I've got one of those silly flash game site, but they suck for earning. Its now getting a few hundred uniques per day and am thinking about adding CPM ads and try to optimize the adsense placement better. I know it will never earn well, but I would like to see how well it could be optimized.
Yep, Adsense suck for gaming sites for now that is why I dropped Adsense from gaming pages of my websites and relay on more relevant advertising services instead of content targeting ads, if you can become affiliate for something that is relevant for your website theme you can actually make few bucks. Another problem is that you need fresh and unique content if you want traffic, if you have just yet another page with generic content with nothing unique you won't get much traffic.
Any tips on affiliate programs that work on gaming sites? I've tried a few but dont make any sales. Game DVD rental sites (Gamefly), Game Downloand sites (D2D), racey t-shirts (Busted Tee's), Sportsbetting and Poker. Some of these get lots of clicks but no sales. Un-fortunately the majority of game site traffic is young and dont have credit cards to make online purchases.
Note at the moment most seems to be "don't call us we will contact you" type so you can't go around and apply. Best way to get in is to get your website amongst fan pages on developers/publishers website, that way you will catch someone's attention and of course build up your profile and traffic. There are way too many pages out there and basically you need to make yours stand out from the crowed in some way. But when you become big publishers will contact you directly anyway...