How do you think other websites stand on their two feet? Advertisments on the game would bring in money.
I'm sure when Grepolis started there wasn't people getting paid to code/run the game. Wasn't the creator doing everything freelance?
I just don't agree with paying for an advantage, mind I only use captain for the farming.
Well to start with, Grepolis was helped fundwise by the fact that Inno owns other games that bring in revenue. Other websites may ask for donations, a monthly/annual fee, or have an Item Mall setup like us. The websites themselves are quite cheap to run, but the servers cost a fair bit more, and that's where this is different to your usual 'website funding' situation.
As for when this game started, we've always had a CoMa, and two/three Co-CoMa's, as well as a super secret guy who is higher in the hierarchy and oversees Grepolis as a whole. I don't know who's above him, but they're all paid. The coder, is presumably a different person to the artist/2.5D modeler, both of which probably work on multiple Inno games. Thus, both of them have to be paid too.
There's so much money involved here, it's near impossible to do it without Premium.
Oh, and Inno is pretty proud about being ad-free as far as I'm aware.
As for surveys, yes, you get really dodgey ones, and that's unfortunately out of Inno's control. The survey company pays Inno to have "free" premium surveys, and then sometimes (most of the time *rolls eyes*) the survey company doesn't cough up our gold.
Don't work for loads of people. As a mod would say 'Inno isn't responsible, you must contact Sponsor Pay in regards to you receiving no gold'
And that is correct. The survey company pays Inno on an annual/monthly whatever basis, to be put on Inno's site(s). The sponser company then takes peoples surveys and is completely responsible for the handing out of said Gold reward. The survey company is supposed to give you a small % (In Premium game currency form) of what it's getting from the sponsor/customer/advertisement, for taking part. This is why there are so many survey companies... They take in lots of money for spreading advertisements/offers, then they give the individuals who took part a small %. UNFORTUNATELY, the surveys we're with don't seem to like paying up.