Farmville... how does $15-$20 million sound for 3-4 months work?

I'm sure pretty much most people have heard of Farmville... But if you haven't played it in any great depth, I strongly recommend it...

Why? They've done an exceptional job of applying a number of different marketing concepts to make it successful. It was not simply a "cool" game that became viral, it was the concepts that were applied and leveraged it into a million dollar game within a matter of months. Estimating (based on what I've seen), I'd say they've made at least $15-$20 million profit within 3-4 months (as of January, I haven't really check recently). Not bad for a days (or couple months) work with a small development team. I believe the actual launch date was sometime in August of 2009.

So what did they do?

- Were they original? As far as I can tell, no. There was another game called "MyFarm" by playSocial that predated them, and the original FarmVille was a near duplicate of it...

So what made them a success?

1. Well. For starters, they made a better looking product, with more features/functionalities. A better mousetrap. How does it help you? Basically, if you are going to make your own product, don't simply "copy" someone. Make it better. Add more value. Make it original. Make it something you would be proud to put your name on. Sometimes getting rich "quick" can be a lot more "work" than if you simply add value and make your own original product.

2. Now... did simply doing that make them successful? No... They advertised... While it is true that they could have 'eventually' gotten a lot of free traffic, they pumped a lot of money into facebook advertisements to get as many eyeballs as possible... So... basically, when you make money, while it is important of course to put food on the table and have a roof over your head, it's really important to remember that you will need to 'reinvest' your profits into your business (whether advertising/development/research), into order to see massive success...

3. Now did just doing the above two make them super successful? No... The above two points did make them achieve some major success, but it did not catapult them to the some 60+ million users that have used it... They used massive, massive leverage for their existing userbase, and tested extensively. If something didn't work, they took it out right away, meanwhile building and expanding on the components that worked really well... And, of course, they built their 'list' and promoted heavily to them, whether it was in the form of freebies, or simple e-mail marketing...

Bottomline, if you are looking at methods of how to make your own business a super success, I really highly recommend playing Farmville, and discovering how many marketing elements you see that they have implemented that you can implement in your own marketing strategies. I'd say they use at least a dozen different/intelligent marketing techniques, if not more. It is an exceptional example of what you can apply to your own business to make it an amazing success.

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