please send a support case if you are disgusted by MA partnering with affiliate marketeers like sometrics and social type

is MA's latest marketing "strategy" a good idea?

  • Yes! Spam me for life for 5 peds

    Votes: 22 22.4%
  • No! Hire a competent PR/Marketing rep.

    Votes: 61 62.2%
  • i am one of the 7-11% of the population without a opinion about anything

    Votes: 15 15.3%

  • Total voters
    98
Yes! Spam me for life for 5 peds

I'll just create a dummy email account

You left out the option to pick both.
 
Don't like it, don't do it - it's that simple.

What a bizarre thing to be so upset about. Your highly biased pole and posts make it seem like you've got a big chip on your shoulder. We need more marketing across the board and this is just one angle.

Whatever.

Miles
 
Is there something in place to stop unscrupulous people from creating hundreds of dummy accounts to farm PED?

No you missed the part about how this program brought a massive influx of new players to the game.

:wtg:
 
in the past, ads in game were added to your seeing them if you chose an option at the client loader... and if you chose that, you got the extra loot access. If not, you didn't get that little bonus. They should re-implement a system like that in game someday as one small part of the pr/marking
 
Don't like it, don't do it - it's that simple.

What a bizarre thing to be so upset about. Your highly biased pole and posts make it seem like you've got a big chip on your shoulder. We need more marketing across the board and this is just one angle.

Whatever.

Miles

yes i have a chip on my shoulder, its more like a log though, but i still call it chip because log is so formal. :p
and you really think its bizarre that this upsets me? I think you are the one that does not comprehend the problem, because calling this marketing is the same as calling a virus a software updater, it might be technically correct but...
 
A person promoting a bad product to his friends because he earns money has a low character and its his own fault if friends dont like him afterwards anymore. A person promoting a good product to friends and earning something along the lines for helping putting the word out - i see nothing wrong in that.

What is ridiculously missing from any comments within this OP is that many of the products being on-sold for access to ped are in fact significantly more costly than the ped earned.

Its a bit of a reward system like AMEX

Although not averse to the concept what we blend here is privacy and the online track-backs / info Entropia recieves in marketing; if you do dive on the sword (so to speak) and subscribe.


Personally I would prefer in game adds supporting anonimity that avoids ip identifiers via a third party.

All in all we have choices that WE need to accept responsibility for and this is yet one more to be had!


Side note
John I enjoyed creamin your ass in the ring last night:)
But then I'd guess you creamed mine a few times too;)
 
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I agree with others about simply not doing it if you don't like it.

I think this is part of their move to make it easier for new players to start playing the game because most are not going to want to deposit any money before they have "gotten into" the game.

Doing these surveys etc is sooo much better than sweating.
 
Is there something in place to stop unscrupulous people from creating hundreds of dummy accounts to farm PED?

Who cares? The PED are not handed out by MA, it is handed out by that affiliation program, right? The PED comes from outside and, even if withdrawn, MA will get a share via fees... :coffee:
 
the point is that a high quality satisfying product does not need to resort to this, it is already being promoted for free as you said in your previous attempt at a comparison, by your logic entropia would of grown exponentially since its inception and would not need to pay people to do this. Marketing starts with your product. You only have to look at the types of businesses that have to resort to these measure to gain clients, if im not mistaken affiliate marketing is heavily used in the online casino and pornography business. I dont see ferrari doing this.

So you say coca cola, armani, victorias secret, etc. dont need promotion because there products are so good that everyone will talk about them anyways ? ;)
*See that turning words around in what others write works both ways :p - But maybe we can keep to the center topic*
The point is that promotion is done to gain more customers and that more promotion means in most cases more customers - if you have 2 good products in the same category then you need to put out promotion to gain customers because the product alone will not be enough until the customers got to test and compare it himself.
Affiliate marketing can only be successfull for high quality products when its products that are continuously bought/consumed cause if the product isnt good then people just wont keep using it.
Affiliate marketing means paying less for adverstisement overall as its one of the cheapest promotions you can run and being able to use more money for the product and improvement of the product instead of wasting it on other companies.

PS: Even banks use affiliate marketing for some of their products, so much for 'its only used in casino/pornography' - cause its not.
 
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I still think they should reward depositors......
 
I still think they should reward depositors......

Actually they do that. If you put money in, you get this thing... It is called PED, you see, and it kinda makes it much faster and easier to progress in the game. Try it! :wise:
 
i don't like the system but I don't mind its existence...it means more ped cycled in the game and that's never bad :)

nobody is forcing you to play with the system and if you are bothered by affiliations to casino sites I've got bad news for you :))

play on normally and keep on with the normal loot complaints that achieve nothing :)
 
Each to their own. It's a choice, if you dont like then dont do. There will be some who take up the effort and there will be those who wont. I wont, but my choice doesnt reflect others.

I think something more constructive, written as a warning, would have been better placed for those ignorant of this style of marketing, not a call to bombard an already overburdened support staff. Until this thread, I had no clue who sometrics/social type were, nor what bertha bot was talking about to be frank. But im not going to vent my distrust of it to MA through their support systems and i dont think others should either.
 
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I tried to stay calm and make fun of So Me Tric(k)s =)

I wanted to post constructive criticism...

But...

I never ever thought Id see "Please install latest Flash Player and pay for it via mobile" in my online game. WHAT THE FUCK ?! :mad:

Surveys...okay...but seriously...

Is this the idea of 1995, seeing PE as your e-commerce platform ?

Usually there ARE people out there that will exactly do THAT ! Pay for free software...and they are among us entropians as well.

WHAT THE FUCK MINDARK ?! I already got disgusted when I realized facebook is doing this as well since a long time now, but now you are trying to lure several of us into this piece of shit ?!?

I know I can ignore it...and I know it is tempting for many of us. Did you really need to choose this direction ?

btw. thx for the 8 PED...the only survey/winshit/enter your fake mobile number that I actually got through. FUCK OFF !
 
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Okay, so I figured hey, free ped, so let's at least try a little. And all I get is 'This offer is not available in your geographic area'. In other words, people are being discriminated with these offers.
 
Okay, so I figured hey, free ped, so let's at least try a little. And all I get is 'This offer is not available in your geographic area'. In other words, people are being discriminated with these offers.

One of the funnier "error messages" is, when you entered all needed (fake) data and click "OK" youll recieve a :

"Thank you, but you do not fit into this survey" x'D
 
Its a choice...there is nothing to complain about....

...will download malware onto the computer...get a lot of spam emails...make up a fake identity so if an affiliate does sell your info it is all bogus.

trap.jpg
 
Thank you for starting this poll! I didn't even pay any attention to bertha and didn't know we had an affiliate program started. I've been doing such programs for over a decade. As a single mother who didn't see child support, clicking ads and such over my morning coffee filled my paypal account with enough extra cash to fill the Christmas tree with presents for Kitty when she was younger. It was because of those affiliate programs that I went looking for a game that could potentially earn money, which is how I found EU and haven't regretted it at all.

I've spent two hours participating in the affiliate program and reading this thread while the downloads complete. I've already seen an increase of 15 ped on my card and there's still more to roll in. I have a laptop that's too old to run EU and if malware gets on here, it's no big deal to repartition it. For your information, the best I can do as a level 12 Sweat Gatherer is about 500 bottles an hour which, if my information is up to date, is only worth about 1 ped to a trader. The affiliate program by no means replaces the income of a job and depositing, but it is still a nice option. Kitty had a very bad medical situation that put us both out of work on medical leave to the point where we lost our jobs. I'm currently on unemployment and looking for work, which doesn't leave much after paying the bills. It's nice to have this option while my cash flow is lower than usual. Under normal circumstances, according to averages I've seen, I would be considered a heavy depositor. I guess that's the kind of person that's being referring to as not the type we want to attract to EU? :rolleyes:

I am going to let the four people I know irl who I've encouraged to join and participate in EU about this affiliate program so they can enjoy extra ped too. I will also be writing to support thanking the party responsible for this program and will encourage those who I talk with about this and who also appreciate having this added option to do the same just to counter your support case. I'm tired of others who complain to the point of ruining someone else's good thing. If you don't like it then don't do it. But don't go ruining it for me!

Hugs,
Aliana
 
I think its a fine thing.

We had ZEHX in game for a while, I have no idea how long but he was around for at least the first year I started playing. Though I never used him, lots of other folks did. Others ran conspiracy theories, and I was even accused of being ZEHX or participating in what some considered his scam.

Given all the potential drama of outside groups using affiliate marketing as PED generation schemes, I think MindArk doing this is actually a good thing. At the very least, we can refer people to a known legitimate affiliate marketing resource, if they are interested in doing such a thing. This can undermine efforts of potential scammers.

So whats the problem again, other than some folks dont like this idea?
 
Me and my Friends are very much disgusted by this move as this is going to bring low quality players to Entropia who are just going to reseller items and inflate and DE-stabalise the economy of Entropia.
 
Hold on,

Here's couple of youtube video from Sometrics:
A so-so One
Google I|O: Sometrics

and an ok which makes things a little bit more clear:

From what I understand, what they do is they mine Survey takers for some anonymous data, without getting any names, just the information that may help Mindark make better decisions about the contingent of the playerbases, their preferences, convictions etc. Then, they use this data to specifically target other people on the web based on these metrics using google ads or other means.

Its actually pretty neat. So, I'd even encourage everyone to take these surveys, and not just do it for fun or PED, but to actually provide some decent metrics, so the game can start expending once again.


There's only one problem that I see with this, and its that some people may decide to mine this system and will provide bullshit information just to get the PED without realizing that this will skew the data and all in all render the metrics useless.

So, if its something MA is paying for it is probably not such a great idea; if it's something which is free for MA it probably wont make much difference.

Unless, they weight all responses to successful ones...

So, its all good, keep filling em out. :)
 
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Hold on,

Here's couple of youtube video from Sometrics:
A so-so One
Google I|O: Sometrics

and an ok which makes things a little bit more clear:

From what I understand, what they do is they mine Survey takers for some anonymous data, without getting any names, just the information that may help Mindark make better decisions about the contingent of the playerbases, their preferences, convictions etc. Then, they use this data to specifically target other people on the web based on these metrics using google ads or other means.

Its actually pretty neat. So, I'd even encourage everyone to take these surveys, and not just do it for fun or PED, but to actually provide some decent metrics, so the game can start expending once again.


There's only one problem that I see with this, and its that some people may decide to mine this system and will provide bullshit information just to get the PED without realizing that this will skew the data and all in all render the metrics useless.

So, if its something MA is paying for it is probably not such a great idea; if it's something which is free for MA it probably wont make much difference.

Unless, they weight all responses to successful ones...

So, its all good, keep filling em out. :)

I dont think they actually mentioned surveys at all, and my issue with the surveys is not that sometrics gets users personal data so much as the companies who commission those surveys get this data, as is clearly stated in the small print when you sign up for one of those surveys.
Because something smelled very funny about this video i checked out the company behind it and as i suspected the video in itself is basically a PR fluff piece, in print media these things are called bylined articles, basically your PR company writes or produces content for magazines, the advantage for the magazine is they dont actually have to pay a journalist to write real news, the advantage for the company is they can position themselves the way they want to appear knowing there will be no critical questions, or only those that appear critical but allows one to frame the issue the way one wants.
And if MA thinks they will get useful data out of the surveys i think they are either in for a surprise or they will have data that will cause them to make the wrong conclusions, surveys like these are obviously self-selective, the data will be missing a lot of customers, and are the customers that do fill out the surveys of much concrete value to MA compared to the people that normally would not fill out a survey like this,
 
Me and my Friends are very much disgusted by this move as this is going to bring low quality players to Entropia who are just going to reseller items and inflate and DE-stabalise the economy of Entropia.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but resellers in the game is a symptom of a healthy economy, as they are able to make a consistent living off of a rather reliable item trade.

That we have very few resellers in the game when compared to 2010 tells you that the economy is in fact destabilized right now. This is further evidenced by a massive price drop over the last 18 months in both property and in avatar related items.

Be disgusted all you want, but please be disgusted for the right reasons. Those reasons being something like "I think this will bring in poor people, and I dont like poor people" or "I think Entropia should only have one way to pay for it. I dont like alternatives."

Cheers.
 
I really think people that constantly send in support cases for issues such as this, can end up costing us more cash if MA has to employ more people to deal with it. Becasue that means they will want to charge us more to pay these costs.

If you want a rant then keep it the the forum I guess.

Personally I have not touched this new marketing thing, I don't want any crap on my PC, or email, any malware or nasties. I just have EU installed on my PC plus whatever came with windows and thats it. I don't even do nosy-parker facebook.

So I say, if you don't want this stuff, don't click on it, simple as that.

Rick
 
Sorry to burst your bubble, but resellers in the game is a symptom of a healthy economy, as they are able to make a consistent living off of a rather reliable item trade.

That we have very few resellers in the game when compared to 2010 tells you that the economy is in fact destabilized right now. This is further evidenced by a massive price drop over the last 18 months in both property and in avatar related items.

Be disgusted all you want, but please be disgusted for the right reasons. Those reasons being something like "I think this will bring in poor people, and I dont like poor people" or "I think Entropia should only have one way to pay for it. I dont like alternatives."

Cheers.

I agree. I liked when the resellers were around. I know it's not a popular opinion, but the way I see it, I sell a lot more things than I buy that have markup and if the resellers are going to create better markup that I benefit from, I say bring them in.

The fact is that from my thinking, MAs perspective for profit margin is going to be on highly active people. Not on how much they necessarily deposit. As a general rule they would go hand in hand because the more ped you have the more you can do. However, it seems that a lot of people have forgotten that MA doesn't make it's money from the loot pool. It makes money on decay. If I chose not to deposit and instead went out hour after hour day after day breaking a club while hunting and sold the skills on auction to keep me going (which could be done once upon a time), I think that would be more beneficial to MAs profits than if I made a huge deposit, bought materials and shoved them in the crafting machine. At least from a direct perspective. Someone created decay gathering those mats. The point is that whether someone deposits or not, isn't necessarily the the most important factor. It's how many hours a day are they creating or helping others create decay. It doesn't help us a bit from a loot perspective, but it's MAs/PCs job to ensure the loot is sufficient enough to keep people inspired enough to go create decay in search of that loot. Resellers just help me get better prices for my loot so I can go out and create more decay gathering more loot.

Hugs,
Aliana
 
Great idea if Sometrics actually follows through with thier offers!!!!

Sometrics lied and cheated me. Now, who knows where my information has gone to.???
 
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