A recent thread on Reddit popped up about my recent RMT post. I’d like to acknowledge flaws in my reasoning, and counter some of the statements with my personal justifications.
This thread does raise some valid points. There is a conflict of interest in my promotion of IWISK and defending them against RMT claims. Yes it’s entirely possible that RMT is going on, and no one is denying that RMT makes mountains of cash. However, the usage of that correlation to say that they would endanger their own operation in favor of a temporary boost in revenue is asinine. Common sense would dictate the reasonable course of action would be to not do RMT. But people will do dumb things. Anyone with a modicum of business sense would hopefully agree that RMT means the death of IWISK.
I’d also like to clear some things up. One, the Reddit account which posted that thread is not my personal account, so please don’t bandwagon that user. Two, the reality of my promotion of IWISK is that it makes hilariously low amounts of ISK for me. Out of 20 referrals, I’ve made ~4.5 Million ISK, so the assumption that I’m speaking about IWISK out of greed is untrue. Nor am I affiliated with IWISK aside from the promotion that takes place within this site. I’m countering RMT claims to offer a counter to the hysterical bandwagon effect that happens with RMT accusations in EVE. I will also admit that my math is likely way off, but as it clearly states in that post, it’s meant as a speculative example to show that IWISK can make money without RMT.
In all honesty, once this site grows out of relying on IWISK promos for a portion of it’s traffic, then I’ll most likely drop IWISK entirely. As it is true that the promotion just makes the site feel less consistent. I make far more ISK from the trial PLEX reward offer I run anyway, so that will eventually be the primary promotion on the site. As I personally don’t care about the fate of IWISK, it was purely a decision to use the promotion as a way to grow this site with promo codes.
I’d also like to talk a bit about the math that I used. In light of the lack of accurate numbers, I drew heavily on my own experience in SEO/marketing both on this site and others. I however did not explain how I arrived at the 0.025% figure for IWISK commission sales. I simply took my own conversion rates in promoting a similar program and cut them by 75%. Attempting to account for the more subtle link they use.
Yes, this arbitrary number is a detriment to the math I used, but as I said above the math wasn’t the strong point. The point of that post was to highlight flawed reasoning behind the assumption that IWISK must be engaging in RMT as it is more profitable, and using speculation to do so. If anything can be drawn so far about the accusations against IWISK thus far, it’s that CCP is the best position to determine if RMT is actually occurring; and in the face of lackluster evidence we can’t make a valid logical claim that IWISK is engaging in RMT. To do so would be fallacious and potentially biased.
I will also not make any attempts to silence criticism, if you think I’m an idiot say so. I welcome criticism and differing opinions. It may seem like this post is a knee-jerk reaction, but it’s derived from my personal interest in discussing RMT as a topic. Further more, I just enjoy discourse, hence the attempt to encourage more conversation.
