[CatDancer]

Interestingly, IMVU had the same issue: many of their target customers didn't have a credit card, and apparently they were able to get mobile phone payment to work for them [www.stanford.edu/class/e140/e140a/handouts/IMVU_Case_Draft.pdf]

But you're right, you need some way of differentiating among your players; some have money and some don't. If you try to charge everyone you lose those who don't want to pay, but if you charge no one then you lose the revenue (and the benefits that would come to the site and for your players if you had revenue) that you'd get from the players who could pay.

What about a premium service? Anything nifty you could offer to paying customers, while the basic game remains free?

[wlievens]

Actually I'm planning a premium service on the new version of the game. There are several small featurettes that, grouped together, could represent some added value. I'd estimate a conversion value in the low single digits for that (based on anecdotical questioning and prior donations), and obviously I can't charge much more than, say, $3 per month. That's the standard going rate for browser games' premium models.

It all boils down to scaling the game up though, as any form of revenue scales along. But before I can do that, I have to put still a lot of work in the new version, and sometimes I doubt whether it's all worth it.

[CatDancer]

What would make it worth it to you? I.e., is there some $/month revenue where you'd say, "yup, I wouldn't mind putting in the work if I were getting that"?

[wlievens]

Excellent question. I've no idea how many hours I've put in it currently. If I add up the codebase of the classic version plus the under-development new version, I get to at least 150,000 lines of code (including comments and whitespace). I know LOC is a crappy metric, but it does give a sense of scope.

I haven't tracked the amount of manhours at all. Ten hours a week gives me 2000 over four years, that seems realistic (although a little low considering the amount of code). At market rate that would make the project cost about $100k but of course something is only worth what a buyer would pay.

To answer your question: I'd be a happy camper for a couple hundred each month. Enough to pay for expenses (hosting) and justify a day off from the day job. To spend on projects like this of course.

[CatDancer]

Sounds like your catch-22 is that you'd be willing to put in the programming if you knew it would pay off, but you're reluctant to put in the programming if it's not going to pay off.

So how about doing an experiment. The purpose of the experiment is to gather information, without doing any more programming. First explain to your players that you're going to run an experiment: you're looking for ways for the site to be self-supporting so it can continue to grow and meet the needs of its players. The experiment isn't going to affect game play, and that it's just an experiment: you'll take it down if it doesn't work out.

Every business faces the issue price differentiation between customers: some customers have little money and some have a lot, so how do you get the customers with money to pay more without turning away the customers who have little (or, in your case, no money).

For the experiment add a tiered membership: free (what you have now) and patron ($5/month). Both are identical in terms of gameplay (both for fairness and so you don't have to do any programming). By becoming a patron a member has their name listed on the homepage as a patron of Particracy (which is literally true). During new user sign up prominently display the patron option "you can become a patron for $5/month, or join for free". On the homepage above the patron list have a button "Join the Patrons of Particracy".

If anyone signs up, that tells you that there are people eager enough the support the game that they'll give you money even though they don't get any tangible extra features.

Next you might try running a Google ads campaign, max $5 total and max $0.05 per click, using a keyword of "political simulation game". This will deliver 100 people to your landing page. Track how many of the 100 become users (if any) and how many become patrons (if any). This will tell you how easy it will be to draw in new users when you have a way to make money.

Now you look at your conversion rate (is it 0%? 5%? 1%?) and get a sense of what it would take to get to $200/month (40 paying customers). For example, if your conversion rate is 1% then you'd need 4,000 customers to get the 40 paying ones. Then you can look at a) if you want to go for that, or b) do you think that doing things like more programming and adding the premium service you're thinking about might get the conversion rate up.

The point of the experiment isn't for it to make money by itself (though of course it will be nice if it did :), it is to gather information and to give you encouragement.