Thursday, April 19, 2012

Rylyz.com Review - The $1/mo Social Gaming Experiment

Sometimes, it takes me a whole month to decide on something. Sometimes I just take the plunge. Besides, I am looking into making a gaming website myself - since I used to be a hard core gamer during my younger years.

Rylyz.com doesn't have much information pertaining to its owners, co-founders, corporate headquarters or any of that. But its proposition is indeed very intriguing.

The Hook That Got Me...
Was an Adsense text link ad on Statcounter which goes something like this:
Add Social Games to your website for $1 a month, and share up to 80% of the profits and get extra traffic

I clicked on it and it brought me to this website:


I just did some intensive analysis on North Korea, which drained me of my investigative vigor, so I haven't gotten much information about this company and its scheme.

I'll be updating this soon and would experiment on this blog.

Anyway, they claim that the games that they would be serving on your website are HTML 5 games like Connect 4, Battleship and Poker. Upon sign up you would be asked to share their referral links via social networks, Facebook, Twitter, Linked In and Tumblr. You could also invite via email.

I was quite surprised since they haven't really asked for payment upfront nor have they given the embed codes necessary for this social gaming experiment.

I won't be putting my referral links just yet, but my concerns about these are as follows:

Concerns
1. Adsense TOS - Prohibition on Gambling Content Quoted:
          Gambling content

AdSense publishers are not permitted to place Google ads on sites with gambling or casino-related content. In other words, if your site accepts money or allows users to place bets in exchange for an opportunity to earn cash or other prizes, then Google ads may not be placed on your site.
Examples of acceptable gambling content
Sites with play-for-fun games, contests, sweepstakes, raffles.
Location-based gambling sites (hotel casinos and destination travel sites).
Sites promoting fantasy sports.
Sites selling books, ebooks, magazines, TV shows that discuss gambling-related activities.
Discussion forums or blogs about gambling that don’t drive traffic to online gambling sites.
Sites selling gambling equipment.
Sites that drive traffic to online gambling sites through referral links or advertising.
Examples of unacceptable gambling content
Online gambling sites, such as online casinos or online wagering sites.
Sites that drive traffic to online gambling sites, such as through organic links.

It needs to be clarified whether Rylyz would be letting us embed gambling games. If they do, I suppose I must remove the Adsense placements on this blog.

2. Is the service really just $1? - website has no Terms of Service yet.
3. Social networking is the whole point of social gaming - so, I am not yet seeing this as a possible Ponzi scheme. Besides, for a $1 investment a month, I must say that it's not at all that bad.

Here is the general gist of the email that was sent to me verbatim:

We'll give you a way to build engaging traffic and make money, by using games :)
Our gaming platform will allow your website to serve fun, casual, high quality, real-time, social games to your visitors.
We are excited to get things kicked off and are very happy that you have decided to check us out.
You can add our HTML5 widget to any page on your site:
For only $1 per month:
o Your website URL will get promoted to other players in a game.
o Your visitors will be given incentives to invite friends to your site.
o Our games will help keep your visitors coming back to your site.
o You will share in the profits whenever your visitors make a purchase while in our gaming environment.
Your membership is very valuable to us.
You are now considered as an early adopter. We honor you as a partner: your amount of profit sharing is set to 25% and your monthly rate is set to $1. Your profit sharing amount will never go down and your monthly rate will never go up. Your rates will be linked to this email address that you signed up with.
You can get more by helping us get the ball rolling even faster!
For everyone of your referrals who use our service, we will bump your profit sharing rate up another 5%! (to a max of 80%.)
Your Unique Share URL
Tweet it, share it, post it to forums, make blog comment and email to webmasters you know:
The more webmasters there are who use our service, the more players there will be, the more exposure your site will get, and the more fun it will become! win, win, win!
You can always find out how many people you have referred through http://rylyz.com/play - just enter your email address again to see your referral stats.
(Note that the signup page may show a lower profit sharing amount or a higher monthly rate - don't worry though, the page is meant for new signups, and we have your correct amount linked to this email address)
Stay connected with us:
We are currently in private development and we'll be looking for partners to alpha test our service.
We'll send you updates as we prepare to launch!
Send us a note if you would like to be an alpha tester, or if you would be interested in doing a partner interview. 

Status: Still awaiting for instructions.
Action Points: Find out who owns Rylyz.com

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