Ideas to help fund your game – Affiliate Marketing
Finding sufficient funding your game can be a tricky thing. Some indie developers are fortunate enough to have decent capital from previous projects, personal savings or investors which keep a roof over their heads, but many pursue their dream living on very little income. Recently, some newer and interesting methods have been found. For example, crowd funding programs such as Kickstarter can help to get started by seeking investment from individuals interested in your project. There are great success stories (e.g. Double Fine Adventure), but of course the ones that will be most likely to thrive will be already popular brands/studios.
The traditional approach of indie games makers is to consider your development period to be one of sole investment, hopefully to be rewarded upon the game’s release. This is the norm for the most part, but there are alternatives to help you along. In this series of posts, we explore other ways in which you can make an income from your game – some even being executable before your first game is released. The first of these we shall cover is affiliate marketing.
What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is essentially gaining a commission by recommending other people’s products and services. If a person clicks on one of your affiliate links and purchases that item, you gain a cut of that sale. A lot of blogs are funded using this scheme, and it can be a great way for people to learn about new products from sources they trust.
The main requirements of this to work is to have/grow a good sized audience, and to pick products in which they shall be interested. We have explained the importance of growing a strong community in other posts, as we have explained the importance of understanding your target audience. If you have not check these out already, we certainly recommend you do so now!
How do you do it?
This is all well and good, we hear you cry, but how do you actually set it up? Check out this video to learn how – in this case specifically for Amazon products:
Some examples
Let’s say we are making a game based in a pirate world. The game features stereotypical pirate characters and situations, allowing the player to enjoy the life of being a marauder of the seven seas. The game has a comical tone, with lots of funny characters and lines. With this alone we can make some educated guesses about the type of person that will want to play the game. More importantly for this topic, we can also assume what kinds of things they will be interested in.
- Pirates, because it’s a pirate game
- Naval warfare, because that’s what you do in the game
- Comedy, it matches the tone of voice
- Films/Books/Music, gamers tend to enjoy them
- Other games, particularly if your game isn’t out for a while
We already know that interesting content is key to keep your audience engaged with your brand – especially on your social outposts. We can assume that our target audience will like pirates, so why not run a feature about the pirate films/books/comics/games that inspired you to make your game? Chances are if you liked them, the audience will too.
Also don’t worry if members of your community have already enjoyed the product you are recommending – that’s still a win for different reasons. They probably wont buy your recommended product, but they might relate to you better and perhaps get involved in the conversation (“Man, I love this series! I think that X is the best one…”).
Summary
Like with so many things, affiliate marketing requires some trial and error to find the right balance. Always keep in mind that you don’t try to sell to your audience, you are just recommending them things you genuinely enjoy/value. When done right, it can be a great conversation piece for your community and can lead to some extra funds to help develop your game.