If you?ve been around the mobile or Facebook games arena, you?ve probably heard about the term monetizing. To put it in short it refers to ways of making money out of a mobile or Facebook app. This term was first mentioned as a result of an intriguing situation that games developers faced in their first days in this market they had vast amounts of visitors but had no idea how to make money out of it. This includes casual games that were gambling oriented, like slots or texas holdem, but in a fun mode. Their main way of earning money was ad placement in different formats. All this changed when one of the giants in this arena figured out how to earn cash, and a lot of it, from these casual games. This obviously refers to Zynga. In fact, a lot of games developers look on Zynga to learn how to monetize their game and turn it from a nice to have and impressive app, to a very profitable one.So what?s going on in recent days in FB and mobile apps
Monetization has come a long way since its first ad placement era. Actually, ad placement is considered the least preferred form of monetizing. Lately you have an entirely different approach that includes offering virtual merchandize to players. Those merchandize can come in different ways: from tips for reaching a higher games level to online casino chips. The biggest challenge is to figure out what is the thing which your users will agree to buy while using your game. A great, fairly recent, example is the ?Manager? app which is available for mobile and Facebook users. It is a game in which you manage a soccer team and play soccer games. You don?t see an actual game happening, however, you can change your strategy while it takes place, train players, purchase players and pretty much act like real football manager does. The monetization in this application is very sophisticated you may enjoy the game for free for as much time as you which and you can win your first league this way without a problem. However, as you go up to a more difficult level, the games get harder to win. You have to come up with new strategies and of course get better football players. In order to buy good players you need to have chips which you must buy with real cash. The moment you?ve had a glance of the game and the win of a championship, you?re most likely to invest money in order to continue to play and win. It is a classic foot in the door strategy, and it works great.The next level of monetizing
The thing that was, till just recently, a huge taboo when it comes to mobile and Facebook apps, is slowly sneaking in. This of course refers to the option to play games for money, real cash that is. Until now the only possibility to do that is finding known online gambling sites that offer a mobile variation for their games. But that is going to change. Around the end of 2012, Zynga has published a press release stating that they?ve joined forces with Bwin.Party and are starting a process of turning some of their games into gambling ones. They did not say anything about an expected launch date, but the fact that they have issued such controversial news is enough to state that they mean business. On the other hand, they?re just might trying to create a buzz that will help them sniff around and get the main industry?s reactions to such a change. The interesting thing about this is they avoided using the word gambling in all of their publications. They systematically prefer to use a more innocent term real money gaming. Whatever it is, this publication opens a new path to a frontier where no mobile or Facebook developer has ever gone before. Only time would tell if this is a false alarm or it?s actually here to stay.
About the Author:
Daniel Craigen is an app developer who's been in the mobile and Facebook gaming industry for the past 4 years. You can find more articles by him in his site, where you can play and win with full access to a Real money gaming experience as well as free casual games.