… and not much gets done. Not on the games programming front anyway.

I’ve been incredibly busy with my job. I had to finish an important project, before I leave after next week. Yes yes, only 1 week to go! Last week I was in Paris (Versailles to be exact) to integrate my last project with the client’s system. It was hard work, coding every day and then some more in the evenings at my hotel room. But at the end the client seemed happy, so I left with a good feeling!

As a result, I was not able to do any blogging at all. But this will improve massively the coming month! As my journey as an online entrepreneur and game producer begins, I expect I’ll have lots of experiences to write about

A while ago, I discovered the Earner’s Forum, an very popular forum with a massive amount of information for people who want ot make, or are currently making, money online. An interesting place to hang out… It pointed me to an interesting interview with Patrick Gavin, president of Text Link Ads, the system I use to monetize this blog.

Anyway, more stuff coming up the following days, including the Speeltijd website stats for September, and some stories about 10 years of Bubblomania, including sales stats!

The last few days I’ve been cleaning up my home office. It was also used as storage room for stuff we can’t place anywhere else. But since I will be working here full time starting next month, I think it’s important to have a clean and comfortable workspace. I’ll be spending quite a lot of time in here after all!

After throwing out the stuff that doesn’t belong here, I’ll be adding some items to relaxify the place, like some plants. On the other hand, it’s shouldn’t be too relaxing, since some serious development work has to be done in here! I think I’m going to print some small posters of my previous games and graphics I made, to keep my goal in sight, literally

When everything is in place, I will definitely post some pictures here!

Here I am again with the visitor stats for our Speeltijd website. I’m happy to announce that the growth from July continued: our traffic doubled in August!

Halfway in August, we did some offline website promotion, by distributing some flyers at a neighbourhood kids party. In the second half of August, we experienced some noticable growth. But I think the contribution of the flyers was only marginal. There was a small increase in direct hits, and 1 newsletter signup as a result.

Anyway, in the style of the Seeking Revenue site, here’s the Google Analytics charts for August:

For those not familiar with Google Analytics charts or the Dutch language: the blue graph represents the number of visits (2,698 total), and the orange one represents pageviews (12,436). There’s a pattern of drops on Friday/Saturday, followed by a spike on Sunday/Monday. The overall traffic is increasing nicely, and continues to do so for September.

The value of the site is in the content, which keeps growing at a rate of about 8 articles a month. This can also be seen by the fact that we get 4.6 pageviews per visit on average!

On the downside, it turns out to be a hard site to monetize. Our audience is clearly more interested in our own content, than in the Adsense ads. I tried a new program a few months ago: www.linki.nl, which as an adsense variant, but only for dutch ads. The good thing about linki is that they pay some money for banner views, but on the downside, their CPC is very low, unless you have a very high CTR…

So, any ideas are welcome!

Another Text-Link-Ads sponsor appeared on my blog: Get Latest Game News & Review. The site, called SyncGaming, features game news, reviews and previews, and has a community forum.

This is my third sponsor already, and it brings my Text Link Ads revenue for september to more than $33! So this seems to be a better than expected extra revenue source, which will come in very handy when I will be a full time indie, in a month!

The months before my first product release will be very tough, with zero income. So, if you want to help me out, you can do so by becoming a sponsor too! You will not only get a link under the Sponsors header on the left, but also a permanent link and a little site description in this blog!

How to become a sponsor?

1. Sign up with Text Link Ads, if you haven’t done so already.
2. Once successfully signed up, search for my blog, by typing “Dark Moon Blog” in the search box, or go directly to my blog details.
3. Click the Add To Cart button.
4. Enter the necessary info to buy the link. A link will cost $25 per month. If you’re new to Text Link Ads, they will give you $100 for free to spend on ads! So it’s a great opportunity either way.

This blog is slowly growing, and will continue doing so when I’m independent, and have more time available to post. So it’s a good investment!

Alternatively, if you own a mac, you can also sponsor me by buying my game Bubblomania X, for only $9.95.