Image: /\ltus @ Flickr.

Living On Virtual FishLiving On Virtual Fish

Tim HowgegoTim HowgegoKeywords: Affiliate advertising, website monetarization, virtual worlds, gaming, wow.

Source: fishtycoon.com.

Source: WoW, Blizzard Entertainment.

The “Learn2Play” Market

Publishing with Affiliate Advertising

Monetarization Based on Nothing?

1. The “Learn2Play” Market

“The game [book] publishing biz might just be the biggest industry you’ve never heard of. Publishers rake in about $100 million a year. … The Halo 2 guide sold nearly as

many copies in its first week as Bill Clinton’s autobiography did.”

Source: Marketplace, publicradio.org.

Source: elsanglin.com.

Virtual fishing guides… WTF?

• 70,000+ unique visitors each month, majority from North America.

• 400,000+ views of content pages each month.• Free traffic from viral and search referral.• Web 1.0.• No effective competition… nobody gets it?

Easy to Learn, Hard to Master

GameComplexity

Extent of Play

Mass market?

Hardcore?

$2+ mil book salesrevenue/year

Estimated from Amazon rankings.

$1.5+ mil adrevenue/year?

Very rough estimated total for Affinity Media.

$1.5+ mil sales revenue/year

Estimated total for commercial online guides. Spugnort network $1+mil alone.

2. Publishing with Affiliate Advertising

“Don’t apologise for advertising!”

(But do decide on the division of advertising and content.)

Iterative Improvement

Guess

Evaluate

Improved Guess

Evaluate

Balance displays

$0.25

Equivalent earnings per thousand page views – first month average.

$1.50 $5.00

Watch Some Metrics

Revenue/Mile - Could an ad network make more money than me?

Clicks/Page View – Optimise ad position.Conversion Rate - How good is the

product’s website?Revenue/Click - The absolute value of

those conversions.

0.22% clicks/view

0.34% clicks/view

x 100+ 2-3 months

Cashflow Equation:

But in the future…

More variedadvertising

Aiming for more repeat visits

Guides not selling as well as they

used to

More competition to sell + game

changesThis isn’t

sustainable?MMOGs don’t

last forever

3. Monetarization Based on Nothing?

Referred from a Website

Buys Access to Paid Online Guide

Uses that Knowledge in a Virtual Environment

Player Seeks Knowledge of Game

• No physical product anywhere in the chain

• Everything useful only within a virtual environment

• Only physical output is real money!

What’s so special?

Image: clickr_clickr @ Flickr.

Source: Hot-or-Not. Sold 100,000+ in the first year.

“5 years from now [2006], I think the impact of their work will be widespread and

deeply meaningful in ways we can't even comprehend yet.”

James Hong on Hot-or-Not's Virtual Flowers.

Art: simianuprising.com.

Tim HowgegoTim Howgego

tim @ capsu.orgtim @ capsu.org

tim.capsu.orgtim.capsu.org

www.elsanglin.comwww.elsanglin.com