Have time to kill online?
Then read on....
Only last week I realized that I am a member of contests2win.com when they sent me a reminder that I haven't participated in any of their contests since long. I don't even remember becoming a member because there were too many sites of that genre which offers you little brownie points to do things that they want you to do. Yeah it's something similar to our mothers telling us to get grocery from the next store for the promise of a chocolate. So there was bargain for both of us. Mother has the convenience of not getting out of home and we are getting the chocolates. I am not very surprised to see that the same thing has become business model. There is just a little difference and this little difference was hyped to be a revolutionary concept. Though our parents use to reward us for fetching grocery or doing other chores (like getting a hair cut, completing home work, cleaning room etc) they never paid us to play video games or for that matter any other game. After all, ours is a society which is built on the principles of "पढोगे लीखोगे बनोगे नवाब, खेलोगे कूदोगे बनोगे खराब" (Simple translation is "just keep yourself immersed in books, you dare go out of home to play).
Our English administrators were really successful in driving the point home and boy-oh-boy, look how successful they were actually. Though the 1 billion population is not good enough to get even a single Olympic gold medal, every other day a son of soil starting an IT services company (back offices are easy to setup and start). The older generations can feel happy that what they sowed all these years, is bearing fruits now. Well, to come back to the point, for people like us who were emotionally attached to sports and whose teachers and tutors made it sure that they don't waste their time on useless things had no other resort than to turn to virtual world. I may not be right but what else can explain the cricket craziness of 1 billion people? Why is that every average Indian can advise Rahul Dravid as to how to hold the bat or how to hit Bret Lee over the top or for that matter how to rotate strike in one dayers? Most importantly it's the feeling of guilt in most of us that we lost some of our precious time reading books rather than getting dirty in the field.
Well, coming back to the business plan, we have seen some good websites coming up during the last couple of year like Zapak.com, contests2win.com etc etc. Their business model "we pay you to play games online or we pay you to have fun on the web". And a nation where sports grounds are best used for grazing cattle or hosting big fat weddings the only resort of the young, literate and computer savvy people like us is to indulge in computer gaming and as internet was becoming a hype so by the rule of association internet gaming became the buzzword. Was it a new concept before zapak or contests to win came on the scene? My answer is an emphatic 'No'. Yahoo had Yahoo gaming and Indiatimes use to give brownie points for even reading news on Times of India (well otherwise who will read Times of India online?). Well, Indian startups have made it an habit of picking up an idea existing in US or other markets and then repackaging and re branding it for Indian masses (not a bad idea in itself because I have also plans for doing this only). So online gaming came to India with a bang. Anil Ambani bought Zapak.com and there you go (comeon! if Anil Ambani believes in online gaming then you know this must have some potential).
What's in there for us?
Games like Sudoku is simply boring and are better to do offline. Other small games are simply time waste and have no real fun. Contests to win goes a step further and asks you simple questions (which any idiot can answer and if he/she doesn't then it's a warning signal that their IQ is less than 40 and their parents should take them to a doctor) which any one can easily google. The business model is based on the number of participants because the more people will participate, the more money the website will make and the less chances you have to win contests. I don't know what fun is there in answering questions like "Who married Aishwary Bachhan"? or "Who is the director of movie Ram Gopal Varma ki Aag"?. Well, I know the answers are not simple and many people will mistake Amitabh for Abhishek but who cares, I will get those 5 points on offer.
And how many points you need to redeem a 256 MB pen drive? A staggering 10000 points for a 100 Rs। thumb drive? Isn't it a cool reward? Well, ofcourse it's cool but not for a person like me who has to spend around 6 hours online attempting for all those stupid questions or games to get points (that too over an entire month) and have to pay the broadband bill at the end of the month. It's other thing if my father pays for it. So guess who is making money out of our stupidity. But well there are no brownie points for answering that question. So contests to win staff! be assured I understand your tricks. Now will you please stop spamming me?
Only last week I realized that I am a member of contests2win.com when they sent me a reminder that I haven't participated in any of their contests since long. I don't even remember becoming a member because there were too many sites of that genre which offers you little brownie points to do things that they want you to do. Yeah it's something similar to our mothers telling us to get grocery from the next store for the promise of a chocolate. So there was bargain for both of us. Mother has the convenience of not getting out of home and we are getting the chocolates. I am not very surprised to see that the same thing has become business model. There is just a little difference and this little difference was hyped to be a revolutionary concept. Though our parents use to reward us for fetching grocery or doing other chores (like getting a hair cut, completing home work, cleaning room etc) they never paid us to play video games or for that matter any other game. After all, ours is a society which is built on the principles of "पढोगे लीखोगे बनोगे नवाब, खेलोगे कूदोगे बनोगे खराब" (Simple translation is "just keep yourself immersed in books, you dare go out of home to play).
Our English administrators were really successful in driving the point home and boy-oh-boy, look how successful they were actually. Though the 1 billion population is not good enough to get even a single Olympic gold medal, every other day a son of soil starting an IT services company (back offices are easy to setup and start). The older generations can feel happy that what they sowed all these years, is bearing fruits now. Well, to come back to the point, for people like us who were emotionally attached to sports and whose teachers and tutors made it sure that they don't waste their time on useless things had no other resort than to turn to virtual world. I may not be right but what else can explain the cricket craziness of 1 billion people? Why is that every average Indian can advise Rahul Dravid as to how to hold the bat or how to hit Bret Lee over the top or for that matter how to rotate strike in one dayers? Most importantly it's the feeling of guilt in most of us that we lost some of our precious time reading books rather than getting dirty in the field.
Well, coming back to the business plan, we have seen some good websites coming up during the last couple of year like Zapak.com, contests2win.com etc etc. Their business model "we pay you to play games online or we pay you to have fun on the web". And a nation where sports grounds are best used for grazing cattle or hosting big fat weddings the only resort of the young, literate and computer savvy people like us is to indulge in computer gaming and as internet was becoming a hype so by the rule of association internet gaming became the buzzword. Was it a new concept before zapak or contests to win came on the scene? My answer is an emphatic 'No'. Yahoo had Yahoo gaming and Indiatimes use to give brownie points for even reading news on Times of India (well otherwise who will read Times of India online?). Well, Indian startups have made it an habit of picking up an idea existing in US or other markets and then repackaging and re branding it for Indian masses (not a bad idea in itself because I have also plans for doing this only). So online gaming came to India with a bang. Anil Ambani bought Zapak.com and there you go (comeon! if Anil Ambani believes in online gaming then you know this must have some potential).
What's in there for us?
Games like Sudoku is simply boring and are better to do offline. Other small games are simply time waste and have no real fun. Contests to win goes a step further and asks you simple questions (which any idiot can answer and if he/she doesn't then it's a warning signal that their IQ is less than 40 and their parents should take them to a doctor) which any one can easily google. The business model is based on the number of participants because the more people will participate, the more money the website will make and the less chances you have to win contests. I don't know what fun is there in answering questions like "Who married Aishwary Bachhan"? or "Who is the director of movie Ram Gopal Varma ki Aag"?. Well, I know the answers are not simple and many people will mistake Amitabh for Abhishek but who cares, I will get those 5 points on offer.
And how many points you need to redeem a 256 MB pen drive? A staggering 10000 points for a 100 Rs। thumb drive? Isn't it a cool reward? Well, ofcourse it's cool but not for a person like me who has to spend around 6 hours online attempting for all those stupid questions or games to get points (that too over an entire month) and have to pay the broadband bill at the end of the month. It's other thing if my father pays for it. So guess who is making money out of our stupidity. But well there are no brownie points for answering that question. So contests to win staff! be assured I understand your tricks. Now will you please stop spamming me?
2 comments:
You know what's the beauty of Contests2Win Rajneesh? It's that 99% of the content is created by the users.
So it's a user similar to you (perhaps not in the same IQ League of a typical B-Schooler) - who has actually asked the question - Who did Aishwarya Rai marry?!
There's nothing stopping you from asking user that was it Dr Sharma or Dr Verma the operating gynecologist who delivered Aishwarya Rai! And what's more you can create this tough quiz and even embed it on your blog or facebook profile!
We just attach prizes and prize points to contests we will are real cool.
And what you call spam - I call customer retention.
Perhaps they don't teach you that in a BSchool?
@ Ekalavya -
Hi, thanks for the comment on my blog. I understand that creating simple quizzes increases the participation but at the same time you are decreasing the chances of someone winning. Well, I did that piece of writing because I feel that your business model is all so great and I intend to do something like this may be a couple of year from now. I noticed certain flaws (smart thinking from business point of view)like, contests are not that great, too few to accumulate points and it takes a lot of time to load (given the average speed of a broadband connection). So one end up wasting a lot of time. And well, I can see that in a business like this, you have to really work hard for retaining customers. I have learnt another important lesson instead - work on increasing the loyalty by creating interesting content and contest. 98% User generated content doesn't mean that 98% content is good.
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