Are external guides needed? Should users charge others for them?

[Midnight Rob]

Personally I have always been surprised that no one has tried to exploit the free forum market. I used to play a lot of Madden (EA Sports NFL) and there has been guides, downloads, tips, online magazines, how to play videos etc available to buy and use for quite some time. In that respect we're being very naive here.

However, it is a free market, so if u wanna buy whatever then good luck to both parties, go ahead.

Personally I don't think the hard core FM gamer will get a lot from it particularly if you play FML for example. As for SI, they are completely right to leave a degree of ambiguity to there game as its what makes it fun.

[JordanC]

I'm assuming this was unpaid work but I'd be interested in that being clarified.

Triangle, I will clarify that right now then.

I have never received payment from Sports Interactive or SEGA. As far as I'm aware, neither has any author or administrator at FM-Britain.

The only measures of tangible "value" that could possibly be considered compensation that I have received from the developers/publishers of Football Manager:

1. Two years of free access to Football Manager Live. 7 months or so as a beta tester (in which I am supposedly "working" to test out for bugs & offer feedback in return for my free access) and 17 months or so as a game world moderator (in which I am supposedly "working" to administrate the game's community & operation in return for my free access)

2. Two months of beta test builds of Football Manager 2009. (in which I am supposedly "working" to test out for bugs & offer feedback - as well as signed a Non Disclosure Agreement preventing me from discussing the game's functions/features until it has been released)

As far as I'm aware, the case would be the same for all the other admins/authors at FM-Britain. I believe, though, we have been given 1-2 free copies of FM over the years. (which at that time I had no use for after already purchasing the game)

Furthermore, I know times are hard economically right now but doesn't it also cause one to wonder why these people aren't employed by SI to provide these useful contributions for those of us who purchase the game?

I wonder the same thing. I would think this would surely rectify the situation quite well. The community gets a ton of great FM content, even more so than before. The content creators are compensated adequately so they can actually spend 20-40 hours per week (as they have been doing) working on producing said content without having their electricity shut off, house foreclosed on and children going to bed hungry.

[phnompenhandy]

I can't help but wonder why, if this guide and subsequent projects alongside the contributions of the FNB contributers are so very worthwhile, doesn't it point to the original guidance materials shipped with the game being inadequate? Furthermore, I know times are hard economically right now but doesn't it also cause one to wonder why these people aren't employed by SI to provide these useful contributions for those of us who purchase the game?

I also agree with this. It's not for me to tell SI how to spend their budget, but I would be entirely happy to pay a few cents more if the extra paid for fans of the game to produce professional quality extra skins, utilities, *.xml files, *.edt files, *.pdf manuals and the like that could be on the disc and validated by SI.

[Finknottle]

In my thread/post of 20:03:10 entitled "The ingame manual....or lack of it", there is a post by "Matt-Sega". Might I be allowed to draw peoples attention to it, it is post #19. It may go someway to bringing the matter to an overdue conclusion. Kind regards.

[iamjerome]

been a bit out of touch with the FM10 part of the sigames forum in recent times mostly as i've not touched the game in a while for a variety of reasons. very surprised to come and read about this just now that the FM-B crew are charging for a release of no doubt, a decent piece of work they spent a lot of time on. but the thought that pops into my head is that whether any of the information in CPW (i'm not going to lie - i have zero intentions of ever purchasing it based purely on principle and this isn't a criticism towards it's existence, creators or fans, purely a personal egoistical(and financial) choice) helped by the access afforded to the people at the helm of it? presumably it's the same people who were involved some with the progress of the match engine of late as well as the design of the tactical creator and possibly more. bit of a shocker this, really. in addition, generally speaking i have to agree with SFraser's sentiments on the whole in post nr 42 on this thread.

[jayahr]

Some very spot on comments in here

I think after all it's been a good discussion with the right solution.

I take the opportunity to apologize for anything about which anyone feels I should do so. Please feel addressed by that

[suffer37]

I'm definitely disappointed in FM Britain for their recent decision. The most obvious reason to be disappointed is the glaring hypocrisy at work here. FMB claims their motivation is to 'help' their loyal fan base. I'm sure the FMB folks have done a good job of convincing themselves that this is the case, but what they don't want to admit to themselves is it's really all about the money. Just as a star footballer will claim he loves his fans (and he probably does) before accepting a contract somewhere else for an extra dollar, FMB is just pursuing the money.

The email FMB sent out to rationalize the pay for content scheme also has a line in it that I found interesting:

"Obviously, we could just plead poverty and place a massive “donate” button on the site; but by releasing a guide, we can actually hand over a product to show our gratitude to those who want to support the site."

I don't really follow the logic here at all. Why won't FMB pursue a donation based route? It sounds mostly like an issue of being too prideful to ask for handouts. The line about handing over a product to show gratitude is particularly interesting.

Let's compare these two models:

1) donation based approach: Every FMB supporter gets the content, some donate, everyone appreciates FMB as a resource and the people at FMB get money.

2) charging for content: only a small percentage of FMB supporters actually receive the content. Most fans are alienated from the content, but FMB still gets money.

Which plan actually shows more gratitude? Charging money isn't showing gratitude at all. It's a simple business transaction where one party decides whether the other party is offering a product worthy of parting with hard earned cash over. They would probably raise just as much money through donations as they would from selling their content and a lot more players would benefit. FMB would also benefit more since donations represent continual income. Selling this eBook, is one time income. Which begs the question, what is FMB going to do for revenue in the future?

The answer is keep selling. Pay-For-Content is a slippery slope, as FMB makes more money from selling content they will want to sell more and provide less for free.

Notice how FMB didn't give you all of their content for 8 pounds, they just gave you a small portion of it, relating to FM10. This careful distinction is an absolutely calculated move since it allows FMB to charge for further content. Today FMB charges for psychological warefare. Next year it will be safe to assume that TTF11 will cost money. The appendixes will cost more, and the OI instructions will be extra, etc etc etc.

Honestly though, everything I've said so far has been beside the point. FMB's situation is not uncommon. They have content, and they want to make money off of it. I actually think this is completely justified. To clarify: I don't think that FMB's motives are bad, I just think they're a bit unimaginative when it comes to the business side of information.

The best way to make money off of content is unquestioningly advertisement.

I'm breaking this up into 4 separate sentences not because I'm trying to be an a-hole, but I think it's incredibly important for anyone attempting a foray into the internet industry (which happens to be the industry I work in).

Website

Traffic

Generates

Money

If you have content that people value, you need to translate that content into traffic. FMB has content people value. If they post this content on their website they can generate traffic. With ads, (google adsense is the easiest to set up) that traffic can generate money, continuous money, as long as FMB has good content (which they do).

Let's look at it this way, what if instead of a 77 page download, FMB just posted that information on about 20 web pages. Someone who wanted to read it could do so for free, but maybe they see 5 google ads on the right hand side of the page as they do so. That's 100 impressions per user reading the whole document. Not to mention users will see other articles, bookmark pages for later reference, all generating more impressions later.

This is a 21st century internet business model. Selling content is a poor solution and donations are only slightly better. Why get money from your user base when you can get it from advertisement? That is showing the highest level of gratitude to your fanbase.

Ads aren't dirty, they make sure that the internet stays free.

Of course Ads have to be sensible and relatively discreet. No one likes annoying ads/popups. There are great examples out there of ad-driven websites out there where ads are not obtrusive.

To summarize it all up briefly like I should have done instead of writing this long post:

FMB has good content, they want to make money off it that's fine, they should do it through internet advertising instead of selling content because it shifts the cost from the community to advertisers. (as long as the ads aren't obtrusive or obnoxious).

[jayahr]

Great post and a good idea well put

[RT--]

Interesting post, suffer - and welcome

In terms of what's the best approach for the good of the 'community' - I think you're right that donations or advertising are absolutely the best options. Way, way more people get to read the guide itself for a starter. You just can't compare the number of people who've probably downloaded and read TT&F to those who'll have read this latest guide, or those who'd want to take part in any podcasts or live chats in the future.

So the only argument for charging for it, to my mind, is if FMB don't think either of those options would make enough money compared to selling the guide. They're the only ones who know how many copies they've sold at 8 quid, so it's difficult for the rest of us to do any sort of calculation.

The other thing is, for anything they decide to sell in the future, I can't imagine for a minute that they'll be allowed to advertise it on these forums, even temporarily. Perhaps the FM 'scene' and FM:B have a bigger user base than I imagine, but it must be a fraction of people who log on here. So creating awareness of future guides is surely going to be difficult - the donation and advertising route would probably mean they'd be able to link to their products with much less trouble.

[phnompenhandy]

Really terrific post suffer. I agree that their major error is their marketing rather than their motives.

I'll just pick up on one point:

Today FMB charges for psychological warefare. Next year it will be safe to assume that TTF11 will cost money.

I'm not party to any inner politics, but I did notice that the creative force behind TTF, wwfan, is not part of the CPW team. He's made a few comments but has largely lain low - possibly embarrassed by this development? I don't know. I will be interested to see if he does distance himself from FMB and stay with 'us', or whether he takes the FMB dollar for TTF11. My instinct tell me he'll ensure in one way or another that TTF11 is free.

A connected, and deeper issue, is the hidden politics of the relationship between FMB and SI. It certainly seems this issue caught SI on the hop. Surely FMB (or at least millie) can't work with SI on developing any improvements to the tactical wizard or any other features - maybe again wwfan will do so on his own. Will this matter therefore be to the detriment of FM11?

[higgins]

A connected, and deeper issue, is the hidden politics of the relationship between FMB and SI. It certainly seems this issue caught SI on the hop. Surely FMB (or at least millie) can't work with SI on developing any improvements to the tactical wizard or any other features - maybe again wwfan will do so on his own. Will this matter therefore be to the detriment of FM11?

This could be an interesting point.

[Comedybegs]

Whole Post

Very good post and I agree

To summarize it all up briefly like I should have done instead of writing this long post:

FMB has good content, they want to make money off it that's fine, they should do it through internet advertising instead of selling content because it shifts the cost from the community to advertisers. (as long as the ads aren't obtrusive or obnoxious).

Surely they could also go the route of advertising and asking for donations. I obviously have no idea of the money they have made from their guide but I imagine you could easily make as much using both of these routes than you could for selling the guide at £8 a pop?!

I too also believe that more products coming out of FMB will cost, as will tools like FMRTE, Genie Scout as well as training aides and whatever else people can come up with to make small profits from the FM community.

[JordanC]

For those who have been heavy proponents of the donation or ad-based methods of raising funds, I'll quickly shed some light on things with some actual hard numbers. I appreciate the suggestions, though... really guys, if these methods were actually effective, I'd be the first one here to go about doing so and keep every single thing on FM-Britain absolutely free.

But we've already used both options before and I've been working with websites for 10+ years under these ad-driven models... from the outside, it may look good seeing all the ads on your favorite sites (many ridiculously obtrusive for my tastes) and wonder about how much income actually comes in on them. I'm sorry to burst your bubble but unfortunately, it's not much - even on sites that get a TON of traffic. Especially ones that have tech-savvy audiences (like video gamers) who know how to use ad blockers and pretty much "blind" to them when viewed (since they're so used to seeing them). Consider the last time you've clicked on a Google Adsense ad? I'm online 12+ hours a day and I can't even remember the last time I did.

So here are the hard numbers for FM-Britain's website (as backed up by Google Analytics) in comparison to income earned using both a visible donation box and well-placed, yet non-obtrusive PPC ads...

Period of October 16, 2008 - October 15, 2009 [old site design with donation button on sidebar, footer & it's own page]

Total Unique Visitors: 479,113 (these are *separate* people)

Donations: 2 (yes, in total for the entire calendar year)

Yearly Income: 20.00 GBP

Period of October 16, 2009 - March 15, 2010 [current design with Adsense image on sidebar & text ads on all posts]

Total Pageviews: 511,202 (how many times these ads actually were loaded)

Number of Clicks: 325

5 Month Income Earned: 34.85 GBP (which isn't even enough yet to pass the $100 USD threshold for Google's first payment to us)

Please realize, I'm sharing this to truly show you how dire these methods are in actually being effective. Sure, there are plenty of unique examples of websites doing this well, but that is the exception, not the rule. Typically, they're either in high-money niches, have a demographic that's not ad-blind or just drive SO much traffic that the law of numbers applies. (and I'm talking about 1 million+ visitors a day type of stuff)

With 8 eBook sales that occurred within the first six hours of release, FM-Britain successfully made more income than in the previous one and a half years using donations & advertising combined. I also would ask you to compare the difference & amount of content we produced for FM2009's release (which was pretty much just TT&F09) in relation to this year's FM2010.

It's not a prerequisite to purchase anything whatsoever to utilize 99% of our articles, podcasts, videos, webcasts, forums, or any other things we're working on for the rest of this year - we're happy to have you come by and give us nothing in return. But if you do get help & find value from the content we produce, you should thank NOT US, but the 1% who have done so for allowing that to be possible.

[suffer37]

It's not a prerequisite to purchase anything whatsoever to utilize 99% of our articles, podcasts, videos, webcasts, forums, or any other things we're working on for the rest of this year - we're happy to have you come by and give us nothing in return.

I'm just going to point out that it's a little misleading to say 99%. It might be 99+% of the articles, but it's not 99% of the content. FMB would have to have 7,700 pages of content for that to be true.

I won't argue the profitability of your PPM campaign since making significant amounts of money can be difficult. I'll just quickly say not to give up on finding ways to use advertisements as a money maker. It takes a lot of creativity to really come up ad campaign that works. One avenue I'd recommend exploring is see if you can strike a deal with a specific company directly. 500,000 visitors is a lot, maybe you could negotiate with SI to have some kind of promotion for FM11, or a preorder thing. A lot of money to FMB is a tiny amount for SI...

But anyway, lets assume that charging users is genuinely the best way to raise revenue. May I suggest a slight change to your approach.

Instead of selling individual e-books which become outdated every year, how about selling lifetime FMB memberships that grant users access to all past, present and future e-books (plus give their forum account some extra doodad: internet folk love that kind of crap).

This way you can sell something that won't go out of style and you're offering something of renewing value. Members can rest assured that for a one time payment they will always have access to all of FMB's content. (As a side note, I wouldn't recommend a subscription/renewal model).

Also I would recommend dropping the price to perhaps 4 pounds. On the supply/demand curve I would definitely say you're in 'surplus product' territory.

So basically you would be offering a much better product at a lower price and you would improve your public image with the community you depend on. The result should be more revenue and less outraged forum posts.

[Cleon]

When me and Caley ran soritoutsi back when it was probably the biggest site ever for FM it became too expensive to run as a hobby, that was our main reason for passing the site on to someone else. It used to cost us about £350+ a month which is a lot for a hobby. The google ads we had on the site used to raise about $50 dollars every 3 months if that.

So I can understand FMB trying to get a little bit of revenue to keep the site going, it was inevitable something would have to provide an income sooner or later. And tbh the articles FMB produce are worth people buying and are as good as any manual. The real issue is with SI/SEGA not doing enough to support the better sites to ensure they can carry on producing good artciles/guides for free. There is no protection for sites that offer quality content. It would be ideal if the better sites got some sort of protection or aid to help keep the sites a hobby for the admins without it turning into a financial burden.

[jayahr]

So I can understand FMB trying to get a little bit of revenue to keep the site going, it was inevitable something would have to provide an income sooner or later. And tbh the articles FMB produce are worth people buying and are as good as any manual. The real issue is with SI/SEGA not doing enough to support the better sites to ensure they can carry on producing good artciles/guides for free. There is no protection for sites that offer quality content. It would be ideal if the better sites got some sort of protection or aid to help keep the sites a hobby for the admins without it turning into a financial burden.

Sadly true and truly sad