My Facebook page was constantly clogged with friends’ postings about games like Farm Ville and Mafia Wars, so I was really happy when someone showed me how to eliminate this sort of posting to my feed. “Yes, I like you, but the pink tractor you bought doesn’t really interest me unless you plan to use it to mow my yard.”
Little did I know, these games (and others) are generating huge income for a company called Zynga. Zynga develops incredibly popular social networking games and they make their money in an amazing way.
It appears that those who play the games are willing to pay real money for “virtual” goods. That pink tractor my friend was bragging about having-it turns out she paid $3.50 for it. Yes, the $3.50 was real, but the tractor is not. Zynga needs no warehouses, no trucks and no maintenance facilities. The pink tractor exists only on their servers and costs essentially nothing. The bulk of their costs (minimal) are tied to the credit card transaction fee for the purchase.
This article in last week’s New York Times values Zynga at $4.5 billion dollars and estimates their annual revenues at $500 million, almost all of it from the sale of virtual goods. The Times goes on the crown Zynga “the Google of Games”.
We sell real things, and the cost of warehousing, shipping and guaranteeing them is the majority of the cost of running our business. If we could figure out a way to sell “virtual” gaffers tape, we could become the “Google of sticky stuff“.
GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape,Duracell Procell batteries, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Hosa and Entertainment One extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands. Got an observation about social network gaming that you would like to share with our readers? Let us know.
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