Just put the finishing touches on our HTML5 arcade, any comments appreciated
http://www.scirra.com/arcade

Tried to base the design around YouTube, I'm quite pleased with the game stats
http://www.scirra.com/arcade/action/93/8-bits-runner
Click the stats button under the game

Looks very nice, like the comment section. It looks inviting. Well done!

double-posting this here since I need to make a decision soon and could really use feedback:

I'm building a site. It's up and running and making a small amount of money just now and I'm about to launch (within 24 hours) a major update. The site deals with collectible cards ("mtg cards") that are used in a game. Total size of the market is something like 6 million people at $300/person/year. Game is made by Hasbro.

A potential competitor and I have been talking and he claims to be building something very similar to my site and is looking to work together rather than against each other. He seems fairly legit and already owns both a physical store selling mtg cards and an online site devotes to card pricing which he claims has 20,000 active users (many of whom pay monthly subscriptions).

I'm trying to decide if I should compete with him or join him. If we chose to work together, any suggestions on structuring the deal? I've done all the work on the site so far but he could potentially give me access to 20K users quickly plus further business help.

He has apparently done work on a prototype of his own, although I get the impression that he is not a developer. He IS moderately well known on various mtg-related sites though and has produced a significant volume of work.

I guess I'm trying to work out what is going to be most +EV in the long run and what possible pitfalls I would face. Any thoughts?

Hey, maybe this isn't the right thread, but what's my best bet for getting a realistic appraisal of a domain name? Name is 5 letters long .com, common food name (there are chains that focus on it, but isn't served by McDonalds or anything), I am thinking it is worth decent money, but never really looked into it, where should I start?

Sharpie,
Getting involved in a business like that with someone you don't know well seems like it could be a disaster down the road when you have different ideas about how to run things or 1 person wants to sell or a million other problems.

Are you far enough ahead that you can capture the market by launching 1st? Can you/ will you put in the effort to just crush him?

If you want to collaborate it seems like giving him a straight percentage for access to his users, his input, non compete and possibly advertising would be best.

This would allow you to retain total control but still get the benefits

I am going to step out of my knowledge and potentially sound stupid but whatever . Can you figure out a way to code a piece of your existing software so that he can't change it but can host on his site and that will report back to you exact numbers on sales and then you take a cut of sales that go through your software? Monthly rent + % of sales seems like a safe bet. That seems like a mega win win for both of you. You could also see if he will give you an outright offer for the software. You could also keep it hosted on your site and work out a partnership where he features your software prominently to his users and you take a smaller affiliate cut from him. Pretty much just rambling, I wouldn't do anything where you have to trust him though.

I've been involved in something similar to this, on both sides, and it's a slippery slope.

When I was on the "affiliate" side I just developed my own software once I learned how +EV it would be. After providing my software to other people as affiliates, I've had them develop/purchase similar software.

It's so easy these days to go to a freelancer to reproduce almost any software that it really becomes about what's the best situation for you right now. Whatever you do, make sure your site is live so you'll be able to compete with him in the future if necessary.

I really like the straight percentage idea. From thinking things over, I'm not sure what he offers other than the (major) addition of lots of users and some experience. I don't think he can code or design (one of the first hits I noticed when I googled him was that he had signed up for a beginners course in PHP/MySQL) but he can clearly run a successful business and it would be nice to avoid competition momentarily.

As for blowing him out of the water: I have a 400-hour head start, some traction (active users and nonzero revenue) and I can code. If he hired a dev to build a clone and the dev worked full-time, he'd be out 10-30 grand and 8-10 weeks. In that time, I'm confident I can get substantial traction.

If we talk more and he can offer more than just users, I may well go for full partnership but for now, a % for users, advertising, ideas and non-compete seems good.

Next question: I've taken enough financial accounting classes to know that it's obviously trivial to mess around with percentage profit to never make any money (Hollywood accounting) so how do people typically structure deals like this? % Revenue? Or perhaps revenue - very specific, approved, costs?

Ok will do, do you have a forum recommendation ?

The only way is to work with people you trust who have skin in the game IMO. From what I have heard figure out a way to partner with him with the code on your own site, offer to sell all the software for whatever makes it worthwhile to you, or just continue on your own. Doesn't sound like he is positioned to really over take you so the whole competing aspect seems like almost a non-issue.

Site looks a lot nicer than most arcade sites imo. Usually game sites like this are just a cluster**** of garbage crammed onto the screen. I like ur style, bro. Well done imo.

My gut reaction is just to steer clear. You don't need this guy and can get 20k users on your own w/o having to deal with someone else. If you get in bed with him, don't give up too much. Seems to me like you are the one with the leverage and he is just trying to get some of that for himself.

Thanks! Agree with you about most arcade sites, they look kinda spammy wanted to avoid that.

I dunno what your actual CPC is but you most likely won't get $3 clicks. What you need is more traffic. Get that site ranking!

i m only at page 13 at the moment, and i m planning to read through all this thread cuz it looks very good so far. I ve just started learning HTML CSS and PHP a couple months ago, and built a couple sites as experiments and possible marketing.
I have 2 questions which may have been answered already:
1. what is the proper way of "connecting" your site to a company like paypal which handles payments, the security of payments, etc... how is it done, is it something very complicated?
2.where can i find quality info on SEO? i ve been looking for good sources but have not found any so far.

thanks in advance!

forgot to mention that i thought the music was catchy and to give you props if it's homegrown

SEOmoz is probably the best SEO resource to start.

@rothko none of those games are mine unfortunately, all games made with our software. The catchiest music I've heard is this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOr09Ez5XAg
Excited to play that

I was wondering if anyone had an opinion on the fairness of Adwords. I've found it myself to be very expensive and pretty useless, but I'm willing to admit that this could be my fault.

Anyway I was watching a BBC interview a while back and one of the interviewees was the Google UK adwords manager. He was arguing that adwords is fair game for all businesses because it works as an auction and it self adjusts and is fair etc etc. Small businesses and big businesses all have the same chances.

Anyway the campaigns we ran, I don't think we started on a level playing field! Firstly, they take VAT away from any topups. So if I top up £100 I actually get ~£75 in credit. If you're a VAT registered businesses you get this back, for all the smaller businesses you have to take the cost.

This means if you want to run a profitable ad, your conversion rate has to be more efficient than that of a VAT registered company who gets the money back. The boundary for a campaign to turn from -EV to +EV is higher. A keyword that lets say is £1 per click, a VAT registered company gets 100 clicks and therefore 100 chances to make £100 back, whilst a small business gets 75 clicks and therefore 25% less chances to make the £100 back. The small business campaigns are more expensive!

This means that small businesses are starting off at a distinct disadvantage. So I don't really think that the Google UK guy can argue it's a level playing field at all.

Edit: My bad, the music is in game. Nice work.

Adwords is awesome, it let's me test the effectiveness of my ideas quickly and efficiently, it's also very effective at quickly scaling up a proven profitable conversation path in a small business. If you are paying a lot for your ads you may have a low quality score. Quality score can make a huge difference in price. It's just different for a bigger business, they may be willing to waste 15% of their ad spend to get the 85% of the good stuff which probably rarely makes sense as a smaller business. In a lot of industries I have seen statistics that they are willing to bid to break even to leverage other aspects of their business hard to compete but so what? There's plenty of strategies you can use a small business that large business can't replicate. Use your strengths as a small business you probably have a technology edge, cleverness, experimentation (if it doesn't work so what?) leanness and agility. The exact same thing could be said for SEO in that some big business will never be removed from Google so can basically buy links fairly aggressively. While a small site makes one mistake and is banished forever (even retroactively) yet we consistently see small startups run effective profitable SEO campaigns like Code Year, Hipmunk, Balsamiq on and on. It really seems certain industries are moving towards social anyways and big business SUCKS at that so there is plenty of opportunity to be had IMO.

I own a beer blog website that I basically just talk about my experiences with beer, whether it's related to my own brews or commercial brews. It obviously isn't a unique thing and there are better blogs out there right now, but I'd like to get more viewers without spending money. What are the best steps I can take towards achieving this?

Thanks! That was kinda motivational

We blew through a couple of hundred free vouchers already, topped up again and am trying to be a lot more careful about it. Read about quality, had no idea about that thanks for the HU. So ranking = MaxPPC*CTR right on Google?

Did Code Year run a SEO campaign? Can you speak more to how they got the huge swell of attention that they did? I assumed it was more through blog coverage and Twitter/FB than through search engines?

Get involved in the beer Twitter/Blogosphere and inject yourself into the conversation. Be intelligent, don't spam. Once they recognize you (ie they have responded to you a few times a week when you ask them about what they are tweeting about) write a post that would specifically interest one of the bloggers and tweet them / email them about it. Make it an epic post, something like "100 Beers You Have To Try Before You Die." Bloggers need content like frat boys need aviators, it should be a relatively easy win and lots of new readers for you.

Not super sharp on quality score I would have to research it but I think it takes into account on-page optimization factors and link juice. There is an AWESOME webinar by Will Critchlow on "Startup SEO" on SEOmoz. It actually has a lot of stuff that you can think a little bit and just use for general good awesome ways to market a startup. Grab the 30 day trial and watch it for free. This is another epic must read post that seems super relevant to your biz Gullanian:
http://blogs.balsamiq.com/product/20...samiq-studios/

AdRank = Max. CPC x Quality Score

There is more to quality score than just CTR. Specifically...