How Flash Games Sites Do
Now it’s just the last few weeks of school here at Brown University, and then I enter the real world. Really, I’m already halfway out - I’ve got a job in Ft. Lauderdale, working for Citrix as a tech consultant. Only a couple more exams and papers are in my way.
In any case, I decided to dip my fingers into the flash gamespace and see how that does. I created a prototype website called Zombie Haven with an assortment of random zombie games. As you can see, the design is basic, the layout is basic, and the advertising is minimal (One line AdSense). I stumbled the main page and started seeing hits almost instantly - over the last four days I’ve had between 1.5k and 3k visitors, mostly from StumbleUpon (about 2/3), and 1/3 from www.motika.com.mk (I’m going to assume that’s Greek).
Advertising revenues, as expected, have been pretty dismal. The first 3 days had a CPM of about $.03, although today it bumped up to about $.27 CPM. If this level of traffic and CPM is maintained or increases, this may be an area I’d be willing to look into, although it seems that it would be a high maintenance project. There are additional monetization possibilities that I’ll explore and experiment with once I believe traffic is more stable.
I’m curious to see if there’ll be an upswing in traffic around the time that 28 Weeks Later is released. Personally, I’m just a huge zombie fan and can’t wait for the sequel to 28 Days Later to come out.
Vince Cordic
wrote @ 11:33 pm on May 10, 2007:Hey Mike,
Any updates on the zombie game site? Curious as to how it’s going.
Also, are you only using the one ad links ad unit? If so that’s not so bad, and you could probably get a higher CPM with a 468X60 ad unit, which shouldn’t be too intrusive.
Still though with that type of traffic it’s hard to achieve a decent CPM. If you get enough traffic though you could probably make some decent money with banner ads.
Mike Bogo
wrote @ 11:43 am on May 11, 2007:Good idea Vince, I’ve started testing to see what the difference is between the two versions. Average CPM is about $.13 right now, and traffics at 300-400 uniques per day. I don’t expect that to grow unfortunately because of the limited nature of the site, but it should provide a good testing bed.