[font=courier new,courier,monospace]

Get Some Friends And Lose The Idiots!!!

[font=courier new,courier,monospace]

There comes a time in every game developers life where they lose the idiots and save their friends. Idiots are people who seem to come and go, just staying in case of a hand out. Some people would argue that would need to "help" said idiots. Don't bother, I tried to help them and they seem to just keep staying idiots. I had to shake a few idiots myself, a lame friend who just wanted to leech my money, another lame friend that was petrified with fear and did incredible stupid acts, and finally a community in which I grew up in I left because they were idiots. These people were not savable in my book, but of course I might be wrong if you throw in Barney TV Shows and builder blocks (Minecraft).

[font=courier new,courier,monospace]

Let's talk about the friends of Game Developers. No, not your real life friends, but the companies and tools there for you when you need them. In Madness #3 I revealed my methods, my friends, that help me get a video viral. They help me make tons of money, and yet some people see them as enemies. Well, then I guess more money and games for me!!! HAHAHA, no I can't be that way, instead I'll reveal how each tool helps me and saves me time and money.

[font=courier new,courier,monospace]

My Motto goes "Videos are like stocks, channels are the companies. You only get good companies from good stocks, and if your stock is bad so is your company."

[font=courier new,courier,monospace]

Tool #1. SHARES! When you share something other than your heart and soul on Facebook, you need to think strategically. How fast is the competition reaching sales? How many people do I know? How fast can I spread a viral video? Do I need help in reaching a mass audience? Well of course you do, and I'll tell you why.

[font=courier new,courier,monospace]You need a mass audience because not everyone will buy your game. Not everyone has money to buy your game. Not everyone will like your game. Not everyone will like how you sell your game. Not everyone can follow your 1 friend back and buy your game. 100,000 voices are better than 10 voices.[/font]

[font=courier new,courier,monospace]The reality is, not everyone even gives 2 flying wind burps about your game. They only care about what they see, and what they see a lot of they will be tempted to buy. That's how grocery stores work, tv works, and now game sales work. People don't buy because you claim your product has a cool new engine, or a cool story line, or some cool combat, or even cool visuals. People buy because they see a eye candy ad on YouTube or hear about it from friends on Facebook and then go buy it. Rarely do people impulse buy on Steam or even on Direct2Drive unless they have seen your game before hand. That is why creating viral trailers are so important, because you are creating a mass hype and potential sales base.[/font]

[font=courier new,courier,monospace]Shares generally cost me around $300.00 for a good 100,000 shares in someones Facebook ring. I screen the people and only use authentic share sellers. They can reach roughly 100,000 people in less than a week, where all I can reach on Facebook with $0.45 a click are roughly 13,000 people looking for a hand out. If you have a giant Facebook, then it is easy to get people to view your trailer, but hard to get sales. Everyone expects the game you made to be free for them and their friends.[/font]

[font=courier new,courier,monospace]Tool #2. Shines all around, and can be used by itself. Simple enough you want to buy traffic to your videos. This is easier said than done because the traffic needs to watch the videos and like and favorite them. The trick is, only people with a Google+ and verified YouTube (phone registration) can like and favorite videos. So you will need either a massive proxy list and a bot which is illegal and never should be done EVER, or you need real people "incentivized" to go and watch your videos. NEVER DO ANYTHING ILLEGAL, EVER EVEN IF IT'S CHEAP AND FREE! The incentives could be a number of things, but mostly I pick a nice traffic reseller for the job. This way, I can ensure that per capita I have spent $1.00 I gain 1,000 viewers with a 1.8% buy rate. The Google way is $0.58 a view for the keywords FPS, first person shooter, and fps game. That's $580 for 1,000 viewers with a 20% buy rate because the traffic is targeted. Typically you won't use Google Adwords for video pre rolls (most effective) because unless your game is $60 you won't come out ahead. Technically since I buy traffic cheap my videos gain millions of views compared to the Google way.[/font]

[font=courier new,courier,monospace]Tool #3. Comes in when SHARES and SHINES need a boost and fail. If I can't generate a massive hype from Shares then I spread my money over Google Juice! This is a last resort, since if views and shares failed then my product isn't worth a dime. Google Juice is building index back links for your website to increase in page rank. The problem is, in gaming you can't get enough juice simply by sharing your link with others. You need to pay people that know where to place your links. Roughly with Google juice, I target .edu back links and pr 3+ back links. These can all be rented or bought. I technically spend around $5,000 if views and shares succeed and $10,000 if shares and views fail. It all comes down to how well the trailer did, and how well actual sales convert. Most of the time it is effected by day, time, and money in the person's pocket.[/font]

[font=courier new,courier,monospace]Tool #4. This is your most important tool, your mind. If you can quickly think, adapt, and evolve to meet the need then you can succeed faster than anyone. If your game is utter trash but people like making videos about it, then why don't you use that to your advantage? Release freeware and tell people to go crazy building with it, then give them the option to feature them on your YouTube channel or some kind of reward for their efforts. The more you think outside the box, the more money you can create. Your games sales will come from eye candy, commentators opinions, and finally how well can they play the game with their friends?[/font]

[font=courier new,courier,monospace]These tools are here to help you, and if you don't use them then you will be like the rest of the communities. Games that get 100 sales a month are not games, they are failware. Games that generate 120,000 sales and then die are failware. Games are products representing your company, and if you are all about the money your product should do well above 300,000 sales. My game investment per game is like $3,500. That mostly is music and a license fee. I don't make games for a living, the games make me money so I can live.[/font]

[font=courier new,courier,monospace]I think the next step in Madness will be to further express out how these tools helped me, and should help you. Although many people only read just for the giggles and their imagination to be appeased, some are actually looking for tips to sell their games. I'll list a example of what can be done for a iPhone game, and also what can be done for a pc game as well.[/font]

[font=courier new,courier,monospace]iPhone Example[/font]

[font=courier new,courier,monospace]$4.99 for the game (less time it takes to make investment money back)[/font]

[font=courier new,courier,monospace]TapJoy sign up for $2.50 per sale[/font]

[font=courier new,courier,monospace](averages around 125 sales per day because it is a big investment for their users)[/font]

[font=courier new,courier,monospace]Viral Video Ad for your game will cost you $2.50 for 1,000 views to hit front page YouTube from a traffic reseller ($7,500 for 3M views), $900 for 300,000 shares on Facebook, and finally $10,000 link juice for your site on Google.[/font]

[font=courier new,courier,monospace]Your app store sales should be around 500-750 a day. It simply comes down to the price and how that effects sales. You don't want free because you will lose money before gaining it, you don't want $0.99 because it takes too many people to hit your investment back, and finally your $5.00 is breaking someone's fingers so sales won't need to be astronomical. Your app store basics is averaged to 625 sales per day.[/font]

[font=courier new,courier,monospace]TapJoy: $9,375 - 30% Apple Tax = $6,562.50 in 30 days.[/font]

[font=courier new,courier,monospace]AppStore: $93,562.50 - 30% Apple Tax = $65,493.75 in 30 days.[/font]

[font=courier new,courier,monospace]Nice and simple for 1 months work, but if you more or less can viralize your game more you WILL have more sales. My average app store sales were about 1,262 a day for about 45 days and then boosted to 2,135 a day for like 90 days. This was for a $3.99 product that was more or less a tiny rpg / metal gear slug style game.[/font]