December, 2007
It’s 7pm on Christmas Eve, so I think I can be excused for using the cheating “InstaCarnival” this month :P I hope you’re all having a great Christmas so far, but take my advice and get away from the computer and spend some time with the people you love (although I’m flattered you’re spending your time here ;)). Enjoy the rest of the year, and I’ll see you in 2008!
Samuel presents
>Nintendo Wii Controlled Smarthome posted at
>Game Villa.
James Nicholls presents
>Crap Internet Games Syndrome | Gaming Legends posted at
>Gaming Legends.
nitesh123 presents
>Which would you rather play? | MyWorldOnly posted at
>Nitesh, saying, “Also includes the new 6.49 dota maps”
Michael Rosen presents
>Bioshock Review posted at
>The Gaming Critic, saying, “One of the most hyped games of 2007, Bioshock turned out to be one of many games to live up to most of it’s hype.”
Michael Rosen presents
>PORTAL posted at
>The Gaming Critic, saying, “One of the most enjoyable and thought provoking experiences you will encounter in 2007.”
Dan-O presents
>How to Make Real Life Money in the Second Life Virtual World posted at
>Danogo.com – Discover. Inspiring . Media, saying, “People are making millions of real dollars in the virtual real estate business. Are you missing out on the next Web gold rush?”
Samuel presents
>Video Games for the Brain posted at
>Game Villa.
old-wizard presents
>Old-Wizard.com / Games / Video Games / Reviews / Pac-Man posted at
>Old-Wizard.com.
panvamp presents
>Danger of violent video games? posted at
>Panvamp’s Digital Palace, saying, “This is my opinion on an recent article that compared violent video games to smoking.”
panvamp presents
>On Mailboxes and White Houses posted at
>Panvamp’s Digital Palace, saying, “A review of Nick Montfort’s Book about the rise of interactive fiction, some of the earlier computer games.”
Samuel presents
>Halo 3 The end of a saga…NOT posted at
>Sam’s View, saying, “My impressions on Halo 3 after playing through the game with a friend.”
blue skelton presents
>Video Game Production Book posted at
>Blue Skelton Publications, saying, “The Gamers Guidebook is a good book on video game production that provides you with a behind-the-scenes view of what it takes to succeed in the game industry with this unique guide written specifically for producers. I just ordered it from Amazon yesterday. I am taking writing for interactive media next semester and would love to write scripts for a video game someday.”
Eric Frey presents
> » Quake Wars Enemy Territory: Is It Worthy? Eric Frey Dot Com: Hopes, Dreams, Ambitions And Things of Interest posted at
>Eric Frey Dot Com.
Ashton presents
>6 Unusual Games You Should Play Before You Die posted at
>Blogs Blow Dot..
Eric Frey presents
>WARHAMMER 40K: The most frustrating fun you will ever have. posted at
>Eric Frey Dot Com.
Shiv379 presents
>Games to look out for… posted at
>Taming Entertainment, saying, “A roundup of upcoming pc games to keep your eyes peeled for.”
Shiv379 presents
>Game Demos – The Decline posted at
>Taming Entertainment, saying, “A critical look at the state of game demos today.”
Shiv379 presents
>Game Demo Reviews posted at
>Taming Entertainment, saying, “A review of some of the most popular pc game demos around at the moment.”
Ian Richardson presents
>Would you like an Ezy way to manage multiple WordPress Blogs? posted at
>Make Everything EzyAs123, saying, “While a typical website can take hours to update, a site built around a blog can be updated INSTANTLY and search engines quickly take notice…”
Ian Richardson presents
>Hosted WordPress Is FREE To Install, and YOU have complete control! posted at
>Make Everything EzyAs123.
Alvaro Fernandez presents
>Brain Training: No Magic Bullet, Yet Useful Tool. Interview with Elizabeth Zelinski posted at
>SharpBrains, saying, “Newsweek says that “computer-based brain training has shot up from essentially zero in 2005 to $80 million this year, according to the consulting firm SharpBrains”. Here goes an interview with a leading scientist.”
ppassion presents
>Yoku Ruta Flash Puzzle Game posted at
>Passion for Puzzles, saying, “Yoku Ruta Flash Puzzle Game”
So that’s it for this year. A big thanks to everyone who submitted articles to this carnival over the year, and I look forward to seeing you all again in 2008!
You can submit an article for the next carnival of video game bloggers using the carnival submission form, and view past and previous editions at the blog carnival index page. The deadline for submissions is January 21st, so grab those keyboards and get writing!
Technorati tags: carnival of video game bloggers, blog carnival.
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Circus Tribe – Level 1, Lemmings 2
Blimey, it’s carnival time already! I’m afraid I’m being lazy again, mainly because there’s snow outside and I wish to play in it before it melts away. Perhaps one day I’ll be able to make a snowman in a Holodeck, but until then outside will have to do…
L. Waymire presents The Voices of Justin Gross posted at The Shadow Council Strider, saying, “His voice is deep. It resonates lowly. Decisive consonants are articulated from the lips and tongue in a strong, focused way—the kind of focus you expect from someone with an unbreakable will. The British vowels, masculine and noble, demand loyalty of the listener. It is sometimes ruthless. It is a voice undoubtedly familiar with power… That is the voice of actor Justin Gross, as recorded for the hero-turned-villain Arthas in the video game “Warcraft III.” Find out about Gross’s experience working with Blizzard as Arthas, and how he became a voice-over actor in the link above.”
Samuel presents Perfect Dark Zero- An Underrated Classic posted at Game Villa.
Ashton presents The Simpsons: GAME posted at Blogs Blow Dot..
Sutocu presents Halo 3 Review – Xbox posted at ConsoleD.org.
Jenny presents Spent the day on RO posted at the so called me.
Jigsaw hc presents Jigsaw hc’s Rants & Reviews: Tony Hawk Proving Ground Review posted at Jigsaw hc’s Rants & Reviews.
Joe Qelqoth presents Sexual Advice Column: Penile Problems with MegaMan posted at The Cult of Qelqoth, saying, “MegaMan takes time out from blasting humanoids with his arm cannon to answer your serious questions on love, sex and relationships. Reader discretion is strongly advised.”
Jigsaw hc presents Guitar Hero III Battle Mode Tips and Strategies posted at Jigsaw hc’s Rants & Reviews.
Turnip presents Crysis Singleplayer Demo Review posted at Turnip of Power.
Turnip presents Battlefield 3: Things I would like to see improved in the next release from EA Games Turnip of Power: All things to Almonds posted at Turnip of Power.
Kabalyero presents CSI:New York meets Second Life posted at Kabalyero.
Sagar presents Top 25 Ultimate Gamer Vacations posted at Travelhacker.
Samuel presents Nokia N-Gage Returns posted at Game Villa.
Rebecca Wallace-Segall presents When one boy plays video games… he finds inspiration posted at a community of young writers in new york city.
Sarah Aswell presents The Release of Halo 3: A Day of Celebration and Remembering « BROOD posted at BROOD, saying, “my relationship with Halo, from Marathon to the release of Halo 3″
Samuel presents The History Of Arcade Games posted at Game Villa.
As always, a big thanks goes to all the contributors this month. Without your help, it wouldn’t be much of a carnival!
You can submit an article for the next carnival of video game bloggers using the carnival submission form, and view past and previous editions at the blog carnival index page. The next edition is due on the 24th of December, so get cracking on those entries!
Technorati tags: carnival of video game bloggers, blog carnival.
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In part 1 I gave an overview of the experiment and what methods were used. Today I’ll be explaining what happened. Just as refresher, here’s the idea behind this challenge:
“If I had $19.95 to spend on advertising and I had to do everything myself, what would give me the greatest return on investment?”
Results are split into two categories, “paid” and “free”. Where applicable the number of ad impressions and clicks are shown. There are also some exciting charts and analysis at the end too.
Paid Advertising
First up we have the paid advertising, the main focus of this experiment. The total number of hits generated was quite impressive for the amount spent. Sales and newsletter sign-ups were the best I’ve seen whilst the adverts were running, so something must have worked.
Google AdWords
| Total Impressions / Clicks: |
4823 / 66 |
| Clickthrough Rate: |
1.37% |
| Cost Per Click |
$0.18 |
I wasn’t really sure what to expect with AdWords, but I was pleasantly be surprised by the results. The cost per click was a little more than I would have liked, but the clickthrough rate was quite high for a first time ad on some pretty competitive keywords.
First time advertisers must pay a fee to set-up their account, so in effect only $9.95 of the advertising budget actually went on displaying ads.
Project Wonderful
| Total Impressions / Clicks: |
1037451 / 650 |
| Clickthrough Rate: |
0.06% |
| Cost Per Click |
$0.03 |
Project Wonderful use an auction based advertisement model, where the highest bidder has their ads displayed on their chosen slot.
To start with I placed a few manual bids to get a feel for how the site worked. Once I was more comfortable with it, I placed a campaign to last for the rest of the challenge. The campaign feature in Project Wonderful is a massive time saver and is quite comprehensive. Simply enter the criteria for sites you’d like to advertise on, and the system will go out and bid on appropriate slots.
One thing you’ll notice is that you often go under your bid limit. The total amount spent on Project Wonderful was $18.59, so there was a little change left to run a few more slots. Another important thing to note is that the most expensive ads are not always the best. A $3 bid on a rather busy site (icanhascheezburger.com/) only brought in around 30 visits, whereas $0.57 on rpghost.com brought in over 100.
Text Link Ads
| Clicks: |
20 |
| Cost Per Click |
$0.85 |
I use Text Link Ads (affil) to generate revenue, so it seemed only right to try them out from an advertisers point of view. The ad cost $17, and with only 20 visits the cost per click wasn’t very good. To make matters worse, 80% of visitors left without clicking anything else on the site. Oh dear.
Of course, Text Link Ads is (or rather was) more about boosting search engine rankings by getting links for your keywords. Google has recently punished people who place text link adverts on their sites (including myself), so I’m not sure how this model of advertising will continue. In this case it wasn’t really worth the money, as any improvements in the site’s ranking have been wiped out by the latest Page Rank update. Oh well.
StumbleUpon
| Visits: |
281 |
| Cost Per Click |
$0.07 |
Everybody knows the WWW is a huge time waster. StumbleUpon is time wasting on steroids. By entering your interests, StumbleUpon will let you “stumble” onto sites that fit into your likes and dislikes. I use it myself and have found hundreds of new sites I never would have seen otherwise. It’s really worth installing, especially if you have Firefox.
The idea behind StumbleAds is that you pay for “stumbles” from people interested in your site’s theme. Each stumble costs $0.05, and you can set how many will be used each day, which is useful for spreading the server load.
My first try at creating a campaign was rejected for not having enough visitors to send. I found this unusual as I’d submitted it in the “Video Games” section which apparently has around 154,000 subscribers. Changing the site to “Shareware” got it accepted, and I was away. $19.95 would effectively buy 399 visitors, but only 281 showed up in the log. I assume that means a percentage of visitors blog Analytics or JavaScript.
Free Advertising
The free advertising was much harder to measure, as it came from a lot of smaller sources which don’t usually have their own reporting features. The range of traffic was quite varied, with a few surprises as well as a few disappointments.
LinkReferral.com
LinkReferral.com is quite a simple idea. Your site is placed in a directory, and its position within this directory is dependant on how active within the community you are. By visiting other member sites you gain places, which improves your exposure. Writing (good) reviews and helping in the forums also improves your rank. Other members can also review your site so you get feedback.
Naturally it doesn’t work quite like that. Plenty of reviews consist of “Great site link me kthxbye”, and there are a fair few sites which are…below average. Having said that, for the amount of work it’s a good way of getting feedback and a few hits. Some of the reviews are quite useful, and I’ve had a few website errors pointed out by members.
Traffic wise, the bounce rate (number of people leaving without interacting) is about the same as StumbleUpon’s, which isn’t as bad as I was expecting.
Link Bait
Link baiting is the process of crafting articles and content with the deliberate intention to attract a big response. For an idea of what these articles are like, check out the front pages of digg or reddit.
The article that worked for me was “Game Design Lessons: Halo“, and a quick email to the editors at the excellent halo.bungie.org quickly got me over 800 visits. There were also a few referrers from other Halo fan sites as the link spread. Sadly Bungie didn’t visit my house with cake and an Xbox 360, or even and Xbox 360 cake. Maybe next time.
The only other attempt at link bait was the Pirate Week series of posts, which didn’t exactly set the Internet on fire. The Carnival of Video Game Bloggers also brought in a few visitors, but nothing compared to the Halo post.
Flashing Banners
You might have seen the square adverts if you’ve visited Flash arcade websites. Most of them animate far too quickly and include gratuitous flashes of cleavage to grab the viewer’s attention.
I’ll be honest. I ran the ads on this blog for a week and then had to remove them because I felt they were just too horrible. They were generating no traffic and made the place look untidy. I didn’t actually realise that one of the services (moregamers.com) gave out 50,000 free credits after a week of posting, which is where all 190 visits came from. Never again.
Forum Posts
I didn’t exactly go overboard with this technique, but I was still surprised at how poorly it did. I went for a more indirect approach with links in signatures and profiles instead of in actual posts, so perhaps that explains the poor response rate. It’s worth a try, but links need to be promoted a little more.
Blog Comments
:(
The Big Conclusion
Out of all the advertisements, creating link bait brought in the most visitors. However, most of them only stayed for the article and then left so sales weren’t really affected. Project Wonderful brought in lots of traffic from a wide variety of sites, and AdWords had a decent clickthrough rate and brought good visitors.
I promised charts, didn’t I?
Exciting, isn’t it?
And finally, two heat maps from before and after the ad campaign (click for bigger images).
Before
1779 visits / 557 clicks
|
After
3021 visits / 1222 clicks
|
The links to Cute Knight and Aveyond attracted a lot of clicks, especially from visitors referred by More Gamers. It must be the pretty pictures (and the fact that they rock).
So where does this leave things? As someone who’d never advertised online, it was easy to get started and quite nice to watch traffic appear with no more effort once the payment had been made.
One thing that’s worth pointing out is that it’s quite easy to blow a lot of money on advertising and see virtually no return. Different advertisers bring in different visitors, and spending money (or even time) on the wrong audience will quickly drain your resources.
From that perspective, Google AdWords brings in some of the most targeted visitors as they’re already looking for what you’re selling. Project Wonderful brings in a lot of traffic at a very low price, so it’s a great place to get started.
StumbleUpon didn’t perform nearly as well as I would have liked, but the content really wasn’t targeted well for StumbleUpon audience. Individual, focused articles tend to do much better than site front pages. In the past I’ve seen articles bring in thousands of visitors within a few hours, so it’s worth using to get some good exposure.
Text Link Ads were the biggest disappointment for me. The recent Google update hasn’t helped matters, but I did see a slight improvement in my search engine rankings shortly after the ad went live. A few well placed ads might still work for other search engines, but it takes a while for the visitors to show up.
The free advertisers weren’t as bad as expected. LinkReferral.com brings in a trickle of traffic, although the site users are looking for free advertising so may not be the biggest spenders. Some reviews are helpful though, and you may be able to build contacts if offering services and products to webmasters.
I still hate those flashing banners, even though they brought in nearly 200 hits. I really don’t see how they’re worth it for most sites as you have to generate around 100 impressions to get a single click. If you’re getting enough impressions to get a worthwhile amount of visitors from them, you really don’t need the help ;)
Forum posts and blog comments didn’t really do much for the traffic, but they’re easy to make and they may just catch someone’s eye. A few recommendations between friends can do more for your business than any amount of paid advertising.
More business articles: Sodaware.net – Article index
Related posts:
Traffic.
Traffic is the lifeblood of websites. Without people seeing your website, it’s just another piece of litter at the side of the Internet super-highway.
Digressing slightly, I really hate the term “Internet super-highway”. It has a real dot com boom feel to it. It’s the sort of term the media used when the online world was new and exciting and and everything that wasn’t electronic was going to become extinct.
Moving swiftly on…
There are plenty of ways to get more traffic. Whole websites and online communities are devoted to it. When starting out, it’s easy to just look at what free options are available. After all, why pay for traffic when you can get it for free?
The thing is, you may never find something better if you don’t experiment with the available options.
I decided to try it out.
This is part one of a two part series that covers an experiment I ran during September.
The Setup
The idea behind the challenge was as follows:
“If I had $19.95 to spend on advertising and I had to do everything myself, what would give me the greatest return on investment?”
Why $19.95? It seems to be the common price for a single Indie game, so it would make it easier to see what percentage of a sale went on advertising. It also meant I wouldn’t break the bank if things went wrong.
The “everything else” clause served two purposes. The first was to stop myself from spending money on advert designers. The second, and perhaps most important, was to act as an excuse in case the ads didn’t perform particularly well.
Finally I picked several forms of “free” advertising to try to see how they compared. I couldn’t use the $19.95 benchmark for these, but I needed some form of limit so I used “time”. My limit was thirty minutes a day on each method. That’s not a particularly long time, but I didn’t really want to devote a full eight hour day to commenting on blogs and forums.
Here’s the list of paid and unpaid advertisers I settled on:
Paid Advertisers:
- Google AdWords — AdWords appear on nearly all Google search results pages, and AdSense is shown on a huge amount of other websites.
- Text Link Ads — TLA sell text links on other sites that are designed to increase your search engine rankings as well as generate clicks.
- Project Wonderful — Project Wonderful sell banner ads in a variety of shapes and sizes. Advertisers bid on different slots, and the highest bidding adverts are displayed.
- StumbleUpon — Users install a browser toolbar, and are given random sites that will appeal to them when they click the “Stumble” button.
Free Advertising:
- LinkReferral.com — Place your link within a directory, and increase your rankings by participating in the community.
- Forum posts — Make a post on a forum advertising your site and get traffic (and flames). I didn’t want to spam people, so I kept this to links in my profile and signature.
- Blog comments — Find interesting blog posts that are related to your website and leave a comment.
- Free banners — Square images that flash and generally annoy. Gain exposure by generating ad impressions and clicks.
- Link bait — Articles deliberately crafted to attract attention.
So there we have the basics of the experiment. $79.80 to spend on four advertisers, and just under three hours a day to spend promoting the site.
Measuring the Results
It wouldn’t be much of an experiment without measuring the results. At the very least I needed to measure where visitors were coming from, but it would also be handy to know what they were doing once they arrived.
Most web-hosting comes with weblog analysis built in, usually Webalizer or AWStats. Several third-parties offer a more visual approach to visitor tracking, such as Crazy Egg and Google Analytics.
I decided to use Analytics to monitor where people were coming from, and Crazy Egg to see what they were doing once they arrived at the index page. Webalizer kept a watchful eye on the blog, but as the blog wasn’t my main focus I left it out of my main tracking.
What happened?
The full results of the experiment are revealed in part two, including how many hits each source generated and how much they cost per click. There’s also a rundown of how the free advertising performed.
There will also be charts like the one below. If that doesn’t get you excited, I don’t know what will…
To give an idea of how things looked before, the following heat map was generated from 56 days worth of data before the test. That’s 1784 front page visits and 560 clicks, if you’re interested in precise figures.
Click the preview below for the full image.
In total, the experiment generated an additional 2261 visitors in 30 days. Where did they come from, and what did they do once they arrived? All is revealed in part two…
Related posts:
Carnival Night Zone, Sonic 3
There’s a great crop of entries this month, although it’s hard to believe we’re already at the 9th edition of this carnival! Time flies when you’re having fun, as they say. Enough introductions though, let’s get down to business…
First up we have the mysterious PL from Web-based Browser Games, who shares two lists – one of text-based browser games and another of web-based virtual pet games.
Next on the list is Causalien who posted Team Fortress 2 beta impressions over at Ultracrepidate. It’s written from the perspective of an “old timer” Team Fortress player, and is part one of a three part series.
Rickey Henderson sent in the splendidly titled “In Which Rickey Explains Why You Should Be Playing Halo“, a review of Halo 3 posted on Riding with Rickey.
Next is a treat for Xbox 360 players, with Dustin’s advice for getting 10,000 Easy Achievement Points for Xbox Live. You can read more from Dustin at his blog, “A PC Gamer in a Xbox World“.
Dustin also shared “A New Xbox Gamer’s Review of Bioshock“, a review of Bioshock written squarely from a console owner’s point of view.
Steve Bainbridge gives a brief overview of Beginners Wine DS at Professor Bainbridge on Wine. The game goes on sale in Japan on November 15th, and it certainly sounds…different.
And now for something completely different. Jonathon Weston of placeintheground.com wrote a beautifully satirical piece entitled “Leaving the House to Exercise will Kill You“, which is aimed squarely at those who say exercising with the Wii is unhealthy and should be replaced.
If you’d like to play more and work less, Alfonso Crawford might have just the thing for you. “Living Off Gaming 0: Introduction“, posted at Valhalla TV, is part of a series of articles to teach you how to make a living from playing games. Nice.
Mattcase points us towards the tr00f posted at Andrew. It’s a video game blog hosted at uber.com, so I have no idea why it’s entitled “Andrew”…
Next we have Samuel from Game Villa who sent in two flash games. First we have Starcraft: Flash Game, which is based on the popular RTS of the same name. There’s also a Flash Prison Break Game, which is quite difficult but worth playing just to make the character run into walls.
Samuel finishes his set of entries with a guide on how to Write Your Own Game Reviews.
MMORPG players looking for some good communities to join can thank Aaron from Gamecron PC Gaming for his article “MMORPG Communities — A list of gaming social networks“. It’s quite in-depth, so you can get a good idea before joining.
Not content with this, Aaron also shares 3 Free Alternatives to World of Warcraft. If you’re wanting an MMORPG to play without the fees, you might find something fun to play.
Marcus is next with a fine pair of submissions from his website “The Thoughts“. BioShock, Symbolism and Mind-Control is a thought-provoking read that looks at the symbolism and subtle details hidden within BioShock.
He then goes on to look at Space Giraffe and human consciousness, comparing it with other brain altering technology and wondering if it can create altered states of thought. If you’ve not seen Space Giraffe moving, check out the video and then make yourself a nice relaxing cup of tea. You’ll need it.
Jigsaw hc brings us to our penultimate entry, a Stranglehold Review over at Jigsaw hc’s Rants & Reviews. Jigsaw hc is a regular contributor to these carnivals, and his blog is definitely worth a visit if you’re looking for reviews of new and upcoming games.
It’s nearly Halloween, so to get you in the mood we have part one of the MOST SCARY GAMES posted by irenic at Irenicplace. Unfortunately part one consists entirely of Silent Hill and Resident Evil games, but hopefully part two will look a little further afield.
That’s all we have time for this issue! Thanks to all the contributors this month, and I look forward to seeing the same high quality for November’s carnival.
You can submit an article for the next carnival of video game bloggers using the carnival submission form, and view past and previous editions at the blog carnival index page. The next edition is due on the 19th of November, so get those entries started!
Technorati tags: carnival of video game bloggers, blog carnival.
Related posts:
