Thursday, February 7, 2008

Finally, some steps towards Internet Marketing

When I started this blog, I suggested I would explain how to market the end product online, but I also left clear I had no idea how to do that. Well, I've finally accomplished the first steps related to the marketing part. I still have a lot to learn regarding the subject, so if anyone is reading this blog and has some ideas I would love to hear them.

So, how do we manage to sell anything online? There are several different options and all of them can happen at the same time, but one of the more attractive way I've found is through Affiliate Marketing. I came around a website called clickbank.com (OK, OK, I don't need to know everbody knows that site since last century, I just found it). The main idea of Affiliate Marketing is: 1) You develop a product and create a basic website promoting it and with a few specific features that "link" it to a third pary that's going to charge the customer and transfer the money to you; 2) You register yourself with that third pary, register your product in it and let it know the address of your "sales page"; 3) Some affiliates registerd with that third pary find your product intersting and create websites, articles, post advertising and so on making people go to your sales page; 4) When the customer purchases your product, a special tracking mecanism from the third pary determines the affiliate that drove the customer to your site and pays him a commission on your behalf. Of course it also takes a commission for itself and then pays you what's left.

Obviously, in this case that third party is clickbank. Which by the way is absolutely free, so you don't have to spend a dime before really starting to sell. They'll only charge commissions after the sales and after issuing the payments twice a month (If you've sold anything at all :p).

The Second AI Level... waaaaay better !

All right, I'm kind of excited because what I thought would be very difficult ended up being kind of piece of cake. The first level of AI was so stupid because it merely looked for the first valid move and that's it. The second level, which is almost finished except for a little bug fixing, is far better in concept.

First, it creates an array of all the possible "combination of moves". With just this part of the definition it has two great advantages over the first level: considering all the possible moves and combining the moves allowed by each of the dice. This includes the possibility of moving the same man several times.

But what would be the objective of having a list of possible moves if you're not going to "choose" the best of them. So the second part of the implementation is a "position evaluator". This is what makes me feel like I'm on the right track. Why? because all the implementations of chess engines have an algorithm that evaluates which one is the best among a list of valid moves.

What does the position evaluator take into account? Well, so far, as positive for the rank, it considers the number of home board points that are blocked, the distance from the isolated men to the opponent's men, the advanced your men are, etc. on the negative side, the number of isolated men, the points with more than 5 men, etc.

So it's unbeatable? ... I wouldn't say so. In fact, I would say it still plays fairly bad if you compare it to an experienced human player, but it will definitely have better odds than the first level. Specially if it has just a little luck. Besides, I had to leave room for the third and final AI level.