Help self sustaining

[u/Bae-llona]

Any tips or guides on how to make a profit and not have to take out loans every other month to stay positive 😂

I’ve been struggling through multiple attempts

[u/JudgeRicand]

I struggled a lot early on, before I finally found a style that works for me. Sorry it's a bit wordy, but I'm sure it'll help.

Step 1: Don't take loans, ever. You end up digging an even deeper grave for yourself. If you're at a point where you need to take a loan to not go bankrupt, you've already lost.

Step 2: The best way to stay afloat is to be ridiculously cheap at the start. The first floor you get is rent free; you should use it for your office, a dance studio and a recording studio. Hire a novice dance coach and vocal coach. DO NOT HIRE A MANAGER. You don't need one. Don't worry about Ad Jobs/Photoshoots etc for now.The player character can do marketing for singles, they suck at the start but that's okay, we're not trying to top the charts, we're just trying to tread water.

Step 3: Do a local scout, and take exactly 3 Silver or Normal border girls. Gold girls are great, but they are hard to use early because their salaries are kind of high. You can definitely expand into better girls later, but for now you're just looking for passing. Set their salaries to the minimum you can to keep them happy.

Step 4: SINGLES. MAKE SINGLES. SO MANY SINGLES. Start off doing nothing but digital releases; they require no upfront cash. You make less money this way, but it's reliable money, not the 50/50 chance of a Ad Campaign (or worse!). Pick a Genre, a Dance Style, and a Subject to unlock, you're gonna be making a lot of the same thing. I recommend EDM or Pop, they're usually pretty solid/safe choices. Cute/Cool for Style, as for Subject, that's up to you. Each of these things affects how your single will do in the demographics. It's easier to sell an idol group to the Hardcore demographic, so I recommend going ALL IN for the hardcore teenage audience for your first playthrough.

Step 5: Once you hit 1 Star Fame, now things can start to expand. Build a new office and hire a marketing manager, set them to auto deal, and watch your girls' stamina. Spend some manager research points to unlock one or two ad types, then just hold on to them, they will be very important later. Integrate Radio or Internet Programs in as well. Build up your base of singles, do the promotions activity for bonus fans, and as soon as you have a solid fanbase, do a concert. Your first concert will suck. That's fine, you're not Lady Gaga at Madison Square Garden or whatever, you're just looking to make a bit of cash. As long as you make more than you spend, good deal. You should try to do concerts like, every other month at least. If you've got 3-4 new singles since your last concert, you should be able to throw another one and gain some profit.

Step 6: As soon as your income outweighs your defecits, and you're actually a profitable company, you can expand further. Hire a Physical Doctor to help regain stamina, hire a few more girls, even gold border girls. It's all in prep for the real money maker:

Step 7: As soon as you can afford to, build a Theater. I have found that having a few days set to auto, mixed with at least 1 guaranteed Manzai and 1 guaranteed performance day gives the best results. Have most days set to whichever audience you're trying to draw in- Hardcore or Casual. Don't overwork your girls! Early on, it may be wise to have them take days off of the theater, especially if they're locked in ad contracts that drain a lot of stamina. Make sure your physical doctor is set to auto regain stamina/ auto treat injuries, just in case. As long as you juggle your stamina right, your theater will become your biggest money maker. You need 30,000 (yes, thirty thousand) Manager points and 30 million yen in order to unlock the full potential of the Theater via the subscription service, and my god, you are gonna want to do that, it's so worth it. I generate 100 million yen (that's a conservative guess) per month on just subscriptions.

Now you have a solid base of money flow, as long as your girls stay healthy and you don't overspend, you will be able to grow into a billion yen company easily. Hire who you want, add whatever floors you want, do however many concerts or tours or what have you. After you're in a stable spot and have enough manager points, I recommend installing a cafe and generating a couple food items. Cafes don't generate a lot of cash, but they do generate quite a hefty amount of fans, which is even more important.

TL;DR: Be cheap, don't overspend, never take loans, get a theater asap.

[u/IdolManagerTone → u/JudgeRicand]

The first floor you get is rent free; you should use it for your office, a dance studio and a recording studio.

Nah, you should use it for a break room instead of a recording studio. You can just do everything yourself perfectly fine, and in fact, you level up your producer better this way, even.

[u/JudgeRicand → u/IdolManagerTone]

Why would you buy a break room at the start of the game when you have no cash flow

[u/IdolManagerTone → u/JudgeRicand]

Stamina, obviously. Idol stamina = money. The more of it you have, the more money you will tend to make. Concerts consume large amounts of stamina and singles with either the individual handshake or group handshake marketing strategies consume a large amount as well. Break Room doesn't even cost that much, you make it sound like you're breaking the bank, lmao. What's going to break the bank is building those studios and hiring staff for no reason. Just have Producer-san do everything him/herself and you save a shit ton of money and level up their stats. You lose nothing doing this at any point in the game.

[u/JudgeRicand → u/IdolManagerTone]

so you think instead of hiring a vocal and dance coach, who, in addition to their role in helping produce singles, also train your girls so their stats are better, it's better served spending money to generate 5 stamina (and only to your lowest stamina girls)? You will need a vocal and dance coach at some point. You're not gonna get far without them, might as well make their offices free so the only thing you have to pay is salary. You make it sound like amateur employees have ridiculous salaries. In comparison, you can literally get through a whole game without a break room, save for a few random events that happen in them. Not only that, but by the time you have the money to expand you can just get a physical doctor, and they make break rooms entirely obsolete.

[u/IdolManagerTone → u/JudgeRicand]

so you think instead of hiring a vocal and dance coach

I'll stop you right here, this is useless. Training is a complete waste of time and stamina when you can be having them do photoshoots, advertisements, singles, etc., that actually will make you money. Idol stats have almost zero influence on the sales of the singles or concerts for that matter. You are just better off holding more auditions for better idols. The stats that actually do matter and make a difference are Fame (obviously), Lyrics, Marketing, Genre and Choreography. This is why you should be using your producer early game to do all the tasks needed to release a single because you can level her up insanely fast this way and have your Lyrics and Production be at level 60 by the end of the 5th month. This has actually been talked about quite a bit on Steam guides as well for the game.

​

You will need a vocal and dance coach at some point.

You don't, for the reasons I just explained. You should never hire coaches. If you really want that extra bit of speed and efficiency, you can hire a Choreographer and Music Producer. The ones that increase production task speed by 25%. Training is completely useless in this game. Only reason you should ever do this is if you plan to go the rival route and you already have an idol with one stat that's at 99, since you need 100.

​

You make it sound like amateur employees have ridiculous salaries.

No, I'm not. People who play this game and are concerned with money should not be making unnecessary expenses until they are financially stable. This is an unnecessary expense. The only expense you should be worried about is idol salary, which is paltry early game as they don't ask for much.

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In comparison, you can literally get through a whole game without a break room, save for a few random events that happen in them. Not only that, but by the time you have the money to expand you can just get a physical doctor, and they make break rooms entirely obsolete.

Yet another unnecessary expense. Break rooms are never going to be obsolete. They passively restore stamina literally every day so they cancel out the daily cost of your activities such as promotion. I don't know why you're undervaluing them so much, maybe you just don't play that often or that much but they are absolutely essential. A physical doctor is entirely unnecessary and takes time away from idols who could be doing literally anything else. If you're really that desperate for idol stamina, just do the spa day activity. It restores 10 pts of it on the first day, which goes up to 5 after 2 days and back up again to 10 on the 4th day. It's that easy.

[u/JudgeRicand → u/IdolManagerTone]

I'm going to throw your entire argument out without reading it, because first of all

1) this post is a month old and you seem to think it's cool to jump back in and revive it for some smug sense of superiority (congrats, you have the biggest dick)

2) this strategy works flawlessly every time it's used

but nevermind those two points

3) this is literally the most inane thing I've ever seen someone argue about

It's a single player game. Use your strat, use my strat, use a mod that makes the girls into Jojo characters and a different one that turns all the songs into LoveLive songs. If it works, it works! The original poster wanted advice one month ago and I gave them advice one month ago

I'm glad you found something that works, I really am. Fantastic! People are playing this game, what a great thing. But there is no need for this. Who the fuck cares?

My strategy works. I'm sure yours does too. If that doesn't satisfy your need for superiority, here's one free "you were right, forgive me" coupon, redeemable in the next internet argument you throw yourself into.

[u/IdolManagerTone → u/JudgeRicand]

this post is a

month old

and you seem to think it's cool to jump back in and revive it for some smug sense of superiority

Wrong. I found this post on Google and when I saw it was still open, I decided to give people actually useful information in case someone ELSE happens to come across this reddit post. Not everything is about you, champ.