Hi Need DP members help on a few issues/questions. What would make a Video Game Blog/site stand out from the rest? These are the factors, i have thought of. Quality Content. (Frequent update). Start 2 articles per week, gradually get to 5 articles per week. Along with videos/pictures High standard website. (clear layout/navigation) A good post layout. Any other factors? What do advertisers want, when displaying an ad? I.e Pr, Traffic, Unique traffiic etc.. What factor/s do i need to be able to charge around $100 (per month) for a 125 x 125 ad spot. I.e 1000 unique hits per day. Is there any other ways a review site can make money without ads? What is the best way to add my url, when; Blog Commenting Article Resouce Box Video Submission (Youtube) What traffic program/website do Dp members use and like? I.e google analytics. When hiring a article writer, what are the factors to look out for?
lol you pretty much got three diffrent posts there, I will stick with the first question when attempting to seperate yourself from your competitors there are a couple strategies you can use. First/easiest find a part of the niche which is not overly dominated such as if there are 1.5 billion sites for the term video game review and only 50,000 sites for xbox 360 game review then it will be much easier to dominate the xbox 360 game review. To get an idea on which keywords are the most popular adwords has an excellent tool https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and to see the actual keyword popularity google has this beta app up an running http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=make money free&cmpt=q Now the Second/hardest way to gain an edge on competition is to out market the top dogs in a niche. This can take years of link building and constant seo'ing, but if your able to take let say video game review with the 1.5 billion sites you will more than likely recieve much more visitors and you will be able to make alot more money just remember when competing over a popular niche you have to be willing to give it everything you got and don't expect to see results for a long time. Usually it is good to type in the keywords you want into google adwords see how many monthly searches are done for those keywords then type them into google and check out the top ten websites running them through every seo tool you have learning their keyword density for desired topic, number of backlinks, and other info which will help you compete. One thing I like to do is go to yahoo and type link:www[dot]yourcompetitor[dot]com and then look to see who he linked to and begin down the list contacting the webmasters requesting a link exchange or if they are a promotional site such as social bookmarking make sure to submit your site. This brings up the subject again because in my niche for the top of the top with well over 100k searches a month the keywords make money the site to beat has over 25k backlinks and the majority coming from outside the website. Anyway I hope this was helpful in giving you some ideas on how to compete within a niche
well in a review site you could put some game trailer as well and provide links to places where you can buy it.. linking to amazon and selling the game can make you money, if your reviews are good , got visitors and reputation then try selling the game your self for some profile
One thing I would really like to see is a site that does not cater to the big names in the gaming industry. If you go to some of the planet sites, such as planet fortress, or planet half-life, the news is filled with stuff about the maker of the game. Most of the time, the modifications are ignored. For an example, there are 4 versions of a game called team fortress - quakeworld team fortress, team fortress classic, fortress forever and team fortress 2. If you go to planet fortress, the news on that site is mostly about team fortress 2. The fan made modification - Fortress Forever is just about ignored in favor of the commercial made versions. This shows a bias on the part of the planet fortress editors.
You have your work cut out for you.... As far as charging for banner placements, that will depend upon your traffic sources and demographics. You will also want to consider Geo traffic. Since I deliver products only to the U.S., traffic from elsewhere does me no good. Also guaranteed CTR is important. If I pay $100 per month and get no clicks that does me no good either. Average sales is about 1.5% of visitors when I advertise broadly. So for every 100 visitors I should at least get 1 sale. At 1000 impressions per day with a CTR of 1% that is about 1 sale per day from your site if you had the traffic. Anything less than that and you will not get repeat customers. On average Google costs me about 0.10-0.15 per click for broad phrases such as PC Games. That is about $10-$15 per sale. Sometimes it is not close to a profit. Other times when I sell a big ticket item or fulfill a large order it is very good and makes up for the low dollar sales. Gamespot.com will charge me about $1500 - $5000 per month for a banner depending upon placement. But I would also get 5 million+ impressions with a guaranteed CTR of 1.8%. At least last time I talked to them it was around that. The economy has dampened things. There is no easy formula, more trial and error than anything. It is best to start off low and when demand increases so does cost. As far as marketing, providing gaming webmasters with quality articles, trailers, and videos will do good. It will get your name out quickly. Perhaps even a service to develop unique quality videos for gaming sites for a charge. I have been forever going to develop a youtube commercial but never seem to have the time or energy. Good luck in your venture. You have taken on a tough cookie.