Monetize gaming site

It depends greatly on the demographic.

If we're talking Skyrim or GTA V, we have one audience.

If it's Bingo or Candy Crush, we have another.

I'm guessing it's the former one, though. What tends to work really well are free gaming sites or free trials. You could look at Peerfly; they have a gaming category.

But also think beyond games and consider the interests of your audience. In my experience, they like anything related to mobile offers, apps, gadgets, phones, tablets.

One thing few people will tell you is dating is another great niche on gaming traffic. It converts very well, so maybe you could give it a test.

I hope some of that helps!

Dating on gaming niche? This is new to me. Will try that anyway
Thanks

Perhaps you can find out what entices them by running a sort of contest or freebies and also giving them your possible options of what they could love and not without giving them the option of listing their individual wants. You could go as far as that, gaming is in two categories the type of xbox, ps3 game and the casino world type.

Yeah, dating! Never heard of mixing gaming niche with dating but if you know the demography then it will be easier.

Goodluck.

interesting thoughts, never heard abt dating for the gaming niche lol.might have some trials though. I do have pinterest for the site but only 50 followers, will work on that. Will go with some dating offers and will test them out. soon.
Thanks for your time spent on here.

Cheers

If it is a video gaming site its legal and a very good niche, and believe it or not some dating actually does well on gaming sites

email marketing with options to subscribe, send them offers and coupons etc ... segmenting groups according your preferences, cities, birthdays. sounds great xD

If you are looking at a specific video game, then you can do quite a lot. For example many World of Warcraft sites have appeared that include a free & paid for gold generation guides alongside a helpful addon that can be installed in game to help people generate gold. An interactive community forum is also available with separate sections of members to share information.

This kind of thing can be scaled up regardless of video game. I have played many games and most of the games with an in-world marketplace or auction house are the best, because you can show people how to generate in-game money. To name a few, a guide could be created for: World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, APB Reloaded, The Secret World. When I have played those games I have made a lot of in-world gold/currency by using the marketplace/auction house. A lot of people are looking to make extra in-world currency so they can pimp out their characters, vehicle, etc.

One thing you could do is offer a short 10 page report on how to generate in-world currency for your specific video game. Offer it for free for a like/tweet/email sign up. Or even offer them a free 'how to' video for an email and then when they are on the 'thank you' page ask them for a 'like' to download a 10 page report. You can then use these targeted emails to promote a 3rd party affiliate program, if you do not have a product to sell.

About 10-12 years ago I formulated a business plan to create a video gaming community. If I were to create a gaming community now I would probably use Wordpress, Buddypress and BBPress alongside the powerful multi-site features of WPMU Dev to allow gamers to create their own niche communities for their games backed by the entire gaming community. Revenue from AdSense and affiliate programs. Collect in-network contact details from all of the subscribers of the individual niche communities to promote premium products. Give them news and information in their inbox every week, or something along those lines. Support specific games by offering free gaming servers using cloud based technology, etc.

As always do extreme market research on your competition, find out where they are getting their traffic from, where they are getting revenue from. Then find an opening and a way to do it better and fill the need. Use the power of social media to bring in subscribers. Always be first with news and reviews. That reminds me. Look at AngryJoeShow on YouTube. This guy is quick to review video games and because of his style his videos go viral. He has 1.2 million subscribers and his videos average 500,000 views (at an average $4 per 1000 views this could generate $2,000 a week if uploading one video per week). You could build a community around a YouTube/Vimeo video game review show. So long as you have your own unique style, etc.

That's all I can think off the top of my head. But, good luck with your video game site

Regards

James

The site is a news/magazine style not related to any game. At the moment i got 5,000 emails, 2,500 FB fans and 1900 twitter followers (in 3 months), so not sure to promote a specific game for this general niche. I think to promote something i create or own rather than trying to market affiliate products (that barely convert).

We have 10's of thousands of members of our Gaming Community and I speak at Gaming Conferences regularly, so as someone who knows, the first thing I would do is find out more about your gamers.

What are their demographics, what kind of things do they like, what do they play and WHY THEY JOINED YOUR LIST. That last one will really help you to understand what you should be offering them (note I said offering, not selling - gamers hate being sold too).

If you want some specific help hit me up via PM, I'd love to take a look at your site.

the best way to monetize it with adsense

There are a ton of different options for Gaming though. We have been with CPMStar for a few years now, we also have worked with Yashi.

We actually went a further step to create our own network because we had so many sites coming to us for advice.

As long as you are putting out fresh content you will make a decent amount of ad revenue. Use sites like N4G.com to aggregate your content and drive even more traffic for free.

Attend events like PAX, E3, Gamescon, etc, that will give you even more content. Interact with your community with doing community play and live stream on Twitch.tv, and you can build up to become a partner. Our cpm rate on Twitch is excellent.

@venturetothetop It is good to see another gaming professional here.

Yeah dating is a great convertor on gaming sites, most people who play to a real serious extent are single because of the hours involved (although not all people are clearly!)