What’s the best recipe for monetizing your game? Flash game blogger and self-proclaimed geek Emanuele Feronato (aka MochiAds member Triqui) weighs in with the results of his experiment.
On October 28th, 2007, I started a an experiment where I released a one-day game called Circle Chain to see if I could earn some bucks with a Flash game. Since that day, I published a total of 10 games and I am currently developing some more.
A year later, this is what I made:
- MochiAds: $4,628.18
- Third-party sponsorship: $4,000.00
- API integration: $250.00
- Donations: $124.00
- Google Adsense: $390.77
- Revenue Sharing: $20.80
- Grand total: $9,413.75
In my opinion, MochiAds is the most interesting way to monetize a game, due to the fact that it’s relatively easy to implement and it’s a constant, easy revenue stream. In other words, whereas I need to find a sponsor in order to secure sponsorship money for any game I make, I’m still earning money from my very first game through in-game ads.
Want to try it yourself?
Here’s my step-by-step recommendation:
1) Sign up for MochiAds.
2) Sign up for MochiBot, a free service that helps you monitor the popularity of your games.
3) Sign up for Flash Game License, where you can get your game sponsored.
4) Think up a game design concept. The more original, the better. If you have no ideas, you can visit Three Hundred Mechanics for some inspiration.
5) Make your game.
6) Once you think it’s finished, encrypt it. You can use the MochiAds free version control and encryption service.
7) Add your game to MochiAds, and add MochiBot to your game.
8) Submit your game to a developer forum or take a look at First Impression service by Flash Game License to get some quality reviews of your game. Remember to site-lock your game if you want to prevent it from being spread before you’re ready. If you don’t know how to site-lock a game, read How to sitelock a Flash movie.
9) Submit your game to Flash Game License.
10) Wait at least two weeks.
11) If you found a sponsor, distribute the game according to the partnership you signed. If you did not find a sponsor, return to step 10 or proceed to step 12.
12) Submit your game to as many portals as you can.
12) Return to step 4.
Good luck!
Indeed. Step 12 is always important when using Mochi Ads. And thanks for the numbers, they help determine what is at least possible with all the revenue modes.
This is really interesting to me – It would be very nice if one could live off flash game ad revenue.
It looks like from your numbers, it’s no where near as good as independent flash contract work?
I’m also really interested in non-ad-based revenue. Webby games like kingdom of loathing, adventure quest, and that new political games (i cant think of the name) don’t have the standard models but approach it different.
They try to get people more committed to the games such that they are more willing to make many micropayments to it. They seem very successful but I’m betting theres a pretty big failure rate in this kinds of games. A critical mass is essential.
Thanks for this!!!
1/ Regarding step 12. Does anybody have a good full list of portals to submit games to. I would love a list so that I could just go through and check them off.
2/ There must be a way to get more then $9,413 per year for 10 games!!!! You can’t live on that… unless you make four or five or maybe 10 games :P
I’m not convinced you can survive off ad revenue. There are definitely other ways to monitize from your games then just ads…
Thanks for the great article Emanuele. Really helpful for everyone here to be able to read this!
Hi Dan,
Here’s a list of sites you can start submitting your games to: http://mochiland.com/articles/45-sites-to-submit-your-flash-games.
Good luck!
Maya
there is 12 and 12 step =)
awesome article.