How to Market Customisable Flash Games?

Marketing Customisable Flash Games

[xtempore]

I have developed a few Flash games with the focus on customisation. These include a couple of really nice coloring books, word-find puzzles and memory/matching game.

The idea is to take give website owners the chance to include games on their site that fit with their products, ideas, message, etc.

The games are all inexpensive and easy to customise. Now I just need to find a way of getting the word out there!

I've tried Facebook advertising, but because of the low price-point of the products this turned out to be too expensive.

Posting to forums certainly gives some exposure, but I suspect that many of my potential clients are more in the "hobbyist" category, and may not be aware of such resources.

One of the best products (IMHO) is a really cool little coloring book that does much more than the common flood-fill, allowing you to paint free-hand, and save and print your pictures. Best of all though, you can easily add your own pictures (I even include a free tool to help you do this).

I'd love to hear your ideas on how to market these products.

Thanks! :)

[caribguy]

Hi xtempore, welcome to WebmasterWorld!

Hmmm... Years ago, I tried to sell custom Flash games as an add-on to the bar and nightlife sites I used to build. Thought it would be a great way to improve the sites' stickyness, return rate, reward winners with discounts, etc. Only to find out that most of my clients weren't ready for the concept and/or the required investment.

A search for flash widgets brings up more than 15M results, with sites that offer hundreds of choices - mostly 'free' (ad-driven). It's probably going to be difficult to compete on quality when most others offer quantity...

That said, I can imagine that boutique design firms with clients in the educational or SME market might be interested in upselling their clients with a product like yours. In your shoes, I would spend some time on making a list of businesses that do custom development for those markets and call them to see if there is any potential demand.

[xtempore]

You make a really good point. It's unfortunate (for me) that there are so many of these "FREE" games out there. I'm quite surprised that people are so willing to put such adware on their sites, with absolutely no control over what they might end up advertising!

It's definitely a good idea to try to target design firms that specialise in the educational market. I'll be working on that soon.

I'm also going to try to generate some buzz by giving away some FREE copies of the games.

Although it's hard to compete against the free adware games, I think the one area where you can succeed on quality is through word of mouth.