Need help marketing an online flash arcade site...

I've been trying for a couple weeks now marketing my new flash arcade site (Play Flash Arcade) and so far had great results (Reddit homepage within first few days, averaging 1,000 uniques a day) but I don't think this kind of traffic is sustainable or long-lasting. I'm getting most my traffic from social bookmarking sites (40%), Direct Type-In ( 21%), then Google Organic (11%). I've submitted the site to some directories but I really don't think it will help much since flash arcade sites are a dime a dozen. What are some more unique or effective marketing methods I could use?

Here's a traffic screen-shot:

 

Bump.. I also think my ads might be badly placed.. I'm making under $1 a day.

 

I think blogging combined with article submission and also some press releases are the answer. My industry thrives on the keyword "edc diamond" . I'm ranked #2 on google. That would surely help traffic to be top of google with the best keyword for your industry.

 

What sort of articles can you write about flash games......?

 

Personally, I think you should take out the words "Advertisement" and "Sponsors". You have done a good job of blending the ads and you are getting targeted ads, so if you eliminate those two words some people won't even realize they are ads, which is what you want.

 

Yeah, I agree. It looks to me that your ads are blended very nicely. I just don't understand with the amount of traffic you generate, that your producing that small amount of revenue.

If you don't mind me asking, what license version are you using?

Good luck

 

What do you mean what license version? Also, I'll take out the "Sponsors" and "Advertisements" text, maybe it will help. Should I just leave it without text in those headers?

 

my traffic is around 1K/day, but my earning is more than yours. think maybe is your ads placement

2 options:
extreme obvious and catchy or
blend well with your site

this is what i think, hope it help

 

Man, this sucks! Is your traffic 1k uniques a day or just 1k visits? Man... I need to figure out why im not making anything...

 

cheer

it's 1K visits, and sometime might lower than that..

 

GOD! Mines 1k uniques... Even worse for me making less than you

Can anybody figure out why I'm not making anything from this site?

 

From what I see, your ads do not pop out at me. They are well blended, though. Also, people are there to play games and many are simply ad blind. Especially people coming from social bookmark sites. They hardly ever click ads! You need to work more on onpage SEO first to get more natural search engine traffic. SE traffic is what converts best.

Have you thought of maybe using image ads along with the text ads? Many arcade owners prefer to use image ads for better CTR.

You could buy traffic from banner exchange programs such as Funklicks and ArcadeBanners as well.

 

Funklicks and ArcadeBanners are two must join programs to get you some traffic. Also, do you have a sitemap? If not, you should add one and submit it to Google. For the ads, I would suggest a link bar either above, or below your main banner.

 

Yes, I've got a sitemap that Google regularly checks.. For clarification, here's my traffic from search engines:

 

Seems you have had a great start. Not sure if you are doing your forum signature marketing quite right though. It's just that you have 4 links going straight to your arcades homepage that uses 4 different anchor text. This may be seen by Google as spamming your site to rank for them phrases/keywords. Maybe you should make them go to different pages of your site instead that are the most important. It's also better for the Digitalpoint visitors aswell I guess.

 

You are not making anything because there are no highly visible, relevant advertisements on the "money page" - your game play page. Try putting an **image** ad, a 160x600, on the left column of the game play page and cutting out the current Google ad and the Game Search box.

AdSense is only one of the ad programs you should be using on your game play page. There is also an optimal ad layout to use for the best CTR. But try the big image ad first and we'll go from there

 

Alright... I'll do as you say I guess. I just think that an ad that huge in combination with the ads I already have (except the little sidebar at the top I'm cutting out) may be upsetting to both myself and my users x.x I don't want them to think it's just an ad farm... Also, as an update here's my current search traffic chart:

 

Ok, the 160x600 image ad is in place! It takes up the entire section of the sidebar above the fold Tell me what you guys think!

 

Sorry for the triple post I just wanted to write about my success from what skyraider to me to do with the 160x600 ad. I put the ad onto the website early yesterday and I am already seeing a drastic jump in CTR and revenue earned. With changing that one ad alone my total CTR jumped 1%. I'm very gratedul of skyraider's advice and I welcome more of the same! Thanks!!

 

how about the Banner (468 x 60) ads? which is in between the games list

if it's not working well, why don't change it to display image ads only?

it work well for me, how abt you with text based?

very curious