Experiment: monetizing a Flash game – Part 6
Multipart tutorial: available parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
The sixth part of the experiment comes with a milestone of Circle Chain game: it reached 200,000 MochiAds impressions.
I stopped promoting the game three weeks ago and the game, launched on october 28th, still shows more than 3,000 impressions/day.
I know it’s quite ridiculous compared to some blockbusters like Bloons, but remember that I made the game in three hours and I spent an hour promoting it.
Let’s see some stats:
Mochiads: 200,826 impressions -> $67.55
Kongregate: 1,717 impressions -> $0.27
Adsense: 26,595 impressions
Paypal Donations: $5 (I received a “beer” of $10 from the experiment post but the donor did not mention if it was for the experiment or for the game, so I am considering $5 for the experiment and $5 for the game itself)
For a total of $193.30… that’s $0.92 per line of code… brackets included!
Donations?
The Paypal donation gives me an idea: what about including a “donate” button in your game? Obviously there is no need to pay for a free flash game, but I could say the game is released with source code (with a link to the source) and fully commented because I relying on developers donations.
I don’t know at this time if this will work or not… I know of a clone of my Create a Flash ball game with visual from above tutorial sold for $400 without buying me a beer so maybe it’s a bad idea… but come on! An experiment should consider all ideas, not only the good ones.
Now, let’s start with bad news…
Christmas Couples
I released Christmas Couples as the second game to take part of the experiment and people at NG and Kongregate did not like it.
They complained about the lack of powerups and bonuses, and a player said “I love the Tuts but if you’re going to submit a game make sure it’s fun to play, not just well made.”
That’s right… people want funny games and maybe Christmas Couples it’s not the funniest game ever produced.
Turning a failure into a success
I have some ideas to turn this failure into a success… or at least turning it into a not-so-bad project. I submitted the game to various portals but at the moment most submissions are still pending… at the moment the game scored $0.57 (yes! less than a buck) but I hope to raise this income in a week or two.
I googled for Circle Chain and the top results are:
The Game Homepage (submit form with registration required at this page)
Funny Games (contact at miluska[at]funny-games.biz)
Dig Your Own Grave (contat at contact[at]digyourowngrave.com)
Gameshot (contact at email[at]gameshot.org)
Internet Games 247 (contact at internetgames247[at]gmail.com)
I am going to send some mails to ask the inclusion of Christmas Couples and see what happens.
How’s going with MochiAds out there?
This is another question I am asking… I referred 40 developers (18 in October, 20 in November, 2 in December) and nobody reached the $100 payout. I know it’s just a matter of time, but I wonder how many of those 40 developers submitted a game, and when.
Well, that’s all at the moment, I’ll be back when I’ll have some interesting news.
Multipart tutorial: available parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
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This post has 17 comments
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Wackiedk
Hi Emanuele.
I’m still enjoying reading about your experiment.
I registered on Mochiads when you linked it here on your site. But I have to admit that I’ve not been earning that much… actually it’s only 0.17$. I’ve used Mochiads on two of my games. The most recent is a game I oploaded about four days ago. Here are the links for my games:
http://www.antony.dk/balance/
http://antony.dk/blowgunz/ (My recent game)
Ciaren Coleman
I made that so called ‘clone’ of your tutorial and I am quite dissapointed that you called it that, it sold for $400 because the graphics were good and it had alot of options, I also added more tiles and took out a few.
Frederik J
I think it’s a pretty good idea, making a paypal button in the game. :) Or, you could make a link to your site. It’ll give some more credits, I think!
I wonder how its going with the OneWeekGame experiment, have you reached far?
Great post!.. Keep ‘em coming.
//Frederik
Sebast78
Thank you from France for all those experiments !
Hoping that the christmas game will have more success in few weeks !
Keep on doing such a good work !! =)
Emanuele Feronato
Ciaren: a game with the same concept of another, with some graphic improvements (if any) and a couple of new features (if any) is a clone.
Anyway, being a clone does not mean being a crap.
I liked your game, but it’s a clone of my tutorial that is a clone of the first “tap keys to drive a ball” game that I don’t even remember the name.
Almost all tutorials in this blog teach you how to clone famous games, so I did not mean to understimate your work.
Anyway, the focus is on another concept: are developers/gamers willing to click on a “donate” button if they find the tutorial/game useful/funny?
At the moment, I am receiving the largest amount of beers from Photoshop users… maybe Photoshoppers are addicted to alchool.
And Mar
Does anyone know a way to enable highscores on Newgrounds?
shiv1411
hi Emanuele!
Gr8 post and we are really looking forward towards your “Kira Factory” game.
A paypals donate button will surely be a good idea as a lot of people buy expensive internet modems just to roam in flash games website. I am sure these people will surely show a big heart towards you.
Christmas Couples game is good. But before being made from poux I think I remember playing it in a Hoyle collection. There it was called “Gravity Tiles.”
tiredoldguy
Great set of tutorials and great games. Thanks for your efforts.
As for the clone discussion….
Maybe everyone knows this, but the pushing a ball through a maze game is very similar to an arcade game from 1984 called Marble Madness. For Marble Madness the ball was a “marble” and it would roll on the top of wall so if you got careless, it would roll off the wall into infinity. Sometimes the wall would slope up or down so the player would have to compensate for this extra energy. The game had icy areas, and windy areas and soft areas etc etc. I spent a lot of quarters on Marble Madness. (wikipedia has nice discussion of marble madness history, but not much about the game itself)
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