First of all there is now a dedicated forum for English as well as Russian language players on our site, where you can pretty much write anything QuizBoom related and our administrators will try to assist you in the best way possible. Of course you have to be polite and patient because as much as we love to discuss various things regarding QuizBoom, we do not tolerate explicit language and rude comments. :)

Stay tuned!

Over the past couple of weeks we have been working hard to offer you something completely new on our beta test site. The feature I am talking about is called “Duels” and it is now available on http://beta.quizboom.com/ if you wish to try it out yourself.

The main idea behind is that every player can challenge another player to a quiz duel placing a bet on the game just like it works for the original QuizBoom games. The trick here is that both you and your opponent will play the exact same quiz and place the exact same bets against each other. Player who scores highest in this quiz takes all the bets as well as chips spent by both players on lifelines.

We wanted to offer you something new and perhaps more personal as you can now compete with your friends and get their money :) . If you did not receive an invitation to test out the new feature it is still possible to try it simply by registering on http://beta.quizboom.com/ . You will receive 2000 test chips on your account within 24 hours and you can use them as you wish, however, as this is a test game these chips cannot be withdrawn as money.

We hope to get some feedback on the changes we made to the original game as well as comments about the duels. Please feel free to express your thoughts, suggestions and critique by sending us an email at quizboom@quizboom.com.

If the feedback we receive is satisfactory, the new changes will be placed on the live game already by the end of next week!

How are you? Studying or working hard? You are not the only one - we are also putting a lot of effort to make QuizBoom.com better, more convenient and fun just for you! Currently, we are testing the beta-version of QuizBoom.com website which offers a new game format and several important changes.

However, we are not doing it alone! As for us it is very essential to know exactly your opinion, we randomly selected 1000 players who are one of the first to try out our beta version of QuizBoom.com, share their opinion and suggest new ideas on the game improvement, meaning they are now involved in the website development!

You want to check it out yourself? No problem! Go to beta.quizboom.com and register! For the registration you can use your QuizBoom.com user name and password, however, you will not be able to login just while using them, you should register again. Your beta.quizboom account will have 10 chips at first, however during the next 24 hours you will get additional 2000(!) free game chips (cool, right? :). With these, you will be able to play and see the changes of the game. However, you must remember that since this is a beta test site, the chips that you win are not redeemable for cash. Nevertheless, you will be able to improve your knowledge, get acquainted with the new format, as well as provide your suggestions on possible ways of the website improvement, which definitely will be value added when you will play the real quiz and will result in higher wins!

Most importantly, we would like to know your opinion on the new overall format of how the winnings are awarded. Even though game participants will now be able to play an unlimited number of games per day, only one game, the one with the highest number of points, will be added to the overall total game ranking for the day.  Now it will be also possible to evaluate, correct and translate questions after each game.

We hope you will be willing to share your comments on the changes with us! Don’t be afraid to voice your opinion and offer constructive criticism! Waiting for your letters on quizboom@quizboom.com!

Wish you sunny weekend!

Dear QuizBoomers,

We have very good news for you – now it’s even more convenient to make payments @QuizBoom! We have promised to our customers and we’ve kept out promise– finally it is possible to make payments via WebMoney online payment system.

The suggestion to introduce this system came mainly from our players in Russia. Indeed – WebMoney is the payment system, which initially was targeted at the market of Russia. Now it is used all around the world and it’s no surprise –WebMoney is very safe payment method – as it does not require credit card or bank account.

Not to go into details – the most significant advantage of WM over majority of other payment systems is lower commission fees. It’s only 0.8% of each outgoing transaction. If you compare it with other systems than you’d realise that this is low indeed!

Thanks, guys, for the great suggestion to introduce WebMoney @QuizBoom! Hope to have more suggestions/ideas/comments in future…Cheers !

As most of you already know – we have created a survey which can be defined as a customer satisfaction survey. The reason for the creation of this survey is quite obvious – some time has passed since QuizBoom launch, we already have made several improvements and changes and a lot more is yet to come. Well…the game is actually yours, at least we want it to be “your game”. In order to do that we need to know – who are you? What do you do? What do you like? And most importantly – what do you dislike about QuizBoom?

To find out the latter, we even had to change one particular question of the survey. Initially we asked for praises/comments/critique – what we got was compliments only. We do appreciate praises from our players (Thanks, guys – we love you too!), but we really need critique – to improve, to move on. Therefore we changed the initial question, and now we ask to share critique only – don’t be shy! :) 

The response rate is great – 500 respondents in few days! Hmm…probably it’s because we have a gift of 100 game chips for each respondent… :) As we have promised the gift, we actually want you to have it! All of you! However, there is a slight problem – some of you have indicated a wrong, imprecise, nonexistent display names – thus we can’t identify you and add the chips to your account. Therefore I’ll now name all the respondents with wrong display names (I believe – there will be more this kind of posts in the nearest future :)).

Respondents wanted (!): alonitis, cuvaks, ruslan, siva, spawn101, Михаил, Николай.

If you find yourself in the list – please write to support@quizboom.com and we will add the chips to your account.

Be active, be critical, be fair! See you soon!

There are many differing opinions about mobile marketing – some of you might consider it one of the most innovative and effective marketing tools. Others may consider mobile marketing to be another spam tool that now allows the sending of spam via mobile phones instead of e-mail. We tried to find “the truth” about mobile marketing and tried this tool…twice…and now have our own opinion and conclusions. As promised, we would like to share our views with you!

First of all, we really didn’t want to send any form of spam to our potential customers. We were probably going try this “marketing tool” only once. To that end, we researched a reputable mobile marketing company, which would have its own legitimate database. And we did find such a company! Mobile marketing specialists Smsbuzz.lv, offer a product that is totally the opposite of spam. Their database includes individuals who are willing (!) to receive advertising SMS. These customers have subscribed to the services of Smsbuzz as they get a small remuneration for each received message.

This company’s outstanding capabilities offer the option to select one’s target audience by specific demographic characteristics – by region, age, gender, education, occupation, interests and even marital status. And we could make the selection ourselves right on the homepage. After selecting the demographic characteristics of the desired recipients of the SMS, all one has to do is – insert the SMS text in the exact field of the Smsbuzz homepage, and the message is immediately sent to the mobile phones of potential customers. Convenient indeed! But convenience was actually not the feature we were looking for :) However, effectiveness of the marketing tool was more important to us.

It goes without saying that the effectiveness of this marketing tool also depends on us – we had to choose the right audience and SMS text. We did our homework – at first we tested this SMS service by sending a small number of messages to several different groups of potential customers (they differed by age, gender and interests). Then we analyzed the return for each of the groups – the unit of measurement was the number of registered users. When the most appropriate groups were found, the final batch of messages could be sent. And – yes! This marketing tool allowed finding the most precise target audience of QuizBoom.

And then…Ok, that’s enough. Now - the results! :) In short? Mobile marketing worked! And it worked much better than expected. Actually this is one of the most effective marketing tools which we’ve ever used. What’s important – the result is almost instantaneous. A bit of statistics – the return for our most precise target group was 16% - thus 16 people from every 100 did register. Judge yourselves… :)

Conclusion: you can attract new customers to your business very quickly and by not spending too much money. Fair and deliberative mobile marketing is indeed a very powerful tool. Hopefully, we will find more use of this exciting and effective marketing tool in the future. Want to know more about Smsbuzz.lv? Look here! Want to know more about our marketing tools? Wait for the next posts! :)

We have some good news for you – after intense discussions about improvements of the game, after the long awaited conclusions and sleepless nights while implementing the improvements – we finally did it! Aaand – the game is more interesting now.

The story started with a letter from one of our users. She wrote: “TV quizzes are easier – there are those lifelines, you know – fifty-fifty, phone-a-friend etc. I think you also need something similar!” Yes, we really did need something similar. However, we do not have the “phone-a-friend”, of course :)

Lifelines that are available for our players are:

-50/50 – when you pick this lifeline, two of the incorrect answers are dropped by the system, leaving you a choice between one incorrect answer and the correct answer.
 
-Another question—when you take advantage of this lifeline, the system switches the current question out for a new question with the same difficulty level and in the same sequence.
 
-Other players’ answers—this lifeline allows you to see which answers were selected by other players. Next to each of the four possible answers, the percentage of players having selected each answer will appear for your view.

Alright, I won’t write here everything in detail. Want to know more about lifelines? Look at our site!

But – that’s not it. We also had to figure out – how to join more users to the game, how to inspire our players to invite their friends…And here we are – from now on friends can be invited by sending free SMS. We have also created a progressive bonus scale – the more users are joined, the more free chips will be received. Moreover, the players will also receive bonus chips for new users joined by their friends.

Sounds good? –Hopefully:) Wait for more improvements soon.

Here I will try to briefly explain the game and the “how to play”. It is not a Chinese ABC indeed. It’s much easier than you think it is.

Step one – before you start the quiz, you should register at the portal. This shouldn’t cause any problems – we have tried to make the registration as simple as possible – only 8 fields to fill. And don’t forget to enter a promo code (if you have one). Even without a promo code, you will get 10 game chips right away after the registration – you don’t have to buy anything to start to play the real game (we also have a trial game – always for free).

So…here we are – you have registered and you have at least 10 game chips “in your pocket”. All the doors are open – go to “Play the Quiz” section and choose your bet – the minimum bet is 5 chips (approx. 0.05 EUR), while the maximum bet amount is 100 chips. The higher the bet – the bigger your potential winnings…logically :) All the bets each day roll into a single game pool.

Now what? As it is written on the red button – “Now play the quiz”. There are 16 questions in a single quiz. Each question has four possible answers – only one is correct. Choose the correct one (if possible :)) – for this task you have 1 minute. Try to answer as fast as possible – points for each questions also depends on speed.

After each quiz you can see the points received, however, the exact winnings will be known only when the exact day round ends (see the remaining time in the upper right corner of the portal).  How the money pool is distributed? For this we have a special distribution mechanism…too long for this post… see the “Rules of the game” :)

Hopefully, I have explained the basics carefully enough. For more info on how to buy game chips, how to improve the results and other useful tips see the “How to play section” and its subsections.

Good luck, friends!

Before we start to enjoy my weekend – we wanted to share some good news with you.
The news actually might be interesting for players from quite many countries. To be more precise – from 29 countries…

Intrigued? We have implemented SMS payment system in 29 countries (besides the existing ones). Yes – from now on players will be able to buy game chips using sms also in: 

Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Belarus, Georgia, Greece, Ireland, Ukraine, Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, Columbia, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Montenegro, Ecuador, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Republic of South Africa, Portugal and United Arab Emirates!

Don’t worry – no lists anymore… at least for a while :) I guess I might be wrong at one point – most probably the news is interesting for all the players, not just for those from the mentioned countries. Why? –Because soon you’ll meet (hopefully) many new players from all around the world – the atmosphere of the game will get even more exciting and international!

Enjoy!

Hopefully, this will be quite interesting entry about quite interesting marketing activity. You might even draw some inspiration from this…or not…well, let’s see.

What: QuizBoom campaign at web2.0 portals Twitter and Facebook – the participants had to had to publish any kind of text containing a link to QuizBoom.com in their profiles and join QuizBoom page in the corresponding portal. Prizes - iPod Nano MP3 players.

When: Lasted for a half month. Just finished.

Why: To test the opportunities offered by web2.0 portals. And of course – to gain some brand awareness :)

Cost: Price of iPod Nano MP3 players and delivery expenses

The biggest challenge: To make the exact campaign stand out among others.

The results: Considerable increase of QuizBoom fans @Facebook and increase of followers @Twitter – not so easy to measure precise impact of the campaign. And extra exposure at the particular portals – probably a part of each participant’s friends of the portals might have noticed QuizBoom.com. In short – social portals are really powerful mean if used wisely!

Aaand the winners: Edgars Orlovskis @Twitter and Olesja Lukina @Facebook. Congratulations, guys!

Advice: Social portals – use them wisely, use them innovatively, and make your projects pleasant and interesting for all parties. Most importantly – use them…