It's been a while since my last update for a number of reasons so expect a long one.... A big reason is that I have been working hard to increase my revenue to be able to grow Monria. This has involved a lot of long hours and 7 day weeks, I've also been putting a lot more focus into our marketing strategy for the last month or so and analyzing our conversions so that I can get even more new players to join us. The other thing that I have done deliberately is to step back from the community for a while to observe and reflect.
Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. This is something I agree with and we are looking to do some things differently going forward. We will pivot and go in a bit of a different direction with some of the plans I had in place. Fail quickly and adapt is pretty much how I live my life and a good job too as I fail often.
Quick review of our first 6 months
The Team
By this, I don't mean just the Monria staff but the extended team of people on Monria and beyond who have bought into what we are trying to achieve and have stuck by us and supported all we do through thick and thin. We know who you are and are truly grateful that you put Monria first which is the unifying factor in all that we are doing. For anyone familiar with Tuckman's team development model, we're just at the tail end of the storming phase. As a team we've had conflict, differences of opinion, emotional moments and general insanity at times, some people have moved on and some new people have joined us. We still have a bit to go to be a performant team but it's all part of the process. To know what this looks like we only need to see how the Monria Space Travel Program is operating. The team is doing an excellent job and it is autonomous and @Dark Moon Enigma can lead and support without having to directly manage it. This is why I still support it and will do so in the future.
Plans going forward:
- I've asked DM to step back from the day to day management of these initiatives and try to facilitate them being managed by the community. This is a tough ask but will enable us to do more, and if there isn't the appetite within the community to manage some of our initiatives then we are better off putting our resources into different areas
- We will be looking to engage with people that have the interest and the dedication to support us in some of these initiatives. This isn't for everyone as this is a game and we login for enjoyment, but for those that have fun contributing we want there to be opportunities for you to do so
- I have asked @Dark Moon Enigma to focus more time to writing and supporting me with some things for the longer term benefit of Monria and our marketing
- Fail Quickly, if we try something and it doesn't work then I prefer to let it fail. This way we can get quick feedback if something we try is best for Monria or not
- My hope in the future is that we can have a lot more community-driven activities and events with our support so that we can achieve a lot more
We've managed to increase the amount of sign-ups and active Monrian-borns significantly since we took over the moon. This is a continuous work in progress but we have learnt a lot and have grown the player base.
- 46% of the total Monrian-born customers have signed up this year between Jan and May
- The number of active accounts has doubled since January
- Our social media reach has been steadily increasing with our Facebook page (newly created when we took over the moon) currently at 2056 page likes
- About 21% of website traffic is through social and organic Google searches (roughly 50/50)
- We are in the top 5 PR rank for numerous key Entropia and its planets-related key words
- We have a total of 15,692 indexed URLs on google which is about double from the start of the year
- Increase the amount of Monria-related content and web presence to further increase organic traffic
- Continue to focus on Facebook reach which is converting well with a focus on people interested in MMORPGs
- Increase number of high performing banner ads through niche websites
- Currently researching marketing firms specializing in Indie games but I'm not sure if it's cost-effective yet
- Continue to reduce the cost per click and analyze relevancy and conversions
This is probably where I am most disappointed with our performance so far. We have a solid list of development features we would like and a prioritized list of bugs. The challenge has been with the amount of development work the planets and Mindark have in the pipeline, and it means that I have been unable to make as much progress as I would like in this area.
- We have added a stable and ran the ticket event in our first VU
- I have submitted development plans and had a series of meetings about development going forward
- I have an agreement for a Monria VU after the summer hiatus. This will include the addition of sweet stuff on Monria and a Monria Pet
- I was planning on waiting for at least the sweet stuff before requesting the stable to be listed on the auction but I will ask for it to be listed soon and announce it when I have a date agreed
- There has been a lot of work done on the forum and a number of upgrades
- Some development has been agreed to for after the summer, including some critical bug fixes
- I will continue to work on getting content for Monria by planning well in advance to get our requests in early
Under DM's stewardship I feel we have done a good job in helping to build a solid community of great people and we continue to get positive feedback from new comers to the Moon about how welcoming we are. This is a credit to everyone who has done so much to make Monria a great place to be. We've also been able to attract people that really care about the future of Entropia Universe and as a result we are getting our own identity. In short we're a rock, no wait, we rock
Plans going forward:
- To continue to focus on supporting things that the community wants to do and to make Monria the best place to start your Entropia life
- Identify Monrians who want to contribute to community initiatives and support them in their efforts through developing teams that can self-organize
Something that I've been pondering for a while is where we fit in Entropia, we're a Moon that doesn't orbit a planet filled with a great community who explore the galaxy and then come home. We have the best tee shirt in game and it is socially acceptable for us to not wear any pants. The Monria channel feels more like a soc channel and we have more inappropriate dancing than anywhere else in the Universe. We don't have our own dev team and we must fight for every pixel but these are the things that are also our strength. Ok maybe not the lack of a dev team but definitely the dancing.
For the rest of the year I want us to focus on being the best place for new players to start and we will continue to make sure that people find out about Monria. The way to do this is for us to continue to be as welcoming as we are and all-inclusive in our events and random parties. Going forward I will be focusing more on supporting initiatives for new players and their Mentors. I want to have the best Mentors in game on Monria and to provide the best experience for Monrian-born. There are already a great number of advantages to starting on Monria and I want there to be more. We may not have as many starter missions as the planets but there is nothing to stop us taking our Monrian new players to complete these missions.
As we grow I would also like to extend the travel program to additional planets and rather than hang on to our new players, unleash them on the universe. It is already quite fun seeing pant-less cool tee shirt wearing Monrians on different planets and I would like to see more of them.
Conclusion
It's been a manic 6 odd months but one that we can feel pretty proud of, and anyone that was here at the beginning will notice the positive influence we have had as a community of like-minded people with common goals. There have been some ups and downs along the way and our commitment to Monria has been tested but not wavered.
Some specific things I would like to achieve by New Year and focus on from now:
- We've doubled the amount of Monrian-born Entropians, I would like to double it again
- Also increase the Facebook Likes to 4k
- Work with DM on our back story, we have some thoughts and questions that need answering, I'd like to reveal some of this by the end of the year
- Have an active program of initiatives in place for new players:
- Active Team Events (The Mentor Games)
- Support for Mentors (weapons and faps for distribution)
- New Player training (MNAT)
- New Player field trips (to get goodies)
- Sweat and resource buying from new players
- Build a team of dedicated Monrians to run some of the community programs and events to free DM up to work on our storyline, some media and content-related work, and to provide guidance to the community teams
That's all Folks
Ant
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