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IGROMoney affiliate program from Realore Studios – overview

Svetlanka — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 06:07:21 +0000

The Realore Studios is one of the leading companies which develope, publish and distribute games. The games, developed by it, are becoming popular not only on the Russian market, but also on foreign markets.

Realore Studios has developed about 30 games, among which such popular series as games with Jane (Jane’s Zoo, Jane’s Hotel, Jane’s Reality, etc.), which is on the top of world charts. Developers state that they produce only exclusive games and are not involved in mass release. By the way, the company has celebrated its 7th birthday this month.

In December, 2008 Realore Studios has launched IGROMoney affiliate program, which helps to earn money on casual games selling. Now the program is accessible only in Russian, but it is suitable both for beginners and professionals.

To become a partner you need to register in the program, the process of registration is very simple. There are two ways of money earning in IGROMoney program:

1) After the registration you’ve been given the partner ID; and the unique partner link, for example [click here] is formed. You can place this link on any resource, and if user buys a game through this link, you will receive the deserved reward – 40 rubles (~$1,4). In IGROMoney this way of cooperation is called “for users”. Everything is extremely simple: you don’t need to have any special knowledge; it will be enough to place the link to your blog, social network, etc.

2) The second way – “for webmasters” – should be examined more closely.

Unlike other affiliate programs, which offer showroom placing through ready Java Script (for example, Alawar), the showroom from IGROMoney is placed on the domain of the second or third level through the addition of new record CNAME. For example, to adjust the domain of the third level games.site.ru with IGROMoney showroom on site.ru, it is necessary to have a games.site.ru CNAME igromoney.ru record. For this purpose you need to refer to your hoster, or if you have an access, to do it yourself. It will take about one day. With ready Zamango Money Extractor plugin it will be faster, more convenient and less problematic, because you don’t have to create any domains of the third level and to register CNAME. If you have chosen the IGROMoney alternative of placing the games, you wouldn’t be able to change your showroom’s appearance, design, etc. The only thing you can do is the editing of top games and the heading of your showroom through the dashboard of the affiliate program.

For those who want to create their own website with Realore games, but don’t want to use ready showroom, XML in Windows-1251 or UTF-8 coding is given. Its processing is your problem, which can be solved if you use Zamango Money Extractor plugin.

There is a bit by bit instruction for users and for experienced webmasters on the site.

After the registration, affiliate is given individual partner number or PID. The Realore company works on the principle of try and buy, i.e. a potential buyer downloads a game and plays first 60 minutes of it for free. After the expiration of this time wrapper blocks the game. To purchase it user needs to send sms and get the activation code.

A partner gets 40 rubles (~$1,4) for each game purchasing. The company promises to make payments automatically at the beginning of every month (from 1 to 5 days), but as a matter of fact the delays of payments are not uncommon. We need to say that there are no limits in payments and they are withdrawn through WebMoney and YandexMoney systems.

The affiliate program has a row of considerable minuses. First, the program is made only for the Russian-language market (Russia, Ukraine, Baltic countries). Second, it has small game base: the total amount is 90 games, unique games (i.e. which are not presented in other Russian partner programs) is 50. However, some games turned out to be successful and are being bought adequately. New games are published not very often, but they appear in the affiliate program on the same day, as on realore.ru. So you can have Realore games “for assortment”.

The IGROMoney affiliate program also gives promo-materials which you can use for users attraction: banners and blocks of games. The choice of banners is poor: 5 sets for five games. Html-code is generated for banner placing on your resource, after you have chosen necessary size and entered a link where the banner leads. Blocks of games are the advertising blocks; their size, color, pictures location, text length, etc. is set by you. As a result you receive html-code, and after its placing on a site you will get such block, for example:

So you should use the affiliate program by Realore as an addition to other Russian programs, for example, to Alawar, GameBoss, TurboGames, because the game base is very small, but there are exclusive games, which are very popular among users. Our Zamango service is made to facilitate you work on collecting games data from different affiliate programs. So register in IGROMoney, download and install our plugin – and games from the leading partner programs will be placed on your resource.

GameBoss affiliate program for casual games selling

Svetlanka — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 03:31:04 +0000

Let’s examine the Russian segment of casual games market and variants of earning money in this segment. The popularity of casual games in Runet has increased during the last years, and business based on Russian mini-games market becomes more and more perspective. GameBoss affiliate program was made in 2006 and for these three years has considerably expanded game base, there are more than 300 games in it now.

How does the GameBoss affiliate program work?

In the description of the affiliate program it is said that “Popular resource GameBoss.ru is regularly refilled fresh games base, with the help of which your website will bring the constant income of 1.5$ from one SMS, sent for the game activation.” It is necessary to specify that GameBoss affiliates can receive 40 rubles for each activation since recently, while the sales amount is more than 100, and if you have more than 150 sales, you get 45 rubles for each activated game. But it is necessary to note that the Alawar affiliates get 40 rubles regardless of sold games.

Certainly potential affiliates are worried about how they can receive the earned money. The unique links for the game downloading, which contain affiliate ID, become available after registration in the affiliate program. The user downloads and installs a game with so-called wrapper (the program module), which blocks the game after some time. The game activation is carried out by sending SMS with a code to special number. The activation code includes the partner ID, which link is used for game downloading.

One of the pluses is a way of payment through SMS that is rather convenient for local gamers, because it is not convenient for all to purchase a game with a credit card (as it happens when you buy a game from the BigFishGames, for example). Besides if you join the GameBoss affiliate program you can involve not only Russian users, because sms payments are accepted from Russian, Ukrainian and Kazakh residents, plus electronic payments.

Besides you can earn money by placing the links with your partner ID, which are given in dashboard, on various resources. The user’s browser remembers cookies, which defines your buyer, when he goes to that link. You will receive the commission for each purchase of this user even if he goes to the GameBoss website without your link.

Also it is necessary to consider that the GameBoss affiliate program is multilevel. You can receive 10% of each partner’s, involved by you, income.

So the affiliate has 3 ways to earn money with the GameBoss affiliate program. The partner can decide whether to choose one of them or use all of them. As an argument in favor of GameBoss we site some figures, viz. top partners:

TOP10 partners for September, 2009
Name	Income, $
1. roma	696.7
2. Alexey	688.9
3. nevo	16896
4. Sergey	686
5. Dimon	503.5
6. Aleksandr	421
7. sotguru	326.6
8. Sergey	285.7
9. Yuriy	264.5
10. Roman	257.8

The GameBoss affiliate can receive the money, earned by honest employment, 2 times a month, the minimal payment is 5 USD at the exchange rate of the Bank of Russia at the current date, transactions commission is paid by the partner. GameBoss works with two payment systems: WebMoney (WMZ) and Yandex money.

After your registration in the affiliate program promo-materials for more than 300 games, Russian descriptions, graphic material (icons and screenshots), partner links for games downloading, also banners and commercial module constructor (which can be placed on the websites), become available for you. As to promo materials we can’t say that they are new and varied, but that will be enough to use them for games promotion. Besides there is a possibility to adjust commercial modules where game advertising is set, this is one more way to increase casual games sales from your site.

As to the regular game base updating we can’t say that this is true. First, new games appear absolutely sporadically, sometimes 2 times a week, sometimes 2 times a month. Second, a new game publication is not always announced in affiliate program’s news for some unknown reasons. But this won’t be a problem for Zamangers as Zamango content managers control the GameBoss updating and add all new games to base.

For professionals and programmers there is including all content XML-feed, which can be customized and adjusted for your website: the games collections according to genres, to rating, to different classification, etc.

Herewith after you have adjusted a site one time, you shouldn’t update it manually when a new game is published.

If there is a problem with functioning, you should apply to the support service and hope for the best. Technical support is not ideal, but is quite good: within several days you can get the answer. Also you shouldn’t hope that you can avoid the interaction with the GameBoss support service: when you have read in news that “bilds are updated” you would have to write and ask what was changed and what you should do with it. If you have no patience and do not want to communicate with support service, you can try to find the answers on the GameBoss forum.

Who is the GameBoss affiliate program made for?

First of all the GameBoss affiliate program for games selling is made for those, who begin to earn money with affiliate programs, but don’t know English well and that is why cannot understand English partner programs and involve English-speaking users.

Also if you want to earn money in the future you should join it, because Russian segment of casual games market is developing rapidly and is rather perspective.

There aren’t many players on it, the traffic fights are not so tough, and as to the low prices for products, a plenty of cracks and warez, all this changes for the better.

However we should note that if you have the base knowledge of English (and online translators can help you), you should pay attention to similar English affiliate programs, for example, BigFishGames or Reflexive. You can earn more there and their content base is larger.

Overview of English casual games affiliate programs

NeoSerge — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 09:22:57 +0000

There are many players on the market of english affiliate programs: RealArcade, Outrix, TryGames, YoudaGames (workink via RegNow), ArcadeTown (working via BMT Micro), PlayFirst, you also can use RegNow itself. This list of partner programs has no ending – today only a lazy person doesn’t have his own partner program. However, don’t rush clicking all those links and signing up for those programs cause all of them refer to second-level or even third-level programs, and some of them are complete trash. Reasons for that can be different: gaming content is poor, usability is low (sometimes it seems that everything is designed in a special way to make the work of affiliates harder), the system of payments is moronic (up to 4 payments a year), or the program itself is designed for affiliates who have enormously huge traffic… From our own experience we can recommend only two affilliate programs in the sphere of casual games: BigFishGames (more info in BigFishGames’ partner affiliation program – overview) and Reflexive (more info in Reflexive’s affiliate program overview). In this article we are going to talk about them.

First of all, we must say that both of these companies are present on the market of casual games, and as a result, they partly share the catalog of games. Other features are different and to make it easy to understand them, we have placed all the data in the following table.

Criterion (numbers as of 2009-09-28)	BigFishGames	Reflexive
Amount of english PC games (in our base)	1130	1230
Amount of unique PC games	528 – english 328 – french 463 – german 283 -spanish 123 – japaneese	628
Amount of Mac games (games for Mac are available only in English for now)	195	288
Amount of unique Mac games	78	171
Releases of new PC games	English – 1 each day German – 1 each day French – 1 each day Spanih – 1 approximately in two days Japaneese – 1 approximatelly in 3 days	1 English game per working day (you see, on weekend Reflexive is relaxing)
Releases of new Mac games	1 game approximately in 2-3 days	1 dame approximately in 2 days
Affiliate sales tracking method	Cookie, which installs for 90 days after you entered any page of BigFishGames sites. However if a certain user have already visited BigFishGames’ site before, he has been given a life-time cookie – a small cheat of this partner program.	when you go to the site using a link that contains your affiliate ID, it is automatically added to all the URLs on the page, so this ID is saved while the user is surfing the site (unless the user deletes this ID manualy) When the user downloads the game via your link, affiliate ID is build-in to the distributive.
Percentage earned on selling the game	25%	40%
Game cost	$6.99	$6.99
Multi-level system	yes, from each partner you bring, you will get 25%, and if they’ll bring new partners you can build a very decent chain that will make your income.	no
One time payment or payments for the rest of your life	Each user you attract to the program is secured for yourself “forever” and you’ll get percentage from each his purchase.	one time payment goes to the partner whose ID is build-in to the distributive
Access to buyers’ e-mails	no	yes
Reports and statistics	Briefly speaking we can call it shitty. It is absolutely useless. You can only see how many users you have attracted and how much money you have earned (per day/month). Also you have to follow your statistics on two different sites (more info here – BigFishGames’ affiliation program – Beginning). Everything works awfuly, falls apart and doesn’t show. Even the emploees of BigFishGames can’t explain the purpuse of Bi-weekly Sales Reporting.	Almost everything you dreamed about – all information is available in real-time mode, also you can save the reports you need.
Tracking of sales	no	is very comfortable, you can create as many channels for different sites, sections of sites, or for various promtion events
Money withdrawal and commission	WireTransfer and ACH, free ($500 minimum) Check, Free ($20 minimum) PayPal, free (PayPal takes it pecentage when you withdraw money)	WireTransfer, costs $20 ACH, free Check, costs $5 PayPal, free (PayPal takes it pecentage when you withdraw money)
Periodicity of payments	once a month or even rarely (as you wish). Also you need to order a withdraw BEFORE the 15th day of the month. Sometimes they delay paymet for several days, but it’s not critical	once a month. Usualy you can withdraw in the beginning of the month, on the 1-3d day of the month
Hold on the payments	No holds, you get all the money you’ve earned by the time of withdraw	One month, i.e. in september you can withdraw your july’s revenue
Ways of receiving the content	here the programs are similar: you get banners, links for the games, frames, XMLs, engines for your own site. Ways of receiving the content are well organized in both programs.
Branding of the content	not available	if you don’t have your own site you can send traffic to your branded reflexive page (headline). Also your pictures are build-in to the distributive of the games and when the game is launched, the user sees your splash-screen, and if he click the button other games, he’ll get to your site. This button is situated in the folder of the game. The page where they buy your games is also branded.
Various promos (like, all games for only $0.99)	Sometimes those events happen, but rarely you are informed about them	Those events take place often enough, and you are always informed about them
Adequacy of support	average, but closer to detestable. Here they answer, but usualy not to the point. Also they don’t fix bugs.	here support is detestable. They just ignore you.
Annoying features	-errors in statistics – sometimes the affiliate program malfunction, there were days without users and partner’s allocations -sometimes cookie wasn’t installing when we used some promotion materials -earlier there was a serious bug (or an attempt of cheating on the part of the program), after it was fixed the amount of new registrations raised in 4 times. -your account can be suddenly blocked, and you will spend months to unlock it	not detected

Turns out that there are two different casual game affiliate programs and both have their unique features. Obviously, you have to use them both if you want to achieve the best result in your affiliate sales!

So, what is left to di is to sign up for BigFishGame’s and Reflexive’s programs, enter your affiliate IDs in Zamango contron panel, and start earning money.

Reflexive’s affiliate program overview, part 1

NeoSerge — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 22:04:04 +0000

So, Reflexive Company was established in far 1997. In that time the company specialized in developing PC games. By the year 2009 their team of developers managed to make about twenty games. Among them you can find Crimsonland, Ricochet: Lost Worlds, Ricochet: Recharged, Wik and the Fable of Souls, and of course Big Kahuna Reef and Big Kahuna Reef 2. We seriously doubt that there is a person in this world who never played at least one of them. Approximately in 2000 the company started its affiliate program called GameCenterSolution, which offered people to sell games and get a percentage for this.
This program is designed for people who are interested in games and eager to earn money. To participate in this program you don’t need to have your own site, or some kind of specialized knowledge. Any one can enter the program cause GameCenterSolution doesn’t require any financial investments. To sign up for the program first you have to read Affiliate Agreement and then fill in a small registration form. The developers divide this process into three stages.

1. Reading the agreement and filling in the Registration Form.
2. Choosing the form of getting and giving away the content.
3. Receiving 40% from each sale.

Now we would like to tell you about the second step. This affiliate program has a vast toolbox.

Banners. The easiest way is to place Reflexive’s banner on your site. After users click the banner, they get to the Reflexive.com site. The important thing is that your affiliate ID will follow those users everywhere they go on the site. If they buy something the sale goes to your account and you get your 40%.
Store Front – is a good choice for the beginners. Banner with your site’s logo will be placed in the header, furthermore, your site will be hosted on GameCenterSolution.
iFrame. It is an interesting way of placing content on your site. Several lines of code and you have a frame on your site, which displays aggregated information about the games you sell. The developers add various games, change tops, carry out marketing mix strategies, and you don’t have to do anything at all, you use the results of their hard work cause your frame is adjusted automatically.
XML Feed. And of course XML Feed, option for those, who was reading about previous methods with a smile on their faces. Yes, XML Feed allows you to get and use the content any way you want. To use this option you will have to get some specialized knowledge, but we guarantee you that the game is worth the can die.

After you have studied the program, seen their site, chosen your way of getting the content, you probably have one question left: What is it all about? But only the most patient readers can find out the answer in the conclusion to this article.
The main distinctive features of the program are:

you get 40% from each sell
at the moment the program offers 1186 games to sell
real-time statistics of sales
game pages, pages where you buy games, and game installer can contain your logo
you have access to your buyers e-mails.

On the whole, we can say that this program is stable, reliable, and is working for a long time already, which is important. Anyway, if you want to earn on the market of casual games we recommend you to try this program, cause the appetite comes while eating, and its impossible to get your own impression until you try.