Online games are a new rage on the Internet. Everybody believes that there is a lot to be earned with online games. I wonder how? You develop games, or license them create a website and try to make it popular amongst millions of others. Lot of money and effort is needed to get noticed on the Internet. And after all that you offer free games. Where is the money?
Online games and advertisements - Look at this scenario. A player has arrived to your website. He/she has downloaded a game and begun playing it. Some advertisement banners are running around. Do you expect the player to click on the advertisements or play the games for winning?
Obviously the players are focused on the game and are totally unaware about the rest of the web page. I don't believe they will click on the advertisements. If they do that, it means that your games are not good enough. The other method of getting revenue is subscription based website. With so much of free stuff floating around, why should I visit your paid site, pay you and play? Why should I not save money by searching for free games?
Internet is very deceptive in some ways. Most of the people believe that if one subject is very popular there is lot of money in that. But this just is not true. Money does not come from popularity of the subject. For getting, money, you have to make people pay. for that your content has to be extremely unique, your advertising expense huge and your running cost quite big. If after that you make money, you should consider yourself lucky.