Presentation to BarCamp Scotland 2008.

1. Image: /tus @ Flickr. Living On Virtual Fish Tim Howgego Keywords: Affiliate advertising, website monetarization, virtual worlds, gaming, wow.

2. Source: fishtycoon.com.

4. 1. The “Learn2Play” Market

5. “ 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.

6. Source: elsanglin.com.

8. Easy to Learn, Hard to Master Game Complexity Extent of Play Mass market? Hardcore?

9. $2+ mil book sales revenue/year Estimated from Amazon rankings.

10. $1.5+ mil ad revenue/year? Very rough estimated total for Affinity Media.

11. $1.5+ mil sales revenue/year Estimated total for commercial online guides. Spugnort network $1+mil alone.

12. 2. Publishing with Affiliate Advertising

13. “ Don’t apologise for advertising!” (But do decide on the division of advertising and content.)

14. Iterative Improvement Guess Evaluate Improved Guess Evaluate Balance displays

15. $0.25 Equivalent earnings per thousand page views – first month average. $1.50 $5.00

17. 0.22% clicks/view

18. 0.34% clicks/view

19. x 100 + 2-3 months Cashflow Equation:

20. But in the future… More varied advertising Aiming for more repeat visits Guides not selling as well as they used to More competition to sell + game changes This isn’t sustainable? MMOGs don’t last forever

21. 3. Monetarization Based on Nothing?

22. Referred from a Website Buys Access to Paid Online Guide Uses that Knowledge in a Virtual Environment Player Seeks Knowledge of Game

24. Image: clickr_clickr @ Flickr.

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

26. “ 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.

27. Art: simianuprising.com. Tim Howgego tim @ capsu.org tim.capsu.org www.elsanglin.com