Stick Online Forums

I was wondering about how some games have a small advert when the game loads and it earns a little bit for the game.
Discuss....can't really think of more to post :/

The fourth choice reflects my opinion the most, but still not completely.

I don't mind ads, as long as they're not "DO THIS SURVEY AND YOU GET TO PLAY". But I've heard Meiun say something like money is not an issue.

i think u should change the question.. lol. it doesn't go with the answers.

oops just realized I did that....Not alot I can do lol

I like the idea. I don't think anyone would mind advertising while it is loading. I know I wouldn't even mind it in the corner during gameplay. But that isn't everyones case.

However, I don't see what advertiser would want to be there, considering the traffic. And it wouldn't be much money. But if it was, perhaps Meiun could lower the donation amount to 5 dollars.

Quote from: Infection on July 28, 2011, 11:07:30 AM
I like the idea. I don't think anyone would mind advertising while it is loading. I know I wouldn't even mind it in the corner during gameplay. But that isn't everyones case.

However, I don't see what advertiser would want to be there, considering the traffic. And it wouldn't be much money. But if it was, perhaps Meiun could lower the donation amount to 5 dollars.

Donation amount? Traffic? You're thinking in V2 terms. I'm pretty sure this is a suggestion for V3, and as such my input is as follows. I wouldn't mind the advertisements on start up at all. Heck, I wouldn't mind them in a few places. However there should be an option in the settings menu to turn advertisements off completely or even just in certain areas for those who are picky.

Instead of ingame, perhaps we could do it on the forums, like a while back when we had the google ads. Not sure why that stopped.

Just out of curiosity, does anyone even know how much money adds would make us like, per day/month?

It varies on how much the advertisers are willing to pay, how many visitors you have, what type of ads you are displaying. Are they a price per month to display? Per click? Or even per load. Although I do remember back when we had ads supporting the game only, it was about $100 a month with only ~100-200 people who constantly played using per click ads.

Having a few google ads is a good idea have back, but i think more people would click on it in-game, there's more traffic flow there too.

NO

Quote from: Forum on July 28, 2011, 06:18:23 PM
NO

Seeing that their was already confusion on what was meant by that, do you mean no ads, or no you don't care? And would you care to elaborate why instead of just raising your post count with a 2 character post?

I'm not entirely sure why you are asking this, if Meiun was contemplating possible forms of ad-based revenue for SOv3 he would probably ask the community himself about what we would or would not stand. There will be expenses, and if money is "not an issue" from the start, it will be eventually and we can expect ads of some sort along the road. Anyways to answer the question, I would dislike any ads involved with the actual game. I don't believe ads should tarnish a players gameplay in any way shape or form, instead I would prefer all ads to be on the website and/or forums as they have always been.

That being said it really depends on what is necessary for the server to stay alive; anything that's necessary can be lived with.

I don't mind ads. They are fine as long as they don't get in the way. The ads on Youtube videos are just annoying though.

Ads in-game though, I am not too sure about. This would be too much.
(http://i129.photobucket.com/albums/p223/scotman_2006/Ads.png)

the type of ad I am talking about is just one that instead of it just showing the banner, it shows the ad while it loads, the second the game is loaded, it stops showing it. It wouldn't affect actual gameplay.

Like this?
(http://i129.photobucket.com/albums/p223/scotman_2006/Ads-1.png)

*NO, only while loading*  But i really doubt Meiun will put ads he already gets donations to support the server

I guess that would be a basic idea, yes, or if our logins are like on our login screens now, a small banner at the bottom. Till you log in. Just small little things, if you assume 200~ log ins a day, a fairly low number if the game goes to how it was, some ads pay 1 cent per impression I believe, which would be $2 a day...it might be 1/10 of a penny, but w/e you get my point. Just throwing ideas out there to keep the game as free as possible.

EDIT: Thanks for clarification Forum :)

Quote from: sayers6 on July 28, 2011, 08:47:04 PM
I guess that would be a basic idea, yes, or if our logins are like on our login screens now, a small banner at the bottom. Till you log in. Just small little things, if you assume 200~ log ins a day, a fairly low number if the game goes to how it was, some ads pay 1 cent per impression I believe, which would be $2 a day...it might be 1/10 of a penny, but w/e you get my point. Just throwing ideas out there to keep the game as free as possible.

EDIT: Thanks for clarification Forum :)

Your welcome

I would suggest CPA (Cost per action) adverts. A good network that i've used in the past is http://www.peerfly.com

Basically a user fills out a very simple page (they just enter their e-mail or zip code) and the publisher (meiun) will be payed about $1.30-$1.60 depending on which offer you use. The network i suggested usually has a banner image in many different sizes that could be displayed across the top of the screen or something. You could also rotate the offers around. You can probably make alot more money using CPA than clicks.

I would suggest e-mailing the network first and asking if this type of promotion is allowed, otherwise they may ban your account and you lose any unpaid earnings.

Contact me if you need any help with CPA. I started with CPA about September last year and have made about $30k.

EDIT: The network i suggested also has "pre-pop" offers. These are offers where you can put the e-mail in the ads url and it will automatically put the e-mail on the form they have to fill out. So basically the user just has to press the submit button.

EDIT: Also, with the network i suggested, it doesnt allow incentives. This means you can't force users to complete an offer/survey or give any rewards for filling them out.

30k? You can't be serious..

That's not very much at all considering it's been almost a year. I know a guy who made $20k in one day.

There is potential to make a decent amount of money through online games and CPA. But like i said, you will need to contact the network first and ask if this promotional method is allowed. peerfly doesn't allowed incentives so you can't force people to fill out an offer before they can play or any of that annoying crap. You also can't offer any rewards for filling out offers. You can probably put something like "Support Stick online and Visit our sponsors" and then show a banner to one of the offers along the top of the screen.

I was thinking something like this:
(http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/6118/unledujp.png) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/823/unledujp.png/)

You don't have to use the banner images they supply. You can use your own that take up less space so it's less obtrusive.

Basically the player simply clicks the offer which will open it in the default web browser. They then put their email in the box that asks for their e-mail and meiun will get about $1.50. They will obviously use your email to spam you with other crap. This is all explained on the offers page and they must agree to it before they can submit to the offer.

Unless the game grows dramatically in size, I don't see that happening. I don't even really see the $1.30 happening. Most of the people on here I bet would not be ones to put any information into a thing like that. No one wants their email spammed like that. Plus we have a upper max of 500~ players who could be around when it comes back up....I doubt you could even get 1 out of every 10 to do that...I would just figure with the constant log and re-log of video games, CPI (cost per impression) and CPC (cost per click) would be the best way to go, seeing that CPI generates a bit of revenue without even needing clicks.

If I were to do ads, i'd be sure to not put them anywhere that it would interfere with gameplay or the enjoyability of the game whatsoever. I would like to not have to do any ads at all of course, as making money is not my top priority with Stick Online. However, the truth of the matter is that now that I'm out of college and having to support myself, the more Stick Online could make, the more time I would potentially be able to spend working on it as oppose to other jobs and what not. So if I were to have ads, the only places I'd even consider putting them would be on the website, a banner in the games auto-patcher, and possibly one at the games loading/login screen (but I'd probably like to avoid this one if possible). Nobody likes ads, myself included. But if they made the difference between me being able to work on SO as part of my living, I'm pretty sure we would ALL benefit greatly from them.

Another possible option would be to show ads in-game but have them stationed in certain areas. You could dress the ads up as billboards, tv's, etc and make them look more appealing. You wouldn't have to see them all them time, maybe they could only be stationed in towns as not to become too much of a distraction.

(http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/4482/screen5lm.png)

Obviously the sprite isn't the greatest, but you get the idea. :P

Stick-online players will benefit from how much the game will make. This game needs all the money it can get, and if it can rack up anything from advertisements or sponsors, I suggest it should.

It's probably something which should be thought of if the traffic which the game is receiving is high enough to purchase a better server or more than one. Even at the state of how it was before, it would probably only be needed if the player base reaches an even higher amount than version 2, which I hope it does. I still voted no on the ads, since it's something to be thought of at a later time as I mentioned. Not quite sure how it'd set with the current players if one day they download a new client version and there are ads all of a sudden.