Nobody really buys subscriptions anymore. You don't get the "observer mode" or lose your items anymore as non-gold, you just get the dumb little banner that says "YOU ARE A TRIAL" across the top. It's like Winrar basically.

Pretty sure you still need a subscription to get on RC. (Correct me if i am wrong).

Actually you don't. Although the blue banner is still at the top of the screen, they've enabled it to where you are still a gold member. The only difference is, (basically) you have to pay to get a community still. Essentially you're buying a gold subscription but if you haven't already picked a community name; then it gives you that option. Other than that, classic accounts can log on 'Dev' servers and will be recognized as a Gold Account (Enabling them to use the RC).

Is there still not restrictions? e.g Possible heads to be used, no joining gangs, etc

Anyone and Everyone are open to joining what ever gang they want or use what ever had they want regardless of there account.

This is a valid point. If advertised across the right mediums reaching the right demographics it could be highly effective.

The best way to advertise IMO would be using the Facebook "lifestyle" form of advertising. I'm sure you've all seen it, based on your likes, pages visited, etc, you get those ads on your news feed or on the sidebar advertising certain things. If you look to target the 13-18 demographic that's playing online games/MMORPGs/etc, you would probably see a decent conversion rate AFTER the ad had run for at least 3 months (again, agreeing).

Advertising is surprisingly affordable. Especially with what I mentioned if you're paying per click. The user acquisition costs don't seem to be very high so if that form of advertising (and others, have to broaden your strategy) your costs really aren't that much if it does end up working.

However, I'm not sure Stefan would do this because the Facebook ads would really be better for the Facebook clients. You could split it and advertise both, though.

I work in the mobile advertising industry -- I don't think advertising is in Graal's budget. Effective advertising typically starts at 20k a month.

There's free options that can at least be attempted.

You're welcome to try, but I'm willing to bet it won't produce a single conversion. You could try guerilla advertising but it's a lot of work.

That sounds like a job for Stefan. Besides, if I was a new player and I saw the current website I would of never attempted playing Graal.

I dunno where you got this from but i can guarantee you that it's not 20k a month for any advertising that Graal would need.

It's simple. I know many advertising methods.

Facebook.. If you look at other gaming sites you will see they have many thousands of followers. Simple, hijack their posts gaining attention to your Facebook page. Keep doing this technique and your page will grow and you will get conversions (people joining your game). You also have the Facebook ads you can also use like Fidel said. Very effective.

Once you have that technique up and running.. You then go on Twitter and start following gamers, they see your page and if it's well set up it will catch their eyes and you get conversions yet again and followers.

Instagram.. Very effective technique that is over looked by many people. All you need to do is set up a page "Graal Online" and upload some pictures of the servers on the page. Then what you do is, search games. I did it and it brought up a like 8million gaming pictures. Now what you do is you start going through picture and liking them.. You like 100s, 1000s, tens of thousands if you want. Hell you can even like the whole 8 million. People get notifications when people like their pictures so everybody is going to see your page..

Then we have the likes of mini-site building. We already have a graal website don't we? Start SEO'ing it. Find keywords. For example... "awesome 2D games" then you go to google keyword tool, you see how many searches it gets a month in google then you analyze the competition and if it can be beaten then you go beat it and then you get that keyword ranked #1 on google so you steal all the click throughs to your website which links to your game. That simple really.

We have Youtube.. Why do we not have an official Graal Online youtube channel? You could have been building cool videos to advertise your page for around $5 off fiverr.com

We have big internet gurus promoting games. (Affiliates that are involved in games) They have a HUGE email list of gamers they send their promotions & offers out to. You pay these guys like $10, $20 to share your game and they send it out to 100s of thousands etc.

I could go on and on. Many advertising techniques that could bring in a lot of players and it doesn't even scratch the 20k.

Yea, you're totally right.

I was only awake when i typed this :( give me a break :D lol

Well, since you were just waking up -- I have the information from the 80+ accounts we manage on a daily basis. There are some which spend as little as $1,000 a month. There are some which spent in excess of $50,000 in May.

The real indicator is going to be how much an advertising client can generate in profit from each lead they gain through advertising; this is called ROI (Return of Investment).

Let's suppose that Graal identifies the "lifetime" of a user as 3 months and over these three months the average user generates $6 of revenue. That would mean that for any given month Graal could not afford to spend more than $2 in order to gain one user -- and that's with the assumption that every user gained through advertising is going to spend $6 in 3 months!

Okay, so let's do the math - someone mentioned CPC (cost per click). We'll convert that into CPI (Cost Per Installation) in order to illustrate my previous message more clearly.

Graal buys 100,000 impressions through an advertiser at $0.50 CPM (cost per mille) which results in $50 of spend. Let's say the CTR (Click Through Rate) for Graal's advertisements are 2.50% (this is a healthy average).

That means that of the 100,000 impressions, only 2,500 people have clicked. Let's talk about conversions rate (CVR). Of these 2,500 clicks not all of them will generate conversions - in fact it's fairly normal to see 1.00% - 1.50%. We'll take the higher number.

with 100,000 impressions and 2,500 clicks, we can expect 38 conversions (rounding up from 37.5). Okay, so Graal now has 38 new players.

What happens now? Not all of these players will meet the 3 month "lifetime" (this 'lifetime' parameter would be defined by statics Stefan and Unixmad have access too, we can only speculate). Let's say 50% of the 38 stick around; I think this is an extraordinary retention rate but we'll continue the example.

Now, of the 38 original conversions we have 19 players which stay for the entirety of the 3 month lifetime. Let's talk about purchases - this is where the ROI comes into effect. Let's say 50% of the retained conversions make purchases. In the mobile industry we typically see something like 1.50% or in that area, but we'll pretend that Graal has a phenomenal flow from conversion to purchase.

19 players make purchases of $2... Graal has generated $48 in revenue while spending $50 to gain the revenue -- they're at a loss of $2. The initial $50 represents about 1 hour of traffic.

Now it should be clear why it's not a problem you throw money at. There is a lot of money to make in the advertising industry, because of this some of the sharpest minds and best technology are put into play. If you think this system can be beat with free advertising systems then I'm left wondering why the Mobile Advertising Industry is set to surpass all other advertising mediums in existence instead of the free options.



All of that being said - advertising could work, but Graal would have to optimize their purchase flow or the ROI won't back out. Would love to give Graal a try at my work but that's a decisions Stefan and Stephane need to make!

dude just dropped a knowledge bomb on koho :fro::fro::fro::D

dude probably wasn't good at maths, got fired and has a lot of spare time

He's explaining what he does and i understand what he does. You can go spend 1k,5k,10k,20k and have different results.

You can also go do free methods and even have better results. Advertising is a tricky game and you need to know how to do it right. I'm sure Stephen can agree on that.

Mobile advertising is also more expensive than PC advertising.

Also i believe company's that offer advertising services are and can be expensive because company's have money. It's just a lazy way of throwing your money at somebody and getting them to do it when in fact it's something you can do yourself.

I think it depends on the product. I work in the digital advertising industry, which is much different and more affordable than mobile advertising. For instance, the Facebook advertising strategy I laid out would not break a budget and would not require 20K.

Especially with a targeted demographic and not blanketing the market, you're foregoing a lot of money that others spend on blanketing a market.

We don't blanket the market -- although I was speaking about US traffic specifically. It's not reasonable to use Facebook's media buying features as a comparison. They have intentionally configured their UI so that it looks like their CPMs and CPIs are cheaper than competitors. We have had many clients tell us our traffic (with our own DSP; we don't re-buy traffic) is higher quality than Facebook.

Well of course if you're spending 20K on advertising Facebook would be farther down the list of advertising strategies than something more effective (but obviously more expensive).

I don't know of too many advertising strategies that immediately give you the ROI you're looking for in the beginning. It would definitely be an investment, but there are cheaper alternatives you can use to get more insight into who you are targeting / who you should be targeting which leads to the development in (better) ways to reach them.

I guess I didn't take into account that you really can play as a trial without having to spend any money now at all. While I think that's great for those who play still, it does give into quite real and low calculations of ROI of certain strategies as you've pointed out.