Hey,
I think its the way you really look at it. If you have the attitude that its hard and won't work, then it will never work. If you have the attitude that it will work and you will make money from it cause you believe in the idea, then it will work, and you will make a lot of money. If you believe it will work, the opportunity to make your site popular is imminent.
Any website on the internet either takes time or money or the combination of them both. But what I find is most important to succeed is thinking outside the box. The power of the internet is to use it as just that a "network" .
To have a successful games site, it needs to maintain an important quality of the internet, and that is being fresh and updated. People notice more than you think when they encounter a stale website. I think that people think they can stick up a cookie cutter template with 1700 games, some probably very good, the vast majority are probably not very good and make money by doing a few link exchanges and SEO their pages. It may build up slowly over time, but if that's your only strategy, you will need to be the cream of the crop on SEO and have a lot of time too.
The gaming sector is only getting bigger, online games are in big demand. I was forwarded this article not too long ago, and I hope its not against policy to just post it here, so here it is.
I'm really looking to make contact with anyone who can help me sell my gaming platform or who wants one themselves. What's cool about our product is we can brand companies marketing message or logo directly into the games themselves, which adds more options to the advertiser and more moeny for the operators.
January 24, 2007
THE NEW YORK TIMES
More Marketers Are Grabbing the Attention of Players During Online Games
By LOUISE STORY
CASUAL game sites have learned how to play the ad game.
The sites - which offer puzzle and strategy games - once focused on selling
the actual games after the dot-com bust drove many advertisers away. But
these days, they are becoming popular marketing spots as they begin to
accept more branded messages.
Last year, advertisers spent about $150 million buying space on casual game
sites or in the games themselves, up from $74 million in 2002, according to
DFC Intelligence, a game industry research firm in San Diego.
This is all possible, of course, because advertisers are increasingly
interested in reaching the diverse group of Web users who like to solve
puzzles, play word games and decipher mind benders online.
In December, about 65.9 million people played online games, which include
puzzle games and action video games. That was up 13 percent from December
2005, when 58.4 million clicked online for a quick round, according to
comScore Networks, an Internet research firm. While traditional action games
still draw more men than women, casual games are more popular with women and
offer the kind of friendly online experience that ad executives say
companies want to be associated with.
Big Fish Games, a casual game site known for its game Mystery Case Files,
for example, says about 75 percent of its visitors each month are women.
And, according to
<
http://www.nytimes.com/mem/MWredirec...arketwatch.com
/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=FORR> Forrester Research, about
51 percent of people over age 30 play online games.
"The gamer is actually a much more of a mainstream consumer than you may
think," said Shar VanBoskirk, a senior analyst with Forrester Research.
"Consumers are really filtering out advertiser messages, and games are one
way that they're actually still engaged."
PopCap Games, a company known for the Bejeweled puzzle game, is testing ads
in the premiere versions of its games. Like many online games, PopCap's are
available in two versions - a free basic version and a fancier version for a
fee, which it calls premiere. Traditionally, Web surfers tried the fancy
version free for an hour before deciding whether to buy it.
Now, under a test PopCap is running with its game Zuma, consumers can
download the fancy version and play it without ever paying - if they are
willing to see ads.
AOL Games, a unit of
<
http://www.nytimes.com/mem/MWredirec...arketwatch.com
/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=TWX> Time Warner, is testing
ads in the one-hour trial version of its deluxe games, said Ralph Rivera,
vice president and general manager of AOL Games. About 95 percent of people
who try games do not end up paying for the deluxe version, he said, and AOL
would like to reach those users in some way.
"Within AOL, games is only second to e-mail and I.M. as far as time spent
per user, so you're talking about a very highly engaged audience," Mr.
Rivera said. "Any time you have a highly engaged audience, you have
advertisers who are looking to get in front of that audience."
Big Fish Games charges for downloads of games and also carries about 200
free puzzle and strategy games online, with ads. Starting last month,
visitors who clicked on their first free online game of the day got a
Sponsor Select pop-up screen giving them a choice of ads for that game.
About 25 percent of the people who play games on Big Fish have chosen to
pick their advertisers, according to AWS Convergence Technologies, the
company that operates Sponsor Select.
Yesterday, for example, visitors could select either Better Homes and
Gardens, Orchard Bank
<
http://www.nytimes.com/mem/MWredirec...arketwatch.com
/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=MA> MasterCard or Windows Live
Search to be the sole advertiser in the first game they played. The rest of
the games they played showed them a variety of ads.
"You're going to get ads no matter what," said Paul Thelen, chief executive
of Big Fish Games. "The advantage of Sponsor Select is it's more likely to
be relevant to you."
Big Fish started offering free games online a year and a half ago. Four
years ago, after the dot-com bust, it was not possible to make much money
from ad-supported games, Mr. Thelen said. Now that is changing. While Big
Fish still makes most of its money from user-paid downloads, its
fastest-growing revenue area is its advertising.
Jason Tarter
www.pepsnap.com
Gaming sites - any profit?
Unless I am a special case >> My website is kind of basic though. I have heard that gaming websites don't make a ton of cash overall though.
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