New player - How do I stop losing money?

[N3XUS12]

Hi all.

Firstly, I'm a couple of hours into this game and I am hooked. A massive thankyou to the dev/devs.

However I'm struggling to understand how to make money in the early game. I just don't quite understand the mechanics.

I have reached milestone 18 which requires me to turn in a $1 profit, but I'm making massive losses. I have the video playback and text ads features, but the text ads barely make any money compared to my losses.

When I increase my user base, that drives up costs such as server space etc, so the money brought in by text ads isn't close to covering my expenses.

How do I make money in the early game? I am miles away from video ads because I can't afford more researchers.

Thanks

[Herbeesh!]

Bringing your first profit is the biggest defining moment in this game as if you succeed you will be set. Your a startup company so figuring out how to get the money rolling in is basically the biggest hurdle and something that takes time even in real life many businesses dont turn a profit for quite a while so dont worry you will get that $1 of income and when you do it will probably be alot more than that. I forget what my first video ad deal brought in a day but it was enough profit that I was set for quite a while with no fears of going red.

Anyways I had the same problem in my playthrough but rode it out on bank loans until I had video ads after that the money pours in as long as you keep making newer better deals you will get more and more filthy rich until you make 2 billion a month lol. So one option is to take bank loans and invesment offers until you have video ads if you cant manage to get a profit going. Just make sure to pay all loans off and buy back your ownership once you get video ads.

For ads you need to look at how many ad views you bring a day and set the filter to near that number so you can get the maximum amount of payment. If the deal is for 350000 and you have 700000 then your only making money on that 350k. You could add a sales exec and make another deal and add a time slot or just always make 1 deal that covers the whole day. Just make sure you cover 99% of your potential.

Another thing is to haggle when making a deal you can get a much better deal by simply sliding the bar to the red and every time they counter offer just come down a bit 20-40 cents. If there counter offer is within around 40 cents offer the same and 95% of the time they will accept it and If there face goes red you might want to take the deal as they may leave the negotiations. Then again there is always more deals to find and of course always pick the deal with the best "base" $ as you can haggle higher.

If you want to expand your user base without adding servers then work on your features efficiency it will lower the CU cost per feature/customer allowing your servers to handle more customers on the same system setup. It will cost you components but the lower levels are not very expensive. Efficiency also lowers your response time which will continue to grow higher as you add features and feature levels.

Also ad blockers continue to grow in prevalence so you will want to keep a eye on that in mid or late game just a heads up as it will reduce your overall earnings potential by reducing ad views later on without a ad blocker. You dont need it now however.

[N3XUS12]

Thanks for the above advice.

I didn't truly grasp the mechanics regarding ad views, and I wasn't using the filter when negotiating new ad deals.

I have done that now, and straight away I started turning a small profit! It's amazing what you can miss when it is staring you right in the face.

Thanks again for those tips, I will use them going forward!