New site, low traffic, adsense not performing

Have something special that cant be found elsewhere.

Look at things other than adsense to make money, affiliates, other ad networks, information products.

Promote the site as much as you can to get that traffic up, that means all of the stuff we have in our promotion category but also make sure you have lots of unique content. With good, unique content get in front of other bloggers and dig, etc and get those links.

With links coming in you need to maximise your traffic from the search engines, I am not talking about twisting your site to benefit google but dont be daft and have an non indexable site. That means good titles friendly urls, only have EITHER www. or non-www. version of the site, permanent redirect the other version.

Main thing is patience, keep plugging away pumping out great content, it will take a few months but the blog traffic will improve

Is there anything more specific than "computer games" you write about? That's an incredibly well fed section of the web, and a very competitive one...

If you want specific advice on your site, it might help to give the url as well.

However, if you don't want to, then here's what you can do:

Go through the Performancing archives and learn all you can about AdSense Optimisation AND Traffic Building. Implement the optimisation techniques mentioned here and work on building up that traffic.

And don't always depend on AdSense as the main source of your site's income - diversify to affiliate products (game posters, consoles, games themselves - your niche has a lot of money to be made there) and sell advertising on your site (depends on how much traffic you get though, so you'll have to wait on that one a bit.

And what Nick says - how targetted is your blog? Is about computer games in general or a particular genre, like RPGs?

And have you done some keyword research in the field to help you figure out what topics are being searched for the most in your niche so you can get traffic for them by writing about them?

Hi guys, thanks for the feedback - I didn't want to give the url in case it was rather frowned upon, but as it's been specifically asked for here its: www.thelairofthemonkey.co.uk

Basically, the concept is my thoughts/feelings on games, the industry, and hopefully adding a little more intelligent discussion other than "this game is l33t, ROFLMAO" etc. I'm in the UK, and I've read the guardian games blog for a long time...

(http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/games/) it was pretty much that which got me writing, as I thought I could have a go at that. I'm going to continue with the content, I know that's definitely key, I'm still not sure on a specific direction yet though - other than intelligent discussion on and raising the awareness of issues relating to games.

I'd like to think that what makes it special is that I'm raising questions not found elsewhere, but I know there are sites offering similar stuff...

Get in touch, make contacts, phone up the companies, write comments, visit fairs, take and publish pictures, get invited to press presentations, target your content, interview your friends about new games, spread your blog address ... become an insider.

If you like the writing at the Guardian get in touch with the editor and interview him how his work looks like. Those guys won't give away exclusive news but they all remember how hard it was when they started and I am sure they will offer some valuable info for you. Ask the editor to have a look at your site and ask for a critic.

That was what I did when I started as a press photographer ...

Markus is right on the dot :)

Also, I'd suggest couple of other things:

1) When you find time, redesign the blog - a gaming site has a 'techy' audience - using the default template wont earn you many bookmarks, no matter how good your posts are.

2) Ditto for optimizing your adsense.

3) Contact the editors of major gaming sites on the Interent - same purpose as what Markus talked about w.r.t the Guardian editor.

4) Keep writing but also get busy on building yourself up in the gaming community (forums, gaming sites, etc).

Nice to hear that :-)

Some more points beside the 'become an insider thing' ... get seen.

Optimize your domain, description, articles and images for SEO reasons. This is what I call the 'good old SEO game'. It's vital in a competitive market to stand out ... become a light tower :-)

Interesting, I didn't consider the possibility of being able to become an 'insider' just yet - I hope I can though, I'd really like to do that. When games devs finally take on writers maybe I could become one of the lucky few :)

Regardless, Markus, would you recommend a particular site with advice on SEO which would work for a site/blog like mine?

Cheers,

B

... there are so many SEO sites out there and also some articles here on p.com. Just make sure to double- or triple-check SEO infos before putting to much work in some mysterious 'how to get traffic fast' tricks. SEO optimization is pretty basic based on 1. content and links, 2. content and links, 3. content and links ... and so on :-)

Well, and domain name, page title, keyword density in articles and content and links ...

Right now, with your adsense where it is, more traffic would not have much effect on revenue. Try putting the adsense between the posts.

In terms of traffic, get in touch with game specific sites and post to their forums with your URL in sig or ask for a link. All they can say is no....

Good luck

Thanks guys, I'll keep cracking on with it, though I'm in the UK and it's a bank holiday today so I'm off to the Aquarium! Maybe it'll inspire some bad link to video games.

It definitely seems a good idea to get the blog skinned in a different way, so I'm going to have that done, and I'm going to hopefully get a new affiliate account as well. At one point I did have a shopping page (with only one link mind you) and it got plenty of hits, so maybe people do want that.

Certainly I know content is King, so I'm going to have to develop the site more with more posts and a few more pages...

What you can learn from every newspaper is the importance of timing the publishing of content. You'll see a fresh small article about timing in my p.com blog.

I mention it (again) here because all the classical paper publications show you all year long how to do it: event calendar, event announcement, event feature and in the end it might show up in a year review.

As the computer game industry and the players are also bound to chronological events like fairs or Christmas it is very important for your computer game blog not only to be an insider, not only to be known and seen but also to react to events in advance!

One last example: Do you know the names of the game developers normally hiding backstage? Yes, but do you know their birthdays or even their round birthdays? Yes, bingo, get in contact with them some weeks in advance and ask for their personal comments on the last year. Trap: But don't forget to ask for permission if you want to make their birth date public! Better might be to keep it as a secret and publish your little article right in time (you gain extra insider points :-)

BlackVV, you opened a nice thread here :-)

I've just taken a look over your article Markus, re: timing. I'd picked a little of it up intuitively (I guess blogging teaches you something :)) as you can see from my post earlier today on my blog with E3 coming up. I am still finding it hard to think of myself as an 'insider' - I still think I'm just some guy writing a computer games blog... I'm sure though with more traffic and when my first cheque arrives I'll think slightly differently!

Thanks again for the advice, I'll certainly try to nap a comment or two from a named developer regarding the last year.