If you have been a part of the mobile or FB gaming arena, you have most likely heard about the phrase monetizing. To put it in a sentence it means coming up with ways of earning money from your mobile or Facebook application. This term was first mentioned following an interesting situation that applications developers dealt with in their first days in this market they had vast amounts of traffic but could not figure out how to make money out of it. This also refers to casual games that were based on gambling, such as blackjack or texas holdem, but in a fun mode. Their main way of earning money was ad placement in different parts of their app. All this took a turn when one of the pioneers in this field came out with a way to make money, and a lot of it, from those casual games. This obviously refers to Zynga poker. In fact, many games developers look on Zynga to learn how to monetize their application and turn it from a nice to have and impressive app, to a highly profitable one.So what is happening in recent days in FB and mobile games
Monetizing has developed quite a lot since its initial ad placement days. In fact, placing ads is regarded as the least profitable format of monetizing. Lately you have an entirely new approach that is based on offering virtual items to players. Those merchandize can come in varies ways: from tips for reaching a higher playing level to online casino chips. The challenge is to figure out what is the item which your users will agree to buy while using your application. A great, fairly recent, example is the ?Manager? game that 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, buy players and pretty much do whatever a real soccer manager does. The monetization in this app is very sophisticated you may play for free for as long as you which and you can win your first championship this way without a problem. However, as you go on to a more difficult stages, the tournaments become harder to win. You must come up with new strategies and mainly get professional players. To do that you have to have tokens which you need to buy with real money. Once you have had a taste of the game and the win of a championship, you are very likely to spend cash in order to be able to play and win. It is a classic foot in the door technique, and it actually works.The next level of monetization
What was, till just recently, a distinctive taboo when it comes to mobile and FB applications, is slowly sneaking in. This obviously refers to the possibility to play games for money, real money that is. Until now the only possibility to do that is playing in specific web gambling sites that offer a mobile version. But that is going to change. Around the end of 2012, Zynga has published a press release stating that they are joining forces with Bwin.Party and are beginning a process of turning some of their games into gambling ones. They have not said anything about a formal release date, but the fact that they have published such controversial news is enough to state that they mean business. Alternatively, they?re just might trying to create a buzz which might help them sniff around and understand the main industry?s reactions to such a change. The interesting thing about this is they completely avoided the use of the word gambling in all of their publications. They constantly prefer using the more innocent term real money gaming. Whatever it is, this publication opens a new window to a place where no mobile or Facebook developer has ever gone before. Now we have to wait to see if it?s 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.
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