You made a game or an animation, and now you want to get some branding for it. What should be your criteria?

It is not easy trying to find the best way to start a sponsorship, and there are many questions you may be asking. For one, how much money does your game deserve? For another, which sponsors are the best, and when do you get paid? But one of the most important questions is "how do I choose a sponsor?"

Quite simply, the answer is not "the one who pays the most," because there is something more to sponsorship then the amount you get for a game or animation. It is necessary to look at your sponsor with a careful eye, and to see what your options are. Here are the critera you should judge on:

Website Quality

Is the website for which you are seeking sponsorship actually there? Has the sponsor had other work produced and sponsored? It is always important to see what website you sponsor is from.

Listen to What Others Say

Listen to what others who have been sponsored have said about sites. For example, I have heard a lot of good things from Armor Games, Crazy Monkey Games, and Hall Pass... but I am sure there are many others. Listening carefully to who is getting sponsored by the community is important.

Look for Repeat Sponsorships

Authors are going to get sponsored again if they had a good experience. Look at some people who have been sponsored many times, and you might get a better idea who is doing it right in the community. For example, the Boxhead series has been sponsored many times by Crazy Money Games, a good indication that the author is probably getting a good experience out of it.

Price

This is such a tricky animal. How do you judge your work with a value? Many sponsors will ask to name your own price, and that makes it even harder. And with that, Flash game prices have gone way, way up with the boom in Casual Gaming... games worth only hundreds of dollars a few years ago are now worth thousands!

Your best guess is to ask a few of your friends, or even check out Flash Game Sponsorship for a few previous sponsor prices. Just know that if anyone is suggesting less than $250 for a fully licensed game, you might as well move on.

Now there are some things to look out for. Look out for a sponsorship judged solely on performance. There are some sponsors out there who only want to give you money if it gets a certain score on Newgrounds or another Flash site... this is incredibly unsafe, since you are putting the judgement of how you get paid by 14 year olds! Avoid these sponsorships. Now I do recommend, however, that you look into performance bonuses on top of a base fee. This is the sponsorship system I used to be on, and it made me work extra hard to polish those last-minute details. I used to get about 90% up front, and small bonuses for good traffic or success.

Well that's the basics! If you want to learn more, check out about how to build a relationship with your sponsor!