How to monetize a play for fun poker site?
charlesju: Did you really write your whole server code in Erlang? Your intelligence scares me a little bit.First off, can you elaborate on what these "social network" features are? There is a really popular poker FB application already, that seems to me to have "social network" features.I think that there are a number of questions you should answer before you embark on this journey.1. Why will your poker program be unique?2. How will you achieve critical mass (what's your distribution channel/marketing)?3. How will you stop your competitors from stealing your idea and implementing them with their existing user base?------------------------------------As for how I think you can make money? I think that you are a very intelligent person, much more than me, and you should leverage that to your advantage.Here are two ways I think you can make a lot more money than just simply running a consumer product:1. There are plenty of people trying to solve the multiplayer problem (my company for example) and we would love to buy some sort of license to custom code written to handle generic server requests. Then you can package your Poker software on top of that as a "demo". But if you go this route, you really need to redo your server in a more traditional language, Erlang is fun for show and tell, but not very practical for the masses.2. If you are adamant on doing a poker related site with your stuff. I would recommend making a Ning for Poker Sites. There are so many poker sites out there right now that it doesn't make sense to try and compete with all of them. It does make sense to setup the backbone to run poker sites, take a cut of the money processing, and then let everyone else figure out how to market and distribute your stuff. There is currently no free poker software that is easy to skin and market, you can be the first, you can undercut everyone and be a millionaire by this time next year.