is here.
Archive for Uncategorized
How to get your blog in the game?
If you’re playing already, this is easy. You do a search on the url of the blog. If it’s not there, you have the option to add it. Easy 20 chips and 1 sigma point.
If you’re not playing already, you need to either join and add it in, or find someone who will do it for you.
Remember it needs to fit the definitions of a qualified blog.
The game can be played as a non-premium player, i.e. for free.
This is how I got started playing the game. I was looking at my stats and wondering who the heck these people were. Then I got in and saw that my blog was only worth $3000 (which is not surprising, this was a personal blog that had about 3 readers).
How to get the value of your blog up? Well, does anyone else link to it? Is that blog in the system? Has it been reindexed? If it’s not in the system and it’s a qualified blog, add it. It’ll show up.
Understanding the market for bonds
A new player was asking me about how the bond market worked in the game and how one went about pricing bonds. He asked me to write a post about it so here goes.
People who buy bonds are usually looking for convenience. They are willing to pay more than market value because of that. Figuring out how much above market value is the trick.
There basically two reasons why someone shops on the bond market.
1. To obtain enough ideas to build artefacts
If the artefact is easily obtainable, it’s probably best to issue a bond in 5000 or 10000 idea increments.
If it’s a rare one, say the way the Seuss artefact is, then you can get away with smaller bonds.
2. To obtain rares
These are usually sold in increments of 10 and are bought usually by people who are looking to raise in rank by obtaining as many industries as possible and by collectors (like me!).
Pricing. These are questions you need to ask yourself.
1. How many ideas are there extant?
2. How many blogs are there in that industry? Do they have incoming? If so, how many?
3. Are there other bonds for that industry already?
4. How many players have ideas in this industry? Is it a lot? A few?
Advertising
Use the forums or the main room on irc to get the word out about your bonds.
Getting started on Blogshares
I’ve helped enough new players out that I’m thinking some basic advice is worth a post. In no particular order…
- It’s worth it to introduce yourself on the forums. People often send new players chips or blogs and are very welcoming.
- Get yourself on IRC. A lot of valuable advice and help can be found there.
- Read the help. It’s a complex game and it can be daunting, but it’s where you should start.
- Start buying up 10001 of every cheap idea you can. Build every artefact you can.
- As you have more wealth, buy 1 of every industry you can.
- Look at inactive player holdings. Do they have deads in their ports? Anything worth snagging? Chances are no one is going to come after you.
- Figure out your game goals. What is it you want to accomplish? Do you want to focus on shares? Ideas? Rising in composite rank?
Never thought I’d say this
but I’m getting a bit sick of sigma hunting.
I’ve been doing everything. Going through my ports, inactive players’ ports, typing in names and words into the Blogshares search engine (there are no longer any blogs with “cashew” in the title), random blogs, cleaning industries. You name it, I’ve done it.
And I’m finally starting to have my fill of it. Need to keep plugging away. Sigma is one of the few ladders with room left for me to climb. It’s also one of the two categories where the player has to do the work without help.
Back to hunting deads….
Bring out your deads
There are a variety of categories in Blogshares that go into determining rankings. One of these is Sigma.
You get sigma by reporting errors. These can be things such as a blog’s title being changed or if the blog isn’t really a qualified blog. You also can get sigma for reporting “deads.” If a blog’s last post is six months old or more, it is dead.
Aside from getting the points for sigma, you also get chips each time you report an error.
Although there’s a lovely new automated dead finder to help ease this prcoess, I still enjoy “hunting for deads” the old way. I use lists of common first names or just words. I plug whatever the term of choice is into the B$ search feature under title and off I go.
Another player recently told me he didn’t think there was a point to sigma hunting, but I rather like doing it. I find interesting blogs I might never have seen. I sometimes find very good live blogs that I can add to my stock portfolio. And well, I like order. I like the feeling of correcting errors, voting in correct industries, and culling out all of the junk.
And of course, you get all those lovely chips for your labor.
How a mathematically impaired person turned into a trillionaire
One day I was doing a search on one of my blogs. There were several hits, but one stuck out. It was a listing for my blog on the Blogshares Market. It took me awhile to figure out what the heck was going on.
Turns out Blogshares is an online game based on the stock market (well, somewhat anyhow) and blogs are the shares, or stocks. The more blogs that have linked to a blog (referred to as incoming links), the higher the value of that particular blog. There are ways to manipulate the value of a blog. Players buy and sell. They use artefacts to hype, buzz, slump, or cause a public relations disaster.
You start out with a fictional $500. It is possible to play for free, which is how I began. These players, referred to as non-premium, don’t have access to the full set of tools and features and are limited in how many transactions they can use per day.
I didn’t last long as a non-premium. Pretty soon I’d shelled out the $15 for a year of premium, unlimited play. I had no idea what I was doing. I read the help (which is very confusing) and stumbled through the game.
Now I’m a trillionaire. I’m also obsessed, but more on that later…
