Hello everyone,

In the upcoming months, I am expecting to launch a new website that features my newest, multi-player online game.

While I don't mind sponsoring this site for the first few months, until it gains a solid support base, I would like the site to generate enough revenue to cover its operating costs and help me recoup the expenses associated with the game development.

So how to do acquire this revenue?

The first idea that comes to my mind is to have a subscription based website -- charge the members some sort of monthly/yearly fee. This follows the traditional "pay to use" model that I use for my non-web based software, but I'm wondering if there is a "better", less obtrusive way to accomplish the same thing.

I often read about advertisements being used to fund websites. The most popular seems to be Google's Adsense. I hesitate to to use Google for two reasons:

1) My website does not use a lot of HTML -- all my games are hosted inside the Adobe Flash plug-in. While these plug-ins appear on my HTML page, the only text that Google will be able to parse on the page is essentially the rules of how to play the game.... I'm not confident that the ads will be targeted correctly and as a result poor response/monthly revenue.

2) I've read way too many complaints online from people that claim Google has suspended their account just as they were nearing the $100 minimum required to receive payment. I don't doubt some of these individuals tried to cheat the system, but I do know that Google automates everything and automation makes mistakes. I don't want to deal with those headaches.

I've also considered selling my ad space to vendors directly. I can see this would be beneficial because it cuts out the middle man and earnings would probably be higher. However, I'd rather spend my time developing new software and not pretending to be an advertising agent.

Later on, I may return to the tradition model and simply sell licenses to other websites that want to host my game on their server for their users. I thought I would try something new first.

So please, if you have experience with generating revenue from a website, please pipe in with your suggestions.

Hi

commission junction may be a good site to look at as you can pick the ad's/site to use and then get paid per click/sale.

I would say that you should seriously consider Google Adsense, complaints aside. They are reasonable people, and you can always add keywords to your site's content in simple ways such as providing a description of the game to make for targeted ads.

Besides this, though, I would still recommend you use various ad networks rather than selling the ads yourself. It doesn't seem like it will be worth your time to do your own ad sales, especially at this scale.