Keynote presentation "Creating a Bull Market:
How to Manage a Successful Virtual Economy" given by Vikas Gupta, Social Gold CEO, at Casual Connect 2010 in Seattle.
Casual Connect Keynote - Creating a Bull Market: How to Manage a Successful Virtual Economy
1. Creating a Bull Market: How to Manage a Successful Virtual Economy Vikas Gupta, CEO SocialGold July 22, 2010
2. In this talk… About Social Gold Basics: What, Why Elements of a Virtual Economy Monetization Growing your Virtual Economy
3. Who is Social Gold? The leading virtual goods monetization platform Launched in Sept 2008 Grew 2000% in revenue in 2009 Founded by ex-Amazon veterans In-game payments, Secure in-Flash payments Introduction
16. “Labour is the real measure of exchangeable value. Wealth is power of purchasing labour.” Value in your economy is in your goods. Currency is a means, not the end.
18. Why Virtual Currency? Separate “Value” from “Cost” Virtual currency is “cheaper” than “money” Train User Behavior Economy around user generated content and time
19. Building It: Who Are You? What you build will vary based on who you are i.e., game, social network, publisher platform, etc Platforms: Are you building a currency or a prepaid stored value system?
26. Payment Methods Credit cards drive majority of the revenue Mobile phones (teens/international) Pre-paid cards (cash paying users) Offers (incentivized leads) Alternate local methods
27. Subscriptions to complement Currency Demonstrate Economic Value Asks for more commitment from users When done well, Subscriptions can complement virtual currency e.g., Tagged.com, Playdom Mobsters 2
28. More… Inventory Management Risk, Fraud control Localization Come by Social Gold’s deeper dive into these tools and more at 4pm today…
30. Make it a Standalone Economy Go beyond “stored value” e.g., Linden Dollar vsFacebook Credits User generated content Prices determine by users (market) Trade against “real” currency “Virtual” Labour creates “real” wealth Both paying and non-paying users can play
31. How Do You Grow Your Virtual Economy? Get more users (peasants) Convert more users to spenders (commoners) Get spenders to spend more money (knights) Serve and retain your high spenders well (kings and lords)
32. Functional Goods drive more users to pay Experiment with price points Understand your user demographics and customize for them Keep them engaged for longer
34. Make repeat purchase experience extremely seamless “Encourage” higher price points Make sure the game is still engaging
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36. How many? Average: 50% of all spenders 9% Best Farming Game: 30% 15% Worst Farming Game: 63% 4% Best Social Game: 36% 51%
37. Summarizing… Virtual Goods power an “experience” economy Engaged users can drive significant monetization through virtual goods Experiment, Measure, Repeat Virtual Economy has both paying and non-paying users – cater to both