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[thunderbird]

My friend and I developed a car racing game. It is a single use car racing game running on Windows XP/vista. We are going to release it in two weeks. We plan to offer it as free game. If we offer it for free, what is the best way to monetize it?

The blog

http://bionicoder.wordpress.com/2009/03/04/three-ways-to-monetize-freeware/

lists three popular ways to monetize freeware. Obviously we can not use service model because no service is provided. So our choice is between ad-supported and attracting traffic.

We considered to use this free game to attract user traffic to our web site. But some friends said those traffic may be useless if the traffic is mainly for downloading game.  In your opinion, What is the best way?

I am looking forward to hearing your opinion. Thanks a lot!

ThunderBird

[Lynx]

Do you think people will like the game enough to purchase T-shirts, posters, mugs, and the like?

If not, I don't think you'll be able to get money from them directly, so you'll want to consider ads or taking donations.

[Don Andy]

Putting ads up on your game's website is probably the best bet for making money off it. Don't overdo it though. If people will have to wade through countless pages of ads before getting to the download they'll get it elsewhere or just WON'T get it.

[TheBlackMask]

The best way to monetize a free game is to charge for it.  The quality of freeware on the internet has risen tremendously in the past few years, and it's gotten harder to make money off of free games.  If you want to make money, I suggest you spend some time making a commercial game.

Putting ads up on your game's website is probably the best bet for making money off it.

Ads are worthless nowadays.  Unless you have a website that is getting thousands of hits a day, you probably won't even get accepted into an ad service.  There's always Google Ads, but those make even less, and you probably wouldn't even make enough to reach t he minimum payout amount.

[Snakey]

Get it up on some freeware game portal sites that handle the ads and stuff for you as a possibility?

[Craig Stern]

I'm definitely not earning as much through Google Ads as I used to, and I never really used to earn all that much. But if you're offering it as a free game and it's not made in Flash, ads (in one form or another) are pretty much your only option for monetizing.

[2beegames]

If your website is going to have compelling content that will attract users to return then it might work out. Otherwise maybe you should consider the shareware approach?
Found this link which may be helpful. http://studioeres.com/games/content/tutorial-how-sell-games-shareware

[Paul Eres]

Happy people are linking to that article I wrote. No idea it'd be that popular when I wrote it; I thought most of it was common knowledge and was mainly writing it for the GMC community, which consists mostly of younger people.

Anyway, yes, monetizing "free" games seems like an oxymoron to me, unless it's a Flash game. But either you want to make money from a downloadable game, or you don't. If you do, charge for it; if you don't, give it away for free. Doing it in a compromising "free but..." manner hasn't really worked for people who have tried it, with the exception of hugely popular games like Dwarf Fortress which can rely just on donations.

[Peevish]

The best way to monetize a free game is to charge for it.  The quality of freeware on the internet has risen tremendously in the past few years...

...if the free games are getting better, doesn't that mean fewer people will pay for one?

[Paul Eres]

Not necessarily. The quality of free internet (in libraries, cafes, etc.) has gone up over the years. But that doesn't mean that fewer people are willing to pay for the internet.