What is your goal? How do you play FFS?
I've said a number of times during my posts that my goal is simply to have a beautiful list of pets. I'm not looking to raise my value, or to keep a friend, or to find a girlfriend. It is simply a fun and terribly addictive game.
I've talked about playing style before... what's yours? Have I missed a way to play the game?
Goals
Good Pictures and Bad Pictures
Every now and then, I get asked "how can I increase my value?" or "how do I make myself more attractive to purchase as a pet?" If your friends are buying you, then there probably isn't much you can do: they will buy you regardless of your activity or your profile picture. The real question comes down to getting strangers to buy you.
Recall that I'm only buying female pets, and will speak to that here. However, most of these thoughts will apply to men, too. Also note that I'm talking about my preferences. Some pet owners look for specific things, such as black and white pictures, or animals, or people with an arm growing out of their forehead. You never know what a niche buyer is going to want, but your goal is to be as attractive as possible to as many people as possible. Then you get bought, and you make money!
One last thing: yeah, when you really think about it, this post is rather crass and rather creepy. We're talking about buying and selling you based on your looks. Well... that is the nature of this game, so that is how we have to approach it. Your thoughts about objectifying women (and men) are well-taken, and sometimes I can agree, but let's just be honest and recognize what we're talking about here. And how to improve your game-playing experience.
Okay. My first and foremost rule? The picture should be of only you. No dogs, no friends, no spouses, and never ever a picture of you and your baby. Sorry to say, that is cute and all, but not for a pet!
The picture should be large -- I don't want to have to squint. And in that picture, you should take up most of the space. The fountain behind you is neat, but I'm looking for a pet, not water features.
Artistic pictures are a definite win -- nice lighting, maybe black and white, or some other special feature. But live pictures are also very good, too! If you end up looking too good, then people might not believe it is really you. This is why a "live" picture rather than posed picture can work really well.
A picture of just your face, hair, etc (a "head shot") is usually best. But if you have a great figure? Go for it. Get that into your picture, but remember to be the main subject of the picture and take up most of the space.
I've also bought pets because they have open profiles and after looking at some of their other profile pics, I've realized just how beautiful the woman is. Her current profile picture might not be her best, but knowing that she is beautiful has definitely increased my interest. A more open profile can be a great way to get people buying you!
And lastly, no... I don't think you need to be suggestive, or blatantly sexual. I have skipped numerous pets that have big boobs and teeny bathing suits. I prefer my pets to be beautiful, not crude.
My past few profile pictures were processed by a friend of mine, creating a "darker" look and more intriguing. After switching to the new pictures, I started getting traded quite more often. If you have a friend into photography (and Photoshop or Lightroom or something), then ask them to do a little work on a picture for you. You could end up with a much more interesting, creative, and attractive profile picture.
Good luck, and I hope this can help you become a more attractive pet!
Zero Dollars!
I finally did it!!
If you've been following this blog, then you'll know that I advocate spending all of your cash. Just sitting on it does you no good. In that post, I noted that Mager had been able to spend all of his cash, but the best that I ever reached was a single dollar.
Well! I finally did it tonite! Down to zero dollars. Bwahahahaa!!
It is actually kind of funny... Mager mentioned once that trying to reach single digits in cash is a sort of "side game". It's true. I always feel a little thrill when I can get my cash that low.
Go forth! Spend cash!
New to this Blog?
Hello!
Are you new to reading this blog? If so, then welcome! Andrew and I have a lot of fun writing about Friends For Sale. The game is incredibly fun and addictive, and we like to share our experiences with others.
You will want to read the posts in reverse order. I started posting with the basics, and then built up from there.
Check out the archives:
Pets to Keep... or to Flip?
When I'm looking for pets, I always buy ones that I am happy with keeping. If they never sell, then I'm good with that. My goal is to collect beautiful pets... not to make money. This is one of the reasons that I don't buy guys :-) (so some of you can stop asking... hehe) Of course, just buying pets based on their profile picture can also subject me to "the Hamster Problem", but that's an acceptable risk.
But there are times when I will buy a pet in order to flip her. Let's say that I'm looking to spend my cash, and I find two pets that are beautiful and about the same price. Which one should I buy?
I look at when she last logged in, whether she has any pets (and has been buying them recently), and whether other people have been buying her lately. If a pet is very active, then it is a good bet they will sell pretty quickly. It means she is being seen by a lot of people, and interacting with people, and one of them will want to buy her.
In this scenario, I will buy the active one with the hope that she'll flip quickly (i.e. a few hours or maybe a day). With the proceeds from the sale, then I can buy the other pet I was looking at. Recall that since I don't keep cash around, then I won't be able to repurchase the active pet. But that's okay because I can buy the other beautiful pet.
Holy Smokes, People!?
So I go away on vacation for four days, and all hell breaks loose.
While on vacation, I did not bring a laptop. I did have my iPhone, so I attempted to log in when I could to get my allowance. Of course, it wasn't quite possible from the depths of the Gifford Pincho National Forest in Washington (talk about no signal!), but I did when I could.
And I saw my list of pets dwindle.
And shrink.
Day. By. Day.
So now I'm back and looking at my pet list. All TWO of them. I had over fifty pets last week! Give a man a break! Can't you leave me any?!
hehe... of course, with all my pets sold, and getting bought a few times (yay Robin, Jamerson, and Rhiannon!!), I am now sitting on a cool $5 million in cash. Can you say, "Shopping spree"? Yeah, I thought you could...
Recently active pets move faster
When I logged into FFS today, I noticed a new person atop my Pet Shop selections.
You may recognize him from this blog. Besides being the most enthusiastic stragey officer of Friends For Sale, Greg is always logging in and making purchases.
Besides the endless commentary in this blog, Greg and I have private IM conversations about FFS strategy, and one common theme is activity. More activity. Log in every hour to see if your pets have flipped. Never let money sit in your queue because it's just gathering dust. Stack your wishlist. Buy as many pets as possible.
Although this may not be a brand new feature, you can filter pets by recently active, instead of most expensive. This helps if you do not have that much money, but most of your friends are very expensive.
I am curious to hear your procedure for choosing a pet. Do you click on Pet Shop first, or do you search for a friend's name and raid their pet list? I do the second thing.
Raid of a Lifetime
Last week was really weird for me. Most of the week, it was pretty quiet on FFS. Not a whole lot of trades, but things started picking up Friday afternoon. I finally got rid of all my cash and went out for the evening.
I got home late and refreshed my FFS page.
$1.5 million in cash. WOAH!!
The run started on an inexpensive pet, Lisa, netting me a simple $1.7k. Then the big one hit... Alex bought my pet Nancy, dropping $905k into my account! Four more sales netted me a bit over $50k. Then Andrew comes stomping along and picks up my pets Carmen and Tifa, giving me $267k and $299k respectively.
Well, at this point, my mind is struggling. $1.5 million. I've never had that before. But... I was now down to just 14 pets. In my post on upscaling, I mentioned how I always try to buy the most expensive pet possible, given how much cash I have. But pets over a million move very slowly. I decided to follow my own advice and extend my list of pets, rather than buy one super-expensive pet.
I was going shopping! Fun, fun, fun!
I went and bought five of my favorite and most beautiful pets: Roxanne, Pari, Esther, Ana, and Faith. With the remaining money, I snapped up Jasmine and Denise. Then I danced a little jig and poured myself a glass of bourbon.
Never fear a raid!
Increases are Permanent
As many of you have figured out by now... the increased allowance (from $2,000 to $10,000) and the increased money for each invite (from $1,000 to $5,000) are now permanent. I confirmed this a couple days ago with one of the FFS developers.
Back in March, I provided details on the numbers behind pet values, purchases, and sharing of profits. These numbers were also changed -- value increases are now 10%, where 4% of that goes to the prior owner, and 5% to the pet (the other 1% is not paid out). The sales tax is now 1% of the new value (original value + increase).
For example, let us say that Jane is now valued at $1,000. The value increase is 10%, or $100, so that her new value will be $1,100. The sales tax is 1% of that, which is $11. Jane's purchase price is the new value plus tax, or $1,111.
These changes will certainly cause some inflation of pet values. However, one of the benefits are many more transactions, which means more interactions between a pet and their owner. With a single allowance, you can trade pets back and forth about 30 times, all the way up to $10,000 (and the increases are slower!). With the prior $2,000 allowance, the number of "easy" trades was greatly reduced (only about 10 trades).
Invites are more valuable
Whenever I find a pet that is just a few thousand dollars worth more than I have, I do not hesitate to send an invite to one of my Facebook friends that doesn't have Friends For Sale installed. In the past, you would earn $1,000 for every friend that you sent an invite to.
But now you earn $5,000 for each friend you invite. Don't be afraid to send an invite to your friends because if you enjoy playing the game, why wouldn't they?
Happy shopping!
Now you can chat
FFS has a new tab in the main navigation labeled, "Chat"
Login and talk with your pets! This new service is powered by Meebo.
$10,000 to Log In
Nice surprise!! It looks like a few people are seeing this, including me... Go log into FFS. Rather than the usual allowance, now you'll get $10,000!!
Questions for the FFS Developers?
Hey there, everybody!
Mager and I are going to interview the developers of Friends For Sale, and post the results here. We have lots of things we want to ask them, but hey... I'm sure you guys do, too!
What do you want to know? Post a comment with your question, and we'll collect some up for the interview!
Putting Pets On Sale
When you own a pet, there is an option to put the pet "On Sale". I have said before that this is a very bad idea. You simply lose money when you do it.
There is at least one reason why you would do this on purpose, and for strategic benefit. Recall my post about people competing for the top spot on networks. If you are playing that way, and you manage to purchase one of your opponents... hehe... guess what? Put them on sale. Over and over and over. Just smash that link as many times as you can.
If they have a friend catch it in time, they might get bought away from you and block your devaluation. But that's unlikely. The normal result is that you'll drive them down to a $500 price.
Mind you: if you bought them for $1 million, then you're going to lose all of that money. At the end of your link-smashing, the pet will sell for a pittance. But they're going to be out of the running for a while. Also note that you're out one million that could have been invested into your own value. Worthwhile? Your call.
If you're not playing for Top Network Position, then a devaluation is awesome. As your value drops, you lose nothing. But as people buy you back/forth up to your previous value, you will make a ton of cash.
I Was Nice
I posted a while ago about how I was mean to a couple, buying them from each other. This post is about how I was nice. Once.
It was pretty early in my FFS playing career, and I was locked into a buying war over a pet with some guy. I had more cash than he did, so I knew that I would end up with the pet. But... he had started with the pet and was insistent on keeping it. So it seemed to me at the time.
Looking at his cash, I realized that I could buy her one more time, and he would have just enough to buy her back. Being the nice guy I am, I wrote on his wall, "I'll buy her one more time, then you can keep her." I went ahead and bought her, and noted that he had replied on my wall, "she's all yours. have fun!"
Gah. I was left holding the pet. My cash was tied up, and the other guy walked away with all the profits from our little buying war.
Moral of the story? Don't announce your intentions. Don't play too nicely.
Even Easier to Find Pets
After yesterday's update to the FFS codebase, Andrew already mentioned the changes to the Pet Shop. There is another change, which I think is possibly even more important.
Today, when a pet is bought away from you, the Minifeed on your profile will show a small thumbnail of the pet. This is not a big deal for you since you obviously know what they look like, but for other people browsing your profile... it is huge.
screenshot added by mager
I spend a lot of time browsing profiles. If a guy buys one of my pets, then he might have similar pets that I would be interested in. So I go to his profile and look at the list of pets. But now the Minifeed will show pets that he used to own. Those could be just as interesting! Before this feature upgrade, I would have to visit all of those pets' profiles to check them out; otherwise, I could end up missing out on a beautiful pet. Today, it is right there in the Minifeed. Score!
These pets are from everywhere, not just the pets you might find in your regional network in the Pet Shop. Watch those Minifeeds, people!
Your pet shop is finally accessible
When you login to FFS and click Pet Shop, you are now greeted with pets that you can afford, instead of the most expensive pet.
This feature is great because now you can click around a lot easier and acquire pets that will bring a quicker return. This soft-launch will really improve the speed of the game.
Newly Discovered Playing Style
(sorry for the delays in posting... Andrew and I will try to post more regularly...)
Last week, I was chatting with an FFS friend of mine. We were talking about high-value pets and about how the gameplay changes. It is an entirely different world from the play styles that I had seen. The new style boils down pretty simply:
I want to be the highest-valued pet in this network.
Whether that network is your local region, your school or work, or the entire world. These players take all of their profits and dump it back into their own value.
"But wait!" you yell. "You can't buy yourself, so how does their cash get combined into their own value?"
That's the trick, now isn't it? If "John" wants to increase his value, then he will require cooperation from several other players. Pets are traded back and forth in a somewhat complicated set of maneuvers intended to shift the cash away from John to whomever will be the John's new owner. The new owner then buys John using that extra cash, and John's value has now gone up.
I don't have all the mechanics down, nor fully understood. But if you want to get into the high-value game, then expect to spend a lot of time instant-messaging with, making friends with, and establishing trust with your fellow players. All of these deals are worked out there, and then quickly executed within the game.
Update: sorry, this "newly discovered" style is in reference to my original post about playing styles.
Take a break, get paid.
I recently visited my mother for her 50th birthday and Mother's Day. They do not have Internet, so I was away from the computer.
Throughout my visit, I thought about Friends For Sale. I missed using the application, but I knew I would be in for a surprise when I logged in tonight.
Yep, four days away from Facebook apparently yields big. My two most expensive pets were snatched up. I suggest that if you want some extra cash, just don't make any purchases for a few days, and see how your bankroll stacks up.
With all this money, I have so many questions:
Should I buy back my most valuable pet?
Try and scoop up some $100k gems?
Finding Quick-Sell Pets
I've covered how you make 4% each time a pet sells. To make money, you need to have pets selling. As many and as often as you can. The pets do not have to be highly-valued... selling 10 $10k pets will net you $4,000. Selling one $100k pet will net you $4000.
To keep the pets moving, one technique I covered is to have a long list of pets. Just based on probability, you'll increase the rate of sales.
But another technique, which can be even more important, is to find pets that will be purchased quickly. The pet may be under-valued, and somebody else will come along and buy them. But the typical case is a pet who will be repurchased by their owner.
These pets are not too hard to spot. Look at their purchase history on their profile. You may need to flip a page or two, but what you're looking for is a pattern where the current owner keeps buying the pet. Somebody will buy the pet, and the original owner will buy them back right away. Somebody else buys... bought back. Every now and then, maybe two owners will be in between, but the original owner continues to rebuy the pet.
Also important is to look at the times of the purchases. Let's say John's pet Jane is bought away 10 days ago. John rebuys her at 9 days. Somebody else buys her at 3 days, and he buys her back at 3 days. This is a good sign -- John really wants to keep Jane and buys her as soon as he logs back in.
On the other hand, if Jane was bought at 10 days, and John waits until 5 days to rebuy her? You could end up holding Jane for a while. Go find another pet that is repurchased much more quickly.
I may refer to this later as "flipping a pet" (the term comes from real estate and "flipping a home"). It is a great way to make a quick buck. And if all of your pets are purchased to flip? Then you will make money very quickly!
I Was Mean
I've talked about buying wars, and how you can use that to make yourself money -- as long as the other person is left holding the pet.
An easy way to ensure that you won't be left with the pet is to find an owner who has a pattern of buying their pets back. Look at the history on the pet to see if the current owner always buys the pet back. Even better is when you find somebody who keeps buying their girlfriend or boyfriend back. They simply won't quit!
A few months ago, I found a couple who owned each other. Gold! I bought the girl, and he bought her back as expected. So I bought her and bought the guy. They each bought the other back. I kept doing this until I could not afford both of them, but I had more than enough to buy just the girl. Then she got too expensive, but now I had enough for the guy! This went on for a few days... then the girl didn't buy him back. Oops! Now I was stuck with some dude on my pet list! Oh no!
Eventually, she did buy him, and I stopped messing with them. I had made some good money.
And hoo boy was it fun!
Feature Request: Improved Wishlist
(this is the first "feature request" post ... I'll be posting these periodically with my/your thoughts on suggested changes to FFS)
I've mentioned before how long my wishlist is... hundreds of potential pets (652 currently). This makes my Dashboard quite slow to load, and it even crashes the browser on my iPhone. I'd really like to see an improved wishlist...
I believe a solution is to move the Wishlist to a tab under the "Pets" menu. This tab would be a companion to the existing Friends, Everyone, On Sale, and network tabs. Within that tab, you could then filter your Wishlist by male/female, and sort according to price and activity. That would go a huge way to solving my Wishlist issues.
Also note that the lists under Pets tab are paginated, and they also display the purchase price (a problem that I discussed yesterday). This would greatly improve the usability.
The above change is mostly "cosmetic" and doesn't change the base functionality of the Wishlist. One functional change that I'd like to see is to have two Wishlists. I would like to use the second Wishlist for tracking people with interesting pets, but whom I do not want to actually buy. I just want to revisit them periodically and raid their pets.
Standard Value Table
In my post, Spending Cash, I note how I try to buy the most expensive pet possible as part of my "upscaling" plan. When looking for a pet to buy, my primary source is my Wishlist. Unfortunately, that list shows pets' values rather than their purchase price. So if I have $35k to spend, then what value should I search for within my list?
My solution was to build a spreadsheet listing "standard" values and purchase prices. If a pet is never put on sale, then their value will follow a standard sequence as it grows. From that table, I find a standard value of $29,509 selling for $33,711. That is the most expensive "standard" price for my $35k. I then use my browser search function to look for "$29," in my wishlisted pets' values. Note that some pets may have non-standard prices, so I will also search for "$28," and "$30,".
I've made my spreadsheet public, so you can also use it.
Keeping a Pet
Two words: You. Can't.
I have seen lots of questions about how to keep a pet. How to prevent others from buying the pet. What strategies to use to ensure you can always buy the pet back.
In short... there is nothing you can do. Sure, you can keep a pet for a while. But not forever, so learn to deal with it.
People may argue that it is possible, but there is a very simple explanation about why you cannot. Consider my previous post about Buying Wars. If somebody wants your pet, and has more cash than you, then they will own your pet at the end of the war. Done. Fini. End of story.
This buying war might occur over days or weeks, and among multiple people, but eventually you will run out of cash, and somebody else will "keep" your pet until you can manage to get enough cash to buy it back. For a little while.
Your allowance of $2,000 every four hours will generate cash to buy your pet back, but it does not work well for an expensive pet. Let's say you have a pet with a value of $100,000. Somebody buys the pet, you get $106,000 back. The pet's value is now $112,000. You will need to buy the pet for about $125,000. That means you are $19,000 short, which will take 40 hours of allowances to come up with.
In a pinch, you can use Invites to generate cash. But that is a limited option, and your friends may not like the invite spam.
Coming up with cash through allowances, invites, or waiting for other pets to sell are all tactics to generate money to buy your pet back. But you still can't keep the pet.
The Buying War
Buying wars occur in a number of scenarios, and you can even trigger them in some cases. But what is it?
In the simplest terms, a buying war occurs when two (or more) people keep buying a pet back and forth. Sometimes this can happen in the span of just a few minutes, or other times over several days. The pets value goes up with every trade, so the war usually ends when somebody runs out of cash and can't buy the pet back.
During the war, note that the pet is getting a slice of every purchase. Wars are terrific things for the pet since some serious cash can be dropped into their account.
At the end of the war, there are two (obvious) outcomes: who is holding the pet? If you have the pet, then note that your investment has been driven up by the war. What may have started as a $1,000 pet is now a $7,000 pet. You haven't made any profit (yet), but will make a good bundle when your pet finally sells. On the other hand, the person who walks away without the pet has made great profit from the very last trade.
So this post is pretty short... I just wanted to get the term "buying war" out there, so I can write more about wars in future posts.
Eek! I've Been Raided!!
One of the things which is both scary, yet fun, is to be "raided".
A couple months ago, I was just kind of trolling around, looking at peoples' list of pets trying to find people to buy and to wishlist. I stumbled upon a guy who appeared to have similar interests, so he had a lot of pets that I wanted to buy. "Cool!" I thought, and bought three of his lower-valued pets.
Well... he didn't seem to think that was too cool, and he normally hangs out with lots of available cash. After he bought back those three pets, he proceeded to buy another five pets from me. He was merciless. Stomped my growing list of pets back to the Stone Age.
After I recovered from battle shock, I soon realized that I was sitting on a very nice cash pile. "Woo! Upscaling, here I come!" ... I bought myself a very nice and expensive pet with the proceeds of the raid.
And learned a lesson: be careful of buying more than one or two pets at a time from a single person. Especially if they have a cash pile. But the result can be so, so good...
The Wishlist
As I've described before, whenever you have cash, then you should spend it. The immediate problem that comes up is, "on which pets?"
I use my wishlist extensively to track pets that I find interesting. And when I say "extensively", I've got literally hundreds of pets on that list. I try and keep pets in a large variety of prices. When I have some cash, then I search my wishlist for the most expensive pet within my means.
As I play the game, I look at people's list of pets and wishlist interesting ones. Sometimes, I'll see somebody interesting who has commented on a person's wall. Other times, when one of my pets is purchased, I'll look at the buyer's list of pets. If they are buying my pets, they may have others that I'll find interesting. In all these cases, I just keep adding to my wishlist for future purchases.
It is hard to keep inexpensive pets on the wishlist, so see my post about finding inexpensive pets. I will write up another post on how to find (more) pets at a given price (too long to include here).
The wishlist is a great way to track pets you like. It could be easier to find pets in a certain price range, but it is decent way to find somebody to spend your cash on. I also find it interesting to watch the growth in value of pets that I've previously owned ("Wow, she's at $200k now! I remember buying her for $1k!").
Invites
A quick and dirty way to earn fast cash is inviting your friends to install FFS.
For every friend you invite, you will get $1000, regardless if they install the app or not.
Facebook app invites can be considered worse than email spam these days, so be careful. You don't want to lose friends over virtual cash.
Personally, I send an invite to a random pool of friends of the same name:
Most of the time, they will reject the app invite, but some will install. FFS is more fun anyway if more of your friends are on it, so send some invites! If they have a problem, have them contact me :)
Where's My Allowance?!
I've seen comments on the discussion board, on this blog, and (most recently) in a message to me asking "Where is my allowance? It has been four hours!"
This has happened to me before, too... I look at my Dashboard, and an entry says "You earned $2,000 for logging in. 7 hours ago." But I do not see a similar entry for now. However, when I look at my cash in the upper-right corner, it might say "$2,349". Since I always spend all my cash, then the fact that I've got over $2,000 says that I received my allowance. What gives?
The simplest answer is that the Newsfeed on your Dashboard is out of date. You got the allowance, but it isn't showing up in the feed. The FFS application keeps a copy of your feed which it will show you when you view the page. That copy will sometimes be wrong.
Here is a trick: under your feed, click on the link to "page 2" of the feed, wait for it to load, then click on "page 1". FFS will recreate its copy of the first page of your feed and that page will show your allowance.
Now. I will remind you to spend all of your cash. It should not be hard to tell whether you received the allowance or not, if you follow that rule.
And now that you have your allowance... go buy some pets!
This is a Game
In the comments on a previous post, Chivy asks if there is a way to play this game with just your friends. She is upset about being bought around by other people, and bought back every time one of her friends comes to the rescue.
There are a couple things here...
First, if you have installed the game, then you are choosing to participate in this game. Everybody can buy you, from friends to coworkers to strangers. If that upsets you, then remove and block the application. One day, maybe, Siqi and Alex will add some controls to allow you to play just amongst your friends, but I seriously doubt it. One of their goals is to help people make new connections.
Second, the people buying Chivy back every time is a basic strategy for making money (though eventually, they'll have to not buy her back to realize that gain), or maybe they simply like her profile picture and truly want to keep her. To stop them, she could change her profile picture to something awful (see The Hamster Problem), have a friend buy her away, and then (later) change the profile picture back in hopes the traders have forgotten about her.
The simple fact is that FFS is a game. If you install it, then you're placing yourself at the mercy of the rules of the game. People will buy pets you want to keep, they may buy you and apply terrible nicknames, and total strangers may buy you from your friends. Don't get upset at them, and don't leave nasty messages on their FFS wall. It is all part of the game, so just go with it and enjoy playing!
Finding Inexpensive Pets
There are two primary times when you want to buy an inexpensive pet:
* use up remaining cash
* grow your total count of pets
The cheapest pet is valued at $500, and with taxes and the value uptick, you will buy that pet for $571.
So how to best find them?
You can find a cheap pet via the "On Sale" tab under the "Pets" menu option. The biggest problem with this approach is that everybody else is looking there, too. When you see a listing for a pet valued at $500, it occurs all-too-often that when you go and try to buy that pet, they are now valued higher. Or the pet is immediately bought from you, leaving with cash to dispose (again!).
The best way is to choose the "Pets" menu option, then select one of your networks. In my case, I choose the "San Francisco, CA" network. It will show you a list of all the most expensive pets in that network. Narrow it down by selecting (say) "Show Girls", and then switch from sorting by cost to sorting by recent activity. You are now looking at (female) pets who are currently active. Invariably, the values of these pets are high or they are climbing as you look at the page.
Here is the key: scroll to the bottom, and hit the link to bring you to page 100. Go to the end of the list. These pets' values are stable, and they are typically very low. These are the people who installed the application, but haven't done much, and/or other people have not bought them. You will be able to find plenty of inexpensive pets here.
Use this technique to find cheap pets and build up your list. Or use your remaining cash.
More, More, More!
The other day, I hinted that there is sometimes a reason to not buy the most expensive pet possible. Let me explain further...
So far, I've explained that you want to invest in pets. They give you a four percent return when somebody buys them. "When" is the key word.
You might buy a pet, only to have it bought back a minute later. Or you might buy a pet and hold it for five weeks. The best way to deal with this unpredictability is to have a lot of pets. I'm talking like a minimum of thirty. The more, the better. Sixty? Seventy? Go wild.
It comes down to basic statistics. If an average pet is bought once per week, and you have 35 pets, then five pets will be purchased from you every day. Once a week isn't typical, but I'm trying to show a point... the more pets you have, the more pets will be purchased each day. And each purchase represents profit!
Back to the original point. If you're "low" on the pet count, then it might actually be more advisable to stock up on a bunch of inexpensive pets, before worrying about upscaling your existing pets. This is definitely a strategy to use if you don't have a desirable expensive pet in mind. Just bail, and by three or four inexpensive pets instead, to get your count up.
Oh, and don't go buy all of your friends to get your count up. Many of your friends might not have the application installed. Thus, non-friends cannot buy them. Thus, they do you no good when it comes to your pet count. Buy pets that people can, in turn, buy from you. That is the goal!
In my next post, I'll talk about how to find inexpensive pets. They are crucial to building your stable of pets!
The Hamster Problem
A cautionary tale...
Once, a few weeks after I had discovered FFS, I had acquired a beautiful expensive pet. I was quite excited. My pets' values were going up... things were going great.
And then...
This is practically criminal, mind you.
She changed her profile picture to one of her pet hamster. A frickin' hamster, for crying out loud! There was no way I'd ever sell her as a hamster. Even if I put her on sale (mind you, this was before I truly discovered that fallacy), there was no way somebody would buy her. And I now had a hamster for my second- or third-best pet.
She eventually changed it back to her beautiful self, and was bought off me. I may buy her in the future, though I just checked... she's quite expensive at this point, so who knows when I ever could.
But lesson learned. Be wary out there. You have no control over your pets' profile picture. They can and do change over time.
Upscaling
In my last post, I mentioned how I always try to buy the most expensive pet possible, given the cash that I have on hand. What happens a lot (especially if you don't log in maniacally) is that a pet or three will have been purchased from you, and then throw in an allowance. You now have the means to convert many less-expensive pets into one more-expensive pet.
Why would you do this? Simple: the more-expensive pets are typically more desirable. If you want to have the most beautiful pets, then you need to start spending more on them. I call this "upscaling your pets".
Earlier today, I was purchased and made about $10k. Throw in the $10k bonus for today, plus a $2k pet and a $2k allowance, and I had a bunch of cash. That allowed me to buy a pet for nearly $24k. That $2k pet that I lost can easily be purchased again in the future, once I get another allowance, but it is much harder to have $20k on hand, so you take the opportunity as soon as possible.
There are some minor exceptions for going with the most expensive pet, based on a strategy of having many pets. I'll detail that later.
For now, just know one thing: buy the best you can!
Free $10,000 bonus today
Login to your FFS Dashboard today and locate this bonus cash in the top left corner of the screen. Is it an April Fools Joke? Click it to find out!
Spending Cash
One cardinal rule that I try and maintain is to spend all of my cash when I can. The reasoning here is very simple: when you hold cash, you get zero return on it. If you buy a pet, then you'll get about four percent when the pet is purchased from you.
Make no money, or make some money. Easy choice.
Choosing which pet to buy is a subject for many more blog posts, but in general I will buy the most expensive pet possible. Then if I still have a little bit of cash, then I'll find an inexpensive pet to use up the remainder of my cash (the cheapest pet is just $571 to purchase).
Just now, I had $23,995 and bought a $23,994 pet. Yup. I'm sitting on a single dollar now. Andrew has actually managed to spend all of his cash once.
5 Reasons to add FFS
If you are reading this blog, chances are that you have Friends for Sale installed already, but for those who are still on the fence, here are some reasons why I think you should give it a try:
1.) Virtual currency is fun - Remember how excited you were to get a dark yellow $500 bill in Monopoly? As Greg pointed out in a previous post, there are many ways to make money.
2.) You can give your pets nicknames - Ever want to call someone a funny name? FFS gives you that option. Sometimes being able to give someone a nickname is the main reason I buy someone.
3.) Buying and selling pets is competitive - Sometimes you get a pet that is close to your heart, and a few minutes later, they're gone! Pet wars occur all the time on FFS, and sometimes it can get pretty interesting. If you get into the right vibe, you can make a ton of cash.
4.) It's addicting - This may or may not be a good thing, but if you like getting addicted to social applications, this one is perfect.
5.) Hey, you could actually meet somebody - at a recent web conference, FFS co-founder Siqi Chen said that creating new connections with people on Facebook is one of their goals. If you make friends with someone on FFS then it's not difficult to add them a real friend on Facebook.
So there you go. There are plenty more reasons to add Friends For Sale, but I can't list them all here.
Have fun and install the app!
Basics of Loss
Yesterday, I talked about profits. Today, it is about loss. There are just two ways to lose money in FFS:
*putting a pet up for sale
*setting a pet free
When you put a pet up for sale, they go into a special tab under the "Pets" menu called "On Sale". The pet's value is also whacked down by a third. Repeat: a third. You don't get that back. It's gone. Even worse, people might not even buy your pet at the reduced price. Sure, lots of people monitor the "On Sale" tab looking for great deals on pets, but it is still no guarantee they will be interested in your pet, at that price.
People might recommend putting a pet on sale to "get it moving". Don't fall for that. It's an idiot move. I'll write more about the On Sale tab at some point, and will also talk about selecting pets and why "get it moving" is such a mistaken idea.
And setting a pet free? Their value is knocked down by a third, but they become an orphan. No longer your pet. And you get zero for the pet. All that value... gone. Vaporized.
Okay. That's it. Two ways to lose money. Simple enough... just don't do these things.
Now go have a great weekend!
Pacing
I've got a hojillion and a half of thoughts and posts around FFS. I'll share those, no worry, but... I am going to try and limit myself to one post a day.
See you soon!
Basics of Profit
In Friends For Sale ("FFS"), there are three ways to make money:
* your $2000 allowance every four hours
* when somebody buys one of your pets
* when somebody buys you
The first is the easiest and most direct way to make money. All you have to do is load a page from the FFS app every four hours. The money is not automatic -- you have to log in to get it. If you wait eight hours, then you get just one allowance, not two. The easiest thing to do is bookmark your FFS dashboard or your FFS profile, and hit it when you think about it. Even better, put a bookmark in your phone's web browser so you can get your allowance even when you're not in front of the computer.
A pet's value goes up by 12% every time they are purchased. When you buy a pet, you have to pay this increased value plus a 2.25% sales tax. The previous owner is paid the pet's original value plus 6%. When you account for the sales tax you paid and the bump in value you're paid, it comes out to just under a 4% gain on the money invested into a pet.
When somebody buys you as a pet, then you will earn about 5.25% of the purchase price as profit. It goes right into your pocket. There aren't any tricks that I know about to get yourself bought. Ask your friends to buy you. Get yourself a kickass profile picture to make others want to own you (I'll discuss "good pics" at some point).
In short, making money is about your allowance and owning pets that will be bought away from you.
Playing Styles
In Friends For Sale, there are several ways that you can play the game:
* for profit and pet ownership
* for buying your friends or significant others
* for meeting people for friendship/dating
Each playing style has different goals, and (therefore) different strategies for playing.
I play for profit with end goal, frankly, to build up a group of beautiful women as pets. The strategy thus revolves around how to maximize the money you have, how to use it to generate profit, how to find the right pets to buy, and when to buy them. Over the course of my posts, I'll be detailing various tips and techniques if you want to follow the same playing style.
If you are here to buy (and keep) your friends, then things may be a bit more difficult for you. In particular, people here for profit will take advantage of you. I will explain in detail in another post.
If you are here to meet people, then FFS can be an interesting conversation starter. "How are you, my new pet?" It is certainly more interesting than a random poke on Facebook. I have met a couple people on FFS this way, more as a matter of course rather than as a goal.
Introduction
Welcome to the Sell Your Friends blog!
In this blog, Andrew and I will share our experience with an awesome Facebook application called Friends For Sale. We spend way too much time with this app, trading "pets". There is actually quite a bit of strategy that you can use with this game. Ways to build your cash up in order to buy the pets that you're interested in. We'll try to share those here, along with various anecdotes to explain our point, along with the funny events that have occurred while playing.
Please note that comments are welcome, but moderated. I've seen the discussion forum for the application, and it is filled with spam about "buy my pets!". That isn't welcome here. Discuss our ideas with us! Share your own experiences! But don't spam, please.
Talk to you soon!
