If you didn’t win today, follow me on Twitter and Facebook where I will be giving away more free game development software in the future. Check out my book Making Money With HTML5 if you’re interested in finding commercial success as a game developer, or bookmark this site if you like my content.

Without further ado, here is a list of the winners…

1 x GameMaker Studio Professional License
1 x GameMaker Studio HTML5 Module

WON BY: Willem Pretorius

1 x Construct 2 Business License

WON BY: Redah Winsblow

1 x Construct 2 Standard License

WON BY: Blue Nobu

1 x Dr Oglesby’s Funk Prescription
1 x Complete Guide to Isometric Pixel Art
1 x Sheeky’s Sound Collection

WON BY: Mattias Cibien

1 x Making Money With HTML5

WON BY: Jason Astle-Adams
WON BY: Glen
WON BY: Mats Dahlström
WON BY: Briareoushex
WON BY: Stephen Trimble
WON BY: Juan Carlos Campbell
WON BY: Matuska László
WON BY: Brandon Cahoe
WON BY: Saulo
WON BY: David Consolo

Congratulations to all of the winners and thank you to everyone who participated. I’m already looking forward to hosting my next giveaway – subscribe below to be notified about it by email. See you next time!

Matthew

Got A Spare Minute?

Take a look at some recently posted articles:

Online Income Report #012 – April 2013
GameMaker Forums Hacked…Again
Game Review – Battleships Forever

This is my way of giving back to the community and people who have supported me during my first year in business as a self-employed game developer.

The giveaway is very easy to enter, and it’s open to everyone. Continue reading for prize details and information.

Prizes

1 x GameMaker Studio Professional License (software)
1 x GameMaker Studio HTML5 Module (software)
1 x Construct 2 Business License (software)
1 x Construct 2 Standard License (software)
1 x Dr Oglesby’s Funk Prescription (audio)
1 x Complete Guide to Isometric Pixel Art (digital book)
1 x Sheeky’s Sound Collection (audio)
10 x Making Money With HTML5 (digital book)

Approximate total value: USD $1000

Some prizes will be bundled together for individual winners. Multiple winners will be selected by random draw. Special thanks to the excellent Construct 2 team, Scirra, for their generous contribution to the prize pool.

How To Enter

Entering is easy! You can get up to three entries to the draw, the winner of which will be announced May 17th 2013. To gain entries, simply complete the tasks below and you’ll be automatically entered for a chance to win!

Ticket 1:

- Like this Facebook page
- Share this linked status (make sure it’s a public Share or I can’t see it)

Ticket 2:

- Follow me on Twitter @TrueValhalla
- Retweet this linked tweet

Ticket 3:

- Subscribe to my newsletter
- Leave a comment below saying that you’ve entered the draw

The purpose of the social media element is to make this giveaway viable and give as many people the chance to enter as possible.

I’ll host more giveaways like this in the future, so be sure to check back frequently. Good luck everyone!

UPDATE: This event has now ended. The results have been announced!

Matthew

Check out my online income report for April 2013.

What I Did In April

It’s been a huge month for me: I’ve now been in business for an entire year (hence my 12th income report)! The past year has been a whole lot of fun, and I’ve learned an incredible amount and met a lot of great people. I was planning to write a large post about it but I never got around to it unfortunately. I’m so humbled by the support that people have shown me during the past year.

Beyond bouncing around with excitement over a year in business, this month I officially launched my brand, 2D Pixels. I felt it was fitting to do that this month. The brand itself isn’t going to be a huge part of my work – I’m not rebranding this site to be dedicated to the brand, for example – but it’s a very important step forward.

To coincide with the brand launch, I also started a mailing list using Aweber ($1 trial available) which has proven to be valuable. So far over 200 people have signed up for my mailing list across my sites truevalhalla.com and gamemakerblog.com and I have sent two broadcasts. I’ll publish my experiences with this in the future – so far it has been worth the cost. If you’d like to hear more from me, enter your email below to subscribe.

I spent a lot of time working on my websites this month, again. I’m planning to make them a larger part of my business but I need to get them up to a higher standard before I invest even more time into content creation. Even writing a post like this can take up half of my work day. Much of my focus has been on my other blog which dominates the GameMaker and GameMaker Studio niches. It needs a lot of attention, and even more improvement.

Just a few days ago I entered the GMC jam #10, a 72 hour game development competition which I actually won this time a year ago. I doubt my entry for this one will win, but I love what I managed to create in such a short period of time. You can download “Seeing Blue” for Windows or watch the play-through video below. You can vote for it here (requires long-term GMC account) and any votes would definitely be appreciated!

In a really significant move for me, I decided to indefinitely pause work on my Windows-based MMORPG project of 3 years, Myriad Online. I was planning to invest a lot of time into it this year, and have done so over the past 2 months, but I decided that it just doesn’t work well with my goals currently. I wrote a post about it on the game’s forums, offered to refund donations, closed down the server, and locked the board. I will return to my favorite project one day.

This move has freed up a large amount of time for me, allowing me to define a more focused direction for my business.

Income Report

April was looking bleak in the first couple of weeks, but the second half of the month really delivered. Some of the large-scale deals that I’ve been working on are starting to come to fruition. Some of the deals had been in progress for a quarter of a year! I’ve included a couple of payments that are invoiced but not paid yet, only because they are guaranteed and I attribute them to this month’s efforts.

$20 – Affiliate referrals
$110 (-$170) – Licensing
$112 (-$113) – HTML5 mobile advertisements
$187 (-$78) – Website advertisements
$460 (+$60) – Book sales
$6178 (+$5165) – HTML5 sponsorships

During April 2013 I earned a total of $7067 (+$4844) online!

Sales of my book Making Money With HTML5 hit 200 total copies sold, and have remained strong. I spent a wedge of cash advertising it this month which paid for itself. Mobile advertising revenue was lower than last month, though only because of a delayed earnings report which I won’t receive until mid-May.

Overall, I couldn’t be more pleased with how April turned out. I’m still shy of my current goal to make $10,000 in a single month, though.

What’s Next?

I’m going on holiday. One of my goals for this year is to travel more, so I’m taking my first solo flight out of the state. I haven’t flown or been in a major city since I was maybe 10 years old, and a decade later I’m flying to the city of Melbourne in Australia. You can see the difference in locale and the distance below.

Quite a transition, right? I’m pretty excited for my trip, and yes, that is the room I’ll be staying in. I really want to see a city skyline at night. Follow me on Twitter and I’ll probably be tweeting pics in a couple of weeks!

I’m not spending the whole month on holiday, just a few days. I still have a lot of work planned for May. Specifically, I want to make vast improvements to my other blog, continue designing my upcoming major HTML5 project, and investigate new potential revenue sources. The month will be a slow one, though I have new business deals in the works right now so I expect revenue to remain strong.

The past year has been simply brilliant. I can’t wait to see how the next one turns out.

Like this post?

Please take a few seconds to leave a comment or share this article. You can also receive more content like this by subscribing below.

Thank you for reading!

Matthew

Centralization

The main reason for launching my brand is to simply create a banner under which I can tie all of my work together. I basically create content for a living, and over time I’m producing more and more and more of it. I’m acquiring new web properties, building new games, and launching new products on a monthly basis! A brand will help to centralize and organize all of these endeavors.

Networking

By applying a consistent brand to all of my content, I’m able to create a more natural network between various properties and products. This is useful in many ways. Between my websites, for example, I can cross-promote content without a reader from either site having to question the authority or integrity of the other – if the reader is familiar with the encompassing brand, they can feel secure in visiting both sites instead of just one. As I edge into the native iOS/Android app market, a core goal I have is to network my apps together to strengthen each individual creation. A brand will enable me to create both of these networks and more.

Separation

A brand assists in separating my personal and commercial ventures. My opinions and comments may influence my business from time to time, but they would more so if I was the “name and face” of it at all times. I never intended for my online persona to become my brand, however that is exactly what has been happening, and honestly I’m not entirely comfortable with it. I want to represent a brand, not be one.

Representation

2D Pixels allows me to represent my business as more than just myself, and it invokes a sense of professionalism that I find is becoming increasingly important as I extend the scope of my commercial work. Behind a brand, it’s no longer just me writing to a multi-billion dollar company, it’s me as a representative of a brand which can be portrayed as something larger than myself. This will improve my credibility when dealing with clients, and hopefully instill confidence amongst customers.

A brand is all-encompassing, and it will assist in building the image I’m working towards. It serves more than just a single purpose. 2D Pixels is a step in the right direction: forwards.

Like this post?

Please take a few seconds to leave a comment or share this article. You can also receive more content like this by subscribing below.

Thank you for reading!

Matthew

To join the newsletter, look for the “subscribe” button in the sidebar to the right. It only takes a few seconds to sign up. I do not spam, and you can easily opt-out at any time.

Note: if you can’t see the subscribe box, and you’re running NoScript, try enabling the Aweber form element.

Check out my online income report for March 2013.

What I Did In March

While I spent much of last month improving my websites, I spent much of this month moving them to new hosting. The hosting service I had been using and recommending, called TelVPS, seemed entirely stable and reliable. Then out of nowhere, I received an email saying the service was being discontinued, and that I had only a few days to take my business elsewhere. Naturally, this disrupted my month from the offset, and it was a distraction I certainly didn’t need.

After a long search I found a new hosting service to use, called Solar VPS. While more expensive than most, I’m confident that Solar VPS are the right choice for my business. I also took the opportunity to improve my server specifications during this transitional process, so despite the headaches and downtime my websites were better off for it. Stability and consistency are important since I’m now serving tens of thousands of HTML5 game sessions each day in addition to the traffic my blogs receive. It’s no surprise that I’ve had to invest time and money into my websites to maintain my growing business, but it’s not what I want to be spending my energy on.

The rest of my month was based around my major project, Myriad Online, which has now been in a chaotic state of development for 3 years. This game isn’t much to look at and it isn’t making much money, but it is one that I’m passionate about. Myriad Online is a long-term project that I hope will eventually sustain me financially. This month I improved the functionality that connects the game to the website, continued outsourcing design and art work to freelancers, finalized the organization of the project workspace, and properly delved into the game code for the first time in months. It’s not a simple task to resume work on a project that I have hardly touched in a year, but I’m glad that I’m finally in a position to work on my favorite project again.

While my focus has been on Myriad Online, I’m still committed to maintaining my established income streams. Thankfully, many of them have been purposely automated to a large degree. Perhaps the reason I haven’t been posting much on this blog lately is because it requires me to invest a lot of my own time to create content…I can’t automate this blog. At least my other income streams haven’t required much effort to maintain lately.

Beyond the above, I have invested a lot of time this month into personal growth. Often I get so caught up in my work that I neglect life a bit too much, so I’m trying to reel myself back from the online world more often. I occasionally like to try short experiments to challenge myself, and this month I decided to try going vegetarian for a week to test my willpower and see what how it would effect my health and productivity. It was actually too easy, so I decided to extend it to veganism for a week. To do that, I had to research veganism extensively, and during my research I actually got really caught up in the ideals of veganism and ended up adopting it for longer than the intended week. It’s been about a month now, and I’ve seen great improvements to my health and state of being, so I’m planning to make veganism part of my lifestyle. A simple one week challenge resulted in a huge lifestyle change for me. If you’re interested in veganism, check out this video and follow it up with this speech.

Income Report

March has been all over the place in terms of earnings from my various income streams. The main pillar of my income is currently based around HTML5 games, but it is always difficult to predict how consistent that will be on a month to month basis. While I have added a lot of diversity to my income now, I really want to establish another major source of income that can pay the bills in the event that my HTML5 earnings start dropping substantially. I need that added layer of security but at the moment I’m not sure where to find it. For now, everything is stable though.

$20 (+$10) – Affiliate referrals
$20 – Myriad Online
$225 (-$327) – HTML5 mobile advertisements
$265 (+$262) – Website advertisements
$280 (-$130) – Licensing
$400 (-$240) – Book sales
$1013 (-$2013) – HTML5 sponsorships

During March 2013 I earned a total of $2223 (-$3451) online!

This month represents a fairly average one but still exceeds the minimum I aim to earn online each month. There is a lot of red across the board, but that’s only because last month was a big one. The earnings here are actually quite decent and nearly entirely passive so I consider March successful.

What’s Next?

Since launching my book, Making Money With HTML5, I have been taking a bit of a break and haven’t really endured any of the long work days that I’m used to. During April I plan to reestablish my routine and get an immense amount of work done. I’m mostly going to focus on Myriad Online again, but I’ll be doing some business planning as well to figure out where I’m going next. Lately I’ve been looking at rental properties as I plan to move houses next year. I want to ensure that my online income will be able to support me consistently before moving forward.

Finally, as of the 10th of April my business will be exactly a year old. I’ll be preparing a big post about my experience so far, so check back soon! It’s been a really interesting year and I can’t wait to reflect on it.

Like this post?

Please take a few seconds to leave a comment or share this article. You can also receive more content like this by subscribing below.

Thank you for reading!

Matthew

LeadBolt is an excellent platform for publishers, especially for those who wish to monetize free-to-play mobile games. As an HTML5 game developer myself, LeadBolt has enabled me to generate significant and consistent income from the HTML5 games in my portfolio very easily. These games have been played by millions of people all over the world, and nearly always from a mobile device of some kind.

To monetize that traffic, I have integrated simple banner ads that generate revenue whenever they are clicked. LeadBolt offer a very extensive set of ad types to choose from. If you have mobile applications that are not monetizing well, try some of the following unique options and you will see a difference.

LeadBolt’s latest addition allows developers to integrate audio ads into their native apps, though for HTML5 applications only banner ads and app walls are currently supported. Both of these ad types monetize very well. They are shown in more detail below.Integrating LeadBolt ads with your HTML5 applications is a straightforward process.

To get started, sign up for LeadBolt as a publisher. Fill in your personal details on the Account Settings page, and then go to the Apps page. You will need to set up an “App” for each individual application, and within each “App” you can set up “Ad Units” of various types. An example of an application with a banner ad configuration is shown below.

If you are planning to use ads in a lot of different HTML5 games or applications, you must create an “App” for each of them individually. If you create a single “App” and then use its “Ad Units” for each of your HTML5 applications, you will not generate as much revenue as you would if you had created an individual “App” for each one. This is due to the way the advertiser bidding system works. Your “App” should never look like this:

The reason multiple “Ad Units” per “App” are supported is in case you wish to use different ad types within a single application. You could use a banner ad and an app wall in a single HTML5 game, for example, and that would be fine.

Once you’ve set everything up correctly, you can generate a code for any of the “Ad Units” that you have defined. Integrate this code into your HTML5 application directly. The code itself is in the form of a script:

The technical process for integrating the ad will vary depending on your development environment, but it’s typically not difficult. You should try to display banners and app walls in your HTML5 games very prominently to encourage click-throughs. Since HTML5 games are played on the internet, and most of the advertisements served promote native applications, users seem to be very willing to click through to the app markets thinking the ad will be for another game on the mobile web. I’m seeing an average click-through-rate of 12%, and average earnings of $4 per 1000 game sessions from the games in my HTML5 portfolio.

Finally, it’s worth noting that while the popular competing service Google AdSense does offer mobile web banners, using these banners in HTML5 games can result in your account being suspended. Developers I know have lost thousands of dollars by using Google AdSense as their HTML5 ad server – don’t make the same mistake.

LeadBolt not only offer a range of ad types for multiple platforms, they also have exceptional customer support and an excellent inventory. I will keep recommending LeadBolt for the foreseeable future, and I suggest that budding HTML5 developers adopt them as their ad server of choice.

To learn how to optimize HTML5 ads for maximum earnings, check out my book Making Money With HTML5.

Like this post?

Please take a few seconds to leave a comment or share this article. You can also receive more content like this by subscribing below.

Thank you for reading!

Matthew

Check out my online income report for February 2013.

What I Did In February

Truth be told, I was fairly lazy during the majority of February (particularly toward the end). The last few months have been very work-orientated, so I decided to take time to relax after receiving some large payments within the first few days of February.

I did get some work done, though.

You might notice some changes to this blog, specifically related to the layout and appearance. I’ve added a navigation menu to the top of the page, where visitors can check out my products, inquire about advertising, contact me, and buy HTML5 games. The addition of that last page, which features most of my HTML5 games portfolio, has been on my to-do list for a very long time. Already I’ve seen a significant boost in inquiries about licensing HTML5 games, and while most of them are from individuals who can’t afford the fees involved, this small addition to the site has already made a significant impact. Changes made to this blog recently have certainly improved its readability, appeal, and commercial value.

Furthering my focus on written media this month, new content was added to both this blog, Touch To Start, and my other blog, Game Maker Blog. While I didn’t publish as many posts here as I had intended, my efforts at Game Maker Blog resulting in a lot of new content and a decent boost to traffic. I’m now actively investing money into the creation of content for that site to help maintain it, and while I don’t see a return on that investment, the Game Maker Blog is a community resource that I wish to upkeep despite the costs involved.

It helps that Game Maker Blog drives quite a few visitors to this site, though, and those visitors may purchase my products here. With the recent launch of my book, Making Money With HTML5, I’ve seen the best month of product sales so far. I dabbled in marketing Making Money With HTML5 a bit during February, but not extensively. I posted a lot on forums and blogs to help promote the book, and I spent some money on paid advertising services. Overall, I’m both surprised and impressed by this month’s sales of Making Money With HTML5, and I’d like to thank everyone who purchased either it or the Mobility Engine, a complementary product. The feedback I’ve received has been overwhelmingly positive, so much so that I even added some of it to the sales page.

The remainder of my time during February was dedicated to my major project, Myriad Online. While the project itself still doesn’t look very appealing to most people yet, it will be changing a lot in the upcoming months. It’s been quite a long time since I last worked on Myriad Online so it was quite exciting to get back into it. Mostly, I didn’t work on the game itself this month, but instead focused on preparation, organisation, and regrouping the people involved with the project’s development. I made some improvements to the game’s forum, and might be upgrading the forum software itself soon. I’m also in the process of outsourcing artwork for a new website design and new game assets.

In the last few days of the month I spent a small amount of time working on a side-project, too, but I’ll discuss this more when there is more to say.

Income Report

While February doesn’t represent my most productive month, my online earnings are often the result of work from previous months. Client work has picked up again after the slow New Year period, and passive income streams such as book sales and mobile advertisements are now generating significant income without requiring my constant attention. The combination of diverse and numerous income streams has resulted in a strong month of online earnings.

$3 (-$2) – Website advertisements
$10 – Affiliate referrals
$13 – Mac App Store sales
$20 – Myriad Online
$410 (+$180) – Licensing
$552 (+270) – HTML5 mobile advertisements
$640 (+$200) – Book sales
$1000 – Misc.
$3026 (+$2230) – HTML5 sponsorships

During February 2013 I earned a total of $5674 (+$3921) online!

This has been a significant month for me, and while it will be difficult to match February’s earnings during March, I have often underestimated my online earning potential in the past. There are still plenty of revenue streams I wish to pursue though, so I see no shortage of opportunities to help maintain and further develop my online income.

What’s Next?

During March, I’m planning to dedicate the majority of my time to blogging and working on Myriad Online. There is also an update to my favorite IDE, GameMaker: Studio, being released soon which will introduce cross-platform networking functionality, so I will probably take some time to play around with that and possibly publish a few examples and tutorials.

Like this post?

Please take a few seconds to leave a comment or share this article. You can also receive more content like this by subscribing below.

Thank you for reading!

Matthew

By sharing 60-70% of the ad impressions in this manner I can reach a massive global audience and make a profit at the same time.

During January 2013, my portfolio saw it’s first significant month of exposure in revenue share deals. A total of 259,865 mobile game sessions were initiated, and approximately 137,000 of my own ad impressions were served. This resulted in 11,786 clicks and generated USD $421.69 in revenue through my ad server, Leadbolt. However, while total revenue is the value most people will get caught up on, what really stood out to me was the total number of clicks.

Since the HTML5 games in my portfolio are designed for mobile devices, the vast majority of the advertisements shown were for native mobile applications, the likes of which you’d find on the App Store or Google Play. Imagine harnessing the power of HTML5 for native app promotion: showing a banner for your own game instead of an advertiser’s.

Sending 11,786 engaged users to any single native app’s store page within a month would be incredibly valuable. Remember, these users have clicked an ad which they found particularly appealing, so whether the game is free or paid it would definitely get a lot of new installations.

If your app was paid and cost $2.99, you’d make $2.09 per sale on the App Store after Apple’s 30% take. If only 5% of engaged users bought the game (a low estimate, in my opinion), you’d make around $1,231 in sales revenue from 11,786 visitors. Of course, this assumes all users would be using an iDevice, which they wouldn’t. But you could easily send Android users to your Google Play store page instead, and you could even filter other devices for other stores.

If your app was free, it’s likely you’d see exceptionally impressive install-rates. Since the users are coming from free HTML5 web applications in the first place they would favor free apps over paid apps.

The main consideration here is whether you’d make more money from promoting your own native apps, or from banner advertisements themselves. The $421.69 in revenue which my ads generated is not entirely accurate due to some technical issues I had to work through; this value should have been significantly higher, perhaps in the range of $600-$800. So currently, it’s difficult for me to estimate the true value of displaying ads in my HTML5 games portfolio as opposed to promoting a native app.

Later this year I will be creating some app store games, and having this type of promotional power behind me is quite an appealing prospect. The good news is, HTML5 games are quick and easy to make, and if used as a marketing tool in this manner they could be extremely effective for developers with minimal marketing budgets. If you’re having trouble on the app stores, try making a few quality HTML5 games and use them to promote your native applications.

Like this post?

Please take a few seconds to leave a comment or share this article. Thank you for reading!

Matthew

Dropbox works a bit differently to typical hosting services – it’s actually a program that’s installed directly onto your computer. During the installation process, a special directory, which you can manipulate like any other, will be created. Every file placed within this directory, your Dropbox folder, will be automatically uploaded to a secure online server. If you alter a file within your Dropbox folder it will seamlessly update itself within the cloud.

As you can imagine, the usefulness of this functionality extends quite far. Dropbox maintains access to old versions of every file you upload, allowing you to find deleted notes or restore a project to a previous state in just a few clicks. Since Dropbox is cloud-based, you can also access your files on any computer or mobile device which runs Dropbox. Your files will even be synced across all of these platforms!

Dropbox is a unique hosting service that every developer should be using, regardless of their interest in web applications. For HTML5 game developers it’s particularly useful; you can use Dropbox to host a live online version of your HTML5 games! Simply place a game’s files into a public Dropbox directory, retrieve the public link to the index file, and then visit it in your browser. Your game will have been automatically uploaded to the internet, so all you have to do is share the public link with your players. This process is shown below.

You can take this dynamic setup a step further by using a public Dropbox directory as your work environment. By working directly within a public Dropbox directory, you can test your game locally, or you can test the live version – all within a few seconds! There is no need to tediously upload your HTML5 games to a web server using an FTP service when Dropbox can make the whole process of testing and publishing HTML5 games so perfectly efficient.

Using Dropbox to host HTML5 games is easy, and more importantly: convenient. Do yourself a favor and check it out!

Matthew