But do they do it right?
If you’ve played scrabulous on Facebook then you’ve, no doubt, experienced the cramped feeling of your scrabble board surrounded by ads that are reaching out, tapping you on the head, and saying “look at me!” Are they doing this right? What else could they be doing to make money off of this endeavor? Here are some ideas. Some of them might be a little out there, but maybe worth it.
Micropayments/Subscriptions
Let everyone play, but offer some premium experiences. Maybe your stuck and you’d like to hit up a scrabble solving algorithm. I’d pay 10 cents not to have to leave the site and get some hints. Maybe it’s not in the spirit of the game for some people so give hosts the option of not letting people use it… even though you know you are going out there and cheating anyway. I know as well as you do that you didn’t know what “eath” was before we played scrabble…. ok, sorry about that. Where was I? 🙂
Charge me to set up Xbox live style tournaments. I think that the Live services has proven that you can charge for premium services that used to be free if you make them simpler to use.
Scrabble Accessories
These people are clearly addicted to this game. Why not have a simple online store or minimally some affiliate sales with Amazon for scrabble related accessories.
Better Ad Targeting
Seriously, you have access to my Facebook profile and this is the best ad targeting you can come up with for me? I’m married and I don’t think any of my favorite movies have anything to do with David Spade.
Rotating Ads
This isn’t a page I go to, get my information and leave. I’m studying the board and could be spending 20 minutes staring at this page. But the ads never change. Maybe it would be distracting, but the ads should rotate after a while on the page. so I see something new once in a while.
Ok, those where my four suggestions for the Scabulous team. I’m not sure why I wrote this. I guess I almost feel slightly insulted by their poor attempt to make money off of an experience that sees people spending hours staring at the same page.