Do you understand, who the audience of a browser game consists of? It's unrealistic to expect high RPM from the kids.

Pollfish is excellent if you can provide a good incentive, and decent without. Very simple integration too!

The only profitable HTML games that I know of are using the Patreon model of distribution and are pornographic in nature.

The more popular ones make well over $5k a month.

Sell things... or let people sell things on your game (ads)

Very simple to say. but you're going to just need to do a lot of trial and error to see what hits the sweet spot

In my opinion, it’s kind of hard to make good money from HTML or browser games - that segment of the market often expects the games to be free.

You can look into how others in that space are doing it - whether it’s ads, donations, subscriptions, etc.

For example, minesweeper.io or chess.com use ads and subscriptions, while some others just have a paypal link for donations - find the sites that offer games most similar to your own and do a bit of competitive analysis.

You’ll also want to make sure you have analytics set up too, so you can figure out actual user numbers and whether it’s worth monetizing at all.

Lastly, the most reliable avenue - is probably just to spend time building up a good portfolio and then sell to an actual portal if you develop some polished hits.

All in all, I’d put your focus on fun and growing your playerbase and portfolio instead of monetization for this kind of game.

Good luck!

Yes, by selling things. Have you done any research on Google or with ChatGPT?

Host it on a browser game distribution platform (website dedicated to browser games). Browser games typically don't make much if any unfortunately.

https://poki.com/ seems to be a site that wants to be non-intrusive and nice while still using some kind of ad model. To me it looks like they do things the right way.

Best bet is just making the game as good as you can. Just share it as a high quality, free puzzle game.

If you get decent traffic then use it market other paid (or more easily monetizable) games you make in the future. Paid puzzle mobile game would probably be pretty good. But can just integrate with Stripe for browser based games (it was about a weekend of work for me for my browser-based digital board games)

Put it on itch and put a price on it. You can add a demo version for people to try it out before buying.

I see what you mean, can you share your H5 site? I can provide Reward, Anchor, Banner, Video ads if your site has good valid traffic and the content is not violating.

bro even p*rn websites can be monetized 😂

I've been studying marketing a bit, and something important to consider for commercial game development is that you're not just competing against other games in your genre or just other indie games, you're effectively competing against all forms of entertainment for people's time and attention.

It is possible however to specifically target certain groups or demographics through focused marketing. Who you are targeting will affect who you are in most direct competition with - for example, a person making a turn-based fantasy RPG will be competing more directly against Square Enix, makers of Octopath Traveler, Dragon Quest, and Final Fantasy. So the question to ask yourself may be...who is also doing boxing stuff or sports browser games, and are they successful at a level you feel is practical to pursue? Are there other aspects you feel you could add to set your game apart from others? If you were the customer, how would you feel playing your game, ignoring all the work you put into it and judging on face value?

It's also worth noting that monetization in videogames is getting a bit of push back from lawmakers in various countries, so be careful of which demographics and regions you market to. Cosmetic stuff should be safe. P2W stuff should be safe. Lootboxes not so safe.

When you market your game, remember that a potential customer does not care how much work you put into the game, but how good the game seems to be. If you do advertise, make sure it adds to rather than subtracts from the "perceived value" of your game - be careful not to advertise falsely though - people will get angry enough to file reports or negative reviews.

The market for browser-based games was mostly swallowed by mobile games. Anything you would have done as a browser-based game 15 years ago would now very likely work much better as an app.

But browser-based games are still a niche a couple games exist in. For example, I believe Fallen London is still turning a profit (a niche game within a niche).

Back in the day I believe Kingdom of Loathing did ok through donations. I'm interested in hearing others' comments

Erepublik is still going, so it has to be generating some profit.

There are various .io games. It started with games like agar.io and became really popular. Check out /r/IoGames/ for the whole ecosystem.

Also, Gameforge has a bunch of games that have been online for years:

https://gameforge.com/en-US/browser-games/

unity still initializes in webgl, so thats -0.2$ for you.

About the same as a car costs

I work for a consultancy. We charge anywhere from $50-$100 per hour for a software developer. You could probably find a solo freelancer for a bit less. A good dev will nail you down on requirements before giving you a reasonable estimate and then you'll need to sign a contract. This is best for both parties. I see a couple red flags in your statement. You say it's a browser only game but then mention Android and IPhone. You say that it's a simple, "MySpace flash" game, but then mention that's it's 3D. You could benefit yourself by really solidifying your requirements. A good dev can help you with that, though you'll probably have to pay them for that time, as well. Also, the complexity of your game means less than you think. Remember, you aren't buying a game, you're buying a software developer. If a $50/hr dev takes 100 hours to do the job, but an $80/hr dev can do it in half the time, you just saved yourself $1000 going with the $80/hr (I'm not saying it will take 50-100 hrs to build your game. I have no idea as I don't know the requirements).

I can't say this enough, always always always have a contract. Never sign a contract that you don't understand completely. Never agree to "time and materials" unless you understand what that means in terms of the contract, or you have money to burn.

Consider creating an LLC and signing the contract as the business. If shit hits the fan, you don't want someone going after your house and your kid's college fund.