How much money I made serving ads to 120k users on my free game.
I made a multiplayer .io game called golfroyale.io - posted it on every web portal for browser games I could find and those portals have sent me 120K+ unique players since launch.
How much money did this make though?
First of all, the game is completely free and monetised through ads. Initially I served 60K impressions to CPMStar, but their CPM was a joke, I only got about $10USD for those impressions.
Why not just use Google as your Ad Network?
Simple. They wouldn't accept my game, I tried.
They only accept games with over 5 million monthly non-iframed impressions into their "Adsense for Games" program.
Luckily a fellow gamedev referred me to his account manager at AdInPlay, their CPMs are a lot better - as you will see from the screenshots below. On AdInPlay I have served about 870K impressions, with 250K of those being video ads, not bad! If you are making a web-game I can also refer you to my account manager at AdInPlay, hmu if so.
On the front screen of the game I have a banner ad, on the score screen I have another banner ad, and on the end-of-round event I trigger a video ad.
One factor I will mention is adblockers. On the site we display our own "ads" where the ad network's ads would appear if the user is using an adblocker, and it says things like "hey we are just two guys trying to make a game in this tough world, if you enjoy golfroyale consider supporting the game by disabling your ad blocker just for our site :)". Anecdotally, I have heard from our users in Discord that some of them have turned off their adblockers because of it. So that's sorta cool.
My AdInPlay dashboard since launch:
So a little over $400EUR since launch, not great, not terrible either - keeps the game servers up.
Some breakdown of my traffic sources (my traffic is ~96% from the web portals I posted to):
The country of origin for my traffic:
So a good amount of high CPM countries in my traffic, so pretty happy about that.
Any questions about the ads, traffic, or anything else feel free to ask.
can you please share the web portals list that you used
Sure.
https://github.com/devcem/HTML5-Game-Platforms
Thank youuuu
i have subscribed with adinplay for about 1 month but got no response. Can you give me information about your account referrer? Thank you
Interesting. Looks like your game is down now. What is the max concurrent users you've ever had ?
I had signed up for adinplay 2 weeks ago. Until now, i don't receive any responce from them yet. Could you please refer me to your account manager? The monthly impressions of my website is 1million+. Am I eligible? Thank You!
Sure thing, pm me your email and I'll see what I can do.
how to send a pm ? i am newbie here
This comment was deleted 4 years ago.
Thanks a lot for sharing. Loved reading this.
Thanks for sharing!!
Thanks for sharing!
That’s great work mate! Honestly, I would have expected you to be making a lot more from that many impressions. Have you got any plans to try different ways to monetise?
Users are asking for merch. So maybe that? If the game were to somehow get bigger the typical route is paying for virtual currency to buy cosmetics in game.
Merch sounds good, I suppose you could just pick a decent drop-shipping service/tee spring etc. A virtual currency sounds very exciting.
I feel like there's potential for you to do something clever with that many impressions though. Maybe promoting another product of yours or affiliate links selling someone else's product. I don't know what common links your audience has. Would be great to hear updates in the future.
Physical merch? You have fans strong enough to go for merch?! That's awesome. Also, do you have any "invite your friends" mechanics? (source: I'm games industry)
No, but it is on the to-do list! Haha.
Thanks for sharing this, it was an interesting read! Have you considered charging money for your games instead of trying to go the ad-supported route? Is your reluctance because you feel people won't pay money for a browser-based game?
After talking to my users a paid game would not be received well.
Which game engine did you use to make your game?
BabylonJS.
I talk about the tech I used here: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/the-tools-i-used-to-make-my-io-game-f1dd84256c
Awesome insight @flukeshot. Can you briefly share what resources went into making this game along with time-frame. Thanks a lot.
I discuss the tools I used here:
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/the-tools-i-used-to-make-my-io-game-f1dd84256c
I also purchased a hand painted texture pack and a pack of 50 hats (to use as cosmetics) for around $50USD each.
The initial version of the game was launched after 3.5 months dev. I then did an additional 3 months post-launch improvements because the game was growing.
Really dope and insightful post. I had always been curious about web game revenue. If you had been on Google Ads from the start, how much do you think that would have made instead?
Not sure tbh, but based on the adsense calculator maybe 25% extra?