Traffic Trading Games

[lfhost]

hey,

how do you choose games best fitted to your niche ?
how do you choose them so you get enough plugs on each traders site, so trades dont die?

I update my sites through the mochi and fgd feeds?

I currently have 2 racing niche arcades, where can I find more racing based games that other traders would have?

I know I could look through different trade sites and click ingame author links etc, but im curious on other peoples views.

Im also in different mailing lists for new games from sites like bubblebox, playhub network sites etc. Also joined different stes fanpages to track new games added.

Im looking to expand my network to other niches, but if theres not enough to trade with, then sites are likely to die without heavy investment.

thoughts?

[Stephan]

The best way to setup a trade site I belief is like this.
Go to big trade sites and add the 100 – 150 most played games to your site, after start trading and add new released good games every couple of days.

[lfhost]

Hey Stephan,

Thanks for the reply, where do you get the actual games from though (the zips etc) if they are not on a distribution site?
I know some sites provide direct links to games, but thumbs are typically watermarked so for every game would need to create thumbs etc.

[Stephan]

If I can’t get the game thru distribution service, I add them manual, just look for the swf file location on any site and download it, the same with the thumps if they don't have a watermark. On ATS sites you have the download link for the swf on the trade signup page and the thump need only right click, copy image location.

[lfhost]

Yeah, but some sites dont like you stealing lol.
Then you also need to write the title/desc etc (im lazy lol)
But the title has to match to get the importer to match the game.

[Stephan]

If they don't like to download the games, they will add some code to the .htaccess and finish.

The most sites I know don't block the download, as the games are free anyway.

EDIT: you should always change the description for SEO

[lfhost]

They dont typically block the game, more the thumbs etc.

trade sites I dont think will pull alot in SEO wise due to the nature of sending the traffic out again.
It can help get an initial spurt of traffic, but I doubt it will help in the long run, unless the site is aged.

I typically leave it to keywords etc in the urls and title tags to do the most work, as you can make that unique without rewriting everything.

[Stephan]

trade sites I dont think will pull alot in SEO wise due to the nature of sending the traffic out again.

Why not, trade sites get the same SE traffic as any other if you set it up (SEO) on the right way.

[lfhost]

SEO comes with age more than for new sites, its hard enough getting spiders like bing to actually go to your sitemap, let alone SEO the descriptions etc.
But then, I am lazy when it comes to SEO lol.

Id prefer to focus on continous trading than SEO.

As bouncing the traffic from trade a to trade b should help.

Eventually bots will catch up.

[gubugnet]

SEO comes with age more than for new sites, its hard enough getting spiders like bing to actually go to your sitemap, let alone SEO the descriptions etc.
But then, I am lazy when it comes to SEO lol.

Id prefer to focus on continous trading than SEO.

As bouncing the traffic from trade a to trade b should help.

Eventually bots will catch up.

Don't give up on SEO even for trading sites is my suggestion. I initually ran my site gubug on the onarcade script ( So I was told ) and we started working it like any site with SEO and stuff for direct traffic. The thing was that even with doing animations for youtube,SEO and banner exchanges + buying banner traffic it seemed to me that I was not taking the path of least resistance. Then we went full steam with almost exclusive focus on traffic trading which is nice and you will build up some better trade numbers that way but to be entirely honest with you. The best thing I have noticed is to kind of mix in a little SEO + traffic trading + original content ( games or whatever ) here and there. These things will all work together in a synergy and they seem to be best for your profits.

Comparing notes with freegamesgallery ( an excellent guy to network with ) kind of brought me back to this ballance. So please consider factoring in SEO even with a trade site. Also I dont worry about Bing much because out of the big 3 right now Google still will send 15 - 20x what bing does and that is even if you are ranked better on Bing for the same Keywords from what I see of crunching the numbers.