In NEED of a PHP coding partner

[king2k5]

I NEED a PHP coding partner very badly. I have made my own RPG web based text game, and have over 1000 members, but lately, it has all gone bad because I dont have enough time to work on it as much as i would want to. I need someone who is very experienced in PHP and mySQL. This game has great potential, it just needs some more work.

I am willing to give a partner 15% of the earnings from my site.

If interested, please PM me.

[NancyJ]

Since your game is already established and already has a player base, surely you can give an indication of how much 15% of earnings and over what period this will be paid

[king2k5]

There isnt much earnings now(none) lol, as this game is very inactive right now because of the game not being near done enough, at least up to my expectations. I can however say that if we get this game off of its feet, it has a great potential to generate a huge income.

[NancyJ]

There isnt much earnings now(none) lol, as this game is very inactive right now because of the game not being near done enough, at least up to my expectations. I can however say that if we get this game off of its feet, it has a great potential to generate a huge income.

Everyone says that ;)

[Mhtml]

Is it me Nancy, or do you and I seem to be drawn into these same posts already knowing we'll be repeating ourselves?

King2k5, see posts:
http://www.codingforums.com/showthread.php?t=106589
http://www.codingforums.com/showthread.php?t=109076
http://www.codingforums.com/showthread.php?t=111457

[NancyJ]

True, but I like to give them a chance to prove they have a clue before shooting them down ;)
You never know, one day someone might come along with something that is worth my investment

[Archangel]

My the day come quickly before taxes take all my money!

[king2k5]

Im not asking you to put any money into the game at all. I have it all paid for, for a year. But whatever, i can rarely get any help on these forums anyway, i just thought i would give it a try.

[NancyJ]

Time = money
you're asking someone to put their time into your game - essentially for free.
You want someone who is very experienced in PHP and mySQL but experience comes with age and with age comes responsibilities.

you dont have the time to work on your own game but you expect someone else who has no emotional attachment to the project or any tangible financial incentive to do it for you.

Out of 1000 users you have 0 income - thats well below average for a sucessful game of this genre, which suggest in order to make it profitable it needs a LOT of work.

The reason you rarely get any help on this forum may be because your request are rarely reasonble. Perhaps you could work on making your offer more enticing to the right kind of person.

[king2k5]

experience doesnt always come with age... im only 17, and yet i have managed to make a semi-successful game...

[NancyJ]

Experience does come with age - Experience is measured in years. You cannot have x years experience without being x years older than when you started.

[Archangel]

Even if experience was measured in minutes...that still constistutes as being older than when you started...hence...age :)

[bcarl314]

Interesting thread, and I can see points on both sides here.

I will say this - it's in the "Project Collaboration / partnership" thread. So I can understand not wanting to pay someone. And king2k5 is offering rev share. Although to me a true "partnership" would be a nearly even split between all involved parties. Unless there are 7 people here, I really don't think this would qualify as a "partnership".

Also, IMO, where there's only 2 people involved, it's risky if it's not 50-50. The difference in ownership between 49.95% and 0.05% legally is essentially nothing. IF it's 50-50, then you need BOTH parties to agree, anything else, the majority stakeholder owns the company.

Nancy, I've got to agree with you that there seems to be a significant amount of work needed if he's got 1000 members and no revenue. I've got a couple of sites that, when at 1000 or so members, I had some revenue - not alot, but some. It may just be that the site needs to be properly monetized. I'm always amazed at how so many people miss the basics in site monetization.

Anyway, just thought I'd weigh in quick.

[king2k5]

It "had" revenue, of sorts... at one point.. like, $200 in a month, when we were at about 200 members... and not too long ago, i needed money for a new host, so i put up an announcement and i recieved just over $300 in one day... but its not like a fixed income or anything, and most everything i get right now goes towards the server...

[NancyJ]

Interesting thread, and I can see points on both sides here.

I will say this - it's in the "Project Collaboration / partnership" thread. So I can understand not wanting to pay someone. And king2k5 is offering rev share. Although to me a true "partnership" would be a nearly even split between all involved parties. Unless there are 7 people here, I really don't think this would qualify as a "partnership".

Also, IMO, where there's only 2 people involved, it's risky if it's not 50-50. The difference in ownership between 49.95% and 0.05% legally is essentially nothing. IF it's 50-50, then you need BOTH parties to agree, anything else, the majority stakeholder owns the company.

Nancy, I've got to agree with you that there seems to be a significant amount of work needed if he's got 1000 members and no revenue. I've got a couple of sites that, when at 1000 or so members, I had some revenue - not alot, but some. It may just be that the site needs to be properly monetized. I'm always amazed at how so many people miss the basics in site monetization.

Anyway, just thought I'd weigh in quick.
Its not about the percentage being offered, 15% of zero is the same as 50%.

Even in a Project Collaboration/Partnership, I would still expect a basic understanding of business, which very few people posting here have. They're just looking for a quick cash fix without doing any work.
They're all looking for experienced coders to work for free on the promise of profits if the project is a sucess. If I were to undertake such a partnership, I would expect my partner as the proverbial entrepeneur in this scenario, to have a basic grasp of business and marketting and I feel anyone else should too. We have to protect the young and naive by pointing out high risk ventures. If someone then was still interested, that is their decision. Almost weekly I get requests in my inbox or on forums to write these kinds of games from kids with $$ in their eyes, the ideas they have are usually lame and completely unoriginal with no concept of the amount of work that goes into them.

No offense King2k5 but your game sounds like it needs rebuilding from the ground up - if it truely needed its own server with only 1k users - you have a major efficiency problem. Based on those donation figures, I'm guessing 200-400 'active' users (eg. those that play every day) Its really not a lot of traffic, it shouldnt need a dedicated server.

To run a sucessful business you need at least 2 of:

A really great unique idea/unique twist on a old idea
A strong knowledge of business and marketting
The skills and knowledge to execute the idea

what we usually see in this forum is:
copy of someone elses successful idea with nothing new or unique
no clue about business or marketting
complete lack of skills necessary to complete the task

What people should REALLY think about is if your idea isnt unique and you have no entrepeneurial skills to bring to the table, why would Person X (the person with the skills to execute the idea) write the code for you for free - theres no incentive, you're bringing nothing to the table to intice them.
If these get rich quick scheme ideas actually had potential - all us coders would be millionairres by now. The reason we're not is because we lack business and marketting experience and/or a really great idea.

I guess my point is that you cant come to a forum like this write a 3 line post and expect experienced coders to be lining up to help you out.
Tell us :
why your idea has great potential
how you plan to increase revenue
what your marketting strategy is
how much work is involved before we start to see a little RoI
how much time investment you expect from your partner

information like that is what makes your proposal stand out from all the others here looking for free coding

Based on your current user base - IF you could make 100% of them active you're looking at an income of around $375 a month for the coder (best case scenario) even at my most discounted rates (which this job wouldnt qualify for) thats max 8 hours a month. If I worked on your project, part-time for a month, You'd be looking at 10 months just for me to have covered costs. (20 at my full rates ;) )
So surely you can see, based on the information you've provided - it does not really look like a viable prospect.

Work on it yourself in your spare time, dont look for quick fixes and easy answers, or at least look for someone younger, less experienced who couldnt be better spending his time making money to pay bills. Experienced coders arent cheap - unless they're from a country with significantly lower cost of living than UK and the US.

These posts are always about what someone else can do for the poster, rather than what the poster can bring to the partnership, if that answer is really nothing, then theres no incentive for the coder not to take the idea, code it then market it himself.

[Mhtml]

Gee you're a smart cookie Nancy. A classic example of age being in direct variance to experience right there (not that I'm implying you're particularly old - just assuming you're older than I am ;)).


King, honestly you need to rewrite your code again. I think the time invested in learning to write solid code would be time well spent. It is likely that any decent coder would have to rewrite most of your code anyway - dare I say it is presentation mixed in with business logic - mysql connections being instantiated in an include file - and little to no OO implemented?

[king2k5]

Ok, look... my game does not need to be re-written... the reason it is so unfinished and inactive right now, is because i had to shut down the majority portion of the game, which was a strategy section. The concept behind my game was to have the strategy section, where "ticks" or cron jobs would give users resources and make "months" go by every 5 minutes. But, seeing as how people ended up waiting a few hours for units to get in, and resources to pile up, I decided to add a little RPG add-on to give them something to do while they wait. Little did I know, that with 1000+ users, and a script running every 5 minutes for each user, my usage sky-rocketed.. I obviously realize now, that that wasnt too smart of me..

So, i shut down the Strategy part, about 2 weeks ago, and start working more on the RPG. Not many people wanted to play the RPG because it hadnt been worked on as much, seeing as it was only a secondary add-on.

Since then, my usage has gone down, and i no longer need a new server, right away anyway. And i currently want to build on this RPG as much as possible. I have huge plans for the game, and I KNOW how to do them, and i COULD do them on my own, the only problem I have is that one person doing all the coding means that it takes quite a while for new features to hit the game. On Sunday however, i am closing the game, and allowing only a few(about 10) testers in. During this time, new features and new ideas will sprout into the game without the complaining of old users who only want the Strategy part back, and without scaring away new players with an un-finished game.

This game will become successful, its only a matter of time.

[Mhtml]

Well yes, definitely a problem in concept there.

This game will become successful, its only a matter of time.
That's a pretty bold claim, something you need to back up with evidence or it can't be taken seriously. How about you post statistics for the period it was operational?

So, is it all modular? What is your code like? I wouldn't want to commit only to find that the code itself is soup.

[Preeya]

Hello,

Please let me know if you are still looking????

I would be interested. You can feel free to contact me on: priya.bizarredesigns@gmail.com