One website for each game?

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6 comments, last by totesmagotes 4 years, 8 months ago

 

Around the internet I see that other devs creates the websites for each game (or two in case it's sequel).

But what if I have many "little games" surely it will not be profitable.

Is there any rule when I should create one website for each game, or is there any other way to do something.

In my case I have one "big" game and I'm planning to create an another after finish it,but I need to spend about 120$ per year, to keep the site alive.

Another question when should I stop paying the website for game which is too old, on what it depends.

Also is there any good/cheap web hosting service especially for game devs?

 

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Hi ggenije,

this all really depends on your goals. Are you (trying to) earning money with your games? How many player do you have and are you planning any marketing campaigns for your games.
If you are paying 10$ a month for the "website" I assume you are not talking about the domain name alone but also about webspace, mailserver etc. or maybe even a small (virtual) server?
If you create a (mostly static) website for each game, you should be able to host as much domains as you like (or the hoster permits) on the webspace/server. If on the other hand you also host a forum for the player this might be different case.
Do your games interact with the website/server? Maybe some account area? Leaderboards?
Do you have shared accounts between different games?
And what do you define as a " different website for a game"? Do you mean a different domain name (subdomain?) or a completly different project? Maybe you do not need a "different website for every game" just a custom css to match the sites look and feel to the game. Or maybe just a landingpage for every game, so you can target your ads better?

If you provide a bit more information you might get better answers to your question.

 

56 minutes ago, GWDev said:

Hi ggenije,

this all really depends on your goals. Are you (trying to) earning money with your games? How many player do you have and are you planning any marketing campaigns for your games.
If you are paying 10$ a month for the "website" I assume you are not talking about the domain name alone but also about webspace, mailserver etc. or maybe even a small (virtual) server?
If you create a (mostly static) website for each game, you should be able to host as much domains as you like (or the hoster permits) on the webspace/server. If on the other hand you also host a forum for the player this might be different case.
Do your games interact with the website/server? Maybe some account area? Leaderboards?
Do you have shared accounts between different games?
And what do you define as a " different website for a game"? Do you mean a different domain name (subdomain?) or a completly different project? Maybe you do not need a "different website for every game" just a custom css to match the sites look and feel to the game. Or maybe just a landingpage for every game, so you can target your ads better?

If you provide a bit more information you might get better answers to your question.

 

1,Yes I am trying to earn money with my game. It's simply but unique mobile game which is  free offline and it's monetization are reward ads and premium services, and my target players are 5000-50000 downloads.

2.The target use of website I want is to be like "center of all places" - for example If I have facebook/twitter/reddit/youtube acc i will lead the potential users not to download link, but to that site, so that site will be basic static site only for use to integrate more users to download the game and lead them to the android/ios download site.

3.Reason why I am asking "One website for each game?" is that when I go to "research" other people sites I see that site name is not www.devepolerName/GameName.dom , but it's www.GameName.dom,  I know very little about hosting websites , so I don't want to lose ton of money trying myself when I can ask, but I think you need to host every that "main name" of site

So if I have game A and game B and game C i will need to host 3 sites because i'll need

www.A.dom & www.B.dom and www.C.dom

it's not profitable surely.

I strongly recommend buying only a single hosting package.  You should then be able to configure it so that it looks like multiple separate sites, if that is what you desire.

Easiest, cheapest options: companyname.com/gamename/

Slightly more difficult, just as cheap option: gamename.companyname.com  (Note that if you buy a domain name like companyname.com, you already own all subdomains like gamename.companyname.com.)

Somewhat more expensive option: gamename.com, configured to use the same server as companyname.com.  Still only costs ~10$ per site per year because you're only paying for multiple domain names, far cheaper than buying multiple full hosting packages.

Regarding hosting: I chose to use a cheap VPS service, which gives me a lot more power and flexibility than a managed hosting solution, at the cost of requiring some more work on my part.  There's a list of such service at https://lowendbox.com/.

28 minutes ago, a light breeze said:

Regarding hosting: I chose to use a cheap VPS service, which gives me a lot more power and flexibility than a managed hosting solution, at the cost of requiring some more work on my part.

All correct advice, but if you have no experience with webhosting and expect "just a few thousand" visitors on (mostly) static webcontent. Choose a reliable (maybe not the cheapest) webhoster that takes care of updates, security etc.

And, like a light breeze said, you do not need a hosting package per domain. Your hoster usually offers packages with multiple domains or the option to buy additional domains for ~$1/month (depending on domain of course, but .com should usually be around $1/month).
Sub-domains are usually included in packages.
You could also do both, e.g.:
www.my-awesome-game.com and my-awesome-game.mygamestudio.com could lead to the same page (if you plan to do this let us know, you need to set some headers for search bots)

I use fasthosts (a UK based company to host my sites); they've got a range of packages depending on what you're after. The incremental cost is the domain name as people have previously mentioned.

Personally, I'd go for separate sites (despite not having done this for my own game) because then you can have full control over the layout etc. for what a customer sees for that game. For my company, we do a few unrelated things and it looks a little.... confusing as to why you'd go to a corporate site when you're specifically looking for game information.

In terms of the cost of creating the sites, if you use wordpress or something similar, then it won't much aside from time (but that time is the same whichever way round you create the sites).

The only thing which would make me combine them into one would be if the games were taking ~1 month to create. Although at that point, there's not going to be much of a website IMO

I second the notion of using subdomains, that works, and doesn't cost you extra.

Have you heard of Greengeeks? Check them out, you could save a lot of money.

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