Ask HN: What are other ways to monetize mobile games beside freemium or ads?

6 points·aml183··5 comments

If I make an iOS game I can have ads, in-app purchases, or charge to buy the game. Are there other monetization methods that people have tried or created?

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Here's a list of some common revenue models: http://taprun.com/revenue/

Include your resume if you want to get a regular job, or flog your consulting service.

The guy who wrote kidpix for mac os was just starting out but he sold the product to a company that hired him as a result of kidpix' popularity.

Ask your users to visit your website. Post stuff there that they will want to link to.

I have a friend who made several web games that went viral (i.e. he is from Australia, and when I was in Sweden I saw people I didn't know playing it in the lecture). Very simple clones of other games in terms of mechanics, however he wrote them himself and made them topical to current events and pop culture. He put a link to his email and facebook in the footer (he had barely heard of github), and got several job offers from it.

Note this guy was studying electrical engineering, but decided to pick up coding himself. These games got great publicity and landed him the job within 6 months of learning to code.

If your game is trivial, boosting your profile from it can be a much greater reward than monetisation. Granted, this advice isn't as helpful if you plan on being an indie game dev.

Example for such game ?

2nd that /\

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