In Spite of all that is positive, there is one aspect that works agains the game - the referral system.
How Splinterlands could get an additional boost
Splinterlands is a relatively complex game and for new users it can be challenging to understand how things work. It is now possible for newcomers to play the game for free to learn how it works. This free system doesn't allow them to participate in the things where they can earn cards or tokens. This is nice but there is still a problem.
With a game of such complexity you need users to be coached and who could do that better than existing users?
Unfortunately existing players don't have much incentive to bring new users to the game because the referral system doesn't work well.
What is wrong with the referral system?
When new users start the game, they have to pay 10 Usd for a starter pack. The referrer get's a 5% commission on that. This means that he get 0.5 Usd. The chances are that after that he won't get anything at all because there are so many ways to buy packs that do not generate referral income. If the referral buys a pack over steem-engine, over peakmonsters or he pays on splinterlands with DEC, the referrer won't get any comission. Even if the referral buys some cards on the market, the referrer can be bypassed easily.
It's simply not worth to find referrals under these conditions
How it could be done better
A good referral system should encourage existing users to get new referrals in the long term. The aim should be that existing users not only acquire new players but that they also educate them. The referrer should have an incentive to produce new users that will actually spend money on the platform because they want to get better.
It would be much better to reward referrer with a precentage of the DEC's earning of a new user.
Why it would be a great idea to reward existing users with DEC rather than with a money comission
Let's say I'm an existing user and I have the possibility to earn 1% of all the DEC earnings of my referrals. 1% is not much and could be deducted quite easily from the normal earnings of the users. So there would be no additional cost for the website. This marketing would in a way be paid by the users because everybody profits if there are new players joining the game.
I could now bring new users to the game but I would have a real interest in encouraging them to take the step to buy the starter pack. I could even pay their starter pack for them. Then I would make sure that these users understand the game. I could even lend them some cards I don't need at the beginning. My interest is to get them hooked and to make them play. The better they get, the more DEC they earn and the more I will earn as well. I could develop it as a real business where I provide youtube videos, online tutorials, newsletters to get more referrals. But I would need this incentive to earn regularly from my referrals.
Everybody would profit and Steemmonsters could delegate the marketing of the game to its users!
by @achim03
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Thanks @happyvoter for your article. As an experienced affiliate marketer, I find interesting that @splinterlands does not have an effective referral program.
Affiliate theft is a major concern in the internet marketing community. We go out of our way to promote a product or service, and we expect our cut as agents for the seller. If such a program is not effective, then remove it. Otherwise, the seller will be using that program as an incentive and that could be construed as confusing and / or misleading advertising, or deliberately confusing and / or misleading advertising. Such behaviour is unlawful in most western countries.
Btw, referral programs work best at launch or soon after, so perhaps @splinterlands no longer needs to commit resources to new affiliators? My advice: make that decision now and move on, just honour your existing referral payouts.
Hi,
Thanks a lot for your feed-back. I agree with you that it can be misleading to have an affiliate programm that promises you 5% on all referral purchases but doesn't deliver when users purchase the same items on another website. I believe that it would be really worth to rethink the whole affiliate programm and deliver rather DEC tokens as an affiliate reward.
Yeah, that sounds like an awesome workable solution. I'm not yet a @splinterlands tribe member. Once they get their referral program re-energised and secured, I'd be keen to join.
Just remember that there are many ways to reward members. Perhaps you could earn different skins like on Borderlands, or maybe get a number - being the number of referrals you have - attached to your handle? If payouts are hindering the growth of the site, then consider these other reputation rewards.
Hi @ianballantine
Great comment.
I may not be right, but I always thought that ref programs can do well as long as one is reaching out to people, who never heard about it before.
As a user: would it matter to me if some software/website just launched or if they exist a year or so? not really. If I would find tool which Im interested and I can sign up with someones ref link, then I surely would.
ps. did you ever consider powering up a bit?
Yours, Piotr
Yep, older sites are OK to promote. The issue though is this: how to excite the viewers to such a state that they sign up? Splash pages are no longer effective, and squeeze pages are becoming less so. Even videos have now become mundane as way too much stuff gets videoed and uploaded onto social media. Virtual reality is still 1-2 years off being mainstreamed.
What do we do now then? Go back to basics: chatrooms. Get actively engaging in chat.
Think of SteemIt as being a partitioned chatroom, post your articles, leave a comment on someone else's post, and reply to all comments made on your posts and comments. You can then develop a marketing strategy for your articles that lead the viewers to where you want them to go. I'm still developing my strategy. If you're interested, check out some of the awesome guerilla marketing being applied by some of my fellow CTP tribe team mates.
As for powering up, yes I will do that. I need a smartphone to set up my crypto wallets so I can place all my accumulated crypto into one or two wallets, then I can get some Steem to power up. Work in progress, that one!
Dear @ianballantine
Thank you for your kind comment and sorry for replying so late.
guuerilla marketing? Im not sure what is it.
ps.
May I ask you for little favour? I'm not sure if I did ask you about it already or not (hope I'm not repeating myself).
Could you please check out also my recent post if you have few min and share your thoughts on questions related to concept of "introducing steem blockchain to businesses":
https://steemit.com/steemleo/@crypto.piotr/my-very-first-trip-to-switzerland-one-of-the-most-crypto-and-blockchain-friendly-place-on-the-planet-earth
Your feedback is always appreciated ;) And I will upvote most valuable comment with 100-200k SP coming from project.hope account.
Yours, Piotr
Hi Piotr, great to hear back from you! Sounds like Switzerland is an awesome place. I hope to get their myself some time. I have replied to your own post, so please review and let me know how else I may help your wonderful project, by replying to the comments I made on your own post.
Dear @happyvoter, @achim03
I surely did hear about steemmonsters and Splinterlands but I'm trying to stay away from it (games are highly addictive lol).
Thx for sharing your thoughts on referral system. Interesting and very valuable read. Indeed it seem that Splinterlands failed to provide incentive to those who are promoting their product with ref links.
Very well said.
ps.
I just visited https://steem-engine.com/?p=market&t=DEC and I was like WOW. I havent seen any other token that would be purchased so often. I wonder how many people are buing DEC as an investment and how many do actually use those tokens within that game.
Upvote on the way! :)
Yours, Piotr
You are totally right about that ;-). I tend to play too much at this stuff...
I really admire the people who run splinterlands. They keep all their tokens under close control. They make shure that there is always a rebalancing of the token. You can actually earn this token while playing the game and you can then use it to buy potions, cards and even card packs. Another way to use it is to transform it into steem. There is a fixed price for card packs at 2 USD per pack and there is also a fixed price for the card packs in DEC which is 2000 DEC. So in theory the coin should stay stable over time.
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I would love to see more affiliate ways.