Comments on: Indie Flash Game Development: A 2009 Year-End Retrospective

By: emily stephenes

emily stephenes — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 06:21:04 +0000

Thanks for the great post.And very good artical and pure statics.

By: Josh Tynjala

Josh Tynjala — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 04:06:54 +0000

“Effective CPM… [is] calculated by dividing estimated earnings by the number of page impressions, then multiplying by 1000.”
Source: Google AdSense

If you solve that equation for earnings, ($0.20 / 1,000) * 10,000,000 returns $2,000, not $20,000.

By: Rocky

Rocky — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 03:51:56 +0000

Thanks for the great post. Just one thing that I don´t seem to get: how come you didn´t get more add-view revenues from 16million plays? Even if you´d get 0,2 cpm with 10 million views, shouldn´t you be getting more like $20.000?

Or am I just calculating it all wrong?

By: Indie Flash Game Development: 2010 « Josh Talks Flash

Indie Flash Game Development: 2010 « Josh Talks Flash — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 16:07:12 +0000

[...] a year ago, you may remember that I shared my revenue numbers for indie game development in 2009. I had big plans for Bowler Hat Games in 2010, but I guess I spent my time going in the [...]

By: Josh Tynjala

Josh Tynjala — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 01:16:09 +0000

QQ, I probably average about six hours a day. Some days it’s more, others a bit less. I try to make up for it with a couple extra hours on weekends. Some days, I’ll add an hour or two in the evening. I would guess it’s 30-35 hours a week, but I don’t spend time tracking it. Working at home where my only responsibility is to myself is definitely a challenge, but I’m getting better at it over time.

Between July and November of 2009, I generally spent 35 hours a week doing contract work for companies. I probably only worked 5-10 hours a week on my games during that time.

By: QQ

QQ — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 00:42:49 +0000

Very good article containing lots of pure statistics, but I have a question, how much hours a day have you been spending in that period ?

By: Surge

Surge — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 21:38:33 +0000

Thanks for the info, it is nice to have when you are thinking about diving in. This was a very helpful post.

By: Colm

Colm — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 16:59:11 +0000

Thanks for sharing the revenue numbers! Always interested in this kind of thing

By: Josh Tynjala

Josh Tynjala — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 23:02:30 +0000

FBIG, most of my time was spent on development. I didn’t feel the difference much for the web games because they were free and spread pretty easily, but my iPhone games could definitely use some more marketing. I’m slowly trying new things here and there to see how they help sales, but marketing is my biggest weakness and I’m not entirely sure what to do.

I’ve heard good stories from people who have hired marketing experts to put together a plan. They say that it can be expensive, but that the results more than make up for the price tag of such experience.

By: Facebook Indie Games

Facebook Indie Games — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 22:55:36 +0000

Of the time you spent on Bowler Hat Games, how much was on game development and how much was on sales and marketing? Do you plan to shift the balance in 2010?

It looks to me like the successful small and indie game developers are the ones with simple games and clever marketing tricks and techniques, rather than necessarily the smartest or best games.