A friend on myspace asked if someone could give him any advice regarding his website.

His name is Bill and I went and checked out his website http://www.arcade4fun.info/ to see if I could give him any advice.

I noticed a couple of things when I got there:

First thing is the only source of monetization I see is google adsense.

I think there should be other forms of monetization working here such as some game related affiliate programs like the ones I saw at http://www.free-games.com.au/. As you can see in the image they have a sidebar with pics and referral links to some pay MMORPG games which I think could be a nice little source of income. Maybe Bill should investigate that.


And he definitely needs an Amazon account. With Amazon.com Bill can offer links to tons of products that gamers love. Like the latest retail games and hint books and such. And it's free.

Secondly, when I click on a game to play it takes me to a page with the same exact layout. No new ads or pretty clicky ads that say "Awesome Free Games!" or anything else. Just adsense.

Again I believe that Bill should have some other forms of income working here. Usually when I go to a flash game site and click on a game it takes me to a new layout. It has the same navigation structure but this time the most important stuff (like ads for retail games and incentives to post comments and rate games) are at the top and you have to scroll down to get to the game.

Third: Bill's site does have a cool little ratings and comments box at the bottom along with an embed code so you can put the games on your own blog that I thought was really cool, but there is no way to collect email addresses. I think Bill would benefit from a feed linked to his blog so people can sign up for updates. That way he can keep in touch with his users and let them know when cool games come out. He can also send them news and encourage them to participate in rating the games and also comment about the games on his blog.

I would create a blog for this at blogger.com or wordpress.com and use feedburner.com to syndicate it. (And if you don't know what that means Bill just message me at myspace and I'll walk you through it if you want. I've done it dozens of times.) Or you can just go to those sites and investigate a bit and eventually you will figure out what it all means. :-)

After checking out Bill's site I went to a couple of other online game sites I know of to search for affiliate links.

This is what I found:


Gamespot:

This is an absolutely awesome site for gamers with mega traffic. The GameSpot family includes GameSpot, GameFAQs, Game Rankings, and GameSpot Trax. Gamespot is powered by CNET and is also part of download.com and CNET Shopper.

I found out that if your site gets enough traffic you can "partner" with CNET Which means you can offer links on your site to CNET Downloads, CNET Reviews and CNET Shopper and generate some extra revenue.

Just go to http://gamespot.com/ and scroll down to the bottom of the home page. You will see a link labeled "partnerships".

They also have an affiliate program in the works and are asking interested individuals if they would like to be notified when the program becomes active. Click Here For That

CNET has been around for a long time. I've been using download.com for years and years. I just recently bought some items from CNET Shopper and was completely happy with the whole experience. I think CNET is a quality internet company, and as a consumer of their products I feel that I can trust them.

What else did I find?

Well, I searched for LinkShare.com affiliates related to gamers and gaming and found out that you can get hooked up with EBGames and get up to 5% commissions on all sales. Electronics Boutique offers just about any retail game you can think of for any platform.

Gamestop is also at LinkShare.com but I think they are part of EBgames because they have the exact same description in the linkshare directory.

Another one at linkshare is Wild Games. This is a unique site. They offer game trials for download and they require that you sign up for the Wild Games newsletter before you can download anything which is ingenious.

After the user downloads a game they have the option to upgrade it and then you make a commission.

Click here to become a LinkShare Affiliate!

I'm sure there are more affiliate programs and partnerships Bill could find if he searches hard enough. I did not go to commission junction because I don't have an account with them anymore. They cut me off for low activity I believe. I think they will let me sign up again if I want to though.

Some other things Bill might want to consider:

An advertising campaign at advertising.com could get Bill enough traffic to "partner" with CNET so he can get his revenue links up and running. They have a campaign package for just about everybody and their customer service is excellent. I have used them before with a small campaign package for a couple of niche sites I have (I have a low budget can you tell? :-) and they were great. Really nice people.

If Bill had some membership software or a social networking site it might help him gain users. People on the internet love to interact with websites in a social way (social networking) like MySpace and Facebook. If Bill had a site that let people join and become friends and play games together his site would be more "sticky" (meaning people will stay longer) and he would have plenty of constant traffic to expose his revenue links to. Just an idea.

I saw a free social membership software package the other day that seems much better than the membership software in some of my previous posts. I haven't tried to install it and test it yet but the features looked great so I did download it for later :-) (I'm a digital packrat I guess).

Searching.....searching.....

Aha! I found it!

It's called the Dolphin Smart Community Builder and it's free. You can view the demo and download it here: http://www.boonex.com/products/dolphin/

Well I've been writing this post for about an hour now and I think I'm done. If anyone has any comments please post them.

Everybody visit Bill's website and play some games so he can get some traffic. And if you have a blog link to him and give him some page rank he's a pretty cool guy. http://www.arcade4fun.info/


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