I am looking into beginning to create a web presence for a new company for games I develop. I would like to see if anyone can point me to where there are good resources to answer these questions, or answer them directly. The first is: Does anyone know of a good place to host the page? I need a GREAT price on the web space, and my own domain name. Definately none of those ad-services will do. I need a non-geocities type page. The only other requirement is I need Frontpage Extensions. In addition to this, I need to learn how to promote my web page and get higher rankings from search engines. Third off, I need info on how to set up an e-commerce system with a merchant account for automatic billing. It would be nice if this came automatically with the web service for simplicity. Thanks for any pointers!! Mike

For webhosting, there are a lot of places out there, but be aware that getting something cheap sometimes means you get no service either. Try http://www.webhostingtalk.com/ for a good start.

As for e-commerce, there are services out there that accept creditcards (and more) for you, and they charge for it (obviously). If you search around the web a bit, you are bound to find some. Then make sure you find out more about them before you sign up. Some examples - without any reference to their reliability or quality: regnow.com, kagi.com, shareit.com, ...

www.zortera.com - Excellent hosting - $5

www.digitalcandle.com - Takes 10% of sales, excellent and does money order, pay pal, AMEX, Visa, Mastercard, etc.


Ibuku
weaponstudios.com
Tokyo War - Cyberpunk strategy game

Thank you guys for the responses! Now, I plan on marketing by of course uploading demos to several of the free download sites. Does anyone know of any other good ideas for getting it out? Perhaps the channels to go throught to get it on one of those magazine demo cd''s?

On top of that, the other thing I am interested in is figures. Does anyone know what would be a reasonable amount of expected sales from a decent indie game? 10 sales per month? 50? 200? I''m of course speaking generally.


Thanks for any help,
Mike

Completely depends on the game and how you market it. You''ll have to experiment a bit to see what works and what doesn''t. It''s tough to give a solid number because so much depends on how good the game is, and where you advertise for it.

Looking for an honest video game publisher? Visit www.gamethoughts.com

I really wish people would stop blindly advertising digital candle, the thing with digital candle is that even though they only take 10%, they also don''t handle anything else, that means they don''t host the file, and you have to generate your own keys and registration codes. If you''re good at that, no problem, but in fact why even use them at 10% if you''re generating your own keys and registration codes, when you could use paypal for like 1-2% (or 3 or 4 depending), since they effectively handle orders too?

Keith

www.cedant.com

Best webhosting in the world (imo). For a modest fee, you''ll get amazing service (< 2 hours per e-mail response, even at 2am in the morning). You get Frontpage Extensions, MySQL, PHP and they''re one of the few webhosts in the world which have a contract with a bank to open online merchant accounts. They can set up shopping carts and the sort for you, to use directly online.

Great host.

assume 5 sales a month. Any more than that and you can clink the champagne. Thats a guess at the average for someones first indie game, and about approximates my first games sales.
Sounds poor i know, but unless anyone would care to contradict me, Id say thats about what to expect.

http://www.positech.co.uk

quote: Original post by cliffski
assume 5 sales a month. Any more than that and you can clink the champagne. Thats a guess at the average for someones first indie game, and about approximates my first games sales.
Sounds poor i know, but unless anyone would care to contradict me, Id say thats about what to expect.

http://www.positech.co.uk

Thanks for an actual # for me to work with. So let''s see. I can get webhosting for somewhere around 7-8$/mo, which comes out to around 96$ for the first year. Assuming 5 sales per month, I would need to charge $1.60 to cover costs.

Hmm. So at 5$ for the game, it''s 300$ for the year, which is about 200$ profit.

At 10$ it is 600$, which is a 500$ profit.

Not bad, because I have a strategy game nearly ready to go, and a good FPS on the way in a couple of months.

Between the FPS and the Strategy game maybe I can get something working.

Thanks a lot! Any more info or ideas for getting things rolling would be appreciated.

Would anyone want to take a gander at what an average 2cnd indie game would probably sell at?

Thanks,
Mike

Im not blindly advertising Digital Candle, I use them for my own game:

http://www.weaponstudios.com/tokyowar.html

PayPal is not only very unprofessional looking, but also they do take quite a bit..Considering my game cost $5, them taking a $1 or whatnot is unacceptable.

Also, I have gotten more than 5 registers, so thats probably good...but Im glad I use DC.

Alex