Now, I don't claim to be an expert on this topic at all, however I have tried all of the methods below with varying success and regularity. As you can tell, I'm still here typing, so I haven't made it "big" with any of these methods. I've been writing games for the love of it for years, I like everything about it. However, for me it's important to have my games played and appreciated - how better to gauge that then to try selling them? What's more, when it's just hobby, the extra cash for beer money is just like icing on time wasters cake!

1) Shareware

The original way for indie types to make money. You give away a free version (or the full version if you're daring) and nag the end user about paying the money for the full/unlimited version making sure to point out the wonderful features they're going to get. In short, it's proven, it works. Letting people really play the game beforehand gives them confidence in the purchase. However, give away too much and they might just decide they've played enough and don't need the full version. I used this method with Tiltilation and it wasn't too bad, making a couple of thousand pounds sterling for 6 months work. It was also my first commercial endeavour and almost killed me. Shareware works well for full scale desktop games but the game needs to be a certain size before you can split it into the free bit and full version and leave both parts providing enough to play.

2) Adware at Home

Adware comes in a few forms. First you can stick adverts on the website around your web based games, most common for this is Google Adsense. Next if you're using the right technology you can embed adverts right into your game. If you're using Flash you have a multitude of options for this, most popular being MochiAds. In other technologies you can always opt for Google In-Game. Both methods essentially rely on the context adverts being smart enough to entice your players to click the adverts. This may of course annoy your players some, so it's best used carefully.

Now the "at Home" bit - one way of using these things is to keep your game (and idealy a bunch of your other games) on your website and try and drive traffic there, much like I do here at Coke And Code by writing blog articles like this (oooh, meta). The upside here is that you've got the exclusive on your games. The downside is you've got to drive that traffic yourself and that's not as easy as you might think. Here at C&C I make enough money from Google Ads to pay for my hosting (read about 25 quid a month) which can't be bad really. I get the odd special deal, but the traffic really isn't enough to making any real money. However, there are other options...

3) Adware at Portals

So you're happy to advertise in your game and/or around it, but you can't get the traffic. Well you might consider submitting the game to a portal and having their huge collection of games drag the traffic in. If you're working in Flash there are a massive number of portals to choose from including my faves Newgrounds and Kongregate. Both offer deals on advertising revenue including extra bonus percentage for integrating with their APIs (highscore, achievements, etc). If you're using other technologies you're going to find yourself limited, although the rather wonderful Game Jolt has just opened up their revenue scheme. For once, they take pretty much any technology and the games selection is starting to look really good!

Putting your game on a portal has a downside of course, it can easily get swamped under the mass of other people doing the exact same thing as you. Your game has to be good enough (and more important, re-playable enough) to actually drag people back to it. That said, my rather limited collection of flash games has been dragging in 15-20 pounds a month for the last few months on portals, so I guess that isn't not too bad. If you had a really popular game on there you could be getting some reasonable cash out of it, but it'd be unlikely to be sustained given the number of new ones every day.

4) Sell or Brand It!

You've written a kick ass implementation but average idea game. Putting it on the portals might get you some money long term but wouldn't it be nice to get a quick lump sum payout. There are a few portals around that will buy games in any technologies but they are few and far between. I've sold a Java applet to a portal (I can't mention here but) only for $250. That's nice for what was a week's work, but it did take an awful lot of finding. However, if you're working in Flash then you have a wonderful option left open to you - Flash Game License. This site lets you upload games for viewing by sponsors and publishers. If your game is quality looking and feeling, but the idea is average (or its a remake) then this is a great option. The downside is that at times you see games getting stolen and published elsewhere, but that's pretty rare these days.

There are a few deals you can do on lump sum game payments. You can sell an exclusive deal - this means the game only goes on one portal but tends to be a decent deal. You can sell a branding deal, where the game goes anywhere you want but carries the branding of a portal. You can just sell the game outright (with or without source), this is a rare occasion but sounds like you can write your own ticket (never happened for me). Each of these deals also may or may not let you keep your own advertising in place. In the best case you might end up with a branded game in which you can keep your own advertising and are actively encouraged to distribute. This is like having option 3 with a bonus :)

The deals vary alot from around $50 up to a few with $10,000+. Obviously game quality and appeal controls how much you're going to get offered. On Flash Game License it's a bidding process where publishers may try to out do each other. Moreover, in some cases you can sell the game to multiple publishers! I've made deals from $500 up to $1500 here, with games not taking more than a few weeks to put together. The problem is keeping going. It's a very dry process designing games to be explicitly appealing in this context - but it's probably a good cash in if you can stick it.

5) Go Mobile!

In the last couple of years the iPhone market place has become hot property. Now, with Android market launched and host of mobile providers itching to release their own versions, there may be money in them there handsets. There are a few great success stories about iPhone applications but not many given the number games released. The process for getting games up on iPhone is labourious but the market is very rich. In contrast the Android market is wonderfully simple to get games up on, but the market is still trying to find it's customers.

Getting your games out there and charging is pretty easy on both accounts. The APIs for developer are also pretty simple. Mobile games seem to work in a similar way to shareware. You push out a free lite version, then charge for the full game. So, why not port your game to a mobile?

I've got a few games out on both iPhone and Android at the moment. Nothing massive, but neat games, with polished looks. Android is selling, well not a lot, I can't imagine I've sold more than 3 in a day of anything so far. This isn't going to make me rich. On iPhone I don't current have "lite" versions and even then they're out selling Android 5 to 1. It's an interesting market. Probably one I need to spend more time on.

6) Trust in the good nature of people

If you really can't bear selling out in any way, but you'd like to make some cash then you consider the infamous "Donate" button. I've tried this on one game (that is no longer available), you're essentially saying "be nice, I wrote the game, drop me some cash". It could work, really it could, but I've yet to see it. The game would have to be something that people felt part of, that they came back and played over and over, that they were committed to - and even then you'd need your players to have enough disposable income to not mind shelling out some cash on something they could have for free. Tricky business!

Conclusion

While it's important to choose the right method for you, it's also to have a great game and put the hours in - which is probably where I keep failing :) There is no get rich quick and there is no easy win. If you work really hard, and choose the right business model and get lucky... you might make enough money for a pub lunch. If you get to be the one in million who makes it's really big, congratulations!, but for most of us it's best to accept that while you can make money on games it's unlikely to become your primary income. Write games for the love it and appreciate the beer money when it's there.