Finally! I received the papers today, I’m officially independent! My one-man business is registered, and I have a Belgian VAT number now: BTW-BE-0886.671.654.

So, this means I can start making expenses! But of course, the idea is to also have some income. I’m hard at work to achieve that!

Unfortunately, having a company also means extra paperwork, which is not something I particularly enjoy. But in my case, it shouldn’t be much of a hassle. And there are still accountants

It’s been a while since my last blog post… I’ve been sick for a couple of days (which is not good when you don’t get paid!), and working hard on the other days.

So, what have I been up to recently? I’ve been doing the (mostly digital) paperwork to become officially independent. So I’ll soon have my own company, which is the Belgian equivalent of a US sole proprietorship company (i think). And I also spoke to an accountant about a couple of issues. The internet business thing is still relatively new, and even for an accountant it’s not always clear

Game production-wise, I’m working on 2 prototypes for new games. One of them, codenamed Smiley Memory, will be part of the Smiley Puzzle Project. It’s based on the classic Memory game, in this case matching smileys, with some action added. I designed it together with my girlfriend, and she’s helping with the level design!

The other one is a very early prototype of a secret action game, codenamed Quantum Chaser. The thing’s gotta have a name, right?

It’s been very quiet around the Smiley Puzzle Project on this blog. So it’s time for a sneak peek at my current plans, which I hope to realise during this year. Quite a while ago, I registered 2 domains to be used for this project: www.SmileyPuzzleGames.com and www.SmileyPuzzle.com.

The first one is intended to become a small online games arcade, with multiple puzzle games, all featuring 3D animated smileys. I have several ideas for puzzle games, for which I will first make a webgame version. The most popular games will get a deluxe downloadable version. Today I made a logo which should give a first impression of the concept. A larger version can be seen at the Smiley Puzzle Games website itself.

The second domain, just named Smiley Puzzle, is a short and nice sounding name that currently forwards to the Smiley Puzzle Project category on this blog. But it will be the main site for the first downloadable Smiley Puzzle game.

Why create puzzle games with smileys? Well, the obvious reason is that I like both smileys and puzzle games! The smiley is one of the icons of the internet age, and the cool 3D looking ones are very popular with kids (thank you, MSN). So it is my hope that smiley themed games will attract people.

My goal is to make mentally challenging puzzle games, not the mind-numbing variant. But they also have to be accessible to a large demographic, and kids in particular. The games should be easy to learn and play, and entertaining enough that it’s not seen as a heavy mental activity. At the same time, using your brain will be rewarded and necessary when progressing in the game. This, of course, is easier said then done…

A new year has started, so, Happy New Year to all my readers!

For me, this will be the year to take things seriously, and to make my business work! It will be tough, but I hope to come out at the end of 2007 with a lot more assets, and a lot more knowledge! And preferably with a couple of extra income streams

As per usual, I’ll give a quick rundown of my website stats for the past month, starting with the Speeltijd site.

As you can see on the Google Analytics chart, the site had 5409 visitors, which is down 10% from last month. As a result, Adsense revenue also dropped about 16%. This little dip was to be expected, because of the Christmas holidays, and the school exams period before. We expect traffic to pick up again, and increase when we launch the forum this month.

Traffic for this blog and the Dark Moon Software site also decreased a bit, again caused by the holidays, and a lower blog update frequency. Both traffic and blog posts will increase again, when I’ll be writing about my indie business plans for the coming year. I’ll be doing some experiments with my Bubblomania webgame, and start again with the Smiley Puzzle Project.

This blog also had a new sponsor through Text Link Ads this month, bringing it’s revenue for december to over $50! A nice way to pay for hosting All 5 sponsors will continue sponsoring next month, so I want to thank them all again: Mortgage Lenders, Cell Phone Covers, Iron Realms - Text MMORPG’s, MaraPets Games and Be The Dealer!

I also added the Performancing Partners program to this blog last month, through which you can advertise here for only $20 a month! You’ll get the same deal as when buying a text link ad: a small review of your site on this blog! This means you’ll get a permanent link on a this PR4 site for free! The same applies when you buy a Performancing ad on our dutch Speeltijd site.

Have a great year!

Today is the official launch day of the Bubblomania webgame! Hooray!!!

What started out as a small project to get to know LWJGL, of course ended up as a total remake of the classic downloadable Bubblomania shareware game. Can you believe it’s already more than 10 years ago that the first Mac version was released? Neither can I…

To celebrate this event, the new online version is available to anyone for free! So spread the word!

The past weeks, the website has been redesigned, and now features more info about the history of Bubblomania, a FAQ and a contact form.

I hope people enjoy playing the game as much as I enjoyed making it!

Be The Dealer is an online casino, where you can not only play as a regular player, but also as the dealer. I’m not into online casino’s (or real life casino’s for that matter), but playing as the dealer seems to be an interesting twist. To play, you have to download an application, which seems to be windows only. So I couldn’t try it…

From their site:

BeTheDealer’s unique concept was created so that each of our players receives the best possible odds when playing at our Casino. Unlike other online or land-based casinos, our Casino allows you to decide whether you’d like to serve in the traditional player role or if you’d prefer to experience life on the other side of the table as the dealer.

This was a sponsored message. If you would like to become a sponsor, buy a link on this blog at Text Link Ads.

Ok, this sounds more impressive than it really is, but our dutch website Speeltijd is named website of the month by the site Het Knutselhuis, a dutch online shop for hobby and crafts products!

So this means we’ll be on their front page for the month of December. I expect this to bring in some extra traffic!

My girlfriend, who creates the content for that site, is really happy with this. It seems our efforts really are appreciated!

Another month has passed, so it’s statistics time again! Yay, I love statistics!

Our Speeltijd website reached 6000 visitors, representing a growth of 24%. Exactly the same growthrate as last month! With almost 28000 pageviews, we’re maintaining a nice average of 4.6 pageviews per visitor. On our best day, we had 281 visitors!

The adsense revenue of the site grew by 57% this month, which is very interesting considering the fact that pageviews only grew by 22% and I did not change the ad layout at all! So it seems to be true that ad revenue grows at a faster rate than traffic.

The site still has no other revenue streams besides adsense, which is a bit disappointing. I have yet to see the first Performancing link, and AdEngage declined the site. On the bright side, there have been early talks with a major brand about a possible cooperation! But I can’t say anything about this yet…

Traffic on this blog and the Dark Moon Software site in general grew by 22% this month, despite moving the page for my Bubblomania X downloadable game to the new Bubblomania website. Adsense revenue for this site is negligable, but since traffic has been growing for several months, I re-introduced the Google ads on the blog today.

On the other hand, the Text-Link-Ads on this blog are still going strong! Big thanks to the 4 current sponsors, who will continue sponsoring for the whole month of december: Mortgage Lenders, Cell Phone Covers, Iron Realms - Text MMORPG’s and MaraPets Games! I still have 4 spots available for sponsors, click here to buy a link, including a blog post with permanent link!

The beta version of my new Bubblomania website has been launched a few weeks ago, and it already has a number of repeat visitors. So it looks promising, although there’s quite some work left on both the webgame and the site. I’m currently thinking hard about possible marketing and monetization options.

Ok, this was a longer than usual post, time to shut up