New member

[cratica]

Hello all,

My name is Curtis. I've been a professional game developer, app developer for approximately 20 years. During the last several years, I have transitioned over to online game play, ecommerce and website creation to support the games and apps. There are many reasons for going from retail to online and one of the things I like most about having online businesses is the instantaneous response in many ways, from customer feedback, customer service, income generation, product deployment, rapid change of technologies, etc...

I'm currently building a website and business for rapid prototyping/3D printers, etc. Will share that once its complete. I also have 3 online businesses for sale, 1 of which is a steady income and the other 2 are new and have huge potential. If anyone is interested in purchasing them, please PM me.

If there is any help I can offer based on my experience as outlined above, please PM me and I'll try my best to help.

Thank you,

Curtis

[Kay]

Hi Curtis, welcome to Experienced People.

I'm sure our members will be interested in what you have to say. But why ask for PMs? It's a discussion forum. When people just talk via PMs, there's no point in having a forum. And you're selling something with "huge potential"? Wow. I have the potential to be the world's next Kung Fu genius. (I could, guys, really I could if only I applied myself a bit more.)

Sorry. Potential doesn't cut it here.

Your experience with gaming sounds really interesting - care to share how to make money out of doing that?

[crabfoot]

Curtis - you might find you get a better response if you pay Kay $2 a time to place small ads for the stuff you want to sell in the BSTE section.


　

I have the potential to be the world's next Kung Fu genius.

Like Lincoln City have the potential to win the European Cup at soccer? That's a better bet.

[Kay]

Crabfoot, the BSTE is for Premium Members to advertise. They (the Premium Members) have the ability/permissions to advertise in all of our marketplace sub-forums at no extra charge.

The "Starter Sites" section is for others who want to sell new sites, including those newly built ones with potential. The $1.99 charge isn't a listing fee, it's a processing fee. The main purpose of that charge is simply a small barrier to entry which keeps out 99%+ of the spammers. In my opinion the starter sites section is a waste of time anyway because we don't have the type of audience who buys such things. Thank goodness for small mercies. When it was free I used to have to spend ages wading through eCrap which was posted for sale. Most of the time I would have been happier to pay the would-be advertiser $1.99 just to go away.

[Wilko]

Wow, that's a lot of great experience to share...

Imho though - things of value and worth require describing - that way people can judge their value and worth...

[cratica]

Wow, that's a lot of great experience to share...

Imho though - things of value and worth require describing - that way people can judge their value and worth...

I completely agree and will describe with full financials and stats, just wanted to make sure I knew where to do it before I placed it in a place that it didn't belong. (It will be a lot of data and information so it will need to be in the correct place. Just trying to follow rules, every site is different)

[cratica]

Disagree Kay, the game I referred to with potential should not be dismissed so easily. This is not just a site, its a game with enormous work put into it, not just a cookie cutter website that can be built in a day or two. The game with "potential" is 100% complete, artwork complete, code complete, admin panels complete, payment system complete with Facebook and working on a proven system.

You ask how to make money doing that? Well, it takes a LOT of work. It's not a question that can be answered in a sentence as there are too many variables. You have to find a niche, either create one or take a proven design and change it to make it different or better but leaving the core gameplay mechanics in tact. This keeps the game familiar to your target audience but still different enough to get them engaged. Keeping them engaged is another discussion and I have techniques that work and are fairly simple that I would share with the new owner of either of my games. Having admin panels to easily change values, introduce new content is key and something I try to stress to anyone developing a game online. I recently chatted with the CEO of a successful online game company who I was interested in licensing their technology from. I know this person from working with him back at Acclaim Entertainment a dozen years ago. I was shocked to hear that they didn't have an admin panel setup and everything they did had to be hard-coded. (any changes, any new content required a programmer). The games I am selling require no programming and its super easy to add content. Adding a new store item can be done in minutes so anyone can do it. This is just one example of how to make money that requires little effort. Prior to developing games/apps on Facebook, I started a game company that manufactured traditional products (boxed copies of games, manufactured microphones and included them in the packages, etc...) The difference is night and day. Selling a retail packaged product requires a signficant amount of capital and a great system for distributing the products. I was fortunate enough to sign a distribution and music license deal with EMI (one of the largest music publishers in the world) who licensed music for my karoake games as well as got my products in thousands of stores across the US. However, it also requires a significant amount of advertising to keep the products moving. There are some similarities there with online games but I found that advertising for online games is far more dynamic, hands on and the feedback is near instantaneous. I would have to wait for months to see if a campaign worked and to see sales data with retail products. With online products, the impact is real-time which is amazing. Lots of upside to online businesses. Hope some of this information helps.

[Kay]

Thanks for answering my question so eloquently.

Could you please share a bit more about your advertising strategies? I 'get' the rest of what you've said, but I've not really understood what you're saying about advertising. Thanks!


***

PS: I'm terribly sorry if I seemed a bit grumpy yesterday. It wasn't a great experience to have to delete loads of adverts about sites for sale (with potential!) from the pre-mod thingy on here.

[Wilko]

@cratica as Kay says; a very eloquent reply...

Interesting, I turned down a recording contract with EMI in around 1977 back in the 'punk' days lol

With regard to the 100% complete game with "potential" - what language is this coded in? Could it be slapped onto a Linux VPS 'out of the box'? I'm curious - I am not a gamer or have any extensive experience in gaming - offline or online, but still curious...

You mention payment system - is it 'pay per play', timed subscription, in-game purchasing?

I am involved in a potentially massive global project and the online gaming arena is one where adoption could be key.
Hence my curiosity...