Virtual Pets Blog

Buying out the competition. Have you ever thought about buying out your competitors and introducing their features onto your virtual pet site? It might be costly but if its done right, the buy out may be worth it. You could even keep your competitor’s pet site running and let it run without updates - while running your site’s advertisements on the pet site itself. It can be a risky investment, but if its done right we think we have an answer for you.

If your competitor’s site lacks the content, then introduce new content to it - while having it include unique features for its game, also; update its current content and make it better. Think to yourself is the content weak? Will users come back for me? If that’s a “no” to both of the questions, then you should try improving your new pet site because it’s your investment. Don’t you want to make the money back and hope that you can buy out more competitors? Well if you continue to buy out your competitors, you may one day not have any competitors and is that a good a thing? Well, yes, you can create something that we’d love to call a monoply - which is running your current industry without anyone trying to compete against you.

Ask yourself another question - if I own two pet sites can I keep both of them updated? The answer is no unless you have staff running both of your pet sites. Our favorite thing to do is buying out the competition, merging the content, and bringing their staff on over. If you can’t merge the two pet sites because of them having two different databases, then you’ll have to run them seperate and see how that goes.

Let’s take Marapets as an example for this one. TheTeen recently posted on virtual pet list with the thought of “What if Neopets bought out Marapets?”. Well, Marapets runs differently than Neopets - and I’m sure if Neopets bought them out, they’ll continue running Marapets and introduce new features, new games and new staff members. Why merge a big pet site with an even bigger one? There isn’t a point to that, however; if you run both of them at the same time - you can double your revenue and make your investment back. It’s a risk, but working on the internet is a risk. It’s all about making money and seeing what can become a success. If Neopets thought Marapets could be a worthy investment, then I’m sure they’ll upgrade Marapets by introducing new programmers, new staff members and new features that’ll make Marapets even better. There’s a reason why Neopets is better than Marapets.

All pet sites all the same. Many users believe that all pet sites are the same and that there’s not an industry for them, however; most pet sites sometimes have unique features that other pet sites don’t have. Sure they have the “create a pet” feature, shops, forums, message boards, restocks and various other features, but they’re not all the same. If all pet sites are the same, then aren’t all the search engines the same? Wrong; Google works differently than Yahoo does and has different features. So, if a pet site has different features than its competitor, then they’re not the same.

Creating a virtual pet site and succeeding part 2:
In our first article about creating a virtual pet site and succeeding, we covered games, pet features, promises, art, and social networking, however; we forgot to include a few things that’ll help your virtual pet succeed and we’re going to cover it in this edition.

Economy: the success of your virtual pet game all depends on its economy. Is it hard to make points? Is it hard to get rich? Is it easy for a newbie to become rich? We can build an economy easily by supply and demand. Are items selling for more than they are worth? Quests help establish an economy and if the rewards are good or well balanced - users will do them and continue to do them. You need at least 5 quest games on your pet site if you hope to establish an economy. If the items aren’t selling for more in the user shops than they are in the main shops, then you’re in trouble. Have you tried to implement an economy like the world? Do you have a stock market yet? A stock market helps bring points into the game as well give the users something to do. A stock market can be company-based or based on how the shops are doing. Is a shop doing bad? Make its stock go down. If the shops are doing well, then the stocks will do well. Does a lot of items stock in the main shops? Are rarities in place? If not, check them.
A good rarity system would be something like 1 - 100.
With 1 being the most common and 100 being the rarest. If you do it like that, then if its rarity is 1, then it’ll most likely restock all the time, but if its 100 then it’ll most likely restock once every 100 restocks. Restocks could be every 15 minutes or 30 depending on how successful your current economy is.

Users building content: Do you have an art gallery yet? What about a newspaper that provides users with an editorial, stories and more? An art gallery helps your users show off their art - and can be very rewarding. If you do create an art gallery, then be sure to update it all the time and make it an important feature of your virtual pet site. Users are always creating new content for your virtual pet site by chatting on the forums, by creating new blogs, and if you give your offers the abilitiy to create their homepage, then there’s even more content for you. Content is the key to a successful virtual pet site and if you don’t allow your users to create their own content - within your pet site’s rules, then you’ll have a tough time succeeding in this community.

Referral system: the referral system is a big feature on any virtual pet site and ca be very rewarding. Why should your users refer their friends? Are they getting rewarded for doing so? If you want to create a successful referral system, then make sure it has good prizes from points to custom-items that are only obtained from the referral system. Attractive banners are also good for this. Do you have plain banners? Well have an artist creat a new one that’ll attract a ton of new users. If your referral system sucks, then don’t expect users to refer - because they’ll do it for the prizes and do support your pet site.

Easy to navigate: Is your site easy to navigate? Can users fly passed each page and know where they’re going? You can do this by building homepages for certain sections - like a pets.php, make that page include every feature for your virtual pets and if you have a games section - make sure to split it into categories so its like flash games, luck/chance, and whatever else you have. If your pet site is easy to navigate, more people will join and your pet site will continue to grow. Navigation is the key and if you don’t have it, then you’ll have a tough time of becoming a big pet site.

The pets: What can users do to the pets? Can they customize them? Are they able to play, feed, and talk to them? A talking feature has never been released on a pet site yet - and if you were to create it, then you could create a dialog between the pets and the users. The user can type something in, and the pets would respond. The pets feature is an important feature for your pet site because it is a pet site and its main focused should be around the pets, however; you can create even better features that’ll help your virtual pet site succeed.

If you guys know of any other ways to help your virtual pet site succeed then feel free to post a comment!

Lack of updates and continuing to grow?
A lot of old virtual pet sites continue to grow without updates. Giropets, Venetopia and Zetapets are three prime examples of virtual pet sites that continue to grow without new updates… Why is this? Why are users continuing to play a dead virtual pet site? Isn’t a pet site considered dead if its not updated at all? Maybe a year or two? What makes a virtual pet site dead? Well, we’re firm believers of if a virtual pet site isn’t updated, changed, or edited in about a few months, then it’s dead.

We’re talking about good updates such as; new features, new art, new staff, etc… If a virtual pet site continues to grow without updates (lack of), then we might know the reasons why…

Let’s take Zetapets as our first example; they’re listed in DMOZ and various gaming directories on the web today and a lot of their users continue to refer their friends as they tend to use Zetapets as a social networking virtual pet site instead of running to Myspace to chat with their friends. Zetapets runs on two servers - and loads fast, so to the average new pet site user they may see Zetapets as the pet site to go. Why is this though? Well, we’re not exactly sure. Zetapets always has over 100 users online during peak hours, 40 guests and has a member base of over 500,000 users. Could it be because of their DMOZ listing and various listings on the web? If you know why, then please let us know!

Our next example is Giropets. Giropets currently ranks on various search engines for “virtual pet site”, “virtual pet”, “virtual pets”, and its owner is currently using Giropets as a profit-resource and it continues to receive new members and we’re not sure why. It’s owned by quite a wealthy person and they’re listed on Topwebgames (with an advertisement) and with such an advertisement on the pet games directory, they continue to receive new members. Giropets isn’t that good, nor is Zetapets, so why are these two pet games continuing to grow without updates?

Venetopia hasn’t been updated in years and really should be taken down - and moved to a new pet site since their users have nothin to do.