So, I've been looking up tips on how to make money with Flash games. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be all that much concrete advice. Most of the topics seem to point to the same ideas:
1. Website advertising
2. In game advertising
3. Sponsorship
4. Micro transactions
5. Submitting your games into contests and winning
6. Using your first game to locate contract work
Point 5 and 6 are just kind of dumb in my opinion. Well, actually doing contract work just doesn't sound all that much fun. I'm not trying to be an independent developer so that I can make other people's games...
Winning contests is not something that I usually think about, but could probably help with advertising. With that said, I'm always more concerned with building a long lasting business than anything. I feel like winning a contest relies too much on luck and not enough on understanding the fundamentals of the marketplace.
Website advertising is easy enough. As is in game advertising (I'm planning to implement Mochiads into my game). Based on my research, however, never forms of advertising offer that much money. Based off a search in the Armor games forum (Armor Games), the amount is VERY low - someone said that they earned $2 for 400 views. Multiplying that out, that's quite a lot of views in order to earn a $1000.
Sponsorship seems to bring you a lot of money up front with the possibility of giving up creative control of the game. To be honest, this is the issue that I'm most confused with. After you find a sponsor for a game, can you still put the game on other sites? Or, is it like a case by case deal? In any case, sponsorship seems to be a great way to bring in some capital right away. It's something that I'm really excited to learn more about in the future (be sure to check out Flash Game License for help sponsoring your game).
Lastly, micro transactions is something that I'm REALLY interested in. Unfortunately, I'm not really sure how to implement it well. In addition, in order to add micro transactions, I would have to develop more content. That isn't such a bad thing, but knowing what to add and how to add it is a difficult thing to choose. Outside of adding a couple of levels, I can't think of how adding any particular feature would add TOO much to the game.
So, that's what I found. I'm sure that there is a bunch of stuff that I'm missing, but that gives a great summary of where I'm at and what I'm thinking about. I'd love to hear from other people if they had any comments!
