Any good strategies?

[Blue]

I have tried so many times, and made so many new games, but i always seem to loose all of my money. If anyone has any tips/strategies that could help, I thank you in advance.

[tibobn]

1 thing that helps alot is to search for beginner employee as close to 200%(wich is max) so they get more efficient % wise as u raise them to expert lvl.
making sure u get all their needs filled help with a big % as well.
also having a manager give them a boost and having HR later on to set 7H shift and to manage the manager all help % wise.

early on u dont need all of them expert since u dont need those component / module produced in masse.
other than that i would say dont move into bigger building too soon since they cost a big chunk ... u need to make sure every website run video ads as revenue so u can make good $ and develeop urself decently.
also check satisfaction of user .. u need to keep them happy with 65% + or something like that.

im pretty new on here myself and after 16 years of game play i start to struggle to get better faster lol ... so im not the best advisor but what i said greatly help for sure at least early / mid game.

[Lord Strong]

i just know you need at least 1 sales executive and at least text ads to become profitable. later features such as banner ads and video ads do a lot more profit. I found I was making profit prior to 1m users, probably a lot sooner but trying to maximize contracts for my ad features. you may need negotiate a few good contracts before you start seeing profit. once you start getting profits on daily basis you can afford more stuff for your offices and website. try not to add too many employee benefits too early. try at least get to a milestone you start to see your site is making money then concentrate on improving everything. sometimes players may add employees too soon and haven't started making profit yet. I think at the start you only need 1 to 3 of each designer and developer depending on what features your site has. and 1 of each of the first few other emloyees you unlock. game seems to go pretty straight forward on whats unlocked in research. you may wait a bit to focus on adding stuff the helps employees stats. I know the early game the investor gives a bit too much help but its a process we all need to learn.

One thing I noticed that has happened in some my games is if your running an email campaign or other marketing it helps to cancel it if your site is at maximum registered users based on feature levels. you dont need marketing sept to gain users to maximum but remember to restart a marketing campaign when you upgrade features. it may take some time to play this game optimaly. but you just got to pay attention to some the details of the game.

I'm not 100% sure but I think it's possible to become profitable around 200k users or more. might take more depending on your sales executive.

[Lord Strong]

another thing i might add is features that are being upgraded work best for your site if they are at the same levels. also doing marketing on a budget from your ad profits might help.

early game you will lose money til you get a somewhat decent ad contract for your sales executive to run. try running first one maybe one day if your playing with investor. then when you get a somewhat decent ad contract try to adjust your marketing so you stay profitable. check the budget screen at least once a day or so depending how far your along and see if your gaining or losing money. you may need upgrade some things to start seeing profits. if your finding yourself losing money while you have a marketing campaign try to disable it when you reach maximum registered users. then see if profit is coming in from your ad campaigns. if your not seeing profit at this point you may need more users or an add contract that has the highest cpm you can get and close to matching amount of your sites maximum impressions.

when you find your starting to make profit from ad contracts try running them for 10 days at a time. and use you sales executive to find some new contracts with more impressions based on maximum impressions your site can do. I like to get at least a few good ads lined up to replace my current ad contract when 10 days are up. dont forget train your sales executive between ad campaigns but try always have at least one or two new contracts waiting for next 10 days. you will slowly but surely keep improving your users and adding profit bit by bit. 2 things to remember when improving your site. search for contracts keep marketing at what you can afford and still get profit. eventually you will get the hang of it and it will get easier to get decent contracts and find ones that are most daily profit.

[Lord Strong]

try to understand marketing and ad contracts are basically two different things. marketing brings users to your site and ad contracts are earning you money for your site.

[MagicMarker]

While the advice to have video ads on your website, or to hire managers to manage your employees' effectiveness, are all pretty sound, they all blatantly ignore one important fact: it takes time to generate the Research Points (RP) you need to buy these abilities. And you can't run the more profitable ads on your site with just beginner level staff. Especially video ads require EXPERT level sales execs, and also expert level components created by expert level designers, developers and lead devs. This means weeks and weeks of training, researching and crafting components and modules by the dozens. It doesn't come overnight.

So the first advice I would give is: get some (at least three) researchers early, train them to their max beginner speed, and then have them generate RP like crazy. And if you're in a particular hurry for more RP, *and* you have chosen 'ex-manager' as your CEO's background, have your CEO manage those researchers to help them generate RP faster.

---

I've gone so far as to start a custom game, rent the smallest office, give my CEO an 'ex-manager' background, and have him/her do nothing but train for the first two weeks, getting their speed up as high as possible, before actually hiring up to eight employees (three researchers, three designers, two developers). I then had the CEO manage those employees, while they did nothing but train as well.
Sure, by day 22, I had still made no revenue whatsoever, while at the same time having spent a weeks worth of wages for my employees, and three weeks worth of rent. But in the grand scheme that is still less than a $10k loss.
Then I had the employees do their job crafting bunches of RP and beginner components, all managed by the CEO. Then I started headhunting for a sales executive to generate some ad contracts, and by the end of the first month, I had a website that produced some revenue from text ads. Halfway through the second month, I had hired another sales executive, and built a second website generating some income.

If you start on this path, don't concentrate on getting employees with high starting speed. Since you're going to spend time training them anyway, just hire the ones with a good MAX speed. The higher max speed is what you want to have in the end, and the lower starting speed means that they are cheaper to hire, which is a good thing when you're not making a lot of money yet.

Following this method, maybe at the start, the revenue stream isn't stellar. But it gets you there!
The important part is to keep diversifying your pool of employees, train them up to their max beginner level ASAP, and let them generate oodles of components.
And don't upgrade your employees too fast. With the CEO, this isn't a problem, but employees get more demanding and expensive when upgraded.
First make sure that you have some staff generating the RP and the low level components and modules you need to START a website, Then make sure you can generate a little income.
Simply the first day that your ad income is higher than total daily expenses, is a BIG WIN.

And here's a tip on negotiating for ad contracts:
When you've opened the negotiation screen and have selected the website and time slot for the ad, the client will make their first offer known. Let's say they offer $3.41. What I then do is, make a $6.80 counter offer. (double their bid, rounded to the nearest dime)
Now every time they raise their bid, I lower mine by 10 cents more. Just be the bigger man, show that you are willing to sacrifice a little. By the time the difference between my last bid and theirs is less than a dollar, I split the difference, and then add 10 cents. I usually end up at 75% of my initial bid, or 50% above theirs! In the $3.41 / $6.80 example, I'll always get $5.10 out of it, But if I'm greedy and try to land on $5.20, they ALWAYS reject me.