How to use MindJolt’s API (and why you should do it)

Reading the comments in this blog, I saw there is a bit of confusion about MindJolt (MJ from now on) API

On the site, there isn’t any guide, and the only way to have some information is by email from Richard Fields.

Besides Richard must be a very busy guy with such a game portal, he always replies to emails… the only issue is sometimes it may take a week before a mail and another. That’s normal, and I’ll never thank Richard enough for the precious time he spends answering to my emails.

Before I show you how to use MJ API, I would like to tell you why you should use it in your games.

In order to make money with MochiAds, you need to submit a game to portals and sites with three main parameters: games played, eCPM and aggressivity

games played is the amount of times your game will be played in a portal. It’s very important, because sometimes (you will understand later why I wrote “sometimes”) tons of plays mean tons of ads shown and tons of money. Moreover, the more people play your game, the more people may click on the button in your game that opens your site. That’s why sponsors want to have their logo in your game: if your game will be played a lot, it’s possible that a lot of people will click on the “play more games” button they want you to put in your game.
In my case, I can’t say how many people come to this blog from a link into my games, but with about 4,000,000 games played, I think at least 2,000 people come and see this site.
Maybe you are one of them. If I am right, I would like to know it. Having a game on MJ frontpage means having from 30,000 to 50,000 games played every day, even if there was a day Christmas Couples reached 100,000 plays

eCPM is the estimated Cost per mille, or cost per thousand. Anyway in our case it’s not a cost, but the income.
If your game has an eCPM of $0.50, that means that every 1,000 ads shown you will earn 50 cents. eCPM may vary slighty according to the geographical location your game is being played… MochiAds did not release an official table but seems that US players raise the eCPM. My eCPM ranged from $0.02 to about $0.80… that’s 40 times higher, and means that in the first case 40,000 ads generate the same income as 1,000 in the second one.
Since every portal has its own audience, it’s not wrong talking about portals eCPM instead of games eCPM. According to my statistics, I suppose freeworldgroup has a low eCPM while MJ has an high one. It would be nice if someday Mochi guys will release a table with major sites eCPM.

aggressivity maesures the portal as if it was a virus. The more aggressive the virus, the more portals will be infected by your game. You have to know there are some portals that are extremely aggressive: when Circle Chain got a review on Jay is Games, a lot of minor portals got infected by it. Obviously I am not talking about a real infection… but if your game gets a frontpage on some famous portals, then every respectable portal must have your game.
Get a frontpage on NewGrounds, and you won’t need to submit your game to a thousand sites. It would be nice if developers help me to make a list of the most aggressive portals. MJ is not one of them, but it’s a gold mine anyway.

End of the boring part, and let’s see how to use MJ API

In the first frame of your game, the one where probably you put your MochiBot code, add this line:

_lockroot=true;

Then, in the frame where it’s game over and you are about to display the score, just write

ScoreAPI = new LocalConnection();

to connect with MJ server, and

ScoreAPI.send(_root.com_mindjolt_api, "submitScore", yourscorevariable);

To send the score. Just replace yourscorevariable with the variable you used to store the score.

If your game has different modes, such as easy, medium, hard, or puzzle, campaign, and so on, just add an extra variable in this way

ScoreAPI.send(_root.com_mindjolt_api, "submitScore", yourscorevariable, "easy");

Replacing easy with anything you want (just assure this makes a sense)

If your game already hosts MochiAds leaderboards it’s not a problem… there is no conflict and you don’t have to worry about anything. Once your game is ready, you can submit it by email at rfields [at] mindjolt [dot] com and if Richard likes your game, you are about to make at least $20/day

Thanks to Richard Fields for letting me publish this guide (I guess)

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