Life After the Sell Out

So I’ve been an influencer on Empire Avenue since it started and last week I finally sold out, introducing me to the next phase of the game. (To put this sell out in context many people who hit the leaderboards sell out in a few weeks or less, took me a few months to reach this milestone).

In Empire Avenue you start out with 10 000 shares that other people can buy. Once they are sold, no one else can buy you until you purchase an upgrade to release more shares (2500 additional shares at at time). I had always assumed that once I sold out that would be it, I wouldn’t bother buying the upgrades and just leave things as they were. If people wanted shares of me they would have to buy them through influencer-to-influencer trades. I was entirely convinced that this would be the better way to play the game.

That lasted a day or so.

See the problem with being a sell-out, is that one of the main gameplay elements is taken away. It is a lot of fun going to new people’s profiles, checking out their blogs and buying a few shares in them, always with the hope that they might buy a few in you. Once I was sold out no one could buy shares of me, at least not easily. And that did sort of dampen my enthusiasm about going out and purchasing others (which I’m sure says a lot about me!)

So I bought the upgrade, even though it was costly and now I have more shares available and am participating in the game again. For those of you playing Empire Avenue and coming close to selling out I definitely recommend starting to save up your nightly dividends for the first upgrade… it beats having to sell a bunch of people to buy it.

And for those of you who aren’t on Empire Avenue, drop me a message and an email address where I can send you an invite. I’m finding Empire a great tool for measuring my online activity, meeting new contacts (and some wacky people) and as I’ve posted previously it has helped grow my twitter follower list.