Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Ten Empire Avenue Investment Strategy Tips

Empire Avenue is a social network game that incorporates a virtual stock exchange in which the players buy and sell shares in each other. Your share price is based in part on your social media activity and also on your virtual wealth and activity on Empire Avenue. Here are a few tips on how to increase your Empire Avenue share price, dividends, investment value, and thereby your social media exposure.

1. Create quality content on your social media sites

Post interesting, informative, funny, or otherwise "attractive" content to your Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Flickr, and blog sites. The more views/followers/retweets/likes/comments/activity you attract on your social media sites, the higher you will be rated on Empire Avenue. Investors look for active and highly rated accounts to invest in. This is the number one tip and the reason to play Empire Avenue - it will improve your social media activities and interactions.

2. Be active on Empire Avenue

In addition to ranking your activity on social media sites like Twitter, Empire Avenue assigns you a ranking for your activity on Empire Avenue itself. This contributes to your overall rating and, more importantly, to your investment desirability. Many savvy Empire Avenue investors refuse to invest in low activity accounts or dump those whose activity slacks off. EA activity can be as simple as buying or selling shares, posting to community forums, and shout outs to your investors and investments.

3. Invest immediately, often, and diversify

There is really no advantage to hording or saving Eaves, the virtual currency used on Empire Avenue. When you receive Eaves through EA "achievements", investments in your shares, or selling other people's shares, invest or re-invest them immediately or as soon as you can find what appears to be a good investment. Invest often and diversify your investments. Diversification is not only just good basic investment strategy but also increases the number of people in your portfolio. This is reflected in your EA rating and, more importantly, often results in a reciprocal investment in you on the part of someone you invested in.

4. Monitor your investments

Login to Empire Avenue frequently (I recommend daily - it only takes a few minutes). Click the "My Profile" tab at the top then the "My Portfolio and Lists" tab. Sort your investments by clicking the "Top Losers" link. Examine the investments whose share price has declined carefully to identify those you wish to dump. Click on the name of a potential dump and details about them will appear in the right pane. Note your investment price and number of shares. Right click their name in the right pane and open their profile in a new tab. Examine the additional details here including graphs of their statistics, Empire Avenue activity, investments they have made or lack thereof, portfolio value, and dividend values. Don't be afraid to dump a declining stock but also be aware that there is often a dip in share price for new accounts after a couple of days then a recovery.

5. Join communities and post to community forums

One of the first things you should do when you join Empire Avenue is click the "Community" tab at the top and join 6 communities. Select those whose interest coincides with yours but also try to join at least one community whose "interest" is to share EA investor tips. Introduce yourself in a community post and followup with regular postings to your community groups. This increases your exposure, gets you a few free achievement Eaves, and counts as EA activity reflected in your rating.

6. Invite your friends with the "Promote Your Profile" link

Login to Empire Avenue and click the "My Profile" tab at the top then the "My Profile" tab below that. To the right click the "Promote Your Profile" link and use this window to invite friends to join Empire Avenue. In addition to the links EA provides here, copy the URL and include it in any EA blog posts etc. When a person uses this link to join Empire Avenue and connects at least one social media service (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or Flickr), you both receive 2,000 Eaves. If you are liking these tips and want to join Empire Avenue to get started, use my profile promotion link.

7. Invest in well connected new arrivals

If you monitor new arrivals closely (Search -> Recent Arrivals) you can often find excellent investments. Look for new accounts whose share price has not yet skyrocketed (e.g. still under 20 or 30) and who are well connected. Note that "well connected" can mean they have connected all social platforms, they have a significant following on one or more platforms, they haven't connected yet but you were able to determine they are active and influential (e.g. you look them up by name or visit their one connected account to find links to their other accounts), or they may just be famous/attractive like I invested in Jane Fonda because, hey, it's Jane Fonda. Investing in well connected new arrivals is an easy way to generate net wealth. These investments will likely increase rapidly in share price over the coming week or two then plateau at their market level. When they cease to climb you can sell, typically for multiple times their purchase value.

8. Build your dividend value by investing in high yield "blue chips"

Initially people will invest in you because you're share price is low, you are well connected, and/or you are active on your social media sites and Empire Avenue. Over the long run, you will need to increase your dividend value to keep investors and attract new investors. To do this it will be necessary to enhance your portfolio with "blue chip" stocks - shares which pay a good dividend and which are usually relatively much higher in price. Examine a potential blue chip's profile and look for the "Dividends (weekly avg)" statistic. There will be numbers for both Eaves per day and Eaves per share. A high Eaves per share average dividend is indicative of a good blue chip. However, see the next tip for an enhanced dividend purchase strategy.

9. Purchase high "dividend per share" per "share price" stocks

A good metric for value investment is "dividend per share" (from the previous tip) divided by "share price" (the number just above the buy/sell buttons). For all purchases other than new arrivals who you think will increase in value rapidly, calculate "dividend per share" multiplied by 100 and divide that by share price. If the resulting number is above 1.0 then purchase as many as you can! Anything above 0.8 is good. For example, currently the account "Totally Guitars" with ticker symbol GUITAR has a dividend per share of 1.54 and a share price of 105.49. To use the metric I describe in this tip you would calculate (1.54 x 100) / 105.49 = 1.46 which is fantastic so buy as many as you can. Occasionally you can even find lower priced stocks with a high div per share per share price index. These are especially good investments because your dividend will still be high while the stock has the potential to increase dramatically in value providing additional profit. For example, my stock, RECORD, has a div per share today of 0.17 and a share price of 17.67. My dividend index would be (0.17 x 100) / 17.67 = 0.96 which is pretty good plus you figure my share price will increase several fold while GUITAR's will probably not double. The 17.67 Eave shares may be a better investment than the 105.49 Eave shares!

10. Invest in leaders

Click on the LEADERS tab at the top of your profile then click on the Portfolio Wealth link along the left hand side. The top ten richest portfolios (both people and businesses) are often good investments and can reap an additional reward. Often these rich portfolios will invest back in those who invest in them. Either they are smart or they are nice or likely both and that's why they got to be rich :) Anyway, an investment in you from one of these heavy hitters will produce an inordinately large bump in your share price. Plus some investors look to who these leaders invest in to guide their own investments so you may get residual investments. They are also usually low risk investments as their value remains solid over time.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Empire Avenue Social Media Stock Exchange

You can buy and sell shares in me on Empire Avenue! It's a virtual stock exchange that uses people's social media activity and influence as factors in determining their stock price. It's interesting because it not only reflects your activity on sites like Facebook and YouTube but also and maybe more importantly because it acts as a catalyst for social media activity.

If you use this link http://empireavenue.com/?t=2j4ddr12 to join Empire Avenue then link one of your social media sites we both get 2,000 Eaves, the virtual currency used there. Try it out, it's sorta fun and kinda addictive.