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August 17, 2009

HeyZap Getting Web Surfers Addicted to Video Games as Developers Make Money

Filed under: Start-up Companies Reviews — admin @ 5:11 am

If you are a web developer who is designing a website and are having a hard time getting people online to visit your site? Maybe you are a developer of an online entertainment site and are sick of relying on advertising revenues and would like to keep people on your website for hours playing games that they would not be able to get enough of. Well, there is a website for all you developers out there. HeyZap is the website made for developers and provides widgets of thousands of video games that developers can place on their website and people would actually pay to play these games. Many of these games are strategy games where the player won’t handle the suspense and be addicted to the game quick enough that he will be on your site for hours.

If this sounds like a good business plan for you, then you probably would like to know how HeyZap works. It’s very simple, you log onto the HeyZap website and you sign up to their service. It is a pay service and HeyZap even offers $50 free credit that will allow you to get what you need to get these games on your website and start earning money from them. This credit is made from “HeyZap Money,” and basically when users play these flash games that have been posted as widgets on your website, they would have to buy the HeyZap money through your website to be able to buy upgrades and new flash games to play and you make money. HayZap will actually pay you to sell their product on your website. The way this system works is by the following: first, as a user plays a game on your website, he will eventually see an update needed button open on the flash game and the user will have to get that update in order to continue to play that game. The user’s option is to have HeyZap money, which he has to buy in order to get the update. Once a user clicks on the upgrade button, he will see a dialogue box come up and the dialogue box will tell the user how much HeyZap money coins he has and how much he needs. Another web window will pop up with several buying options. The options can be a free promotional option, choose a payment by credit or debit card, choose payment by cellphone, or choose payment through Paypal. After clicking on one of the payment options you have a choice of several options to get, some of them are free and some of them cost money. These are advertising campaigns of certain businesses and you get a certain number of HeyZap money coins if you choose a particular advertisement. Some of these offers can range from internet-related software applications to snoring problem solving. Once the user has completed one of the listed offers, he can pay and continue playing.

HeyZap offers all kinds of different games for all kinds of different tastes. Some of these games include war games with amazing graphics to catching butterflies. Furthermore, if you want to choose some game widgets to put on your website, there is a list of games which has several options. The first option is the Popular option, which is a list of the most popular flash games that HeyZap has published. Some of the games on this list include Gem Craft, Iron Serpent, 3d Microwars, and many more. The next list of games that you can choose from is the list of featured games. These games are the games that have been featured and are also popular. Some of the games in this list include Shuriken, Even More Bloons, Colour Shift, Roly Poly Cannon, and more. Some of the games on the featured list are also on the popular list. The next game genre that you can choose from is the Premium game list. This list contains the best or the top rated games of all the genre lists. The list after the premium list is the New list, which contains all the new games that HeyZap has recently published. The next list is the Sports list. This list contains all flash games that are in the sports genre. The list below the Sports list is the Shooter list, which contains all the games in the shooting genre. These games are games where the player has to shoot his opponents and these games can range from simple target shooting to hunting related games to war games where you need to shoot invaders. There is also a list of strategy games, which can be different games where you need to develop a strategy to excel at those games. Some of the games in this genre include Bloons, 50 States, Kaban: Sheep, and many more. The point is that HeyZap has so many games that it is impossible to explain them all in one article. Other genres that you could choose from include puzzles, action, etc.

If you are a game developer, you can even sell your own flash game that you have developed and earn money every time someone on HeyZap is playing your game. All you need to do is to click your mouse on the developers tab at the top right-hand site and you will be prompted to type in a username, your email address, and a password. After that you need to click on the submit button and then you will be prompted to type in the name of the game and later on will have to upload the game.

HeyZap is the brainchild of to young entrepreneurs, Jude Gomila and Immad Akhund.

Born in London, England, Mr. Gomilla is not new at building startups. Before he co-founding HeyZap, Mr. Gomilla founded several other companies, which include Sugar Global and Helpthrist.com. Both of these companies became big names. Sugar Global is a company that makes digital picture frames and its products are also sold in big name stores throughout the United Kingdom, including Herrods, one of England’s biggest name stores. Mr. Gomilla graduated from Cambridge where he graduated will honors, receiving a degree in Engineering and Management.

Like Mr. Gomilla, Mr. Akhund also has a good business background. Before joining Mr. Gomilla in founding HeyZap, Mr. Akhund was both a founder and CTO of Clickpass, which was later sold to Synthasite. Mr. Akhund also graduated from Cambridge University, where he received a BA in Computer Science. Mr. Akhund also worked for Bloomberg’s Trading Systems Department.

HeyZap’s investors include the Y Combinator and Union Square Ventures along with angel investors, Naval Ravikant and Joshua Schachter. All of these investors joined in investing $500,000 in seed funding for HeyZap in May of 2009.

The Y Combinator is a new kind of vc firm that is dedicated to funding young entrepreneurs in the tech industry. The Y Combinator is a vc firm that only invests in the early stages in a company’s life. The Y Combinator mainly invests in seed stage, giving the young dedicated entrepreneur get over that first difficult hump in starting up a company. The team at the Y Combinator is dedicated to the tech industry, because its investors are all tech junkies and have the knowledge about the tech industry as well as the knowledge needed to start up a successful company and helping in creating a business plan that will take off.

Based in New York City, Union Square Ventures is a vc firm that primarily invests in early stage companies who are in the IT, digital media, healthcare, financial services, and telecom industries. Having been around for over 17 years, Union Square Ventures has a small team of investors who have the experience in a wide variety of industries. Some other companies in Union Square’s portfolio include 10gen, Adaptive Blue, AMEE, Boxee, Bug Labs, Disqus, Esty, and others.

HeyZap is still a rather new startup and the company still has not acquired any noteworthy competitors.

For more information about HeyZap, click here.

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