Member Avatar for baker011

Hi, I have been reading through this forum and decided to register and seek the advice of you guys as most seem very experianced in running and maintaining communities.

Originally I was a moderator for a site called gamer.tv which provided online games, reviews and had its own tv channel. Its a huge website and i was pleased to be a senior moderator at this place. Anyway due to restructuring they decided to close down the community aspects of the site and lay off most of its staff.

I was approached to take over the community section, building and hosting my own forum for them and they would directly link to it. So I created www.gamerparty.com So far things are working out well, its only been going a couple of months and it seems very active, however I want to try and make a revenue from it. I am not disillusioned and thinking I can make fortunes from it, just enough to cover the costly hosting fees. I have subscribed to the google adsense program but no one seems to click the adverts and im making less than $1 a day.

My plan for the site was to offer online games aswell, but I dont really know how to go about this now, should I be approaching other websites or should I be hosting games? if so where do i get the games from? I am not tied down to www.gamer.tv I can easily associate myself with other websites and provide a community for them, what would be the best way to do this? I have a very experianced moderating team, most have been doing this for over two years now so we can handle pretty much anything thrown at us. Your thoughts and ideas on how tot ake gamerparty forward would be very much appreciated.

Thanks for your time
:cool:

  • 4 Contributors
  • 6 Replies
  • 181 Views
  • 2 Months Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by baker011
Member Avatar for Mafia

Hey,

I'll Share my Thoughts.

1st: Hosting Gaming Sites - If you feel that you have enough Space, Bandwidth, FTP Accounts, Email Accounts ... Go Ahead its your Money. You should try it out and see what happens, Maybe you gain something out of it, Never Know. Just Take Baby Steps and Suggest and find out if it sthe best step for your site.

2nd: Advertising ~ MONEY - Ok, This is a Big Problem we all face, Now My Site Costs a Buttload of money to keep it up and I don't get any money out of it, I do it for the fun of the members. Now if you really want Money then I suggest talking with some other Webmasters and asking around if they want to Advertise on your site and offer a good price and time! Also, Do a search on Google ... You may find something good instore for you! My Thoughts on Adsense ... a IDea from Google to get they're Advertisers more "Playing Time", And I think it does bull for us Webmasters, I Don't Like it honestly.

I think those were most of your questions, Ask Away.

Thanks,
Kevin

Member Avatar for baker011

Thanks for the reply I shall certainly check out google and search for what I can. As for the games, i was thinking about just flash games in a similar way to the website we support does them, www.weplayhere.com But I am really not sure where I would go to get them or who to approach to make them. Originally I was meant to have a team joining me, all developers, but they have all let me down and I have ended up taking this on myself.

Member Avatar for sanjaykattimani

adwords will not let u make lot of money but its definitely something better than nothing. Hence adword should only be used as an alternate source of revenue & you should contact other related gaming sites that are interested to advertise on your site (text or banner). these will fetch you more $$ than anything else.

Member Avatar for Dani

A big problem that I see is that your AdSense banner is at the very bottom of the page. Usually, when people browse forums, they stop reading after the last thread listed on the page or after the last post they see. Therefore, you want to bring the ad up to where the content is, and where the eye is focused, in order to entice clicks. Notice how we have it done here on DaniWeb.

I see you are using a phpBB forum. Something else to consider is an Arcade mod for phpBB. Check out this link: http://www.phpbbhacks.com/download/3312

Member Avatar for baker011

Thanks for the help. Yeah I agree about the banner positioning. Right now I am pulling in about $15 a day from them so moving them cant do any harm. Just about to launch a ange of merchandise, starting with clothing as users say they are interested in this. Interested to see if this works out. Thanks for the arcade games, I will be sure to look at them.

Member Avatar for baker011

About to launch our first multiplayer game on Jan 1st and have a new website designed to be launched at the same time, so the site is coming on nicely. It is getting over 2 million hits a month now and thats before the content is added. I have managed to get some good relations going with big game makers and system makers who will be providing us with stuff to review.

However, I still have the problem of making money from this. I want to keep it free but to support the development over the next 6 months I really need good ideas to start generating some cash. I was doing well with googleads, but they claimed I was using software to click the links (totally untrue but there was no way of appealing).

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.