Video game site creation

• Kind
• Investigate
• Know your stuff
• Name
• When to make a gaming site
• happy
• Design
• Content management system
• Advertising
• Income
• Press contacts
• Keeping up with the news
• Get staff
• Tricks

Type / Research. There are 5 different types of gaming sites.

• Multi-console : Covers all aspects of games. For example, PS2, Xbox, GameCube, etc.
• Single console : Covers only one console. For example: Nintendo Wii
• Unique company : Covers everything related to a company. For example, Nintendo
• Single series : Covers a complete series of games. Example: Legend of Zelda
• Individual game : Covers only one (1) set. For example: Metroid Prime 2

It is simply a personal preference on the type of site you want, they can all work equally, although there is the possibility of a wider audience for multi-console sites, but some may argue that your audience will be less wide due to the fact that it is a saturated market.

Investigate. Use a tool like this one from SeoBook.com to see what people are looking for; this is more useful on smaller gaming sites (single company, series, game) as you will need to target a much smaller audience. Also, check out what related sites are doing; if it is the first site in the field, try to make it as original as possible; Ask the Tricks section for more help with this.

Know your stuff. To make a good gaming site, you have to be a good, active gamer. You must be “informed”: know the lingo, companies, games and what is happening in general in the world of games, if you know things, you can give informed opinions or thoughts.

Name. Of course, search engines are better off including keywords in your site name, but since the market is so saturated, what you should be looking for is a memorable and brand name, so instead of MetroidPrime3Gaming.com , I would use MP3Gaming, MP3Gamers, or more simply MPGamers, of course you can buy the variations and see which is the most effective.

When to make a gaming site. There are times of the year that are the best times to open a gaming site, which will give you a better launch and visitor boost.

• Game conventions: More specifically, E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo), this is when I opened my gaming sites and it definitely helps. A lot of people will be looking for all the E3 gossip and media, so if you have them, you will get a lot of visitors.
• Christmas: Everyone wants games at Christmas, so give them games! The Christmas holidays are always the most profitable / trafficked months for gaming sites.

Happy. The content really depends on what you want to offer. You want to be a news site, an editorial site, a review site, a cheat site, or a bit of everything. Of course, it’s best to open with as much content as possible, but if you’re doing a little of everything, try to have at least 5-10 reviews / articles, so your site looks a bit established and people can decide if it’s worth it. worth visiting the site again.

Design. Game designs are usually bold, eye-catching, bright, and high-tech, and it seems to be working, so try to get the most direct design you can, while still including a wide variety of content on each page.

Content management systems. Take a look at these great content management systems, unless you want to customize them.

• http://www.ncastercms.com/ – Free!

• http://www.igamingcms.com/ – Free!

• http://www.insanevisions.com/onecms.html – Free!

• http://www.gamecms.com/ – Free!

• [http://www.vgportal.com/]

• http://www.customcms.net/

OneCMS from Insane Visions is a little hard to get used to, but it’s probably my personal favorite, but if you have the money, take a look VG Portal gold CustomCMS.

Advertising. This is how I advertise new gaming sites:

• Related forums
• Top site lists
• Link exchanges with similar sites
• Digg.co
• MySpace.com

Return. CPM methods, once you get some traffic, would be the best option, so sign up for a program like Valueclick Media that has decent rates and you can start earning some cash. CPC ads pay very low on video game sites, so stay away from them. Best idea to keep your visitors on your site. Press Contacts. The wonderful thing is, once your gaming site has traffic / user base, you can get some press contacts. Most game publishers will have a dedicated PR person, so sign up for GamesPress.com for a long list of these people and companies. Don’t go for the bigwigs at first, contact companies like THQ, Vivendi, or Ubisoft as they are known for backing the newer sites. Now if they have a press site, easy just log in and sign up, if they don’t get your PR email then write something like this:

Dear Mr / Mrs CONTACT NAME HERE,

I am the owner of NAME OF THE SITE, which provides its users with high quality information and ……….

We request that we be added to your list of press releases so that we can further increase our news broadcasts. NAME OF THE SITE receives X number of unique visitors per day, and has been open in the past X days / weeks / months.

Thanks,

NAME

E-MAIL

NAME OF THE SITE

SPEAK TO

PHONE NUMBER

If you get accepted to your press release list, wait a few months, post your news, and then you can apply. Free reviewable copies of games. You may not even need to ask, many companies just ship them after X number of days.

Keep up to date with the news. Forums are the best source of news and rumors, the big ones have thousands of people continually looking for information on the net, and when they find it, they publish it, then you can simply post it on your site, simple! So take a look at:

• http://www.gamespot.com
• http://www.ign.com
• http://www.gamefaqs.com
• http://www.gametrailers.com

If you visit their forums regularly, you should keep up to date with the latest news.

Get staff. Finding staff to work for free is often difficult, but if you can grow a decent sized gaming forum, there should be at least 2-3 people who would be happy to post some news or review some games. The best way to get staff is, once you start receiving free games, agree to send some to your staff for review and then return, many people will be happy to review a game if they are among the first to play. that. Getting staffed mostly requires a lot of patience, if your site grows, so will the number of people who will want to work for it.

Tricks. These are the tricks I usually use to get additional visitors:

• User bars: People love user bars and use them in many forums, so if you create some, then use basic html to link them, you will get extra visitors / exposure. In case the user remove the link part, please add your url in the actual images.

  [ Check out http://www.userbars.com to see examples of userbars. ]

• Flash gamesHave flash games related to games on your site, your visitors will surely love playing remakes of some of their favorite games.
• Wallpapers: A section for wallpapers never hurts, some people can even submit their own so it’s good for community engagement.