There seems to be a lot of frustration in the forums with ad networks – bad fill rates, bad eCPM, bad click-through, whatever. And a lot of the case-studies I’ve seen (e.g. at Gamasutra) seem to show pretty poor dollars-per-month kind of revenue, unless you win the app lottery.
Has anyone tried the various affiliate programs which pay you some percentage for all purchases generated through your affiliate-ID? I.e. display a product to the user, they click and buy it, and you get a commission.
Some of the commissions seem to be reasonable (5-10%), and you could potentially target your game/app’s customers to items they are likely to enjoy (e.g. driving game --> car items). Considering even a nominal purchase (i.e. a couple of t-shirts at $15 each @ 5% commission is $1.50 in your pocket), it would seem to get you close to the (low-end) revenue of an ad network.
On a related note: maybe someone at Corona could comment on how this fits in with the Starter, Basic, Pro, etc. categorization. I.e. you could probably hack this out with basic network.request calls under the Starter/free package, no need for a higher-level/paid-for plugin. But is that cool with Corona?
John