I've recently launched http://www.prizearcade.net I did link exchanges, joined a link exchange network, did some forums promotion. However I'm still not very satisfied and I'm hoping for more visitors. Can you please share some ideas that will bring more traffic? Thank you.
Banner promotion is a huge thing for arcade sites. Create a few interactive banners in Image Ready and post them. That's how people get addicted to arcade sites, they click on a banner and play 1 or 2. Then the next day they come back. I suggest joining some gaming forums. A lot of forums allow to post banners as a signature, which is another good strategy.
Personally, i'd forget about link exchanges for now, if it's a new website its pointless trading links with other new websites that won't bring decent traffic, and you'll be stuck with them :\ I'd join some banner exchange networks, take a look at arcaderun.com you'll see quite a few on there, a visitor clicks on the banner, you get one back! While the myspace scene is still hot, get promoting your website on there, it'll bring some regular visitors, also recommend to put a code for users to put the game on their blog/website to bring more unique hits. Once you get a decent amount of daily uniques then i'd start to think about trading links with sites to get better quality links back to your website, and more hits =)
Here is a similair thread I started. Maybe it will be of some help. http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=103140&highlight=arcade
Have you tried Arcade Banners? They are probably the best arcade promotion site out there. You can buy 1k impressions for only $0.50 - I recently bought 20k impressions with a 4% CTR - the results were amazing. You'll also get 25k free impressions after a week of being a member!
I have one more question please: I'm starting to get a good no of visitors -however they don't register as members - can you please take a look at the site and tell me if the registration process looks hard to you? thanks.
It's by no means hard, it's just hard to find. If possible, try and find a new template for your site (I'm not sure if PHPQuickArcade has a template feature). I can't quite pick out what's wrong the design - it is clean but it's probably too clean, if you know what I mean. Cheers, Ponynugget
OK, dumb question time, but here goes... Since I'm not a gamer (too damn old) and I haven't put together an arcade site yet, how are you guys earning money off these sites? adsense, paid advertising, paid membership?