Make money from flash games

Flash games earn money. The interesting part is what you earn from these… but let’s start from the start. There are two ways to earn money from flash games. Advertisements (ads) and licensing ( or sponsoring ). I’ve so far tried out only the first one, but I’m into trying licensing when I get the chance.

To sum up licensing, it is the part where you sell your flash game to a sponsor. For that they pay you an interesting amount of money, and if they have it exclusively your earnings are more. What you are supposed to do is add their logo and their link into your game, and give the swf to them. They also may accept your ads. The fact is that licensing is a one time pay job, but it has the potential of big earnings. It also needs a lot of waiting time, about 2 months, to get a fair offer. If you happen to get interested check out Flash Game License. That’s it for licensing.

Advertisements is the part that I’ve been working on. I’ve been publishing games through Mochi, and Kongregate so far. My games aren’t big, just simple. A space invaders game, a hangman, quizzes, and more. One game stats of these simple games for 1 month are about ~3.000 players, ~7.000 impressions (how many times the ads have been viewed) and 1.2$ earnings. Stats differ from service to service since players choose these respectively for the games that they have to offer. Try to view some games, the date they’ve been published and the total views they have to figure out what is interesting and what is not. My take on that is quantity over quality, and that’s why I said simple games. Their quality is good, they are just classic games that you’ve surely have seen again so far. Development times are smaller, more titles come up every month that raise your total revenue.

Tricks that you can use, is first being a publisher by yourself. You can create your own website (try blogger for example), and post there your games. That way you can create a community by yourself which will play your games. Be warned though, that creating a community is hard job and takes a lot of time and devotion. Mochi also supports publishers by sharing a 10% of their revenue, if you host by yourself the games’ files. Another classic trick is adding a ‘More games’ button that will open a page with more games from you. That way you ‘recycle’ players which generate more impressions.

Cons

Both Mochi and Kongregate have a limit which you must pass to take your money. 100$ earnings for Mochi, 25$ for Kongregate. If you make your calculations you’ll need to invest a fair amount of time to reach these goals. Even if you at last achieve it, you’ll have to wait for a month before you get approval to take your money.

How to upload games to Mochi

For Mochi its simple. After you register you’ll find in your Dashboard a Setup New Game button. Then upload your game files. You will be introduced to a variable to authenticate your game. Just type public var _mochiads_game_id:String = "yourstringhere123"; and MochiServices.connect(_mochiads_game_id, root); in your games’ constructor. After uploading you’ll have to wait for 24 hours until the game gets accepted for Distribution. The same goes for patching up your game. You’ll need to provide icons and a description for that.

How to upload games to Kongregate

While you’re logged in, got to the top right of the page, open the pop up menu of your profile and click on the Upload A Game option. Then you must upload your files and set up your stats if you use. Well, that’s it. Next I’m planning on trying for licensing, just to check it out.