pay2play

[FC]

My online game (ferion.net) is going pay2play to cover the expected future expences of our new host.

We have always been able to run the game on a free host but are now forced to pay for the bandwidth and servers.

The bannerincome of the website has been a joke compaired to the the numbers I see here. To compare, we get about 10.000.000 pageview per month which gets me $30-$50.
any kind of banners on a gaming site does not work, no matter how targeted. Ive tried everything.

Back to the pay2play (p2p) option.

Currently, a players will signup for our game. and play the newbie arena for free. It is a limited version of the full game to keep inactives(signup-once and never login) from the real arena's and let them learn the game.

After that they can join a real game (a new game start every week, and the last about 1-2 months) Still for free. They will have a crippled version of the game. Namely we have limited their option in the technology tree (for you who have played civilization, its something like that). Once they pay for that arena they will be able to develop all techs and play normally, if they do not pay, they will simply be overrun by the payers that have the techs.

Its looks pretty complicated for non-players/gamers. but it comes down to this. Players can play for free , but once they are doing well they will have to pay a small amount.

We are talking about $2 per game.

The main problem is how to receive payments.

Paypal is nice for creditcard owners, but not everybody has one.

International banktransfers are hugely expensive.

Has anyone got any advice, or idea's on how to receive small payments ?

[theguy]

try ccbill or ibill.com
they require 5$ minimum charge

[Edwin]

One question, two suggestions:-

A) Approx. how many UNIQUE monthly visitors are you getting in order to show them the 10 million banner impressions?

B) If you're currently only making $30-50 off 10 million banner impressions, I suggest you replace your banners by a totally blank banner - fully optimized with a GIF file compressor - so that your bandwidth costs drop. I imagine it will quickly cost you more than $50 to serve 10 million real banners. Ok, you're not getting the $30-50 a month, but at least you can minimize the red ink until the paid memberships kick in

C) You're not going to get anywhere, frankly, trying to sell games at $2 a pop. Either people will NEVER be willing to pay (in which case the price is not an issue) or else they will accept an $8-10 price tag if the perceived value is high enough (I am talking about averages here, not individuals!) So sell a 6-pack game pass for $8 or a 9-pack game pass for $10 i.e. people can play 9 games for $10. Downside is that you're not getting $2 a game - upside is that you're collecting larger amounts - and up front - and reducing your credit card processing charges

[FC]

A) not 10M bannerimpressions, but 10 pageviews, If I would load a banner on every page I would have a CTR of 0,000000001

B) thank god those banners are run from advertising.com not my site .. I get a CTR of 0.45 btw with 15.000 Banner impressions a day

C) yes, we are going to sell packs of games. And the option to let someone else pay for their game. (this actually works, Planetarion has a simular system)

[FC]

ibill is only creditcard payments, which I already receive from paypal

[PaulT]

If I was you I would take a long, hard look at PlanetArion (Planetarion.com) and see how they implement it etc..

I don't know your demographics, but if u have a lot of younger people playing, then you need to give them ways to pay. (Look at "Splashtastic" and the soon-to-be-launched BT Openworld E-Wallet service (of which I was a trial customer) )


HTH

[theguy]

ibill and ccbill offer complete payment options
credit card, checks and 900#