Hi,
I have just released my first game today and I have laready got a publisher but the deal is non exclusive so I am looking for places to advertise.I am already putting it on download.com but I need other places.So where have you guys been successful? where do you advertise your game?

Thanks in advance for your replies

When you say advertise, do you mean buying paid advertisements like banner ads, ads in email newsletters, that kind of thing? Or are you just looking for websites where you can list your game? If it's the latter, you could grab yourself a copy of Shareware Tracker (http://www.accusolve.biz/strack.html) and submit your game to something like 400+ websites.

It depends how you define success. You haven't said what your goals are for advertising. Examples are...

1) Sell a particular product
2) Sell any of your many products
3) Grow your customer base by 1000 people
4) Build name brand recognition

I'm guessing from the tone of your email that your main goal is either 1 or 2. I suspect that in most cases if you're trying to sell a particular product or a few products most advertising will end up costing you more than you make. So you if you define success as..

Money Made from Ad - Cost of Add = some positive number

..then I'd say you'll have trouble finding a "good" advertising spot. There are a few spots I ran, (palmgear.com for 1 month - but lost money on following months) that succeeded in that sense, but generally speaking all my advertising has been geared at gaining extra cusomters for the long term and trying to break even or not lose too much money. If you're looking at long term growth then you might consider something like google adwords as a way to draw traffic. But to make the most of that you have to push and try to make that person not only a 1 time customer but also someone you can pitch new games and add-ons to down the road.

Not too many people want to share the good spots to advertise. Firstly because it's different for every game, but secondly and more importantly; once you get a place that works, you don't really want other games advertising there.

Finally, I just have to say that I don't think too many websites that sell advertising really understand how it works for the indie gamer (or any small company, really) and as such charge more than their site is worth (although again, it depends on the game). that is to say, you end up spening more on the advertising than you get back in sales.

A FEW WORDS OF ADVICE:

If you don't have the proper means to track the effectiveness of your ads ... then don't even bother placing them. Without a system for tracking whether or not a person who clicked on your ad actually ended up buying a game, you won't be able to determine if your ads were worth the money.

~Hanford

With Plimus there's a nice option known as "referrer", for the orders you see the page that originated it.
However if ppl are using firewalls or program to remain anonymous (hide their IP) it's really hard to track it (I'd say impossible).
Personally I just submitted my games to lot of sites using shareware tracker.
That builds up over the time, now if you try a search with "soccer manager" in Google I am in the first page... :)

Originally posted by Jack_Norton
With Plimus there's a nice option known as "referrer", for the orders you see the page that originated it.

In my experience the referrer is only useful for the free version, not the sale, since 90% of the time the buyer comes directly from the game itself (from either the in-game "Buy now" button or the URL shortcut installed with the game). I checked this with my game by including a "buy now" URL in the game that was otherwise not public, and not linked to from my main site.

Now I use cookies as tracking devices. I know not everyone likes cookies, but it seems to do a decent job of tracking.

~Hanford

I use a unique installation ID, along with an affiliate code. Combination of the two gives a pretty clear indication of what's going on.

Cas :)

Cas, can you explain that a little bit more? I don't understand how you can track ad effectivness from the system you described.

I'm talking about tracking how people found your demo or site, and whether or not that led to a sale (esp. if it was through an ad).

I have thought of 2 major ways of doing this:

1. Tag people with cookies depending on their referring information. In the case of ads, have the ads link to special pages that lay down the cookie. When they visit the store page to buy (potentially weeks later)), embed the information gleaned from the cookie into the sales page and encode it with the sale.

The problem with this is if they don't use cookies, or if they don't visit your site to download (and instead just download through a link directly to your game on your site) then you don't get the refering information.

2. When the user goes to download your free version, Save their refering information, and give them a special download encoded with a unique ID that indicates the referer. When/if the gamer clicks on the "buy this game" link, this unique ID is passed back to your store and you can track it from there.

The problem with this is you need to customize your game or installer dynamically as it is being downloaded (PITA). The other problem is that if the user does not use the in-game link to visit your store, then you don't get the refering information correct (although in my experience, a majority of people use the in-game link to buy)

Are there other ways to track Ad effectivness?

Hanford

When the user goes to download your free version, Save their refering information, and give them a special download encoded with a unique ID that indicates the referer.This is like a system described in a recent newsletter article in the Association of Shareware Professionals (http://www.asp-shareware.org/), except they describe how to do it without needing to modify your download dynamically. Really. And they explain how to do it much much more accurately, so you don't have to worry about inaccurate referers.

And I can't say anymore than that :) No, I haven't tried it myself, but it did look extremely clever.