Another gaming directory website, have you looked at putting down your goals with the website for your potential members. Unless you got something different to offer you will be joining the thousands of others on the same bandwagon. You could write a list of what your competition has going for it, what are the common basic features or things they offer that are common among them. Then you have to look at your website and see how your going to win the hearts and souls of potential members. Once you have them how do you bring them back and keep them coming back. I think is is a good idea to approach any website with a business plan strategy. Do a SWAT analysis for you gaming website. The 4 steps of SWOT Analysis are: * (S) Identify strengths. What are your strengths? * (W) Identify weakness. What are your weaknesses? * (O) Identify opportunities. What opportunity exists for you? * (T) Identify threat. What are the threats to you? You can do alot to gain traffic but if you do not have a goal to convert the visitors into members then you will always be dependent on generating traffic all the time. People often forget that word of mouth online is in the form of a digital fingerprint ie. bookmark, recommendation in forum post, chat room talk on your service or product etc. I feel that it would be better to aim for this type of success then to be solely dependent on generating one sided traffic. The traditional methods of generating website traffic are : Search Engine Traffic (organic) Link Popularity PPC Advertising Article Marketing Press Releases Link Building Blogs Videos Forums Paid Links / Ads Social Networking / Web 2.0 Off-line Advertising Prizes competitions Reviews Tips & Shortcuts Cheat Sheets Post ads Ebook Get naked and film it and post it on you tube! These are the traditional ways of generating website traffic, if there is something new I would like to know about it. It takes HARD work and yes TIME to build up some decent traffic. So all the best with your website and enjoy the journey in terms of the wealth of education and new friendships it brings.
Here are the ways I use to gain traffic for my sites 1. Forum Postings 2. Link Exchanges 3. Word to mouth (tell your friends) 4. Social bookmarking