Budget and Income

[[ .NK. ]]

I understand that it's really none of our business how you spend your money, but regardless, I have some suggestions that may help you save money and earn money.

- Mmkay, I found something interesting last night. While browsing around, compiling information about artists, devs, admins, etc., and getting links to their journals for an upcoming project, I found a new developer that was hired in October. Shortly afterwards was the layoffs, and yet this dev was kept around. I'm not saying there's anything necessarily foul here, I just find it kind of funny that you fired 36 employees, some long time members, but didn't fire a new guy hired in October first.

- Advertise Gaia less. Currently, you're trying to pull in a ton of new users. Right now, you're mostly getting tweens that won't be able to pay for cash shop items anyway. That being the case, don't invest so much money in advertising Gaia. Instead, put up official banners that users can put on their own websites, and their signatures on other forums. I found Gaia in 2003 via some random user's webpage, which I found through Neopets. Advertising via word of mouth is generally ignored, even though it's a wonderful, free way to spread the word. A good example would be this thread, which has become what it is ONLY by word of mouth. Put up a referral system that works by, when a user joins, ask them "Who told you about Gaia?" and allow them to put in a username. Every new user brought in earns the referrer 100 gold or so. Word of mouth is so strong that it's actually working against you right now. People are complaining about Gaia to their friends. Their friends think, "Well gee, that sounds crappy. I won't waste my time." From there it'll just go on, and on, and on. Since you got wrapped up in the *chans as well, that's even more negative word of mouth going on. There are a lot of people that won't join for fear of being called a Gaiafag. You need to change those negative comments into ones of praise.

- Do more research before working on new features. Surprises are great, but it's sad to see things that your team worked so hard on be hated and ignored because they don't interest your current userbase. Yes, some users will use the feature, but it probably won't be enough. This will save you a ton of time and money.

- Delete old, unused information from the servers, which will free up space. Deleting threads isn't an easy decision to make because someone may be coming back to it. But you could, at the very least, delete all spam topics from the servers completely, and from there, browse old, dead threads in the chatterbox. Spam threads like "lol hi *insert emote spam here* with little to no replies. I know you have said again and again that you won't delete old users, but deleting ones that were justly banned (porn/gore trolls) would be a good idea if you can find a way to get around the problems that were mentioned. This also includes the items that are still on the server (the ones we got the day Daily Chance came out, the ones like the Angelic Rod) that we can't use, but still exist.  

[[ .NK. ]]

Reserved.