Marketer question

[GRRRRR BABABARKBABARRRRKKK]

Hi guys,I really enjoy the game,but I'm wondering about the use of the video format,audio format and the contract agreement that my marketer are able to do,cause I don't see the utility of these.
Anyone can help me?

[jhovgaard]

Hi there,

Thanks, happy you like it!

Currently there's no use for these components. I'm adding new marketing options soon that will require these types.

Best,
Jonas

[GRRRRR BABABARKBABARRRRKKK]

Originally posted by jhovgaard:

Hi there,

Thanks, happy you like it!

Currently there's no use for these components. I'm adding new marketing options soon that will require these types.

Best,
Jonas

Nice,I really think the marketing should be more faster,cause it take soooooo long to get new costumers,just my feedback too,thx for the fast response

[stefweegels]

i waiting also for this update :(

[jhovgaard]

I've just released Beta 15.1 which is increasing the maximum budget per day a lot! Restart your Steam client to get it :-)

[midnight]

Originally posted by jhovgaard:

I've just released Beta 15.1 which is increasing the maximum budget per day a lot! Restart your Steam client to get it :-)

Yeah I saw that.

First off, there is maybe a bug in the default value of the slider for email campaigns. It's set to $100 per day by default and if I modify it and bring it back to the smallest value, it's now $100,000. Please have a look at all the other campaigns, too. They might have the same issue.

But lets get back to the marketing. It's still the same issue like before. Now I can just throw more money into marketing. More than I have for the more effective camapigns, which also requires components from the merketers. I can't produce enough marketing component to keep it running all the time. And even if a could, I don't have the money. 15% of my employeers are producing marketing components. The effect of marketing is not very impressive. In a short experiement I spend something around $400,000 and the required marketing resources and I just got ~300,000 new users.

I also noticed that now there I a negative organic growth by default. So, viral marketing is off the table?

If I do the math (hasty):

• lets say I get $0.01 per registered user
  
• Lets say I have to invest $2 per user through marketing. This is an estimated number including direct costs for marketing campaigns and salaries for employees working on marketing components, I still have the feeling this number is too small. I will try to run the numbers again, later.

The investment to get 1 user is paid off after 6 to 7 month.

There is still no option to auto repeat, so if I get lazy and forget about marketing, my user numbers are decreasing.

I don't know... it feels broken :(

[midnight]

I did run some more numbers:

situation:

• 6 work days per week (1 day off per week)
  
• Registered users: 8,500,000
  
• Potential users: 20,000,000
  
• 25% of my employees working for marketing (13 marketers, 2 managers, salary: ~ $11,000 per month per employee → $5,500 per day, I will add this to the marketing costs)
  
• My marketing employees are high skilled and can produce enough components to run an email campaign with $100,000 budget for 1 day every 3 days (so, 2 times per week)
  
• $45,000 total revenue per day after hosting expenses, salaries, benefits, etc. → which means: for now I have to wait ~3 days anyway to get enought money for that marketing campaign
  
• Due to the number of registered users and my income (after hosting expenses, but before salaries and benefits) the income per user is ~ $0.008 per day

This results is:

• 1 email campaign ($100,000 budget, 1 day) increases the number of regisered users by ~180,000
  
• That means, I can increase the number of registered users by ~60,000 per workday
  
• That means, I can increase the number of registered users by ~360,000 per week (remember: 1 day off per week)
  
• The marketing investment per user pays off after ~81 ingame days
  
• At that rate I still need ~224 ingame days to hit my current maximum of potential users at 20,000,000
  
• At that rate I will need ~1,880 ingame days (~5 ingame years) to reach 100,000,000 users
  
• At that rate I will need ~19,280 ingame days (~53 ingame years) to reach 1,000,000,000 users

Right now, the only way I can see to accelerate this, Is by hiring even more marketers. This game should be about developing and not marketing!

Is there some kind of multiplier, based on the product size, just like in Beta 14, which results in an increased effect per marketing campaign?

[jhovgaard]

Thanks for the detailed summary gamer, it’s much appreciated!

I’ll look into fixing this, I see your point.

You can increase your income a lot by reducing your potential users. Right now you pay hosting costs for handling 20m, but you only have 8.5m. Make sure to only increase potential users when you need it. You can disable features and then cut down on your servers.

Hope it makes sense :-)

Best,
Jonas

[midnight]

Originally posted by jhovgaard:

You can increase your income a lot by reducing your potential users. Right now you pay hosting costs for handling 20m, but you only have 8.5m. Make sure to only increase potential users when you need it. You can disable features and then cut down on your servers.

No, I can't.

• Besides the landing page I already have just 1 feature active
  
• My base daily income is ~$73,000
  
• My daily hosting expenses are ~$1,000
  
• My daily licence expenses are ~$2,000
  
• My daily revenue is ~$45,000

I have 1 large server and 1 medium server. The hosting expenses are kind of cute. Some time ago, I needed that setup to handle the traffic. In the meantime I optimized the hell out of my product because it didn't make sense to increase the procuct level to increase the maximum number of users, because marketing too slow, u know ;) I just increased the product level to 500 because it's a nice round number :) Now, these servers can handle the traffic easily and maybe they can also handle the 20m. But I don't see a big multiplier by reducing my hosting capacity and expenses by (lets say) 50%, just to have $500 more revenue per day, which equals a plus of 1.1%, as I said: cute ;)

Buy the way: as far as I understand the game: the server capacity always just handles to online users. The max. online users (peak between 18:00 and 20:00) may correlate with the registered users at ~1.1%? The number of potiential users is just a threshold to screw up the servers if you don't upgrade in time, right?

[jhovgaard]

Is your savegame a convert from Beta 14?

Hosting costs is based on required CU which is generated both from feature level and online users.

Anyways, thanks again, amazing feedback! Are you on Discord? I would to invite you to the playtesting group!

Our Discord is: https://discord.gg/hovgaardgames

Best,
Jonas

[midnight]

Originally posted by jhovgaard:

Is your savegame a convert from Beta 14?

No it's not. I started a new fresh game after the release of Beta 15.

Originally posted by jhovgaard:

Hosting costs is based on required CU which is generated both from feature level and online users.

I find that really hard to believe. Is that new in Beta 15 or should be? Right now, I started a brand new game, Beta 15.1. My product starts with a small server by default which costs me $40 per day for 500 CU. The balance shows me estimated expenses for hosting: $1,200. This is straight forward for me. The product has no visitors and no online users. If the hosting expenses are related to my online users, why am I charged with hosting expanses for an unused product?

Originally posted by jhovgaard:

Are you on Discord?

Not yet. I'll looking into it.

[djvandebrake]

I think he means indirectly - more potential customers mean more CU, and that means more hosting is needed. Potential customers don't directly mean more hosting costs.

Why can't you downgrade your servers as your efficiency increases? You may have needed that once to handle your users but you could kill a server to drop hosting costs now that you have increased efficiency.