Interesting article, Though I didnt rate their app much, Im amazed its giving them a salery, I think they was expecting to retire of it.

How long does it take to be accepted into the program and what payment methods are there to pay the 99$?

I need to make some extra money to support my indie game dev efforts, are there any contract companies for games developers, do you know of any that are available that need art staff to contract work for them.

* Talked to a guy I know who's been pretty successful with iphone game development (only one title, but it hit the top 10)*

What kind of figures did he pull in, Ive been hearing some big figures from those that are high in page rank.

Ive decided to buy a cheap mini mac and convert the app using a program I have to a native app, doesnt run on windows mind, hense the cash outlay on a mac computer, I think native apps is the only real option. Though for some things a subscription business model may be the way, but I think its easier for me just to bite the bullet and convert the web app to a native app.

I want to sell access to my iphone web app, I think a subscription business model would fit the bill, I think what Ill do is have a years access to the web app, what are my options, how can I sell a years access to the app, whats available to me. what services are available so I can do this.

They must be able to give the subscriber access, collect the payments and protect the access of the product, I don't want people downloading the product and then giving it out, I know you cannot save web apps on iphone, but a PC user could potentially download it to their PC, and then put it on a web site for free.

How do we sell access to a web site.

[Mo'Minis]

I just read that before I saw your link. 20% is still rubbish.

I need to go over again over Mo'Minis terms, I want to see how fast they pay out, also do they publish all titles, otherwise you could be wasting your time here, they also don't have a policy on the games, like what about mature content.

I find it interesting that its based in Israel, of course its a front company, its run at the top by the big boys, they make these start ups that just spring up, how do I know, its the name.

Mo'Minis,

Its a backwards name. Its a backwards version of Sinim Om.

Sinim is a land mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, in the Book of Isaiah 49:12, This country is unknown, though it is apparent from Isaiah that it was considered one of the most distant lands imaginable.

Om, is a sun god, think of the word Solomon, its the sun in 3 languages, Sol, Om, and On, get it.

So we get faraway Sun God. but as its backwards, its reversed, so its meaning is not faraway, or distant, but close, then reverse the Sun God, so God of darkness, or the black sun, which is the planet Saturn, which is associated with power and and control. Ohh my, let the profane tremble at the cleverness of the illuminated, the company names and logos and language they all use is really quite funny. The lower end worker bees from the Mo'Minis reading this will be obliveous to their company name, but those up the chain that funded the whole operation will know that I know what they know. Hidden in plain sight as some say. Like I said, these corporations are rarely grass roots.

Now how about upping that 20% to something more agreeable.

Id love to hear what kind of rates are being given, my experiance is with bricks and mortar publishers, I thought online publishers would be giving better rates due to the lower costs and risk, though saying that, the devs have lower costs with online games, so perhaps this may be why one is not getting the respect due,lower intro costs and skills, so bigger catchment of devs, supply and demand then turned at pubs.

I cant talk too much about mobiles as I haven't done that platform, but I know the market for bricks and mortar store publishing, I have been offered over 50% and the publisher was paying for the development, and 30% for arcade games, and again the publisher was paying for the game to be made, dev costs over 100k UK sterling for both.
Though saying that, signing for it, and getting it, are not the same thing, an acquaintance of mine got cheated out of around 250k sterling from a major European publisher, they ended up with only a few thousand, it worked out in the end at like 2% or something stupid, not sure if he sued them as he was slow to reveal the full facts.

With the mobile publisher we have here, I don't think they are incurring any marketing costs, so they cut is staggering, you are paying top wack here, Id like to hear how others have done with mobile games and what costs they in cured. These people here are not incurring costs, so 20% is just taking the mikey, they have no costs or risk involved, so 20% is out of order to me.

They need to revise this if they want serious games, I mean come on, your not going to take months making a game on some un tested company you know nothing about with a poor royalty pay out, that's if you get the money, now that's risk to me. I incur that, when I incur risk, I need guarantees or subsidy for that risk. The best they are going to get with that pay out is people making a quick game in a day or a couple of days and having a punt with them. That's a bad business model, they will end up with trash.

Ive seen these companies before, they bring out good software to release easy game making, they offer a portal to sell or distribute, but take a huge profit, they end up with pure tat games made in minutes by amateurs that don't sell, what I'm advising is a better payout, you will get serious developers then, decent games, and you will get sales, otherwise you run the risk of sinking before you start. Like I said, Ive seen this before with companies like just like this, same concept, same ease of making and distributing, poor payout, poor games, no sales, end of company.

If they go for real game makers and not the kids having a go with a new toy, then they may make a business, if not, it will go the same way as the other channels Ive seen with the same just the same business model as this one.

Seems great till you get to the bones of it, they take, wait for it, 80%, can you belive that, Apple for the iphone give you 70% and they keep 30, these guys want 80% and to only give 20%.
You are not going to attract series developers with that deal. You are catering to people that are greatfull that they can make a game at all, and guess what, people like that dont make games that sell, you get what you pay for my friend. I was going to put some serious thought into this, but keeping 80% of the royalty for you is really an insult. Change your figures and perhaps you will have some serious minded developers signing up.

I think developers would be better doing a game as a html app, like the Apple web apps, but sized for a mobile phone, have the game for free and stick some google ads in it.

Anyone made much money doing this, or even got lots of page views, these social bookmarking sites seem all the rage at the moment, I wonder what kind of results developers have got.

To build a native app you need to either 1, run the SDK, thats needs a mac, I dont have the money for one, or two, an aplication that outputs as a native app, I can only think of Unity, again that needs an mac, or 3, use some of the free tools, they require programming skills, I dont program, so thats out.
There is a tool that will convert a web app to a native app, but guess what, it needs a mac. So the options for me are, sell the web app, then with the money buy a mac, and either use the convertor, or re build it in Unity. Both good options, but both need a mac. Which, like I said. I dont have the money for.
Surly, someone in the whole world has built a web app, and sold it and knows how to go about doing this.

This sounds interesting, I have a program that outputs my games as html files, I wonder if they can be embeded in the facebook page, same goes for the other social network service myspace, I dont use social networking myself Im either too busy or perhaps Im too old, Im not sure which. Im not sure how you could monetarize and make some cash, do these social service site allow you to sell stuff, or put adds or links, say put up a demo, then have a link to an outside sales web site?

I have developed a web app for the iphone, iphone applications Apple have their store but the web apps you have to sell yourself, Apple only act as a service to list the web apps, they don't sell them, you have to do that yourself from your own site.

I have a few things I need to sort out before I can do that.

I need to combine its files into one exe, web apps come as html files, so I want to combine them into one simple file to exe to launch the program without having lots of html files and directories. I also need to protect as best I can the program for being copied or pirated, I can see the application being passed round amongst people due to the nature of the app, and that I don't want, if you want it, buy it, I don't want it passed around for free, these things are not easy to make and I'm far from wealthy, in fact quite the reverse. I also need to have something to distribute it and process the orders.

I'm really quite in a muddle here, it was one thing making it, now Ive got to get it ready in a way to sell the product, If I can work through this step I think I can get a hell of a lot of sales, its something that will sell very well, thats if the iphone web app part of Apple gets anywhere near the visitors that the regular iphone application gets, later on Ill port the web app to the regular iphone application when I get the finances and time to do so, but for now I have the product as a iphone web app and I need some direction on what I can do here as I'm quite unsure of my next steps.

Can anyone point me in the right direction.

Just a note on pricing, the app is 2.99 usd, I thought Id add that, in case it affects pricing of ecommerce services.

Also do an option that for a fee you can have a version without the adds, So you can make money from adverts from the free game and sell it as well, the hook is the free version, then from their we have our customer base that we can sell extra features to.

20 usd seems like a cut point on games, any less and the buyer will believe price is related to perceived value, for 20 usd we have to make a reasonably sized game, this takes time and investment,we want a quicker return on these, we could offer a smaller game, less dev time, quicker return, but it will be charged at less and may have a stigma of less value, so the option could be, don't sell the game, sell the right to not see the adverts, you are not buying the game, it is free, you are buying an add free version, for this we can charge a small fee, big user base from a free game, revenue from adverts from this and a percentage who don't like adverts and are fans of the game will opt to have the advert free version, this way we can see a return on games far quicker. Also the large user base from a free game can be brought in to a news letter subscription, so broadening your potential customer base, this could be volunteer, or if you was very ruthless then needed before one is eligible to join up to the free game, though I don't think that's a good idea, volunteer is much better, you could also offer two versions of the game, a free version with adds and a subscription or staggered content version, upgrades extra levels characters etc, could be available for the paid version, with the free version acting more like a permanent trial, eventually the staggered content version if it continued to gain interest and releases would add up to a full game, which would be released as a stand alone product.

So all in all I see that advert generated revenue could have many possibilities to indie developers who do not have the funds for large long term projects that have risk involved with long dev times, using the method I outline development can continue as long as the project is profitable and has a much lower price entry for the developer.

Just looking for alternate revenue, unsure about how much revenue can be made in this line, I think one needs major traffic to make money from advertising, though free is a good incentive, especially if one can corner a niche market, yes your right, just make a good game and sell it, but one has a long dev cycle that costs, with advertising one may make a return quicker perhaps?

What do you think of using game adds to make revenue, in game 'dynamic' adds, adds that play between levels loading or commercials before the game stats. Do you think this is a good way to generate revenue, I was thinking about running some niche fps in a browser and using commercials to make the money and have these games to play online for free, is this a good market do you think. Of course one would have to get good traffic, but I see it as a sort development cycle, and who can resist free games, if the quality is good.

So can you get a refund on the next Halo game or Gears of War then, I think you will find the answer is no, then why is that?

Also what possible reason whould they have for the refund, it didnt work, play the demo first, so the game works then, then you want a refund for what reason?

7% of the population are sociopaths, psychopaths or have anti social disorders, you are going to get that figure refunding your game, that 7% is a general figure of the population, it may be even higher for your game downloads if the game has anti social, violence or themes of acquiring power, as they will be attracted to those concepts. That's why they have tests for positions of authority to filter hopefully these people out, say for example a prison warder. This 7% could be considered a parasitic sub species of the human race, they have no intention of doing what is fair in any sense, so I don't think offering 30 day refunds is a good idea.
Issue a demo, that insures that it works on their PC, so why else do they need a refund.

That adds up to 277.7 hours (not counting any development time to create your own system).  Save any money yet?

pay someone 5 quid an hour, 277 x 5 = 1385 pounds sterling. Thats cheaper than the 100,000 of our 100,000 selling 10 pounds game.

But like the post says, this is the idiots guide.

lets walk through what happens, what exactly does paypal do, what does the seller do, like I said, this is the idiots guide, for someone that knows nothing about it, as in nothing.