View Full Version : Which portal is the best?
Many of you have released your games on serveral portals. So, on which portals have made you the most sales? I'm not asking for sale datas, I'm only interessted which portal made you the most money :-)
Our Absolute Blue was released (over 1 year ago if I remember right) on various portals (Big Fish Games, Reflexive, NextArcade...). Most of our earnings were/are from direct sales, but from the Portals Reflexive was the winner (but I'm sure that is caused because they are some of the few portals who have a good audience for shooter games).
amaranth
10-11-2006, 10:37 AM
Big Fish Games, Yahoo, and Arcade Town
(Arcade Town is smaller, but ironically, sales go up every month not down. Gotta love that!)
Sybixsus
10-11-2006, 10:56 AM
Did you ever see a cent out of NextArcade? I had two games in the top ten for weeks and never received a cent out of them. When I asked what was going on they said they hadn't sold any, and gave me some old pony about the top ten list was nothing to do with sales.
luggage
10-11-2006, 11:05 AM
You should have pulled your game from their site. They were either lying or your game wasn't selling so there was probably no point it being on there.
Genimo
10-11-2006, 11:11 AM
Big Fish Games, Yahoo, and Arcade Town
Amanda, I could not find Aveyond on RealArcade, zone.msn.com or TryGames.com. Where you unable or unwilling to distribute via these portals?
Sybixsus
10-11-2006, 12:08 PM
You should have pulled your game from their site. They were either lying or your game wasn't selling so there was probably no point it being on there.
To be honest, I''d completely forgotten about them until they were mentioned in this thread. Being very much the one man band back then ( and again just recently ) I was easily sidetracked by things which *were* making me money, but yes, I should have had them remove the games.
NextArcade never had more than a handful of visitors... :(
It was more or less still-born.
I'll take your games down, Sybixsus...
Big Fish Games, Yahoo, and Arcade Town
(Arcade Town is smaller, but ironically, sales go up every month not down. Gotta love that!)
there's no irony in that, just science. If you type "aveyond" on google, he's 2nd, you're first. Soon he'll be first and you'll be second and he'll sell even more!
That's a very common method of "affiliates", they query better than the vendor on their own game names and manage to grab the sales of people typing directly the game name. Many portals are very good at that ;) ( since their sites are powerful, they rank better than an average indy site )
Jmc
arcadetown
10-12-2006, 12:48 AM
Aveyond sold well enough here from day 1 well before it started appearing in serps. Sure serps help some but I suspect the measures we've taken to push it internally (home page feature, nudging affiliates, using internal ad inventory, etc) have tons more to do with it. That and our users simply love strategy, adventure, and RPG games plus our sales keep increasing overall.
p.s. doubt anyone could ever knock her off #1 spot there, too much time has past.
Fun, everyone reports that google is the biggest source of traffic, so I really don't know how being in the first positions can be a "small factor".
Also I notice you're taking all the best spot for good queries like: "RPG games", "strategy games", "Adventure Games", "Shooting games" and so on.
Nothing wrong, business is business: but it makes me laugh when (newbie) developers say "is just an extra revenue channel". Yes and the pigs fly, don't you know? ;)
arcadetown
10-12-2006, 01:51 AM
Averaging 300k unique visitors per day we can push far more traffic internally to a game than any particular keyword could accomplish. Last MediaMetrix report I saw for Aug 06 ranked us #29 world wide for all gaming sites while Alexa currently shows us ranked 1970 for all sites. BigFish #16 and 1632 in comparison. Surely that's not tiny nor an "affiliate" level. If serps provide of course we'll take it (you'd say no thanks?) but once again it's only a small part of our equation.
Sure, Google is a factor, but I wouldn't overestimate it. Whenever I notice a spike in sales, it's not related to visits from serps. My sales spikes are always related to articles and reviews in online mags or printed mags. And their links lead most readers directly to my site.
Nexic
10-12-2006, 01:57 AM
That's a very common method of "affiliates", they query better than the vendor on their own game names and manage to grab the sales of people typing directly the game name. Many portals are very good at that ( since their sites are powerful, they rank better than an average indy site )
No portal or affiliate has ever beaten me to #1 on google for my own game name. Simply make sure your game page is spidered about a month before it appears anywhere else. Assuming your game name isn't too common it seems google will tag the first page it spiders as the official source.
Oh and for god sakes put the game name in the <title> tags!!!! Seen a couple of devs do that and as a result end up like 13th for their own game name.
tewe76
10-12-2006, 04:03 AM
Sorry for my ignorance, but what is "serps"?:confused:
Search engine result pages :)
Genimo
10-12-2006, 11:18 AM
Last MediaMetrix report I saw...
Sorry to hijack the thread, but how does one get such report? I assume you have to pay for it, how much? ComScore web site it pretty useless...
Thanks!
This is my best guess at the top 15 casual/game download portals:
1 - Real Arcade
2 - Yahoo Games
3 - MSN Gaming Zone
4 - Pogo
5 - Gamehouse
6 - PopCap
7 - Big Fish Games
8 - Shockwave
9 - AOL Games
10 - iWin
11 - TryGames
12 - Reflexive
13 - ArcadeTown
14 - Download Free Games
15 - Spintop Games
This is just a mildly educated guess - pretty unclear on #s 4-9 and where they are in relation to each other. I am taking into account affiliate networks and main site combined for Reflexive and Trygames. I don't think anyone really knows for sure who is where but I think most in the industry would agree that these on the list are top 20 players.
Others I am not sure where to fit the following for US audience - Zylom (powerhouse European portal), Grab, Oberon (their main site), Boonty (main site), WildTangent. GameFiesta is a bit of a wild card. They don't have a very good Alexa ranking but they do have very strong traffic potential due to other industries the parent company works in so there could be more traffic funneling over than Alexa shows. Reflexive could be in top 10 but hard to tell their too due to unknown size and power of affiliate network.
I am sure I am forgetting some major players but this is off the top of my head. Sorry if I grossly underestimated anyone - feel free to correct me :)
Yield
10-12-2006, 05:27 PM
If money is your criteria, Real Arcade is easily the best portal.
arcadetown
10-13-2006, 07:37 AM
A comment about what I believe is a mis-conception about searches and portals. Portal users are not special, they search. So when a portal shows a game to their large user base they add to the total searches generated.
Google for "Aveyond" or "Virtual Villagers". Bet those developers don't complain about the net sum they gain from portal leakage. Congratulations, they deserve it! Bet they'd net sum gain from portals even if came up just #5 on google. Some analysis... looking at our Oct Aveyond stats we internally generated 100x the impressions that even a good # 2 google spot generated, that's what I mean by small impact. Look closer at the VV search results, notice we're burried so yes we can get on losing side (more often than I like).
Also please note we pay a better commission than most portals so if we do manage to place higher than other portals I imagine it's better for developers.
Read Nexic's comment above, very good advice for all developers!
Well I'm not so sure that everyone goes searching ;)
but there's a recent portal trick - they underprice the game.
(is a general discussion, don't take this personally)
If I am interested in gameA and I can get from portalX for $12 instead of $20 (or even $6 in case of those subscriptions) I will always buy it for $6 unless I'm so inclined (and full of money) to buy the game directly from the developer.
Everyone can believe what they want - I'm just curious to see, that only a few years later, nobody does ever CONSIDER the "selling directly" strategy anymore.
Times have really changed.
amaranth
10-13-2006, 10:29 AM
Amanda, I could not find Aveyond on RealArcade, zone.msn.com or TryGames.com. Where you unable or unwilling to distribute via these portals?
Nah, Aveyond has been sent to these places a while ago, but my general impression is that they don't think it will sell to their audience. (I think this is true for at least one of these companies.) It's a little frustrating because the game has done better than many of the games they've recently listed, but oh well. :p
Hey, you don't always win every battle to win the war. I'm the new kid on the block, and I still have to prove myself. Onward!!!
@jwc
I can tell you that my direct sales have gone up since I listed my game on portals. :) For me, I would never give up putting energy into selling directly. It's a huge chunk of my sales, and I love rolling up my sleeves and guerrilla marketing the game to the gazillion download sites that aren't portals. If more developers stop doing this, I think it will mean more exposure for those of us who continue to do it.
Roman Budzowski
10-13-2006, 01:55 PM
If I am interested in gameA and I can get from portalX for $12 instead of $20 (or even $6 in case of those subscriptions) I will always buy it for $6 unless I'm so inclined (and full of money) to buy the game directly from the developer.
Can you please show me a portal that sells one single game for less than $19.95?
Can you please show me a portal that sells one single game for less than $19.95?
I think he's referring to RA gamepass at £5.95 per month -which gets you one game free per month (sorry, I'm getting geo-ip'd out from here, so can't see the dollar price - think it's $8 currently?).
I think some of the other portals have similar deals.
I have several priced rather low:
http://www.download-free-games.com/store/
However, I will share that I don't think revising the price down has helped net revenue at all and I will probably be raising those back up again.
Roman Budzowski
10-14-2006, 01:39 AM
But you need a pass to get a title discounted (or buy it bundled). No one will give you 19.95 game cheaper is you come to them to buy just one game (and then go away).
But you need a pass to get a title discounted (or buy it bundled). No one will give you 19.95 game cheaper is you come to them to buy just one game (and then go away).
Hm is quite simple. Really. Is quite easy to find...
http://www.realarcade.com/gamepass
http://www.bigfishgames.com/store/gameclub.html
now ask yourself: who is going to get a subscription? a good potential customer, one that buys game often or a bad one that buy a game a year?
someone always interested in buying games (10+ games bought a year) will most likely join those clubs because they save lot of money and they can easily find new games every week.
No portal or affiliate has ever beaten me to #1 on google for my own game name.
http://www.google.com/search?q=kudos+game+download
seems like that "someone" just beat Cliffsky on #1 :eek:
seems like that "someone" just beat Cliffsky on #1
My favorite is the sponsored link the right.
"Why even buy games? Download Them!"
Kudos Game Download?
$19/Yr Download Kudos PC Game Now
Why Even Buy Games? Download Them!
Jack Norton
10-17-2006, 08:16 AM
Yeah that advert is a scam. I wonder why google even allow it... :o
arcadetown
10-17-2006, 11:51 AM
http://www.google.com/search?q=kudos+game+download
seems like that "someone" just beat Cliffsky on #1 :eek:
And are you showing your claimed "portal trick" or simply that Cliff unfortunately didn't do all his homework in setting up his web pages properly? Your claimed "newbie" Amanda sure seems to know what she's doing, wolf in sheep's clothing? Oddly you're not complaining that your site shows up quite nicely for that term.
Pyabo
10-17-2006, 12:40 PM
My favorite is the sponsored link the right.
"Why even buy games? Download Them!"
Those pricks... does Google have an abuse report email address?
cliffski
10-17-2006, 01:06 PM
Yeah that advert is a scam. I wonder why google even allow it... :o
It would be a nightmare if people kept clicking that cost per click link too.
Pyabo
10-18-2006, 12:02 AM
It would be a nightmare if people kept clicking that cost per click link too.
They can only be charged a predetermined maximum though, right?
cliffski
10-18-2006, 12:28 AM
Yes, and it would be terrible if none of the people clicking it ever bought/downloaded anything, as it would have wasted their budget.
The truth is: people do not need search engines to find Yahoo! or Real, or even Big Fish Games.
Serps are important for indies, but you have to do really serious job to earn big money on se-traffic.
Pyabo
10-18-2006, 12:20 PM
Yes, and it would be terrible if none of the people clicking it ever bought/downloaded anything, as it would have wasted their budget.
What we need is a botnet that only uses its powers for good.
soniCron
10-18-2006, 12:44 PM
What we need is a botnet that only uses its powers for good. Hah! Brilliant! :D Sol_HSA (http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?t=8756), redirect that bot to the sponsored link on here: http://www.google.com/search?q=kudos+game+download
Pyabo
10-19-2006, 01:09 PM
Unfortunately, that won't work... all the hits were from one IP address.
But it's an interesting idea. What if someone with a popular blog add a img tag that actually pointed at that link? Sure, it would show up as an error on the page, but every browser hitting the page would be "clicking" that link, right? Hmmmmm... there must be something in the link stopping that from happening?
Ruining other people budgets doesn't make any good to any indie.
Chris Evans
10-19-2006, 10:10 PM
Yeah I'm not sure why we're discussing this. It's a waste of time and it's not professional. When you roll in the mud with the pigs all you do is get dirty and smelly yourself.
arcadetown
10-19-2006, 10:35 PM
Great statement Chris.
Pyabo
10-20-2006, 12:08 PM
On the other hand, if you don't actively fight this sort of thing (profiting from pirated software), it only encourages more of it.
If there was a simple and easy way to stop this, would it still be "rolling around in the mud?"
vBulletin v3.6.0, Copyright ©2000-2008, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.