One of the big question marks I have always had about a website like conrohl.com is; how do you monetize it?

There are a few options; you can charge people to play it, you can depend on add revenue, or you can do a hybrid of "pay to play." With any of these options you will see benefits and drawbacks.

If you charge to play the drawback is rather obvious. It is going to be incredibly difficult to be a start up game with no name brand and get people to try it for free. If we charged people to play it would pretty much insure that we never got off the ground. Longer term if the game catches on we may be able to toy with a pay to play model on the game and on any future game we create.

Google makes it relatively easy for websites like ours to make money through selling ad space...once you have traffic going to the site. Obviously we will not be able to count on any add revenue anytime soon. We do think we will take advantage of this model at some point, but we do not think it will be our primary revenue source.

The final option is a hybrid of pay to play. This is really what we want to do. You will be able to play the game for free if you want, but you will be able to pay for things that will give you an advantage over the free-players. This is a dangerous model and it needs to be done correctly. We could very easily scare away many users if they think you have to pay something to have a chance to be successful in the game. The advantage gained in paying has to be enough to entice people to use is but not so much that it scares people away from trying the game.

Making money on the game will likely be an iterative process with some trial and error involved but we are confident we are taking the best approach there is.

-Brett