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Really interesting for me to read this analysis. For my online game, conversion of people who visit the landing page is about 0.5%, but once they're paying, ch

by JeffL 16y ago

Really interesting for me to read this analysis. For my online game, conversion of people who visit the landing page is about 0.5%, but once they're paying, churn is in the 3%-5% range per month, which is around 25 months retention on average. So for me, it seems that the real money is in trying to get the conversion rate up and I'm mostly ignoring the retention, because it seems like I'd have to do a lot of work to move the retention rate. I guess people looking for sex are quicker to pull out their wallet but also quicker to be satisfied.

jacquesm 16y ago
You've got a goldmine there! With a retention like that you could drop your conversion rate even further (so market more aggressively) and still come out on top. Don't bother optimizing the conversion, the retention or any simple formula but instead focus on optimizing the one number that matters: net profits.
- JeffL 16y ago
  If I have a goldmine, it's been eluding me. I'm not that great at marketing and seem to be able to only get so many people in with adwords. People pay $10/mo, so a new user is worth something like $200 and I'm currently bringing them in via adwords at about $50 each, but that's the average and if I up my bids, the cost to bring in more will be about $80 each, which seems high considering how long it will take to make the money back. I only get about $3k spend/mo with adwords at the current bids. Edit: Costs are already so low that the only way to increase net profits would be to increase revenue per user, perhaps with added micropayments, but it seems to me that with so few paying users <1200, I should be trying to get a larger user base and then later increase revenue per user?
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    A couple of ideas: - increase your price (see: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1639712 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1639712). - consider partnering with sites that you select to send you traffic and give them a kickback of for instance $20 / signup.
  - il 16y ago
    If you have a proven conversion funnel and high retention, you should be able to absolutely blow this thing up via Facebook Ads. AdWords is hardly the ideal channel to drive significant game traffic(unless you're awesome at Content Network). Or set up an affiliate program paying about $1 per free signup.
    - JeffL 16y ago
      Don't know if I'm awesome at content network, but about 95% of my adwords clicks are coming from the content network and not from actual search. I get people via Adwords at less than 20 cents a click. According to Facebook, the minimum bid for people who like online games or mmorpgs, or other categories I've tried is currently well over a dollar. I did get some clicks from Facebook when their ads were fairly new and the minimum bids weren't so high, but conversion rates were much lower than those from Adwords.

by JeffL 16y ago

jacquesm 16y ago

You've got a goldmine there! With a retention like that you could drop your conversion rate even further (so market more aggressively) and still come out on top. Don't bother optimizing the conversion, the retention or any simple formula but instead focus on optimizing the one number that matters: net profits.

JeffL 16y ago
If I have a goldmine, it's been eluding me. I'm not that great at marketing and seem to be able to only get so many people in with adwords. People pay $10/mo, so a new user is worth something like $200 and I'm currently bringing them in via adwords at about $50 each, but that's the average and if I up my bids, the cost to bring in more will be about $80 each, which seems high considering how long it will take to make the money back. I only get about $3k spend/mo with adwords at the current bids. Edit: Costs are already so low that the only way to increase net profits would be to increase revenue per user, perhaps with added micropayments, but it seems to me that with so few paying users <1200, I should be trying to get a larger user base and then later increase revenue per user?
- jacquesm 16y ago
  A couple of ideas: - increase your price (see: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1639712 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1639712). - consider partnering with sites that you select to send you traffic and give them a kickback of for instance $20 / signup.
- il 16y ago
  If you have a proven conversion funnel and high retention, you should be able to absolutely blow this thing up via Facebook Ads. AdWords is hardly the ideal channel to drive significant game traffic(unless you're awesome at Content Network). Or set up an affiliate program paying about $1 per free signup.
  - JeffL 16y ago
    Don't know if I'm awesome at content network, but about 95% of my adwords clicks are coming from the content network and not from actual search. I get people via Adwords at less than 20 cents a click. According to Facebook, the minimum bid for people who like online games or mmorpgs, or other categories I've tried is currently well over a dollar. I did get some clicks from Facebook when their ads were fairly new and the minimum bids weren't so high, but conversion rates were much lower than those from Adwords.