Just going to throw this in here, maybe it doesn't belong.

Tom, redefine your adsense criteria. Put a little more study into your demographics.

I only get ads for xfinity & comcast, which claim is based off my internet browsing activity. Never have I once been actively looking for a service provider.

Use section targeting as well as limiting ad categories. The keyword 'computer programming course' is going for $47.43 dollars per click right now on adwords!
Even if 5% of 5,000 visitors are clicking that ad per month, your revenue would equate to approx. $11,857.50 per month.

You can also hire people who can optimize for you, might be an initial investment but better for you in the long run.

Seriously, check into this.

Reference here

~Redo the blue book into interactive, live youtube videos that program a simple game (A Step BYOND - deadron) from start to finish. Use generic keywords (not ONLY BYOND) like 'online games' 'programming tutorials' etc. This will potentially open your audience traffic FOR FREE. Use a PPC service to your youtube channel with keywords on programming small games, or etc. Do some research here.

~I don't know if there is a FB page for BYOND, but use one. Link to it in the homepages somewhere, just a share button. I won't get into the many free techniques on social media here, but the potential is extremely high.

~BYOND Merchandise... it would take you literally a day to set up a spreadshirt.com account, and make some t-shirt designs relating to BYOND logos. Spreadshirt takes care of manufacturing, invoices, customers, returns, shipping, tracking & information logs as well as taxes & W2s. All you do is set up an account, make a t-shirt with the logo and direct traffic to it. Oh, and its FREE.

~You could do SMALL investment media buys, for a website like this I would recommend mochimedia. Ranking higher than Yahoo games, MSN games, reaching potentially 91 million people, the cost is $100 bucks to start. AND its a CPC, so you pay for people who are clicking your ad to BYOND.com. Oh BYOND members who want their game seen & have small budgets, I would recommend this site for you as well.

To tell you the truth guys, you and every other BYOND staff member could have quit their 'jobs' a long time ago. If you hire SEO professionals, even list building services, or just internet marketing professional help, you could be making way more than 5 large per month, and that is only accomplished through donations!!

I know you don't want to treat BYOND as a 'business model', but if you spend the initial investment, you can generate a highly effective passive income rate at which all the BYOND staff would be able to focus on BYOND as their full-time job!

You can learn exactly how to do this
(To get 60% off, try to leave the page & the offer will appear)
http://bit.ly/1j6h3Ho
It does cost like 45$, but its one of the best training courses I've seen.

Google's Ad Placement Statistics: Darker areas generate more CTR % (Click through rates)

The adsense criteria currently is entirely FUBAR

Personally I noticed that if your gender is set to female it only gives you ads for shaving and cleaning products. And thats just the video ads. Its even funnier when you get them in dutch (I'm swedish).

The thing about a business, your going to fail 9 times out of ten. But if you try ten times, one is likely to succeed.

This is why many people (online & realworld) don't get very far owning their own business models.

I assume Tom & staff have tried many times before, all with no avail. So much to the point they have deemed their efforts worthless. This is number 1 mistake most people make.

DON'T give up, there are professionals out there who can streamline this process and almost instantly jump your ROI. Like I said, some are cheap so start there. Don't dump money into it. It is like any thing else, put some investment into it at the beginning, but not so much so that it completely takes away from development.

Pick a day & budget per week or per month even to meet with a professional, and with a little investment, you can be able to begin generating wealthy amounts of PASSIVE income. So you can focus on what really matters.. BYOND.

For the Facebook page, it would be smart to give ownership to a community member or moderator. Run contests on the page, do all your GIAD events there. Offer prizes such as 20% off a membership. Facebook ACTIVITY attracts people. You can even promote posts for 5 bucks to a couple thousand people, and FB has extreme targeting functionality demographics, better than most of the big ad platforms out there.

Toddab503 wrote:

BYOND has already attempted merchandise in the past, and while it may not have been the best time for it, there likely wouldn't be enough interest for this.

Thing about spreadshirt is, you don't do anything. It would take Tom a day to set up & put some BYOND logos on a tshirt.
Then he would have to link to it in the home page. And sit. Check it once a month.

Fact is, even if nobody is interested enough, the effort spent to create it is worth it. Even if 2 people buy a shirt in a month, that's $10 bucks. Money is money.

If you don't believe me, check it out here http://www.spreadshirt.com/open-free-tshirt-shop-C3600

I can agree with Fugsnarf on this. I would much rather see the actual engine ironed out, and the website options polished.

I think Tom and Lummox were discussing making the EXE creator right inside Dream Maker. Granted you have the distribution key, theoretically you'd be able to make your EXE if it is plugged into your project settings, sort of like hub and hub_password.

I don't like the $100 fee for making it a native windows executable, but I guess that's their call. I'd prefer it be free, which would allow me to distribute the game more affordably to the outside audience. Having the distributable key already grants developers the following:

• Outside interest into the BYOND engine
• Generated revenue from subscriptions and payments, which would be shared unto BYOND.
• More customers/clients and thus a wider audience.

The reason why I am hesitant on buying the key at that price is just knowledge that other engines usually do it for free as well, such as Game Maker (though the lite version, which is free, keeps special features locked up).

I can agree on making Facebook a more active thing for BYOND, but I personally do not use Facebook anymore. BYOND also doesn't have a very high reputation outside of the community it seems, and Tom/Lummox, as well as us developers, will need to work hard to ensure that the engine is capable of rich multimedia, including competent games.

You keep mentioning that the source code inside of BYOND's central core is written by Dan, and obfuscated. It is unreadable to Tom or Lummox. Because it is not possible to work with this source, maybe a rewrite of the core might be a good idea. This would allow you to have a confident sense of control over the project. It would make things easier. That doesn't mean scrap this though.

Is there a way to check how much you've donated? I wouldn't mind knowing how far I am from the top 30 all-timers.

Edit: Nvm, I checked my wallet on my settings, I've donated $210 total lol. Not including game subs like feval.

Writing A New One wrote:

please, 2013/early 2014, bring me the following!:

- nearest neighbor interpolation http://www.byond.com/forum/?post=1388769
- support for purchaseable in-game tokens
- and the anticipated Flash support, ideally after the above feature

i've been real good n' santa knows it. = ( *fingers crossed*

BYOND staff are Santa's elf's. They decide if you deserve the gift, not Santa. Santa's just a delivery boy.

I've got the milk and cookies, so please, oh please.

Nadrew wrote:

Technically, you can do the in-game token thing already yourself using the Paypal IPN.

Very true. I've actually been considering that with my new project I just started on the bus this morning.

Writing A New One wrote:

yup, but that's not really in BYOND's interests since it would cut them out of the transaction.

I don't know about others, but only a small portion of my money will go to BYOND in the form of a donation. I think that attraction via third party would probably be the quickest way to spread it. As I already run a game server hosting service, I plan to add BYOND to our lineup, and even host servers of games I and a few others deem to be something you'd want new-comers to BYOND to see.