of view to my statements. But I won't tolerate to be judged like this and my statements corrected as if they are untrue. I hope I have proven to you that they are not. I don't need you to agree on them at all but I felt your post to be very not-constructive.

[Chris]

Codestryke had a bad day, to my intuition it was server crashing three times in a row

5$ is too much because you can built a school in Africa for $12.500

What if these $5 per player bring you $10 income on average? With spending these $5 multiple times you will get the profit to sponsor such school then
Numbers are purely relative.

[codestryke]

In the PBBG realm there really isn't a lot of information that is shared about the day after you open your game. These forums are filled more with programming and database how-to's then running and marketing a game. When someone posts the cost they have for an active player that is real data which, like I said, is hard to come by. Chris came in and said it was to much for him, Mike said it would work for him. For us, like I said, on the average of all the games that sounds about right. Again these are real data points from people that are actually in the PBBG realm. When you come in and say that is way to much without any valid position other then what you read, heard or gut feeling then, to me, it cheapens the actual valuable information that is being given in this thread. 2 days, 2 weeks from now some new game owner may stumble upon this thread and see your "way to much post" and then pound his/her head on what they are doing wrong because that's what there numbers are.

Now lets correct some of your misconceptions about what marketing really is. If you hire a marketing firm or are large enough of a company to have a marketing branch there sole goal in life is to move as much traffic as they can to the signup page and get them to sign up. This is what you or anyone will pay for. Once the player is signed up marketing is complete, it is then up to what is now called a community manager to keep players playing, answer questions and engage the community to let them know you care. They, the CMs, are not attached to the marketing arm of the business they are attached to the game designers or developers. With PBBG's the same holds true but it's normally one person doing all the jobs. Marketing is about traffic and who can throw the best quality traffic to my game. Then how do I make the main page sexy and easy enough to get them to actually sign up. Once they are in the game then I'm CM trying to grow the community, make sure they can come up to speed on the game and hopefully tell there friends about it. Do I rely on referrals, no, as I said it's a great way to get more people in the door but nothing will get more people to the game then market adverts.

I apologize if you took this personally. I've been a programmer my entire life and when I was old enough to get out into the world and get hired as a programmer I had huge ideas and dreams. My ideas and coding grew because of people calling me out to prove the the way I was doing it was the fastest or best way of doing it at the time. If I was to go to a code review without hard data then I was told to shut up, sit down and let the people who actually have real data talk as there information was real and mine wasn't. This was hard at first because I took it personally. After a while I found out that it wasn't personal it was actually teaching me (if I was willing to take the criticisms which is the key) to go from hobbyist programmer to a highly sought after and very well paid one

And in closing if you think $5 per active player is high you should see what it costs per active player that actually purchases good via a game

[famulus]

Calculating a cost per active player is much easier than calculating a value per active player, and I'm not sure one statistic is worthwhile without the other.  There are many intangible benefits to players, and the tangibles are hard to nail down as they tend to come in over time.  There's a tendency to want to calculate your value from an ad campaign right away, but it's very possible that you don't see the income for a number of months, and the true value will extent for as long as any players gained end up playing.  This is a mindset I picked up from doing shareware.  The effects of any new marketing always lagged behind because of the software's trial period.  In some ways it's easier with PBBG's, as you can track individual players right from signup, but my players seem to be fickle and can disappear for months at a time or spend hundreds one month and nothing the next.


My cost per signup through ads started around $0.60, but after getting the low hanging fruit has risen about $0.10 per month and is holding around $1.  My cost per active player is about $2.56 and rising along with my cost per signup.  To date, my income per active is around $65.65.  One in three active players will refer an active player to the game.

[Blacklava]

Thanks for sharing Famulus  

How do you explain the fact you've slowly seen your CPA going up like that exactly? Just because you needed more volume and jumped into more expensive but efficient providers?
And may I ask you which game you're talking about? Checked your posts and profile, can't find that info (sorry if I've missed it).

We have a CPA between 50 to 80 cents from best sources but our registration does not need an email so it's hard to compare.
I've just realized I forgot to add that our Game is only in english and we're buying (when we can) only from richest english speaking countries.

[famulus]

The reason I don't like to mention my game happens to be the same reason I advertise the way I do, so I'll get that out of the way first.  I run www.mafiacaper.com .  I'm not an artist by any means, so it very much resembles the generic mafia games, and I'm not very proud of that.  When you dig into the game, there are a number of unique gameplay elements, but it's not a masterpiece of game design and the casual observer won't find those right away.  I should probably change my attitude.  I have a game that has never taken a month of loss (I average about 1k a month), and an active playerbase who love the work I do.  Also, the game has recently paid for a professional layout which I'm currently integrating.  By most standards, a success.


I'm advertising using www.gameadvertisingonline.com and only an a couple specific sites that are similar to mine.  I've found that those players convert the best.  Players from the more professional looking sites don't make it past my front page.  I attribute the CPA going up to the ad getting stale over the months.  I figure the more open minded players who want to check out new games clicked it early, and the clicks I currently get are more picky, but this is just a guess.

[Blacklava]

That's really stunning result, the fact you have -excuse me for the words- no design at all makes it just more impressive...
I've found recently a great mafia template : http://www.gamesitetemplates.com/photoshop-templates/modern-gaming/mafia-design/prod_58.html but I bet you don't need that with such a high ROI 

I've tried GAO but I haven't found enough english only sources to be efficient, again I don't get it as your site is english only too 
I will try your game asap for sure

[famulus]

I know you didn't mean it the way it could be read, and I definitely excuse the choice of words, but I would like to clarify.  I didn't have an initial design, no, but I do attempt to design individual features to enhance the overall gameplay, and I spent about a year tweaking the initial design of the stock script to fix many of the problem areas.  Still, there are lage sections that fall under "no design at all" and I continue to remove or fix them as I have time.

[Murzim]

I wouldn't dare to see the cost of each person in the way you mention. What I care mostly is CPA and this is around $0.3 to $0.6 (I stop if higher).

Online game marketing is very complex for sure and the better you are at it, the more you can actually save. And the difference can be really great if you are spending large sums in advertising. Finding the best sites is always troublesome.

Myself I prefer to stick with a website when I am advertising. Especially when speaking about toplists (ads or votes). For example, a player who will keep seeing your game performing well for months on a toplist, will eventually come and try it. These type of players will likely become an active part of your playerbase of your game as such players have somehow built a trust with your game all this time before.

Players like active games and a game with an advertisement promises this.

[Blacklava]

Thanks for your point Murzim 

Famulus there is something I don't get... You're saying you are making 30 times more the invest when buying traffic but your site still small, why don't you go for a real campaign on ad4game who could provide hundred of signups a day then?
With such ROI even if you would pay 2 times more it would still rock.

[famulus]

There are a few reasons.  First, I haven't found a lot of great sites to advertise on (but I'm sticking that link away for later... thank you).  I'm actually paying someone right now to go through the top lists, visit each game, and collect advertising information for me.

Second, I wanted to get the new artwork finished and into the game before doing any large ad campaigns.  While I do have a high ROI, it may be skewed by the smaller size of the game.  The majority of the money comes from four or five player who spend too much money in the game and less from the rest of the player base.  I hope that I'll pick up more of those players as I advertise, but I'm not certain I will so I'd like to hedge my bets by making sure I give new players every reason to sign up and start playing in the first place.

Third, I got a decent sized contract for a side project and that's been taking up a lot of my time, slowing the progress on the game down a bit.