tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-340470382011-09-08T00:27:49.966-07:00The reality of indie game development - EXPOSED!!!! Geez that sounds like the front cover of a girly mag, except with game development instead of celebrity weight loss secrets...Neil Yateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17853365663107959112noreply@blogger.comBlogger111100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34047038.post-27617597177905269402007-04-01T07:38:00.000-07:002007-04-01T07:47:11.020-07:00

Well Chris reminded me that I should do an update, so here it is.After employing my brother to do link exchanges recently I've started to notice some very favorable results. My search engines rankings are slowly crawling to the top which is great news. I've been seeing some decent traffic increases in line with these improvements and sales seem to be picking up in a serious way. Not totally

Neil Yateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17853365663107959112noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34047038.post-29132049519995287262007-02-24T11:17:00.000-08:002007-02-24T16:59:51.519-08:00

Just want to appologise for not posting for a while. Not much has happened around here except that I failed to double my traffic. Not sure why, everything that seemed to be working just stopped for a while.Game for a link got lots of links to start but after a while barely any takers and I noticed a sales drop. Guess people didn't like the idea of paying for a game that is free to other people (

Neil Yateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17853365663107959112noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34047038.post-80753096702928031732007-02-24T11:06:00.000-08:002007-02-24T11:14:18.359-08:00

Adsense is junk.Honestly, since getting it back up to $300/month it's dropped consistantly down to only about $75 now. Number of impressions the same, % of clicks the same, getting similar ads as before. Just earning much less per click. Basically, Google is smart pricing me.Smart pricing means Google decides how much you actually get. If the advertiser payed 50c for that click you can get

Neil Yateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17853365663107959112noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34047038.post-1160168533162341562006-10-06T13:45:00.000-07:002007-02-23T10:59:21.146-08:00

I have so many options for my next indie game. I actually have about 5 1/3 done games on the go, one of which I need to develop into a full title for early 2007. I can go for another shooter, which will add to the synergy of my other titles and will play to all my shoot em up related traffic. However knowing first hand how poorly an average shooter sells I'm not sure I want to do another one. Yeh

Neil Yateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17853365663107959112noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34047038.post-1159524222055479922006-09-29T02:44:00.000-07:002007-02-20T20:52:09.660-08:00

I've pretty much cracked it :-)After a lot of tweaking AdSense has generated roughly $100 this week, with a solid high CPM on all pages. Check here to see what they look like. Whilst they are a little intrusive I don't think they ruin the look and feel of the site too much, but I'd like to hear what each of you think about that. The main things I did was intergrate the ADs with pictures and used

Neil Yateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17853365663107959112noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34047038.post-1158960884427724232006-09-22T14:08:00.000-07:002006-09-27T06:44:29.350-07:00

By Christmas I aim to have doubled my traffic. Seems like a massive task, but in the past I have managed to double it within a few months, so it IS possible. Although last time I was aiming to go from about 300 daily visitors to 600. This time it's more like 1000 to 2000 =)My 'Game for a link' promotion seems to be working fairly well and already got a lot of links back to my site, each of which

Neil Yateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17853365663107959112noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34047038.post-1158618866250138082006-09-18T15:30:00.000-07:002006-09-18T15:34:26.493-07:00

http://www.jaggedbladesoft.com/getfullgame2.htmlI'm now offering a free full version game for a link back to my site.After a few days of doing this I've now gotten a few links, and each one is pulling in a fairly decent amount of traffic. Nothing major but well worth the $20, since that much traffic over a year or so would most likely bring in at least 1 sale. Plus I'm guessing the majority of

Neil Yateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17853365663107959112noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34047038.post-1158583319613855972006-09-18T05:14:00.000-07:002007-02-22T05:38:15.536-08:00

Well it's pretty much not working. Here is the summary for the week. Newsletter:Of the estimated 15 affiliate sales I got.... 2! I'm guessing a lot of the people on the newsletter had already tried the game I was showing them since the game was only actually downloaded by 200 of my 4000 newsletter subscribers.Affiliate ADs:Zero sales.Google ADs:Started off with them everywhere and they were only

Neil Yateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17853365663107959112noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34047038.post-1157848198473655252006-09-09T17:12:00.000-07:002007-02-20T22:02:41.460-08:00

Currently my website generates between $300 and $400 per month through direct sales of my games, I plan to increase that to $600-$800 before the end of this year. You're probably wondering how I'm going to pull this off...Well it's simple really, I'm going to milk the site to it's absolute fullest potential. I played with advertising a few months ago but didn't like the way it made my site look,

Neil Yateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17853365663107959112noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34047038.post-1157689971547596342006-09-07T21:11:00.000-07:002006-09-21T01:32:59.310-07:00

Mighty Rodent was a huge failure. It's actually made me even less money than my very first game. It was still a better than my first game by miles, but because I spent around $2000 on art and music it's technically in the negative.Where did I go wrong? Well there are a million possible explanations, but I think the main one is that I put profit first. I've never done that before, all my previous

Neil Yateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17853365663107959112noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34047038.post-1157688455496830912006-09-07T20:27:00.000-07:002006-09-13T05:41:46.363-07:00

I see a lot of people coming to indiegamer.com basically asking the question "How much can I really earn?". When I reply to these I know for a fact that this person is already doomed to failure, because like me they will no doubt make a terrible start.I was that person around the start of 2004, and in all honesty I didn't have a clue. I seriously thought my first game would make at least 100

Neil Yateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17853365663107959112noreply@blogger.com2