Is there money to be made here?

OK, I hate to be this cold and commercial, but, I've been toying with getting the flash runtime for a while, but since I'm in business (I work for myself), I can't dedicate too much time to working on stuff which isn't going to pay for my time... I've made good money using the iOS exporter, not just made back what I spent on the software but also twice what I'd have made if I had worked in the time I spent making the game. I know there's Mochi ads etc. available here but I've never really had anything pay for itself with ads before, every ad service I've tried has basically given me a few pennies and thus I've wasted the time I spent on the project. As much as I'd love to do everything free just to know people are playing it, these days it's just not possible with my business. How much money is there to be made here, really? Any success (or failure) stories?

Ads won't make enough to pay for your time, you'd have to go for sponsoring. Guess it's better to grow your iOS business, since you already have a good base now. Flash is completely different and requires much more than dealing with the runtime specifics and technical stuff. And if you don't find a sponsor who offers an acceptable deal, you have a problem to monetize your game. Personally, I target iOS and Windows now and keep Flash in mind. Could be a nice addition if a game allows easy conversion.

I believe Steve Harris has had a lot of success with both - I've had one minor hit with an advert-fuelled game, but as JoKa said, the more reliable way of making money is through sponsorship. It can take a while (the recommended period is six weeks) for a game to be picked up - I wrote an article about my own experience here. http://www.clickteam.info/davidn/post.php?id=415602

As far as I know, there are 3 ways to monetize a Flash game: sponsorship, ads, in-app purchase (or a mix of these). The biggest bucks are probably to be made from a sponsor. But if you have a VERY successful game, that spreads well, then you could also make some serious money from ads + virtual goods. I think that the success of a game depends on a lot of factors, some of which the developer does not control.
My most successful game, a puzzle game called My Shapes, made me about 1,000 USD with MochiAds alone in about 2 years. Today I still earn about 1.5 USD/day with that game. I didn't push it too hard, but at the beginning it got picked by a few bigger websites, and then smaller websites pick it up etc.. Of course this is not enough to live off of. Or maybe it is, if you release enough games and each of them have a long lifetime.

If you want to learn more about the Flash games market & sponsorship, I suggest you to read the whole FGLopedia at flashgamelicense.com.

Virtual goods would require quite some extra work to offer a reliable service. Using Mochicoins only may be too limited. Impressive numbers for My Shapes, I'm happy if I get a single Dollar with 19 games on Mochi. I don't think all of them are crap. But simply pumping out games is no warranty for success :)

The Flash market is so hard to predict and on other platforms you have more options for marketing.

I managed to get 150,000 hits on my dress up game over a three day period, but I only made $20.00 so far with mochiads. Some sponsor in China picked it up at mochiads and my stats started going crazy!

The problem is that all of my links are getting blocked by the sites. I don't know how to get around that...

I recently licensed a (currently unreleased) Flash game to a big Flash portal for $3500. For a game that took four weeks to make, it was a bit of a surprise success. I'm going to do a full write up of my experience soon, if you're interested. It's certainly possible to make money, but it all comes down to quality.

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Originally Posted by DizzyDoo

I recently licensed a (currently unreleased) Flash game to a big Flash portal for $3500. For a game that took four weeks to make, it was a bit of a surprise success. I'm going to do a full write up of my experience soon, if you're interested. It's certainly possible to make money, but it all comes down to quality.

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I'd read it.

Yes, everyone loves success stories :)

I sold 6 games over at FGL beyond, I made over 3500 dollar for small games, never had a big hit but it's fun to go through the whole bidding thing, always hoping for a bigger bid.
Glad to help you out when you have the exporter with anything DistantJ!

I've made a decent amount of money for a hobby from both MochiAds and sponsorship licenses, but business-wise, if I evaluate it purely just from a business point of view and calculate the total investment with opportunity costs, I've made loss with almost every game.

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Originally Posted by MJK

I've made a decent amount of money for a hobby from both MochiAds and sponsorship licenses, but business-wise, if I evaluate it purely just from a business point of view and calculate the total investment with opportunity costs, I've made loss with almost every game.

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Could you go into that a little more, where do the losses come from? Does it not work out to a good hourly wage, or are there other expenses?

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Originally Posted by DizzyDoo

Could you go into that a little more, where do the losses come from? Does it not work out to a good hourly wage, or are there other expenses?

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Well, basically the earnings per invested hour is lower than the opportunity cost for the same time, which results in financial loss. So yes, the hourly wage has not been on a level that would justify this activity for me personally from a business perspective. Of course it might change in the future if I start making better games or similar games more efficiently.

One game has been pretty good, though. I used 3 hours in total to make and release the game, and it has generated a few hundreds. So that's clearly "green" on my dashboard. ;)

I see. All but my last project haven't been properly worth my time for the money, but that last project makes up for the previous ones. Of course, for me, I'm simply using game development to pay my way through Uni, rather than making something I can live off. But if I can scale that up, then great, I'll have a great job, but until then, making games rather than working in a supermarket makes it worth it.

Plus, I just really like making games.

I've made a good amount of income from using this runtime, but not through ads or a standard Flash type use. I use the runtime to export to Flash and then use the BlackBerry Playbook SDK to wrap it into a .bar file for sale at the BlackBerry App World. Since the next gen BlackBerrys will all run their new OS it will in turn, be easy to port to them as well. Just another option.

Thats neat! Could you perhaps write a tutorial on how to port to Blackberry? I never would have thought you could translate it like that.,,,

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Originally Posted by DTownTony

I've made a good amount of income from using this runtime, but not through ads or a standard Flash type use. I use the runtime to export to Flash and then use the BlackBerry Playbook SDK to wrap it into a .bar file for sale at the BlackBerry App World. Since the next gen BlackBerrys will all run their new OS it will in turn, be easy to port to them as well. Just another option.

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Originally Posted by kinase

Thats neat! Could you perhaps write a tutorial on how to port to Blackberry? I never would have thought you could translate it like that.,,,

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Ive been looking into doing this process too. All the info on how to do it is located in the support area at blackberry:
http://supportforums.blackberry.com/...k/td-p/1080047

Its a little complicated but I managed to get my MMF2 app running on the simulator, I don't have an actually device to test on yet :/
I wish they were still offering free ones...

Adobe Air does wonders though, its a shame that its not as integrated into other device platforms. I found that a similar process can be performed for creating android apps but it may require end users to download an additional air plugin or something.