I'm an idiot and didn't post a BA thread. :(

In regards to advertising Caius, it's something of a catch 22. More users brings more revenue. To get more users, we need more revenue! An adwords campaign has been run by myself and Izzy before - but unfortunately wasn't all too successful. No matter how low the CPA went, or how high the CVR was - it was not ultimately a cost effective venture (as no advertising will be!) with a poor user retention rate. The plan in regards to Ellis Island and this competition is to get some collective ideas on how to improve these, to allow more to be invested in advertising.

As far as SEO goes, I'd wager that'd be a better long term method as opposed to text based ads in sponsored links - for whatever reason some people don't seem to trust them as much!? However, I'm not surew how easy SEO would be on such a dynamic site that a bit of a melting pot of code with contributions from so many different coders. I could just be talking cack there.

ANYWAY. On another note, I have many ideas (all of them splendidandtremendous) for in game innovations which will lead to a hopefully higher retention rate - but I will be making these from superjew-account to ensure I can claim my rightful bounty.

Incidentally, and I could be totally wrong, but I don't think that things like the 48 hour rule, whoring and whatever other 'help' is given to new folk helps retention.

The thing that gripped me here as a newbie was the fact that anything could happen at any point.  It adds a bit of excitement having to earn your spot in a family and knowing that, until you do, you're fair game.  Things were much more relaxed, less structured and as a result, more chaotic (i.e. exciting).

In fact, I remember getting into quite a heated debate with some guy called 'Rooster' for shooting at me early on, when I had done nothing wrong but feeling exhilarated that I has survived an attempt on my life.

Once you're established here, it's the politics, community, loyalty to certain people and the rest that keeps you here but new folk need some excitement.  I'd imagine that, at the moment, their first few days boil down to:

• Do a petty
• Accept one of the 5 invites they have
• Do a petty
• Ooh, look a jail
• Do a petty
• Read the Streets
• Do a petty
• ....

I could go on about BGs and a whole other ton of stuff but that's nothing to do with newbies/retention.

Sprozza, I added 7 idea's to increase retention ratio.

As far as running an Adwords campaign, it can be done successfully, however if retention is that much of a problem you HAVE to do site targeting and specific searches. As for SEO, I was merely speaking about SEO'ing the Landing pages for search to bring up the quality score. 

Caius - I wasn't trying to be at all dismissive or ignorant of your suggestions, apologies if it came across that way! I was just pointing out that until such a time when any of these are implemented ideas (and I'd assume the best of them will be, then marketing isn't really the priority.

Noah, thank you for clarifying your point. However, when you run a game such as this, you ALWAYS have to spend SOMETHING on advertising to sustain the game in itself. You then take the learning for those campaigns, and use them to scale when you are ready to expand after additional features have been added.

My entry for this competition will be a video tutorial to draw the attention of those that click, see lots of text and run off again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ElMhdWaihY

I think that basicly explains the whole concept :)

Not half bad Scipita. Reading off cards though I see :P

Ha! Off the monitor, it's the idea that counts, I guess if you were going to implement something like this you probably should consider a native speaker or give me a while to study in the stuff, it was quite a struggle for me actually. It's the only thing I'm not 100% happy with :(

Two thumbs up Godmother Scipita.  I think the video is great!

Scipita. I really do think you did a good job actually. To be honest it wouldn't be bad but where would it air really?

I personally can think of 2 places, either on the main page (home page) or in a link that is send when the person signs up, the idea behind it is to catch the attention of those that don't directly feel like sitting down for hours trying to figure out wtf all this grey stuff is about. Get them interested directly sorta thing :) How many IA's don't we have that spent 2 minutes on this game... trying to extend that.

It could even be sent in the "conformation e-mail" when registering.  The game could even send this video out to previously signed up "IAs" in hopes of getting them to return and try again after watching this tutorial video.

We should make our own iPod app. As we all know the iPod and it's apps are growing at great rates and many people download the mafia apps they have there but this game is much much better than those so we should come up with some kind of app to put on iTunes and we can even charge $.99USD in order to raise some capital for more advertising and also for the owners to line their pockets ;)

The ipod idea is good however text based games are not ideal for ipods if you intended on making this game an actual application.  Although you could create a lighter version of mr which could advertise the real game online.

The only problem with that is theres 1000s of Mafia like games in App form and for the most part are free so im not sure how well the advertising or cash flow would be.

Another thing that can be done, and forgive me if something to this effect is already in place and I am ignorant to it, but the referral system.   Maybe put a prize to it.  Say, you get a referral and he plays to WG, then the referrer could get something,  say 1 Credit or something. 

Good idea.

Perhaps have a montly/bi montly competition - the person with most referrals who become made man or above, and are still active at the end of the period wins a few credits or something.

If someone has already said this, i apologize in advance, and no i didn't mean to copy you, it was an accident.

Ok, my idea is that we could run a competition for a great motto for MafiaReturns, then that may attract more players, and then more of them will stay, because there is more people their, so then even if the same percentage turn IA, not only does it help the user base by increasing the number of IA, which is good for training peoples gun, it also brings more people into the game, and then they might recommend a friend.

Also, i think that you might be able to attract more people, if there were more IA, which then attracts people because when i was talking to my friend,recommending the game to him, he was asking when can i shoot something, i think that this might help people stay on the user base, but then it might just cause more wars, with more people with better guns, means more idiots deciding to take pot shots at people.

And another thing, I have found that sponsoring people does actually help them stay on the game longer, knowing that there is someone there, helping them along the way, guiding them, and i will always send my assiciates about 100k to get them started dealing drugs, and also i get them to tribute regularly, which doesn't happen as much as if you have just joined a family, and then you have to ask the Crew Leader for help, when i first start, this may sound stupid, i was a bit scared to ask my crew leader for anything, i wasn't sure how to address them, so having a lower ranked person to talk to does definitely help on that front. With a sponsor, they will then learn more about the game, meaning that they will then rank up faster than people who don't have a sponsor, who are completely new to the game, and then I think that we would probably have a lot more Made Men, which would then mean that more people would have associates, and so it goes in a big loop, and i am probably repeating myself.

And finally, I was wondering whether it would be possible, to shorten the Tutorial, though there is quite a lot to fit in, my friend just gave up on reading it about 5 lines in, after he saw how long it went on for, maybe just shortening it just a little bit, or maybe it changes for each rank you have, like when your gangster, it will just show the basics, and when you get to Made, it will then show more and you get the picture, though i don't know how hard it would be to write a script for that.

I have just realized that i am rambling , so shall end it here

Thanks

Well the referal system ideas are nice, since i refer a lot :P  The thing I recently took notice to is that the ones i have refered reach wise guy before I've even scored $100,000 in loot... perhaps remove the rank limitation and allow us to earn the full mill off of referals...  Is it really that bad to put the extra money into play?  An extra mill is roughly equivalent to 5 credits off the marketplace, so hey 30 days of timers is well worth my refering / working on keeping my referal playing.

Not bad Scipita, but the 10million is mine damnit! :P