So you have just finished a great game and you are ready to show it to the world. What if you want to make a little money from all of your hard work? There are many ways to capitalize your game. One method that you have probably heard often, but perhaps don’t know much about, is a sponsorship.

What is a ‘sponsorship’?

Typically a sponsorship means someone pays you money to put their logos and links into your game and you agree that any distribution of that game will always have that “branding” in place. They will also want to be able to freely distribute the game to any website. You still get credit for the making the game and can submit it as *yours* to Newgrounds, Kongregate and others. You will also be able to create a link in the game credits (or menu page) that takes the person back to your website.

What is the difference between a sponsorship and an “exclusive license”?

There isn’t a simple answer to this question and sometimes the terms are used interchangeably. Both terms are generic descriptions and every deal is different. For example a sponsorship from Kongregate or Arcade Town is not fully exclusive. You could still sell non-branded site-locked licenses to other websites. Kongregate will even let you include MochiAds in your game.

A general rule of thumb is you should have more freedom to take credit for your game and keep contest winnings in a sponsorship vs. an exclusive license. Many exclusive licenses may even ask you to remove your name and contact information completely.

Be warned that some sites incorrectly view a sponsorship as buying all rights to your game. This may include:

• Getting your source fla and code to edit and change any way they want
• Taking credit for the game themselves
• Taking the rights to create sequels or their own derivative games from your source files.

This flavor of ‘sponsorship’ (if you can even use the word) is much worse in terms of what rights you keep vs. the average exclusive license.

How much can you earn with a sponsorship?

There is a widely held misconception that sponsorships range from $100 to $500 and occasionally hitting $1,000. This is certainly true for many games (or people that don’t shop around) but a good game can easily get $1,000-$2,000. Truly exceptional games can get even more… $3,000-$4,000, I’ve even heard of a couple getting close to $6,000. If the sponsor allows you to link back to your site (which most do) you can still earn a small trickle of revenue from ads on it.

Should you sponsor your game?

Obviously this is a personal choice.  Basically it boils down to this: The money from flash games comes from advertising.

A sponsor will pay you a lump sum for the game and then will earn that back over time from the advertising revenue.  [Imagine making an investment of $2,000 that earns you $75/week for the next two years]

If you don’t get a sponsor then you can *TRY* to earn this revenue directly.  You can capture some of this by signing up with MochiAds (or similar program) but to truly make the most money you will need to build a site around your game where you include additional ads.  You will want bring people to your site via the high score submissions or perhaps offering a “bigger/better” version of your game that is only playable from your site. You will need to spend A LOT of time to create the site, finding a reliable host to handle the traffic, setting up advertising accounts, etc. There is also a very real risk that after all this effort you will make less money then a sponsor would have paid you. However if are successful the payoff could potentially be huge.

Successful examples of this approach can been seen with Desktop Tower Defense, Onslaught 2 and Bloons (and many others). Bloons was initially offered $350 for the source files!!  They turned it down and have since made WELL OVER 100 times that amount of money and are still generating revenue from it. Truly $350 was a TERRIBLE offer but they would have almost certainly received less then 5k in a sponsorship deal. Desktop Tower Defense is rumored to have made nearly 100k. Keep in mind that you also have the very real risk of earning almost nothing if you take this approach.

If you just want to make cool games and get a bit of cash without other worries, or if you think your game does not have much replay value, then you should probably consider a sponsorship.

Interested in learning more?

There is a lot to consider in determining if a sponsorship is right for you. I’ve put together a site to help you decide on sponsoring your game or pursuing another avenue. In addition to my own thoughts I have write-ups from game portals (ArcadeTown, CrazyMonkey & Kongregate) additionally there are some thoughts from Ezone who will try to convince you that a sponsorship is not the right choice.

Check it out and let me know what you think. I’d love to hear suggestions on what else I can add to make it more useful!