作者：Peter Kjaer

Pixeleap是个相对较新的独立工作室，有4个开发者。当我们准备发布第2款游戏《Vendespillet》时，我们计划以免费的形式发布，但是不知道要采用何种盈利方式。

Vendespillet(from gamesbrief)

我们考虑过IAP，但是我们最终没有选择这种方式，主要是因为这款游戏的目标用户是很小的孩子。

所以，我们决定尝试利用广告，看看能否从中赚到些钱。

我们决定，我们只在游戏中添加不妨碍游戏玩法过程的广告，所以事实上我们只能选择在游戏开启时呈现全屏广告。

首周广告印象、安装量及eCPM(from gamesbrief)

我们希望eCPM能够达到5美元左右，但没有想到会出现以上图表的结果。

应用发布首周，数值较为稳定，最高点出现在周末，但是在工作日期间依然很不错。

3月11-17日的数据(from gamesbrief)

eCPM依然保持良好的态势，我们正在尝试获取更多的用户，希望盈利也能够随之增加。

我们使用开启全屏广告获得了良好的成果，我们很高兴能够同Chartboost合作。

下图是去年的报告:

2011年11月20日至12月31日的数据(from gamesbrief)

游戏介绍

游戏名为《Vendespillet》。游戏总下载量为4.1万次，每周独立用户数量约为7500，这是一款仅针对丹麦用户的游戏。

我们已经发布了名为《Fun Memory》的国际版，但是直到获取了足够用户才激活该版本的广告系统。

之所以要等待这段时间，是因为我们想要让用户先尝试下游戏，然后再开始通过用户来盈利。

因为添加了广告，我们的应用确实出现了一部分1星评论。但是正如Kiloo的Simon之前所提到的那样，这些评论屈指可数。我们觉得，无论你采取何种方式，总会有少数人反对。

进一步盈利

为了实现游戏丹麦语版本的进一步盈利，我们添加了“移除广告”的IAP，售价为2美元。

我们正在跟踪，看看这种做法会影响广告收入还是增加游戏的整体盈利。

发布该版本的想法是，愿意付费移除广告的人原本就不会去点击广告，因此这是个从这部分用户处盈利的尝试。

展望未来

现在，我们发布的游戏都在其中添加了广告。现在，我们依靠Chartboost便可以获得可观的盈利。但是，将来的游戏中可能还会添加虚拟货币，我们或许会同Tapjoy合作，但目前还未确定。

对于我们是否会允许用户付费获得免广告游戏的问题，我们需要根据当前措施所获得的数据来决定，看看是否能够在提升用户满意度的同时保持收入稳定。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

HOW A PRICING DILEMMA OPENED OUR EYES TO ADVERTISEMENTS

Peter Kjaer

Pixeleap is a relatively new indie studio with four developers. When we were about to release our second game, Vendespillet, we wanted to offer it for free, but could not figure out how to monetize it.

We talked about in app purchases, but we did not choose it, mainly because the game was intended for very young kids.

So we decided to go with advertising to try and see if any money could be gained from it.

We decided that we only wanted ads that did not interfere with gameplay, so our only real choice was to go with a fullscreen on startup, and nothing else.

Before we saw the numbers we had dared hope for an eCPM of about $5, but we never dreamed of seeing the numbers shown above.

Since the first week the numbers have stabilized a bit, and are mostly high on the weekend, but still good on weekdays.

eCPM is still good and as we are trying to aquire more users, hopefully the amount earned will increase.

Our experience with fullscreen ads on startup has really only been good and we have been very happy to work with Chartboost.

Below is the report from last year (we released late November)

The game this is based on

The game is called Vendespillet. It has about 7500 unique users a week over a total of 41k downloads, and this is a Denmark only game.

We have released an international version called Fun Memory but until the userbase picks up we are not activating the advertisements yet.

The reason for this waiting is that we want to give the users a chance to try out the game before we start monetizing them.

We did receive a few 1 star reviews based on the ads, but as Simon from Kiloo mentioned last week, they can be counted on one hand. And we think that no matter what you do, some very few people will always hate it.

Further monetization

In an attempt to further monetize the Danish version of the game we have added a “remove ads” IAP that can be bought for $2.

We are holding our breath to see if this will undermine our ads income or if it will increase profit overall.

The thoughts behind it is, that the people who would pay to remove ads are not going to click on the ads anyway, so it is an experiment to try and monetize this group of users.

Looking forward

We are working on a few game titles right now and will definitely be using advertisements in them. Right now we are very happy with Chartboost only, but as we add virtual currency to our future games we are also looking at Tapjoy, but have not made any decisions yet.

To the question if we will allow users to pay for an ad free game, we will have to look at the numbers generated by our current game to get a better feeling for it, to see if it raises user satisfaction and to see if it ad income keeps steady.

I hope you enjoyed this post and if you have any questions please let me know, I can be found on twitter @PeterPixeleap

I mostly tweet about what we are doing a Pixeleap but also post when there is a new blog on our website where we usually share sales/income numbers and general experience with being an indie on the app store. (Source: Games Brief)