What in your opinions, is the best way to promote an arcade (www.bustarcade.com)? I'm sending out constant bulletins to 1500 people via MySpace but am getting minimal traffic. Advice, anyone?
pay for traffic. there are banner exchange programs from which you can buy flash-arcade-site-type traffic. try google for the links.
Targeted banner exchanges and top site lists can send a lot of traffic. I've seen MySpace bulletins work, but results vary...
MySpace bulletins didn't perform all that well for me. I think I'll join top sites to see if I can get any traffic out of it. My arcade site is niftyarcade.com btw.
If your sending out bulletins to Myspace you need to send to a minimum of 100k friends. It's weight of numbers that work because most bulletins disappear off the first page in a few hours. So the bulletin has to be there when the friend logs on. You can't send bulletis out that look like spam. Use a headline like "This is pretty good." Then just place a small bit of text in the body, like "I found this really useful, thought you might too, check it out". I guarantee with that approach the results will double for you. You have to make them curious. If you want a bulletin sent out to 1 million+ PM me. It will cost you $50.
Well, I find that it takes a while to get traffic. If you are sending the bulletin to the same group of people, it probably wouldn't do well. What is important is probably look at exchanging links with other arcade game sites and at the same time, maybe getting listed on Arcade Games top list may not be a bad idea. That basically works for me. Of course, don't expect a lot of immediate traffic but they will surely come.
The problem is not as much in promotion but in the incredibly stiff competition in the online arcade business. Arcades are the new 'it' online and you really have to present your customers something original that would make you stand out. Even with great promotion and paying for traffic you will not get much hits because there are so many people doing the same thing. So you really have to differentiate.
how about myspace?? If you let peaple inbed your games into there myspace/xanga/livejournal ect.. then you would get loads of backlinks. (Becouse you could put at the bottom of the game "Game providided by "XXXXarcade" Whatever your arcade is called. This way you will get loads of backlinks. Myspace is a PR5. So...
The best way to get backlinks is related forums. It does not mean join a forum, spam your link 50 times and then leave. Most forums allow you to include a signature in your posts so it's an easy way to get backlinks. If you become a trusted regular poster it will also mean you get a lot of traffic from these backlinks. Hint: Find a reliable poster and offer your link on his/her signature space in exchange with money (Advertise via forum signatures) or exchange with your own forum signature or avatar space (Signature exchange model).