Great Idea: Groupon-Style Offers for Avatars!

VentureBeat has a very interesting post on a new initiative hatched by IMVU, the light 3D virtual chatroom: Basically, Groupon for avatars, where a virtual goods offer kicks in only after a mass of users agree to purchase it:

IMVU ran a special offer dubbed IMVU Crewpon that let users buy virtual currency in the world for 50 percent off the regular price, as long as 300 users took advantage of it. Under the deal... [t]he average number of dollars spent per order of virtual currency was up 27 percent. IMVU tried out the Crewpon promotion a second time this past weekend, Clancy said, selling 40,000 credits for $25. This time, 2,671 users participated and generated $67,000 in revenue for IMVU.

Very interesting. It's easy to see Groupon-style offers working in other virtual worlds and social games, and quite probably, working just as effectively as actual Groupons. Maybe even better, since virtual goods purchases are generally cheaper for consumers, and have much higher profit margins for the developer.

Comments

[Sasy Scarborough]

I could see that working in SL if it was kind of a reverse Midnight Mania, a designer could post a pic of what they would make or offer, the price they would be willing to sell it for, and then only do so if the target amount was reached.

But then we also have those boards that once enough people are there in the store the price drops.

Some store groups have also done the ' if we reach the target amount of ____ members, we will give a gift of ____ " and it has worked in some cases.

so on typing all this, the conclusion is... IMVU you are soooo behind the times, we have already been there done that :P

[Nexus Burbclave]

I actually started work on a project of this nature, but I abandoned it due to some pretty key missing components that I couldn't easily solve. Some were challenges of web-to-world integration that I could find workarounds for, but Most notably, the lack of a micro-transaction friendly payment system was an issue I coudln't solve. Linden escrow was too much of a hack, so I've given up on the idea, at least for now. Perhaps if a micro transaction-friendly payment system emerges I'll resurrect the idea, providing that ship hasn't sailed by that point. Maybe the solution is just to target higher ticket items that don't require a microtransaction solution.

[maricarhunter]

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