Who do you do your advertising with?

I'm totally clueless when it comes to advertising, so i'm curious who anyone elses uses.

Do we have actual middle-man agencies around, or do we have to make our own ads and submit them?

Thanks

May I suggest having a look at this thread which contains quite a bit of helpful advice wrt advertising in SL?

MetaAdverse isn't a bad idea.... they offer a lot of flexibility in displaying ads, and a lot of exposure throughout SL.

Setup is mildly complicated if you've never done it before - but once you've done one sign, the rest are cake.

Hope this helps!

Find

Well, part of why i'm asking is i'm still 7,000Ls in the red trying to sell my new boardgame, so I think it's a safe bet that I suck at business.

I'm trying to find someone with more skill than me.

How much are you selling it for?

1000Ls a copy.

Wasen't quite sure what to price it at to be honest, the best comparable game is Settlers of SL which is 2500Ls now.

I don't know if this is the issue in your case, but I've looked at a number of board games in SL, and everytime what has stopped me from buying was the prim count. If your game requires 234 prims, then your market is very limited--to people with and extra 1024 m2 they are not doing anything with.

Consider redesigning for minimum prim count. One of our NCI instructors, Osgeld Barmy, took the GNU XY-Chess game that's a common freebie (and commonly sold at yard sales), and re-coded, re-built, and re-textured it from aproximatley 240 prims to less than 75.

I currently use "Find/Places" (only 30L a week--the best advertising bargain in SL), "Find/Classifieds" (minimum 50L a week), and the Metaverse Messenger (50L/column inch). I'm not sure how effective the MM ads are going to be yet, though the people at the MM have been a pleasure to work with.

Word of mouth is very good, too. One of my largest selling products is my Builders Grid. I gave away lots of them as prizes at my game show (Trivial Obession, M & W 6pm @ The Shelter). After a few months of this, I started getting lots more word of mouth sales.

Also take advantage of the Forum classifieds--they are free.

Finally--hold some events--real events. You have a game; organize a tournament. Have prizes, post in the "Find/Events" section.

MM needs to be HTML

Hi,

I'm looking for your board game, but it isn't sticking out at me in the shop in your forum link. You may find that link itself goes along way, but you may want to add the board game info to your signature and also make the game more priminant in your shop.

Well, I had it listed and had a classified ad up for awhile, but I found they weren't bringing in anyone, so after 3 weeks I quit paying for them.

Tho yes, the game is prim heavy, the board alone is 193 prims, and there are an extra ten for the base/seats/score display. But then there's not much of a way to make that smaller given the style of the game. Even so i'd like to think it would sell more than 3 copies.

For those that don't already know this is the game i'm trying to advertise: Link

Looking at the ad itself is quite plain, nothing caught my eye and no description of what it does or how you play, didn't even bother to give it a second look since you didnt take the time to make a more descriptive ad... maybe others see it how I just did?

That's highly likely, and it's why i'm kind of looking for where I can hire someone to make ads for me since I suck at it, heh

Philip Linden has said that he loves the M2.
If he can read the M2 in PDF format, then I think we're doing just fine.
And apparently, 7,000 readers agree with him.

Wow way to listen to feedback - name drop and whip out your stats instead of addressing the comment directly. Just because someone can read it doesn't mean it is in the ideal format. Nearly everyone I have talked to about the M2 all say the same thing - it's nice, but the PDF format is awkward, and they wished there was an HTML version online, which is far more accessible.

I absolutely agree. Philip's reading or not reading M2 doesn't change the fact that HTML is much easier to consume with regularity than PDF. I'm a little surprised that you responded the way you did to such a valid observation. I'll tolerate PDF for documentation and I embrace it as a format for documents that I intend for printing, but for regular digestion, the format leaves much to be desired. As a business, it's crucial to look towards to new opportunities. Countless honest-to-God dead-tree newspapers have already seen this.

I think that a big opportunity is being missed with regard to M2. There's a whole lot of information and commentary there that would be of interest to many people, but as it stands, there's no real web destination for any single piece of the publication. Were M2 more tightly integrated with the web, you'd definitely increase your readership (and advertising opportunities) as the outside world would be more apt to discover and discuss your content.

As it stands, it's pretty tough for Boing Boing or Digg to take an interest in you via their direct linking style, just as examples, because you're building the paper as though it's going to be printed while its entire premise is to serve purely electronic community. It's definitely a head-scratcher for me, and I hope you'll take these encouragements seriously. All this content, but no portal! I'd exhort you to seize the opportunities a true web presence would grant you and your advertisers. This sounds like a conversation from 1996 -- not 2006 -- but I'm being completely earnest here.

Since im mentioned



your game looks interesting, does it look 15 us$ a month interesting... no not really, a 1024 plot cost 15 $ a month your game eats all but 31 prims.

So already 2 groups are excluded (the 512 owners and the 1024 owners)

And IMO, the ppl who have larger land plots tend to have alot more stuff to set down, prim counts still get tight, and therefore you really have to SELL the game

ok now looking at your screenshots i count 72 triangle peices, instead of all those extra prims around the edges you could use just use a prisim and cut the topsize down abit, and get a simmilar effect, and just a bit of retooling code....


all of a sudden you went from 203 prims to 82

fits on a 512 plot (tight but fits)
doesnt eat up most of a 1024
and the ppl with larger plots might think, hm 82 thats nothing ive got 200 free

as far as the advertising goes, you probally should use words like FUN!!! and EXCITING!!! or CHALLENGING!! be discriptive, but not long winded

For a picture you probally want some "pretty" av's playing the game with happy excited (arms waving in the air) goofyness to show how much fun it is

anyways good luck and hope to see the game everywhere soon

Even as a publication insistent on using PDF for whatever reason, they are not taking advantage of any of the PDF features that could help to make the process more accessible - the table of contents has no links to individual content or any indexing, only links to pages (and you can already easily jump to a page in a PDF, so that is pointless). Additionally, none of the ads or content referring to inworld locations are hyperlinked. Also, for the complete lack of importance of HTML, why is there suddenly content on the site from the paper in HTML format? I am actually shocked at the arrogant way Katt just dismissed any feedback, so I suppose we shouldn't waste our time offering any since apparently what anyone else thinks (except Philip apparently) is meaningless.

wow! you do realize you are constantly representing M2, dont you? so your words and actions will be judged then tied to M2

phil also likes to blow smoke

make that 6,999 readers

Sometimes the need to be right wins the football game Cris.

In this case, the score is 56 to 0.

Reminds me of that sign-off for Steven Bochco productions -- "I made this!"

As long as Philip is happy though.

Those "extra pieces around the edges of the triangles" are actually playing pieces on the board, not just seperation between the triangles.

The "playing field" is 193 pieces.

So far i've gotten one offer of someone willing to help me with advertising, but they want 50% of the profits.

Pardon me while I laugh myself silly.

(At this point i'm clear where to put ads, and the rates don't seem outrageous, but making an ad I think would be effective isn't a skill I posess)