need help about advertising

[jpr2]

Hello everyone,

I’ve just registered to this site, i hope i’m in the right section
Also, pardon my English, I’m French after all

I’m currently developing an on-line computer game, I don’t want to disclose too much of the product, let’s just say it’s a kind of treasure hunt, players have to pay to participate and the winner takes all (minus my commission )

I’m not looking for comments about the idea in itself (though I’m sure they’d be valuable), but for information about advertising

I’m currently working on my business plan, and I have loads of questions about advertising costs and strategies

Let’s say i need 50.000 people playing once every month to start making money

I have no idea of the amount (and the time) necessary to reach that level

What is the best strategy, advertise specifically on on-line gaming websites or on the contrary, target main stream websites?

Should I advertise on a CPC or CPM basis? Or mix both?

If it’s on a CPA basis, if a customer registers to my web site but doesn’t make a deposit and doesn’t effectively plays, what would that cost me?
What would be the CPA if he registers and plays?

Generally, how much are CPC and CPM?

What about viral advertising? Is that “self made” or do advertising companies take that in charge? What does it cost?

What about affiliation?



As you can see (and though I know my product and my market well), i’m week when it comes to web advertising…:

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!

[jon123]

Hi, am sure you have already looked into this but i would first find out how much it is going to cost you for the licence for on line gambling, which I think isn't going to be cheap, as well as all the personal checks you have to go through. Although I guess it is different from country to country.

I once wanted to create an online competition where there was no personal profit involved, i scrapped it because i couldn't believe what i would have to go through to make it legal, of course this is the UK i am referring to.

[jpr2]

hi there,
as you guessed, i have checked this issue, and my conclusion is that it's simply a jungle out there (as you stated, it differs from country to country)

i found the bottom line in a French official comment: "we can't prosecute a Frenchman for gambling on a foreign site"

so my strategy will be to go some place where all my customers are foreigners (though my product still has a chance of being eligable for a uk gambling commission licence)

for now, i'm working on the advertisement, and i can't believe how hard it is to find figures, considering the amount of sites and forums on the subject

take care

[Prudence]

I would just like to drop in a small suggestion.

First and foremost, do consider affiliates. Offer some incentive to people for bringing in signups. Also, keep it multi level, like if people get other people as affiliates then they will get some percentage of their income. This ideally should be 2 to 3 levels deep.

Secondly, have you heard about a site called as Traffic Swarm ? ( trafficswarm.com ) . It aims at providing targeted traffic to every user. Each user is expected to browse their listings and each listing he cilcks upon, he gets a few credits (between 1 to 1000) and for each credit his link is shown to other people once. Although its quite a tedious task to keep going through links, you can even buy credits in bulk and I feel that since its targeted this is a good option. Using this, advertise your site for both - for the game you offer and for the earning opportunity through affiliation.

[jpr2]

thanks for the suggestions.

i thought about affiliations, but since i don't want to deprive affiliates of any of their gains, it would be me rewarding players for affiliating people, i need to calculate how much that could cost and compare that with other marketing strategies

as for trafficswarm, i've had a kick look, i'll look it up further later (unfortunately, as good as my English might be, i waste a lot of time making sure i understand things fully, especially in unknown territory)