Loading ...Unofficial Owned Strategy Guide
DISCLAIMER
Owned is a game of buying and selling pictures on Facebook. Complete strangers are going to be buying pictures of you, your loved ones, your friends and even your pets. Think about that. Some pretty strange people are going to “own” pictures of you. This may include perverts, old guys, freaks and Ralph Nader supporters. You consent to this by playing the game and, yes, you can be kicked off for threatening or abusing people who own your pictures. So think about it again. If you are psycho, if you are possessive, if you are going to go to war over a picture of your significant other, if you don’t want some weirdo “owning” a picture of you, do us all a favor — DON’T PLAY. Just walk away. Save everyone the stress.
This guide is NOT CONDONED OR SANCTIONED by the folks who run Owned. The guy who writes it HAS NOTHING TO DO with Owned or Facebook. He’s just some dude named Jim Finch and he retains responsibility for it. You can pass this on as you like but you can’t buy or sell it. Plus, if you really like the dude’s work, go buy his pictures or raid his holdings at: this link. He’ll love you forever.
Owned is constantly changing. The guy who writes this guide has some sort of a life and keeps up with the game as he can. Sometimes things don’t work as he says due to changes in the game. He’ll get to the changes eventually. If you want to complain about something that’s not working to the actual creators of Owned, please use the feedback option by selecting Owned out of the list at this link. Alternatively, you can visit the Owned Discussion Forum on Facebook and complain there.
Again, Jim Finch (or a representative from this site) has never claimed to have created owned, have anything to do with the administration of owned, or promised “official” tech support for owned. He cannot help restore your account, restore any money you’ve lost or combat hackers/stalkers/ex-boyfriends. Those are things that are handled by Facebook and the makers of owned. While he does provide advice, he can do nothing more for you than say, “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that, did you contact tech support?” So please remember that before contacting him.
SELLING YOURSELF ON OWNED
Owned is a casual game where you and your friends have a fun time buying and selling each other’s pictures.
If you believe that line, then read no further, live in that fantasy.
To the rest of us, Owned is about making money and being the best. While buying and pictures of others is the keystone to the game, selling pictures of yourself is also a great way to make money since you get half of the profit every time your picture is sold.
If you want to put up a picture of yourself up for sale go to the main Facebook options and click EDIT. From there, click the PICTURE tab. Click BROWSE, find a picture, then click the little box that says you have a right to distribute the picture. The picture should now appear on your Facebook profile.
Now to add them to Owned. Click the Owned application. Click “ADD PHOTOS.” A list of the pictures from your profile should appear there. Highlight the one you want to add then click “ADD PHOTO.” It should appear within a few seconds and now you have something to sell.
All photos must abide by the guidelines set forth in the Facebook Code of Conduct, which you agree to by using the service. Please take a second to review that before we go further.
With that out of the way, you only have five free slots (and another 10 you can purchase) to deal with so there are important guidelines to have in the back of your mind before posting pictures.
BOYFRIENDS/HUSBANDS: Never put a picture that centers on your boyfriend or husband. This includes wedding photos. The lonely internet nerds want to see YOU and not your significant other (well unless he’s HOT and you can sell him to the gay crowd). So every picture should be of you with the focus on YOU.
WIVES/GIRLFRIENDS: If you’re selling yourself to the general population then the same rules apply as with husbands/boyfriends. No one wants to see HER. The focus should be on YOU. The only case where you’d include one is if you’re bi and you have a girlfriend or wife. I know it’s sexist to the Nth degree, but a guy’s mind works like this: “She’s got a girlfriend. That’s hot. Two for the price of one.” Sales of groups of girls do much better than groups of guys.
YOUR KIDS: Never put up pictures of your kids or of you with your kids. Sure they may sell to aunt Ginny but does Aunt Ginny have $100k to spend on the pictures? No. Plus do you really want every pedophile out there knowing what your kids look like? I think not. The lonely internet guy may eventually buy them to complete the set of you, but let’s face it, it’s a bad idea. They don’t sell.
MINORS: Most users cannot purchase those people who are under 19 years old. Owned has a filter that sets those profiles to private and the only people who are under 19 can buy them. While there are bugs that allow adults to buy those users, for the most part you should be dealing with those folks around your age. If an adult buys you and you’re not comfortable with it, block them instead of making contact. Insulting them or degrading them can get you kicked off the service. So block them and buy your pictures back from them then report them to facebook if they continue to contact you.
PROVOCATIVE PICTURES (NO NUDITY): As of May of 2008, Owned! Has cracked down on provocative pictures. Thong and g-string pictures are no longer allowed. So please do not post them. With that said, pictures of girls with a hint of cleavage usually sell better than those where the girl’s boobs are hanging out. That’s just the general trend. Keep it tasteful and keep it TV-safe. Think PG or G rather than a PG-13 or R rating. You can make a profit by showing less.
NUDITY: Naked pictures of yourself (or anyone) might be great for people to look at, but they’re against the Rules of Facebook and will be reported and removed. Both you and those who own you are going to lose money when your pictures are removed. Save yourself the hassle here. Don’t do it. You will NOT be compensated for your losses and may lose your Facebook account.
FIREARMS: Do not post pictures of firearms on the service. While they are not reported as frequently as nudity, they are still against the rules of Facebook and will be removed if reported with no compensation provided.
PHOTOSHOP: The basic rule is that if you don’t look good in the picture, don’t sell the picture. If you’re going to sell yourself and it needs work, put a photoshop filter on it. Do anything you can to make it look great. These people want to see you look your best. So do whatever it takes to make the picture look good. Don’t have photoshop? There’s a lot of great alternatives out there. The MAC comes with iPhoto for basic image editing needs. PC and Linux users have literally hundreds of programs out there to choose from. One of the best of the free ones for nearly every system out there is The Gimp.
NOVELTY PICTURES: This is very hit and miss. By no means should you have more than one of them in your pictures for sale. This includes cheesecake artsy shots you’ve stolen off the internet. People are here to see YOU in said shots, not the art, so the focus should be on YOU.
ANIMALS: Just like with novelty pictures, they can be very hit or miss. I say that you should never put up pictures of your animals. You with your animals is okay (if the other guidelines are not violated), but a picture of your dog Goofy isn’t going to sell unless he’s rabid. I’ve tried to market them. It just doesn’t work for me. Others have had more luck, but in MY book, it’s just a wasted slot.
COPYRIGHT: Sites like Facebook assume that you have permission or the right to post the pictures you put up. In fact, before you even upload a picture you have to click a little box that says you have that permission to do so that frees Facebook of responsibility for your actions. People can and do get sued for using copy written material on the internet without permission. They also get kicked off of Facebook for the same activities as Facebook outlines that posting copy written material is a violation of the Facebook Code of Conduct. It’s rare but it DOES happen, especially if you piss someone off and they report you. Ignorance of a law or guidelines is no defense here. You’ve had to agree that you own the picture before putting it up, so the blame and punishment is going to fall squarely on your shoulders. For further information on the Copyright policy please visit Facebook’s copyright FAQ at: http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=28.
A second point here. It’s increasingly popular for people to take pictures from porn sites (without even editing out the copyright or watermarks!) and putting up batches of the “nice” pictures and presenting themselves as that person in order to get sales. If you’re going to do this incredibly lame activity at least be smart about it. Don’t mix and match pictures that you’ve ripped off with pictures of yourself. People are just going to confused. Especially when your head and body don’t match the person in the rest of the pictures. If you’re going to live that fantasy — and this guide in NO WAY condones such a thing — go all the way with it. Don’t mix and match.
Just remember that YOU can be banned from both Owned and Facebook for it. You can also be sued for illegal use of copy written material and really, once all these new friends you’ve made find out that they’ve been duped, you’re going to lose them. So is it really worth the time and effort to present yourself as something you’re not?
SETTING YOUR MINIMUM PRICE
You have the ability to set your starting price when you put pictures up for sale. There’s a lot of different schools of thought on this one and, of course, it comes down to how much you think your pictures are going to sell for. Ideally, someone using this guide would encourage everyone to start their for sale price at L$1. It just fits the buying strategies that are outlined below and is the smartest move since no one would pass up a picture for L$1.
On the other hand, this is quite an unusual situation. When a picture is initially up for sale, you are owner of the picture and the person who put the picture up for sale. That means that any money from the purchase of sale is going directly back to you since there’s no profit to be made or money to be diverted to a previous owner. Factor in that you need to pay for slots 6 to 15 and you start to think about at least making your money back when setting your price.
My advice on this one is to test the market first. Set your first few for L$1 and see who buys them. If you get people you know will pay more than L$1 to initially own your picture, by all means, experiment with prices. The maximum amount you can set is L$50,000. So start small, see what the market will handle, and go from there.
DELETING YOUR PICTURES
From time to time you may want to swap out older pictures with new ones or replace ones that just aren’t selling. In the early days of Owned you could delete pictures at any time. Your ranking would go down and whomever Owned your pictures would lose all the money invested in them when they were deleted. Obviously, people didn’t like the risk involved in that so it was changed to be fair. Under the current system you must buy the picture you want to delete before deleting it. At that time you LOSE the money you’ve invested in the picture. To prevent misuse, Owned does not reimburse you for the money you’ve lost when you willingly deleted your pictures. This is NOT a bug and should not be reported as one. It’s just how the game works.
To delete a picture you need to buy it from its current owner. Then click “ADD PHOTOS.” Find the photo you want to delete and click “DELETE.” It will now vanish from your list of pictures for sale. Remember, there’s no going back once you have clicked delete and you will lose the money that you’ve invested in the picture. If you accidentally delete the wrong picture, no one can help you. So be careful and delete at your own risk.
ENGAGING THE CUSTOMER
Unlike buying, when you’re selling YOURSELF you want to do everything you can to be engaging without having people stalk you. If they buy your picture, immediately click their picture and use the private messaging feature to send them a thank you. If they write a comment on your picture or send you a private message, immediately respond. People love communication. Make them feel wanted. NEVER be rude or buy your picture back because a dork bought it. It’s all about brand loyalty here. Be nice to them and they’ll be nice to you.
DRUMMING UP BUSINESS
Owned is a social game on a social networking site. At a certain point, looks alone won’t sell pictures. It’s all about who you know and getting attention focused on your pictures in order to drum up sales. A good way to start is to become a participant in the Owned Discussion Forum. A simple post with a link to your pictures is a start, but interacting with people and taking part in the forums is a great way to get repeat sales.
A second way to drum up business is to post your link in the comments area of the Post Your Link thread on this site. While we don’t get a massive amount of traffic, people do look at that forum and visit the pages that people post.
Ideally, by participating in the forums you’re looking for a “whale” or a “sugar daddy/mama” who will buy your pictures for an insane amount of money on a regular basis. You don’t need to know where they get their money or what they do to get it, all you need to do is to continue to be nice to them so they’ll keep buying you.
As awful as it sounds, there are a lot of lonely people on Owned who will pay obscene amounts of money for people who are nice to them. So you’d be dumb not to use this to your advantage.
BUYING & SELLING OTHER PEOPLE ON OWNED
This game is all about exploiting greed. You’re playing on very basic principles when you’re buying people. It’s the basic need for people to “own” who they know and more importantly, who they want to have sex with. Your job is to make them pay to the nose for their friends and then pay double that for those pictures.
Start simple. Buy 10 people for very low prices (under L$200). Then use the human gifts feature to give those 10 people to 10 individual people on your friends list. You make L$10,000 per gift (up to L$100,000 a day) and can do this once every 24 hours. You’ve just made your first profit.
Now start buying more people.
In selecting, make sure they’re cute and they’re legal. If they have big warnings on them like “back off he/she is mine” then that’s even better. You buy those and, once you buy those, you take the label off. It’s a cheap provocation but it works.
Psycho boyfriends/girlfriends are all a part of the game. My opinion: Block them before you even start to mess around with them. They can’t hurt you so buy buy buy.
When you buy someone, buy for the minimum amount. Then immediately raise the price by at least a thousand. You do this by highlighting the person’s picture, clicking and paying for them again.
Why? Well look at this:
You buy someone for L$1. You buy them from yourself at L$1000.
What happens is this: You get your initial investment (L$1) back. Then you get half the profits (L$499) back and the other half of the profit goes to the person in the picture. So you just paid L$500 to up the price to a thousand.
Your worth also goes up by that 1/2 of profit that you’ve just made. Keep that in mind because ranking is VERY important. The only way to gain rank is to gain profit, so it is in your best interest to continue to make that profit.
Once someone buys the picture, buy it again. Keep buying them back and raising the price by whatever you think they’ll pay for the picture until you hit L$100,000. That’s the first real dead zone. Most casual users back off and stop buying around that point. However, with so much money in the economy (with everyone theoretically making at least L$100k a day from gifting), the dead zone is gradually vanishing as almost everyone can be a power player within a few days of play.
At the lower levels, you need to look for patterns. Look for obsessive people. If they’ve got a psycho buying and rebuying them, exploit it. Get as much money out of that sucker as you can. Because this game is all about the “mine mine mine” mentality. You have to exploit it to the fullest extent — while being a nameless faceless buyer (do NOT engage these people unless you want to make friends with them) — so you’re not targeted or hassled by said psychos.
Eventually your money is going to build up. Now start taking that L$1 picture and rebuy it from yourself for L$100,000. You’ve just spent L$50,000 to up the price to L$100,000 (remember L$50k goes to the owner of the picture and the other L$49,999 goes right back to you). The price to buy that picture is now L$125,000 by default. So you’re getting the L$1+L$49,999+L$50,000+L$12,500 (half the profit from the sale) when it sells. That is L$72,500 of pure profit for your investment that should be applied to your rank.
At the same time, If you haven’t already done it, start going through your previous purchases and start using them as a money sink. Anything that isn’t L$100,000 should be rebought from yourself for at least L$100,000. These sales will bump up your ranking and you’ll make at least L$12,500 per picture when they sell. Again, with so much money in the economy, more and more people will buy for L$100,00 and not think twice about it. Use this to your advantage. Buy buy buy and up your rank!
CASHING OUT
Cashing out is a new feature to Owned (Aug ‘08) that allows a user to get a partial refund for pictures that no one is buying. At this time this guide cannot recommend the use of this feature and will not cover how to use it (though basic questions about it are covered in the Unofficial Owned FAQ). Why? Simply put, you lose money every time you use it, your Total Worth ranking goes down for using it and you can pretty much devastate the person whose picture you’ve cashed out.
Look at it this way: You buy a picture for L$100,000. After 3 days of no sales (and a variety of other factors) you can get L$70,000 back for the picture. That picture is currently adding L$100,000 to your Total Worth and L$100,000 to the person in the picture’s Total Value. After cash out you lose the entire L$100,000 from your Total Worth as the value becomes L$70,000 in cash and cash does not normally show up in your Total Worth rankings. The person in the picture loses L$99,999 in Total Value as the picture has been reset to a L$1 value. It’s a lose-lose situation for both parties and an action we do not condone.
There will be times when things are slow and you need an influx of cash and it may look tempting, but the fact is that losing money to make money is not a sound business investment. This guide has given you a lot of ways to make money, read them, use them, be smart about them and be patient enough to know that things WILL turn around if you follow the advice given to you here.
BUGS
As with any game, Owned has a couple of game ending bugs that you should be aware of. Before we go any further you must remember that if a bug hits you will not be compensated for your losses. It sucks. It’s horrible. It’s going to piss you off. Deal with it. The bugs can hit anyone and it’s like playing a game Russian Roulette. You don’t know when the bullet is going to be in the chamber.
The first reported bug is one where you’ve amassed a lot of money and you sign into Owned and it’s all gone. All your holdings are still there, however, whatever money you have in your account is gone. The only way to avoid taking a loss (that I’ve seen) is to invest as much of your money as you can before signing out. Buy random people or reinvest it in the people you have. That way you avoid heavy losses should the bug hit.
The second reported bug is that *everything* is gone. It’s a game killer and it’s like you had deleted the game. Your rankings, your holdings, your money on hand all gone. If this one hits, all you can do is start over. Posting on the boards about it might get you a few gifts here and there (and yes, there’s a lot of nice people out there who will help), but you really have no other option than to take the loss and start over.
Please note that with the first two bugs, we’ve had reports that if you stay logged in to Owned long enough, the money may eventually reappear, but have not been able to confirm it since the bug is random. So if it happens, stay cool, don’t freak too much, and give the game a chance to catch up before doing anything drastic.
A third issue (as mentioned above) that some feel is a bug comes when you buy a picture of yourself and then delete it without getting your money back. This is NOT a bug. The developers apparently decided that reimbursement for a picture that is no longer in the economy could lead to cheating so it’s never been a part of the game. Again it is NOT a bug and you WILL NOT be compensated when you delete a picture. So deal with it and move on.
RANKINGS
Click on the “MY RANK” tab. You’ll see two sides and it lists most of your friends who have Owned installed.
The left side says “TOP PEOPLE.” This is a list of all your friends and the list on this side is the Total Value of the pictures of your friends. It only updates after your friend or friends have signed in, so it’s not entirely accurate.
The right side says “TOTAL WORTH.” This is a measure of all your all the pictures you own plus the cash you have on hand to determine your overall ranking.
The only way the value goes DOWN is if an administrator deletes a picture that you own or if someone uninstalls owned.
The only ways to make it actually go UP is to make a profit off of a sale, have someone give you a picture, earn money for inviting a friend/getting a sign in bonus/giving a human gift/clicking pictures, or have someone buy a picture of yourself that you’ve put on the site for sale.
Please note that it does not count purchases as gains unless you turn around and sell them. That’s why buying a photo then immediately rebuying it from yourself is so important. Owned sees that initial sale as the conversion of money to assets and does not increase your rank. If you buy it from yourself, your rank will then go up by half of the profit you’ve just generated from rebuying it.
THE “TRICKLE DOWN” ECONOMY
Earlier there was talk about finding a “whale” or a “sugar daddy/mama” who will buy you for an insane amount of money. As you go up in Total Worth, you’re going to end up with more money than you know what to do with. Unless you want to risk losing that money to bugs, you’re going to become a “whale” or “sugar daddy/mama” yourself. In turn, the people below you are going to become “whales” or “sugar daddies/mamas” to people under them. This is just how the game works. One “whale” can control (to some extent) the fortunes of hundreds or thousands of players below her/him. So keep this in mind as you go up in rank as your actions can impact a lot of people.
It is not unheard of for one “whale” to control the Total Worth rankings for an entire geological region. You simply pick up to 24 people in your region (with you being the #1 person in the regional rankings) and continue to fund them until you control the rankings. While it’s a silly game to play (since it’s JUST a game), it’s something you can try especially if you want to shake up the rankings. The money you put into your region usually stays in your region, so by investing locally is actually a good investment if you care about how your region is “represented” on Owned. Plus, it’s a great way to meet people from your area who you might not otherwise interact with.
CHEATING
There are hundreds of ways to “cheat” in owned. Everything from running macros to fake accounts to one guy who says he’ll even pay you cash for Owned lunch money and vice versa (if you find him, use his service at YOUR OWN RISK because we don’t condone it). The fact is that there are no written rules for Owned. The only rules we have are found in the Facebook Code of Conduct and they primarily say that you won’t use macros and duplicate accounts or else face banishment from Facebook.
This guide will not show you how to do any of the actions that would put yourself at risk. We do not condone “cheating” in general and abhor the use of outside means to generate income. But there are some schools of thought on what is “cheating.”
Some feel that the method of buying and rebuying a picture from yourself to generate income is cheating.
Some feel that families and friends getting together to organize efforts to raise their value is cheating.
Some feel that (insert endless amount of ideas here) is cheating and so on and so on.
In the end, Owned is a game of buying and selling. With no set “rules” on what is “cheating” (other than the use of outside means to generate income), there’s going to be a lot of debate as people get miffed over advantages people seem to have over each other. Endless words have been written about this on the message boards and the debate will rage on until the end of time.
The guidelines presented here will get you started with Owned. They will not help you exploit the system and will not help you take an unfair advantage over anyone else. You’re going to play in the manner you feel comfortable playing. You’re going to generate a lot of money and (hopefully) you’re going to have fun doing so. So our “ultimate cheat” is to remember that it’s a game and in a game you have fun. Do whatever it takes to have fun (without violating the rules of Facebook or hurting others). Because, in the end, it’s just a game. It’s not real life and if you take it as more than that, it’s time to walk away and get some air.
So enjoy! Have fun! PLAY THE GAME! And thanks for reading. 