Manual intervention (Part 2)

Giving Away Freebies
While giving away free stuff doesn't sound like the right thing to do, many businesses owe their success to this practice. "Freebie Marketing"(link), also known as the razor and blades business model, is a business model where one item is sold at a low price (or given away for free) in order to increase sales of a complementary good, such as supplies (inkjet printers and ink cartridges, "Swiffers" and cleaning fluid, mobile phones and service contracts).





Freebie Marketing in MTGO
While many might think that giving away free cards isn't beneficial within a MTGO business the reality is, after I done some tests, I had some positive results which I will share with you.
Many of my sales out of the client (such as on my bots website and others) are made by MTGO users that never traded with my bots and many of which are quite new to MTGO. While this seems like a perfect combination to have a bit of a chat and introduce them to my bots (and hopefully get a new regular Customer), the reality is that only about 10-15% ended up using my bots after their order.

The Test
My test was to give every customer(that never used my bots before) that made any order above $10 or so a few cents credit on my bot (such as 0.5 - 0.75), explain them my bots unusual pricing and see what happened. While my sample isn't the biggest, I can tell that within one week of giving the "freebie" at least half of my "test subjects" done at least trade with my bots worth over 1 Event Ticket.

Conclusion
Examples of this marketing strategy can be seen all over MTGO. From "free bots" (easily over half of new players hear about mtgotraders "free bot" within 1 month of playing MTGO) which give a massive advertisement to their chain, to discount codes on first orders, etc.
Remember to be wise if you are trying this path as part of my success could be due to the Customer trust made from a very fast delivery and clear helpful communication on their purchased goods in the first place.

On next week, I'll talk about card transfers.

Collection valuation

Hello folks!

Long time no see.
For the new readers that don't know who I am. Long story short, I run 8 bots on MTGO and I started my botting business about 4 years ago.

Anyway!
I recently introduced a friend of mine to start up his own bots using ML bot. And he asked me how to get started, so I told him that the best way would be to possibly buy some collections from ebay or the classifieds board inside the client.
He answered me that it seemed as a good idea. Some seconds later he told me that he doesn't know what a collection would be worth and that he don't have the time to manually price every card. So I told him that I could make a program that would calculate the values for him.

We started discussing features that the program could have and started writing it down. So I've got a small list of features that this MTGO/ML Bot tool will have.
The first thing will ofcourse be some collection valuation thing. Based on the ML bot pricelist and the .CSV files exported from MTGO. At first there will be a quick overview of the collection, card count and values.
Later on I will implement some more details and also maybe some way to easily manipulate the personalprices.txt and personalpercentages.txt files.

So, the first rough draft looks like this: (So far only including a valuation tool, also no design has been done at all.)
All prices are currently counted from 0% CardsMTGO3.txt. I will add in a feature where you can set your own -+ corrections corresponding to your ML bot settings.

So, what do I want with this post?
I wonder if this kind of program is something that YOU want. If so, what kind of features would you like to have? I will hopefully in a short time have a beta version ready to release with the most basic features.

Don't hesitate to post a comment to this post or send me an email at mtgoswebot@gmail.com

Regards,
Sebastian

Other side of the world (Part 2)

 Other side of the world

Most Magic the Gathering Online bot owners and Customers are in the US and this is something that can affect bot owners living in a different timezone. In these series  I'll talk about ways of "shortening" the distance and on how you can provide great Customer Support, Sell/Buy Collections and other services without needing to be awake from 1:00AM to 7:00AM.

Website

 Today I will talk about the advantages of having a website dedicated to your bots. A form of comunication, such as a webform is only one them. You can also attract more Customers by having a strong MTGO Community visiting your website, forums, deck discussion, webcasts and so on. Having a website also opens doors to a another whole new business model, instead of automated trades within MTGO you now have the chance of working just like a normal MTG Cards Store. You might ask yourself: "yes we all know that but what is that to do with being on the other side of the world?", the answer is very simple, being on the other side of the world you will need a method of delivering online orders and although MTGO Library bots weren't exactly designed to be used as delivery bots they can do the task without much time and effort into setting it all up.

 In a few days I will show you how to do this, step by step.

Other side of the world (Part 1)

Other side of the world

 Most Magic the Gathering Online bot owners and Customers are in the US and this is something that can affect bot owners living in a different timezone. In these series  I'll talk about ways of "shortening" the distance and on how you can provide great Customer Support, Sell/Buy Collections and other services without needing to be awake from 1:00AM to 7:00AM.

Contacts

Today I'll talk about the easiest one to setup, the Contact options.

Being in the other side of the world (England) means I cannot assist most of my customers while they're online, making my username almost useless as a "contact" option for my bots.

Emails are very easy to setup nowadays and are the very minimum you should have as a contact. MTGO is not perfect and a few occasional bugs (such as displaying "trade complete" when someone cancels on second confirmation window) may lead to lost credit. Without a email address or a contact to fix for example, 0.1 credit lost, you might end up losing a Customer that would give you potentially high profits in the long run.

A Telefone number, IM or even a Facebook Page could be viable second options but you should still have a email address. 

Another Option would be a Web-form on your bots website. That would give your customers the option of just sharing their username (not private email address) and would open up doors for new business possibilities which I will explain on Part 2.

Ebay Auctions (Part 3 of 3)

Last time I began a story where a college student from Thailand was studying over in the United States.  He discovered that the textbooks he needed were cheaper in Thailand than in the US, so he had relatives obtain his textbooks.  Being of the entrepreneur mind, he quickly realized that he could purchase a lot of these textbooks in Thailand, ship them to the US, and then make a hearty profit reselling them on Ebay, to the tune of over $1,000,000.

Here is where the story gets interesting.   The publisher, John Wiley and Sons, found out about this little venture and sued the student, Supap Kirtsarng.  As is to be expected, this court case dragged on and on.  A US Appellate Court has ruled in favor of publisher.

Look man, we are bot owners.  What does any of this legal garbage have to do with us?

I’m getting to that.  See, the Appellate Court’s ruling has several implications when it concerns things like copyright and reselling stuff you previously purchased.

Back in 1908, the Supreme Court ruled that once the initial sale was made, the buyer was free to resell without getting permission from the copyright holder.  That book you purchased a year ago, you could sell on Ebay, Amazon, a garage sale, or simply give it to charity.  This is being challenged now for products that are being made outside the United States and if this Appellate Court’s ruling stands, copyright holders in China, Japan, Spain, Africa, etc would have to give you permission to sell it.

Think about that for a minute.  To sell that book, you’d need the publisher’s permission, in writing.  This is not limited to physical objects like that antique table your grandmother has either.  It would apply to anything made outside the United States.  Quick, can you name anything of substance that is exclusively made inside the United States?

Ebay appears to have taken the cautious approach of implementing this when it concerns things like the Magic Online cards which we all profit from.

So what is the future?  The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear this case on Oct 29th, and probably will make its ruling in June 2013.  This is a case which goes under the radar until the ruling comes and all of a sudden, well, you get the point.  I for one will be watching and will keep you abreast.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/your-right-to-resell-your-own-stuff-is-in-peril-2012-10-04

Ebay Auctions (Part 2 of 3)

Back in the dark ages of 1997, Supap Kirtsarng, a native of Thailand, went to Cornell University to study.  Nothing unusual there.

What is unusual is what happened after this. 

He soon discovered that the college textbooks he needed to buy, were substantially cheaper to buy in Thailand than they were in the United States.  So, being the economically conscious person he is, he got his relatives to buy the books he needed , and then to ship said books to him over in the United States.  This in of itself is not unusual.

Like most college students, he sold his textbooks when he had completed the semester.  Nothing unusual there.

Then his entrepreneurial spirit took over.  Why not buy a bunch of these textbooks for very little, ship them over to the United States, and then sell them on Ebay for a nice profit?  And that is what he did.  Very successfully as well.  To at least $1,000,000 according to some estimates.

So what does this have to do with us bot owners?  You’ll have to tune in next time for part 2 of this little story.

Ebay Auctions (Part 1 of 3)

A few months ago I was approached to buy an MTGO collection.  Nothing unusual there.

I used this as an opportunity to expand my budding bot empire. Nothing unusual there.

I then set up my bots to pull from this collection to fill up the holes in each bot’s inventory. Nothing unusual there.

When all of this was done, I looked at what remained. I saw a lot of potential play sets, which I can fill the holes if need be and then turn around and sell some on Ebay.  Nothing unusual there.

I ordered the bots to create some play sets.  I then posted them on Ebay.  Nothing unusual there.

The next morning, I received a pretty nasty letter stating that my postings were taken down, that these postings were in violation of the copyright holder, and that my account could be suspended or terminated if I attempted to repost these items.  I also was informed that in order to sell anything again, I would have to complete a tutorial as what I can sell and what I can not sell.

This is not the first time that this has happened.  I thought that might have been a little misunderstanding, some programmer went a little overboard removing digital items up for sale, or there was a snafu.  Last time, it went away in a few days.  After all, WotC encourages the secondary market.  However, this time, it feels different.

This has not gone away.  At the time of writing this, I checked Ebay for Magic Online items… Only 6 of them are posted and no doubt they’ll be taken down shortly.  This is a far cry when one would easily see hundreds of auctions for Magic Online material.

So what happened?  I think I may have found it.  You’ll have to tune in next time to find out what I discovered.