Viable way to make money with website

[astarum]

Hi, so I have spent some time creating my browser game and its getting close to being ready for full scale deployment.  At the moment it is perfectly playable, just needs some graphics work etc on it and some unit balancing etc....

I would like to know any reccomeded ways of creating a little income.

I don't need much, just enough to cover hosting costs would be nice, but the game will stay online even if I dont manage this as the outgoings will be less than $10 a month, which I can handle

I have already placed some google ads on the site - I know this won't generate much unless I get thousands of people playing  (Insert histerical laughter here...) and I also have a donate link on the login screen in case someone feels generous

Is there something else I should be doing - I know there is no magic solution, I suppose the best way would be for my game to become very popular (insert more laughing here!)

My website is www.astarum.com if anyone wants a look.

Does anyone have any sucsess stories with their own websites?

Cheers Guys!!

[codestryke]

I'm not sure what category I'm in but when I first put a game online I don't have any way, not even a donation link, for the player's to give me money. IMHO the game comes first meaning when you put the game online for the first time you are going to discover a lot of gotchas that need to be worked out. This plus the influx of player input about the game puts me into deep down programming mode trying to fix things I didn't think of and to give the players what they requested.

Then I attend to the players. I myself and my partner spend time in chat, time answering questions in email, trying to force them to put big issues in the forum so everyone can discuss them. We try with all our effort to do right by the players.

Once all this is accomplished you have a very good understanding of your game and of your players and then it's time to look to what a player would be willing to pay for. Some player's don't have a lot of time to play and are willing to pony up some money to stay equal with someone that can sit all day playing the game. Some times players want something special that only money can buy but then at the same time you can run contest and give those that don't spend money on games a fair chance at getting those items as well.

To myself and my partner it's all about balance and finding that balance can only be accomplished by knowing your game and the players that play the game. I never understood those that bring up a game and have a way to spend money on it right away. To me that seems cheap and they are only doing it for the money and those sites are the ones that tend to last a couple of months and then vanish.

Do right by your game, by your players and trust me the ways to make money will become very easy

[Scion]

A common approach for monetisation that is all the rage at the moment is to use a vitrual currency. This means having some sort of internal currency, eg points, koins, tyranian gobbler horns, etc. These are then used inside the game for purchasing premium services, virtual goods, donating. Once you have a virtual currency in place there are a number of ways to monitise it. You can make direct sales of it, you can also link into a targeted advertising platform, these often offer things like questionairs or trial subscriptions to your users, in return your users get some of your internal currency and you get paid some real cash.

of course if your in it for the money then your business has just shifted from being a games developer to being a virtual currency retailer.... which means the focus shifts to one of what can i do to encourage more people to obtain the virtual currency, and how can i encourage them to spend it once they do....If you take a look at all the gardening/farming style games on facebook/myspace at the moment youll see what i mean.

[astarum]

Thanks for the advice guys.  I would like to avoid the whole monertisation of in-game items, for the basic reason that being a complete noob, I don't feel that my game would be of sufficant quality for someone to actually pay for parts of it. 

Also, that always (as a gamer) puts me off if I see a "Free" game, then realise that to actually compete I have to spend real money!

Having said that - I could just be the minority, what are other peoples views?

I will continue to improve my game, but its a long and hard process as Im sure many of you know!

Once again, thanks for the advice - I will take it all to heart!

[jannesiera]

Also, that always (as a gamer) puts me off if I see a "Free" game, then realise that to actually compete I have to spend real money!

Having said that - I could just be the minority, what are other peoples views?

You're certainly not the only one who thinks that way . The key is to deliver ingame benifits, which don't give the player the power to win.

You could for example limit the amount of power they gain, or even better deliver services which don't affect direct gameplay. A lame example is to let them use colours in messages etc. But this really is a topic on it's own, and there have already been several interesting discussions about it on this forum.

I would like to avoid the whole monertisation of in-game items, for the basic reason that being a complete noob, I don't feel that my game would be of sufficant quality for someone to actually pay for parts of it

I think you could be right. The time you spent on making (and maintaining) a monetization program you could also spent on working on the actual game instead.

So in the beginning you can focus on that, there's always room for monetization later.

I want to note I'm not very experienced in game design, so this are all (like actually every single thing I say) IMHO's. If you would be interested in my journey, you can visit my blog (@ my signature). I recently posted a round-up post about the development of my first browser based game.

[toxin]

You could use something like https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/join/landing/main.html It may work it may not but there are a lot of things that you can set up on it. I have one but it is not known so I have not sold anything. There are other programs you can join, Ebay has one.

[Mufasa]

You could use something like https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/join/landing/main.html It may work it may not but there are a lot of things that you can set up on it. I have one but it is not known so I have not sold anything. There are other programs you can join, Ebay has one.

old thread, but that's not even worth the time. I have a fairly large site that sends amazon thousands of TARGETED visitors per day. The ref fees are so low, I make about 70-80/month from it