Making Money with Flash games: Part I: Licensing to portals

[cadin]

This is really great. (Although a few months too late for me ).
I look forward to the future posts as well.

[heyo]

great post.. good insight

[this.Alex]

I dont see why you cant post ur price range people pay you whats the worst that can happen?

[691175002]

Although it would be interesting, I doubt it would provide any real benefit. At best there will be a massive influx of crap games that want 500$ because some other guy got 500.

Not to mention that the numbers probably wont be at all relevant or even similar to what you may get.

[Eager Beaver]

Has any survey been done about the market size, number of sellers, and buyers?The price of the games depends upon the demand and supply. Presently it's a buyer's market, not to speak of developers like Van goghs, and Picassos.

[tomsamson]

thanks for all the positive feedback

to Cimmeran: Yeah, i had something similar in mind, let´s see

to Eager Beaver: Yes, indeed the market has been a buyer´s market for a long time, meanwhile there´s a transition going on for a while though.
As i see it there are thousands of game portals spreading daily and for those there are normally 2 main legal ways to try to compete with the rest:
Get lots of cheap content in or get fewer but in return probably larger scale games in the audience plays for a longer while (which then normally also cost more).
As game developer one can decide if one wants to do one quick game after the other and licence it around a lot for smaller sums per licence or maybe make more exclusive stuff and licence that to few or even just one propper paying client.
As i said meanwhile there are also other revenue ways coming up for developers (ingame ad networks like mochiads for example), so developers are also less bound to the actual payment limit of a portal, so yeah, regarding all that there´s a transition noticable
Decide for yourself at which price/game scale range you want to work, chances aren´t bad there´s a fitting client for that.

[Squize]

"I dont see why you cant post ur price range people pay you whats the worst that can happen?"

It's been a long standing un-written rule here that you don't talk money.

Without fail, every thread that has ever brought up the subject has always descended into a row, usually with people undercutting each other ( Before the freelance forum there used to be requests for ( Paid ) games here, and within about 5 posts it would always end up that someone offered to do it for free for "the experience", which would always start a flame war ).

Also look at the bottom of the forum page. See all those guests here ? A percentage of those are people looking to licence games. If you openly say you'll do a certain game (Let's say Tetris ) for $x, then that sets the limit for that game.
Suppose then someone is approached to code Tetris. They quote a price on what they expect to earn for doing it, only to be directed to your post where you've offered to do it $x.

I understand market forces, and that's just the way it is, but let's not make it that bit harder for everyone in what is already a buyers market.

Also, this is a lot of peoples full time jobs. It amazes me when people ask how much you got paid for doing such and such, I would never ask a stranger how much they got paid doing their job, especially if they knew that I was trying to do the same job as them.

Squize.

[tomsamson]

Good points by Squize. To me i´m not afraid someone else might offer a way better price for what we offer cause i´m meanwhile into doing things few people do. (Not wanting to sound show off,but yeah,its my aim to do something special, so if you seperate yourself from others regarding the quality level/originality/complexity of your work,chances are higher you won´t get underbid by a contender offer).
But yeah,other reasons for still not stating prices openly are still valid, like clients may not like it and its illegal in some countries. Also though i post threads like this to help developers, at the end its always up to the developer,his dev skills and his negotation skills to come up with fitting prices,i´m not into setting them for others.

[Cimmerian]

This may be a little offtopic but i got to ask...
How those games portals make money?Just with banners?I've heard somewhere that miniclip also sells games but i dont know if this is his main goal

[nick_das]

Alot of them make money from banners, served by ad networks (Tribal Fusion, Casale, Fastclick etc), that pay per 1000 impressions (views). For example they might be paid $1 for every 1000 visitors that view the banner.