Today I placed another 'end of the month' sales pitch in to the Game Announcement system, and it struck me that we tend to do this every month and that I'm sure by now your bored of seeing them
But I thought I'd take some time out to explain WHY we need your support.Well for one thing CE stands and falls on the support we get from You. I work full time on the project and Prev gives as much of his time as he can. The staff also give their time for Free.
When we first started CE it was run from a test server and has grown from there over the years. We now lease two private top of the range Servers in one of Europe's finest data centres and also pay for separate hosting for the sub services we run for CE.
But that's not where the bulk of your money goes - true a large chunk, but the bulk is used on advertising.
To give you some idea, if we were to run 'successful' adversing on Facebook and Google we would be looking at paying this months prices of around £1.50 and £2.50 per Click! Note I said 'successful'. That means the people that clicked on the links actually signed up. That doesn't take into account if they then went on to actually play and eventually support in turn.
When we first started CE costs were as low as 0.04 cents per click range and we could utilise the smaller voting sites etc. Even Google was 'reasonable' and we could bring in new visitors for around a maximum of 20 cents a click. Those days are long gone. Now we have to look at advertising budgets that make me wince on a weekly basis.
For instance I would like to start re-adversing with some of the larger sites on the web. We did this in the first year of CE and were seeing sign up ratios of 500+ per week. These days they have all turned commercial and now a minimum entry for some of the ones we are looking at is a $1,000 spend. Some are $1,500 and more.
At this point in time we rotate between five larger advertising companies on the web, all specialising in browser game sites. We work hard at keeping the advertising 'working' IE not spending it in places it simply won't work, and we are constantly on the look out for new avenues to advertise.
Our face book presence has now risen to close to 50K views per week through actions like taking on a dedicated Social Media Manager (Shinter), but this also has advertising promotional costs attached.
So, to wrap up please don't feel that when I add a sale or promote a 'last chance' to grab a bargain I'm doing it for any other reason than to keep CE moving forward and trying to keep abreast of ever increasing advertising costs.
A Thank You
Thank you to those of you that spend with us each month, sometimes even when you don't need to. I know a number of you buy for other players and help support in other ways as well. It's all very much appreciated.
2013 Edging in to 2014
What's coming ? We will see the first of the Starbases I suspect. The war board coming into play and perhaps even replacing how we do RAID combat. There will be new elements added to Exploring both Derelicts and Planets. The Expanse will at last open up for Settlements and the AI war will come to each and every corner of the game, giving you all something new to work towards.
I have a LOT of work to be getting on with as you can tell, but I wanted to make this post to highlight that when we say we need your support, we really mean it
Coops, Sep 22, 2013