May 9, 2008
Yup, I’m finally back. Finals are over, I’m back to blogging. That means I’ve got a small fortune in EC credits to give away, I’ll try and do that Monday.
In the mean time, head over to another of my sites, I did a nice write up on my take on micro-blogging, I think its pretty good and will prove to be nicely profitable. Click!.
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April 21, 2008
I’m going to warn you all now, I’ll be updating very erratically for the next week or so. Sorry about it, I’ve got no guarantees when, or if, I’ll be posting for around a week. I’ve got finals coming up. Its really, really rough. See, I’m a bad student, and don’t go to class. In fact, I’ve got two classes I haven’t been to except for tests. And right now it looks like I have to get a 95 or better on the finals in those classes, or I’m screwed. That means a shitload of studying the next week, because I can’t afford to retake these classes.
I apologize for the personal nature of this post, I usually don’t like to talk about my personal life like this, I just wanted to let all of my readers know what’s going on, and why I’m not posting. I’d really suggest subscribing to the RSS feed, so you can grab my posts when they go up, since they’ll probably be all over the place.
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April 17, 2008
I know I said I was going to do a post about my personal ad campaigning. However, I’ve come upon something a little more pressing to talk about. Its been around for a while, and I’ve been using it for a few months. I’ve never actually kept it up though. Now though, I’ve finally started to get into it again, just as its really taking off yet again.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m talking about Twitter. Its been taking the blog-o-sphere by storm. Its been around for a while, but its really taking hold again.
See, the thing about twitter is that its a cross between blogging, chatting, and a message board. Its called a micro-blog, because it functions almost identically to a blog, but much smaller. Maxed out at 140 characters, you can’t say a whole lot, but you can say enough if you make several posts a day.
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April 16, 2008
Yesterday I talked a good bit about my publicity campaign. Well, not a good bit, but I’ve mentioned over the weeks a good bit. I figure now would be a good time to describe how it is being conducted. I like to think an ad campaign functions similarly to a campaign in a game. The term doesn’t get used often enough in gaming any more, but back in D&D times it was the big thing. Now its usually referred to as a “Long Quest” or a “Quest Chain” or any number of similar terms. In the old days a campaign was a long series of adventures, which all tied in together to defeat some enormous foe.
An ad campaign functions similarly. The first thing to do is to choose your ultimate foe, what you’re trying to defeat with your ads. There’s a couple of different ways of doing this, each with its own merits. Some of the more popular (and effective) methods are a “Targeted Campaign,” “Market Saturation,” or a “Viral Campaign.” They each function slightly differently, but I’ve listed them in their approximate difficulty. The one I chose to focus on is a form of Market Saturation, but more on that below.
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April 14, 2008
Today’s topic is rather serious. Its the reason why most people stop playing games, and the reason most websites die. Burnout. At some point, you look at it and it all seems so pointless. Sometimes its because you’ve sunk massive amounts of time into a project, and you look back at it and see yourself at almost the same place you started. Other times its because you look ahead to your goal and have trouble seeing it, the goal just seems too far away to ever get to. The worst though, is when you have a series of setbacks, which push you away from your goal.
The problem with setbacks is that they’re easily the most discouraging. In games, you may spend days trying to get a new piece of equipment, only to die and lose it. I’ve had all together too many experiences like that, and have left several games because of it. I remember my first experience with it, in Runescape so many years ago. I had spent all day saving up for a new piece of armor, and then I died and lost it. I was devastated. I did end up getting back up from it and playing for far too long after that, but it was my first experience with potential burnout.
It happens with websites too. Right now I’m seriously looking at it with this project. All weekend I’ll spend building up the site, working my ad campaigns and pushing it across the board. Its successful, very much so. By Friday of the first week, I was at over 50 unique hits a day. Then all weekend I was sick, and wasn’t able to do any posting or publicity. By Monday I was down to 12. I got myself up, and went right back to it, and by that Friday I was doing fairly well again, not quite as well, but I pulled in 45 unique hits, not a shabby number at all. Then I went out of town for the week, and the same thing happened, my numbers plummeted. For the weekend I only got 10 hits a day, and I lost a good chunk of my RSS feeds.
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April 11, 2008
One big thing I’ve found while running websites is that you’ve got to keep your ideas fresh. By that I mean you need to get on them, as quickly as possible, or else someone else will steal it. It happens in MMOs a lot, but at a considerably faster pace. Take for example the person who sits and waits, arduously waiting for the moment to pounce, when the enemy is at precisely the right spot, then they’ll attack it and beat it easily.
I’ve done that before. Thats my entire strategy when playing RTS/Turn based strategy games. Sit and wait, and once I’m absolutely sure I can beat anything, finally make my move. For some reason I just can’t kick that habit, and I almost always lose because of it. I’ll wait to long, build up a massive force, and push most of the way through their defences, but I end up taxes my troops too much and they win at the end.
You can do the same thing with a website. Waiting too long to start it will kill you. Its become fairly common knowledge, especially in the “Making Money Online” circles that its almost impossible to make lots of money off a website. It just takes far too massive of an audience, and most people just can’t attract that. Instead, the goal is to make a number of smaller websites, which each pull in smaller amounts of money, but which may add up to a nice pay day.
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April 9, 2008
Grouping is a feature in most modern MMO games. The concept is simple, and the reasoning is just as simple. Game makers realized people weren’t getting quite as sucked in to their games. They would play, and eventually move on. In order to solve this “problem” they realized they could make people play in groups. Its a lot harder to quit a game when you’ve got other people counting on you for things. Thus, the group was formed. They’re common in video games now, enemies too difficult to kill on your own, designed to be defeated by a handful of people all working together.
Usually in a group situation, whatever you get out of it is better than regular, non-grouped, rewards. Often this comes in the form of better equipment, more stats, or large amounts of whatever currency the game uses. Often you get all of them at the same time.
The same is true for websites. Its important to get a group set up, a few friends who all strive together. Its highly advantageous: if one of you is going through rough time, you can often get someone else to cover for you for a little while; by working together you can often help send traffic to each other, linking to each other in order to combine fans of each other. Look at my group right now: there’s TUK, of The MMO Kid, Sukosaki of Cookie Money, and Jay of Another MMO Blog. We all work together, we’ve got similar goals, and we try and help each other out.
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April 7, 2008
I’m sure you’ve seen them in video games. How many Legolas2004s are there? It was terrible right after the Lord of the Rings movies came out, it seemed like every other elf was named Legolas, and all the humans were Aragorn. It was terrible. Outside of that, you see things like XX_COOLDUDE_XX all the time too. They’re just stupid looking names.
Websites have the same problem. You’ve got to keep your name simple, but memorable. Take the name for this website, The Other MMO. Its hard to miss, and it will stick in your mind. It tells you a lot about my topic, but really only if you’ve read the blog. Its the kind of name that you just go “Huh. That sounds interesting, I should check that out.”
Too often website owners get carried away with their names. Just a search on Google for “Make Money Online” turns up nothing but “How I make money online with my thirteen year old” and the like. They’re generic and downright stupid names for a website.
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April 6, 2008
I’m a little late posting. I had intended to do a post yesterday, the goal is 6 posts a week, Monday through Saturday. I just wasn’t up for it, it was too much to do. I’ve been pretty sick this weekend, and spent it all in bed. Its been pretty rough; I can barely breathe, moving is difficult and sitting up kills me.
That makes today a great chance to talk about that. Everyone gets sick some times, and its equally hard when you’re running a website or playing a game. In most modern games the concentration is on groups, and that comes in the form of guilds. When you’ve gotten a place in a good guild, you’ve usually got a schedule to stick to. Its the exact same with a website. I’ve got a schedule to keep to; if I’m in a guild and don’t show up for a scheduled activity, I may lose my spot next time, with a website, I’ll lose users who come for my content if I don’t make my posts.
So what does that mean? What can I do? What exactly do I do to get out of this problem? (more…)
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April 4, 2008
Day two of the Entrecard grind. Its not going so well. 600 drops in two days is rough. It really hard to just shut my mind off and drop like crazy for a couple of hours. Alas, that is the nature of Grinding, so I put up with it. Hopefully the benefits will begin to show soon. Its already drawn some attention to the blog, but nothing amazing. Not to mention the Entrecard Contest I started has gone over dreadfully; I only got two entries for the first round and neither of them followed the very easy rules.
Oh well. It just means I’ve got more work to do. Lots more. First off, I’m not sure I quite like the interface yet. I spent quite a while on it, and I’m just not sure I’ve got the kind of look I’d like. Blogging, or really any website, is just like gaming in that aspect. Both have an interface that you feel comfortable looking at for hours at a time. I’m just not sure mine “clicks” quite right yet.
I like to have a nice, comfortable page to come back to after a hard grind. Its no different than if it was in an MMO, I want a comfortable interface, its hard enough grinding, I don’t want to feel like something is being shoved down my throat every time I come to my own site.
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