Either way, the many naysayers suggesting that it’s impossible to make money on Facebook might want to think again.
It's not impossible, it's just damn hard - not any easier than making money off facebook. It is also fraught with additional risks, as Facebook can pull the plug on your business and destroy you in the blink of an eye (see Scrabulous), whereas that would be much harder off the FB platform.
Indeed, the lesson that should be learned is to take your earnings and put them in the bank and put off buying that new office space in downtown SF and that new Porsche you've had your eye on until you have a sufficient cushion.
Does anyone actually do that? Buy the porsche I mean. Before having their finances solidly cemented in place. Maybe it's just my Midwestern sensibility (or, less generously, my being a cheapskate), but that is just unfathomable to me.
Being from the midwest as well, I was horrified when I moved to phoenix and saw all the millionaires driving in their $60,000-$80,000 cars.
Then I found out that the majority of the people driving those things make $80-$140,000 a year. People out here tend to live at the ends of their means. Its a cultural thing.
Hey, badass. I just took a week of R&R to sort out priorities and decided that my web-based game (with OpenSocial/FB frontends, natch) was probably the best bet. This success story is a nice encouragement.
Isn't this one of those games that used to be around a while back (outwar, et-al) that was essentially a pyramid scheme wrapped in a game and led to IRC networks, blogging communities and such insta-banning on a mere mention of them due to massive spamming?
Yes and no. Although it's possible to play the game successfully without recruiting other people some functionality in the game does require you to recruit other people.
On the web at large I suspect this game would get a lot of complaints. On facebook though this sort of crazed inviting is so prevalent that Mobwars actually seems quite tame.
Although now with the new facebook gui/api/rules, you can't have incentivetized invites anymore, so this kind of stuff will probably die pretty quickly.
It's not impossible, it's just damn hard - not any easier than making money off facebook. It is also fraught with additional risks, as Facebook can pull the plug on your business and destroy you in the blink of an eye (see Scrabulous), whereas that would be much harder off the FB platform.