Indie-Resource.com

Aye, beyond using googles adsense you could use projectwonderful.com. The nifty thing with them is you can use your search to find other browser games that have adverts with them, and see how much they are making from their adverts per day. Gives you an idea of what you might get back!

Personally, I prefer donations.

Also, there are 4 types of ads:

PPC- Pay-Per-Click
Rental - They pay you a steady amount regardless of clicks
1:1 - For every visitor you send to their site, they send 1 to you
PPS - Pay-Per-Signup

Pax.

PaxBritannia wrote:Personally, I prefer donations.

Also, there are 4 types of ads:

PPC- Pay-Per-Click
Rental - They pay you a steady amount regardless of clicks
1:1 - For every visitor you send to their site, they send 1 to you
PPS - Pay-Per-Signup

Pax.

If you have a pretty decent amount of traffic on your game site, the rental type is typically the best. Unless you run a retail site, most people who come to your site aren't paying attention to the ads, nor buying anything from them, rendering PPC and PPS useless. I believe most rental types require fair amounts of traffic though so you have to get your site going first.

Also I heard of another ad option which pays per how many times the ad is viewed, typically a small amount for every 5,000 views. Again, you have to have decent traffic to make money this way. But some sites work better with them than others, such as games which have high amounts of page refreshes and viewers who stick around for long periods of time. It was a few years ago that I looked into these, however, and I don't know how many are still around.

I've played games that charge monthly payments and games that were free with an item shop. I really do feel it is smart to have a legitimately free option to attract players and keep the server full. Many of the monthly fee games do have a free trial option but if your game isn't already popular like WoW then that really doesn't work too well in my opinion.

I think Evony was pretty smart with how easy it allowed people to join the game and how you could still be competitive without spending any money in the item shop. Not that I'm recommending the game but they were smart in my opinion with how they made their money.

Another option is to let people play in a limited fashion for free. Warhammer caps free players at level 20 I believe and I think there are other games that limit how much of the game you can experience while playing for free.

I have an idea that I haven't seen used but I wonder if it would work. If you allowed people to log in to the server as long as the concurrent players were under a certain number for example 1000 person limit. Then if the number of concurrent players goes over 1000 you would not let any free players enter the game but anyone who has paid the fee would not be limited by the 1000 player limit.

I'm thinking this would encourage people to log in to the server in off peak hours while also generating revenue from people who want to be able to log in when the player limit is exceeded. You could also have a timer on free player accounts to log them off after a certain time for example 3 hours. This would force the free players to log in every 3 hours and if the server had reached the player limit they would have to wait till the concurrent players were under 1000 to log in again.

This method would hopefully allow people to play for free a decent amount while also making sure that paying players have plenty of people to play with and that the server is not overwhelmed by free players during peak hours.

towcar wrote:Best way to make money now and the easiest is to have ads on your site.

yeah google adsense, but that is for websites With lots of traffic (which is hard to get)

[quote="Zyviel"I have an idea that I haven't seen used but I wonder if it would work. If you allowed people to log in to the server as long as the concurrent players were under a certain number for example 1000 person limit. Then if the number of concurrent players goes over 1000 you would not let any free players enter the game but anyone who has paid the fee would not be limited by the 1000 player limit.[/quote]

There are actually a number of games that use a system like that. I know R.O.S.E. had a system like that at one point, but I think they have changed it since then. Most of the games with that system seemed to be Asian games that came to the US.

Jackolantern wrote:If you have a pretty decent amount of traffic on your game site, the rental type is typically the best. Unless you run a retail site, most people who come to your site aren't paying attention to the ads, nor buying anything from them, rendering PPC and PPS useless.

I'm not so sure about that. I think this is actually very specifically tied to design, from one account I heard of a game with action points per day. They sounded like they did alright, specifically because the person would run out of action points, have nothing to do and be staring at some ads that might show another game or such. The action points meant the person was still keen to get their game on - on another design where you play till your done with gaming, I'd grant less interest in clicking ads.

With the idea to block people when a server limit is reached, a few PBBG's such as: dragon fable, mech quest, pokemon crater, battleon, etc, us it.

I haven't ever played them before but from what i've heard, it nearly always reaches the limit and alot of people have quit because of it. But then again, they weren't paying ones.

As for the idea of Action Points a game i've played called Pardus uses them, and it becomes a chore to calculate how to spend your APs wisely.


Pax.

P.S. Pardus is a really good RPG style PBBG.

Zyviel wrote:I've played games that charge monthly payments and games that were free with an item shop. I really do feel it is smart to have a legitimately free option to attract players and keep the server full. Many of the monthly fee games do have a free trial option but if your game isn't already popular like WoW then that really doesn't work too well in my opinion.

I think Evony was pretty smart with how easy it allowed people to join the game and how you could still be competitive without spending any money in the item shop. Not that I'm recommending the game but they were smart in my opinion with how they made their money.

Another option is to let people play in a limited fashion for free. Warhammer caps free players at level 20 I believe and I think there are other games that limit how much of the game you can experience while playing for free.

I have an idea that I haven't seen used but I wonder if it would work. If you allowed people to log in to the server as long as the concurrent players were under a certain number for example 1000 person limit. Then if the number of concurrent players goes over 1000 you would not let any free players enter the game but anyone who has paid the fee would not be limited by the 1000 player limit.

I'm thinking this would encourage people to log in to the server in off peak hours while also generating revenue from people who want to be able to log in when the player limit is exceeded. You could also have a timer on free player accounts to log them off after a certain time for example 3 hours. This would force the free players to log in every 3 hours and if the server had reached the player limit they would have to wait till the concurrent players were under 1000 to log in again.

This method would hopefully allow people to play for free a decent amount while also making sure that paying players have plenty of people to play with and that the server is not overwhelmed by free players during peak hours.

it sounds like people would leave and quit if you did this and they wouldn't come back thinking that the server is just full again

Zyviel wrote:I've played games that charge monthly payments and games that were free with an item shop. I really do feel it is smart to have a legitimately free option to attract players and keep the server full. Many of the monthly fee games do have a free trial option but if your game isn't already popular like WoW then that really doesn't work too well in my opinion.

I think Evony was pretty smart with how easy it allowed people to join the game and how you could still be competitive without spending any money in the item shop. Not that I'm recommending the game but they were smart in my opinion with how they made their money.

Another option is to let people play in a limited fashion for free. Warhammer caps free players at level 20 I believe and I think there are other games that limit how much of the game you can experience while playing for free.

I have an idea that I haven't seen used but I wonder if it would work. If you allowed people to log in to the server as long as the concurrent players were under a certain number for example 1000 person limit. Then if the number of concurrent players goes over 1000 you would not let any free players enter the game but anyone who has paid the fee would not be limited by the 1000 player limit.

I'm thinking this would encourage people to log in to the server in off peak hours while also generating revenue from people who want to be able to log in when the player limit is exceeded. You could also have a timer on free player accounts to log them off after a certain time for example 3 hours. This would force the free players to log in every 3 hours and if the server had reached the player limit they would have to wait till the concurrent players were under 1000 to log in again.

This method would hopefully allow people to play for free a decent amount while also making sure that paying players have plenty of people to play with and that the server is not overwhelmed by free players during peak hours.

it sounds like people would leave and quit if you did this and they wouldn't come back thinking that the server is just full again