Provide subscriber-only games
Give your subscribers more reasons to subscribe by adding PuzzleMe games behind a paywall.

Decrease Churn Rate
Subscribers who engage early on with puzzles have a lower churn rate than those who don’t, according to this analysis by the Wall Street Journal.

Sell a separate games subscription
Offer your audience a separate games app like the Guardian Puzzles app on iOS and Android, built by Amuse Labs.

The Guardian Puzzles App

AS SEEN ON: 

“[Puzzles] is one of the site sections with the highest ratio of subscribers-to-overall visitors… People who subscribe really value our crossword.”
The Washington Post Logo
The New Yorker Logo
The Atlantic Logo
The Log Angeles Times Logo
New York Magazine logo
Al-Awasat Logo
Crossword Club Logo as a partner feature on amuselabs.com
Der Standard logo
MRM

Give your readers a reason to stick around.

Add PuzzleMe games to your website or app.

What's your pricing?

Our preferred model is a flat per-gameplay charge (with a reasonable monthly minimum), so that you and we both benefit as usage grows. We can also support other pricing models depending on how you’re going to use the platform.

For pricing details please contact us: puzzlemaster@amuselabs.com

How do publishers monetize puzzles?

Some ways you could monetize your puzzles are through:

  • Video pre-roll advertising: the drop-off due to video pre-roll is negligible in the case of crosswords. Since users are going to spend 10-20 minutes on the page, they don’t mind seeing a 15 second video clip. Also, crosswords are a habit — users know exactly what they are getting into, so they don’t get turned off by ads in front of some content of whose value they are unsure.
  • Display advertising: You can easily have multiple ads on a page – perhaps a top leaderboard, a side-skyscraper and a bottom leaderboard as well. You can rotate the ads too to get a large number of impressions per play.
  • Sponsorship: Crosswords and other puzzles appeal to a highly literate and affluent audience, which sponsors want to reach. A simple backdrop, or sponsored-by message can be displayed on the screen for their benefit.
  • Subscriptions: Puzzles are amongst the biggest draws for getting users to subscribe. A $20 subscription/month is an easy sell to a customer who has a habit of solving crosswords and cumulatively spends several hours playing them every month.

Our team has extensive expertise in consulting publishers on monetizing their puzzle-products. Please contact us for more information.

Where can I find puzzle content? Do you supply it?

Many of our users create or purchase their own crosswords for use on our platform, but we can supply English mini crosswords owned by Amuse Labs. For other languages or needs, we can work with publishers to identify appropriate sources. Crossword puzzles are sometimes country (and of course, language) specific, so you know the best type of puzzles for your audience. For example, even in English puzzles, American, British and Canadian styles can be subtly different.

If you already have a print puzzle, we can work with your syndicate or constructor to see if we can import the print puzzles into our platform. If the puzzles are already available in standard formats like .puz or .jpz or .xml, there is no problem at all. Sometimes we can write custom converters for other formats.

If you do not have a readily available source of content, we can work with you to identify appropriate constructors. We work with several professional puzzle constructors and syndicates, and can identify one who is appropriate for your needs.

With PuzzleMe creator, you can also create your own puzzles in minutes.

Note: If you run a video ad, it will come from your advertising system. PuzzleMe can integrate with any VAST compliant ads system (such as DFP video) very easily.

Can I put the puzzles behind my paywall?

Yes – simply build a CMS page that is already behind the paywall. You can embed the puzzle in an iframe on this page. We can ensure that accesses to the iframe are allowed only from your walled site.