Most people to be honest decide to own their own PBBG because they want to make money. Lets all be honest, its the driving force behind nearly all of the games out there. Why else would you put yourself into the world of the game owner. Most players just play the game, they interact with other, they turn it into a pleasurable experience, but every now and again you get the children who like to swear, stamp their feet and cry to anyone who will bother listening that things are not fair, usually because they want something for nothing and they get refused.
Most games make their money from Donation packs, you have to strike a balance between giving an advantage to donators and the non donators. Some games the only way to get on in the game IS to donate. Some it gives you a jump start but not enough for you to catch the big players straight away. Over the 3 years I have been running my PBBG’s I’ve pondered many time taking away Donations, then when the server bill comes in the temptation to do so soon wavers.
So what else is there to do?
You can claw back a little of your server cost using google adsense, but this only pays out after 3-4months and can take a very long time before it makes enough to actually pay for anything. Most my sites have made has been $25 in a month, which isn’t bad but is not going to make me rich enough to never have money worries again. Its something for nothing so its reasonable.
Another alternative is merchandising, you create say a cafe press account and sell hats, t-shirts with your logo on them, problem here is that the prices are already high at cost and by the time you add your amount they are not in a price range your players are willing to pay, and you soon realise its not making you anything near what a good donation system would.
What ideas do you have as alternatives?
As the title says, do you have any ideas for alternative income streams that could be used to generate cash to pay for the day to day running of the server, and the time and effort that is put into keeping the game, server and user community happy and in my case of course coding the game too.
Drop me a comment with your ideas so we can discuss them here.
Some of my other ideas are, amazon id tags to mp3’s, dvd, books etc that can be recommended to people who play the game, that will bring in a little affiliation cash. Or even a subscription based model so that users can if they want to donate a set amount each month to the game.
Mobile Donations.
I am also looking for a secure and stable mobile donations system that works all over the world. I have seen many such systems but most take almost 95% of any donations or they only work in US or in EU countries. Again comment here if you know of any sites that I could look at for this.
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