So I'm going to start promoting my game portal site soon. Right now I have very little money, so I'm going to take advantage of every possible free marketing avenue I can, even if it means crossing the line of ethics. Here's my initial plan: -ask bloggers to post my promo trailer or talk about my site -post on hundreds of popular gaming forums with a sig link, and occasionally plug my site, (and I don't mean straight up spam, I mean professional hidden spam) -use bots to send out friend requests on myspace, facebook, & youtube (only friend requests) -manually send out friend requests on sites like flickr, IGN blogs, gametrailers blogs, etc. (basically any popular site that has a friends feature) -maximize traffic from social bookmarking by trading diggs & stumbles -use the money I make to buy banner ads, adwords, etc. How effective do you think this marketing campaign will be? Any advise? Also, do any of you know the friend request limits on myspace, facebook, & youtube?
The key to marketing any site is to not appear like spam. Some of the methods could cross that line. It can be very effective but can also cause you to build a reputation as a spammer and thus your plan will back fire and your site will have the same rep as you. If you are caught trading either stumbles or diggs you will get you and your site banned. If you are caught spamming on MySpace and the other like sites, also a ban. The forums are OK as long as you become an active member, otherwise, you will be blocked and marked as a spammer and all your links will be removed. It is always better to portray you and your site as ethical but each to their own and as the old saying goes "You reap what you sow."
As long as you provide good information and don't blatantly spam your url everywhere, your campaign might do pretty well. Use some article marketing as well. And get other game sites to link to yours (I believe they have some sort of "friends list" or whatever it is, at the left or right side of the page. Link to different game sites etc.) Oh and use sites like www.i-am-bored.com to post a link to a game on your site. There are loads more sites like that, at least I think so , so get your games listed. perhaps you can use freebie sites as well, your games are free to play, right? you'll probably have a few free ones so you can still use it. greetz, hope it works for you, jobic