I play StarCraft II.  A lot.  If you log in virtually anytime you will see me there.  At work I use it as a reward system.  If I get X done then I will play a quick game.

I play pretty much nothing but custom maps.

When StarCraft launched I worked with some of the high profile professional players to guide them in making an info product.  They didn’t make a ton of money but they did well.

When Diablo came out this dude made a site that dripped content of upsells on how to get better at Diablo and what not.  Not sure how well he did but sure he did something.

But here is something I thought of the other day.  And one of the things you could do right now… the other depends on if it happens.  Lemme elaborate.

Like I said above I play nothing but custom maps.  SquadTD is my favorite one and its been #1 for as long as I can remember.   I have sponsored it in the past and that got it banned (most likely cause of my dumbass writing about it on here).  Evidently you can’t sponsor a map.

BUT you are allowed to take donations.

Almost every site has a “like this map, donate!” button on it.

I was trying out this new map the other day which seemed pretty cool.  It wasnt listed in the top ten just a random map.  Game play was neat but I could tell it was going to take a while to get a guy up to level… like days.  And if the map never goes anywhere or gets any players then its a complete waste of time.

But then I noticed at the end of the game it said “Want the lvl 50 builder and skip getting exp?  Donate $20 to paypal@hisemail.com.   Shit I did it.  I just had to give him my battlenet ID and he put it in the map so it knew I should have the best thing.

BOOM my head exploded.  What if you did things like that “donations” for in game purchases.  This guy was doing it for a map that was not in the top 1000 played… and he was making money.

In Game Purchases

Like think about all the iPhone games that are free.  But if you want the cool x or x you pay for it. People make so much money in there its SICK.

I am juts going to go out on a limb here and say you could probably get the #1 map for as cheap as 1k.  Maybe 10k most.  Remember the people who are making these are college kids.  10k is a lot of money to them.  Then give them some royalty or something for as long as they are developing it.

Man I think that would do well.

Here is the 2nd Idea and its much more lucrative if it happens.

There are rumors that Blizzard is going to implement a marketplace where people can sell maps.  If this happens…….  its going to be insane.  Again another reason to think about “owning” a very popular map.  I am guessing if you charged like $2.50 for a map in the top ten your talking about a million dollars.

But the time to buy is now.   Anyway if this goes down remember you heard it here first from Shoestradamus.