Spotplex Sucks

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I was trying out spotplex. Since I have set it up I really haven't gained anything from the experience. Their code does an ok job at tracking activity on each individual page, but it still seems to be flawed, it was able to ignore some of this activity. Even on the best of days, when I was getting what for me was very good traffic for a single day, on an individual post page at that, I didn't receive any traffic from spotplex. They have managed to prove to me that unless I am already a big player I do not have any chance of gaining any benefit from their service. Hell, I got more hits from technorati because of my post about spotplex then from spotplex itself.

The Bottom Line: Unless you already have a reasonable amount of daily traffic I wouldn't even consider using it.

Link Popularity Tools

Over the past couple of weeks I have begun to pay more attention to link popularity and page ranks. In my searches I came across a pair of tools that can be helpful for performing analyses in this area.

The first of these tools is at www.widexl.com. This tool takes the url of a site or sites as input, and produces a count of the number of search hits on a handful of search engines: Google, Yahoo, AllTheWeb, AltaVista, and MSN. The output also displays a handful of other sites as a reference.

The other tool I found is used for predicting your google page rank. Google is constantly updating their own page rank, but this doesn't appear in the directories (as seen with the google toolbar for example) immediately. Instead google does an update to the directory several times a year. This tool predicts the page rank based on back links to your site. Quite useful for planning, and to see the fruits of your page promoting efforts.

Top 1,000,000 Alexa!

Within the past week or so this blog has broken into the top million websites listed on Alexa.com. This really isn't that big of a deal, but things have been moving up right along. To be honest I am still unsure if this is because of all the increased traffic I have have picked up, or if it is just because I now check the blog about twice a day with the toolbar I installed. Whatever the cause its a definite plus!

Reminder: Anyone with questions about DynamicMUD should read this post. I will aim to start answering questions over this next week.

New Google Referrals

A few weeks ago google adsense added a new set of referrals. These referrals are unlike the previous set, as they come from a much larger base of advertisers. These referrals are basically CPA or Cost Per Action ads, which means that the publisher is paid when a specific action is performed (for example sign up for a service). These ads can be run in conjunction with the normal ads, and many of them offer some serious pay outs. These also come with the advantage of letting the publisher guide his or her users to the ads through recommendations, which is a serious no-no with normal adsense.

I am hoping that these new ads (they are now rotating in the top right hand corner of the page) will bring in some additional revenue. I choose mainly gaming related referrals, two of them are for game design educational programs, and a few are casual games, and a computer hardware one. I can and will recommend you check out these services.

Spotplex, Digg's New Rival?

I came across a new social media site today in between tasks at work today. Oddly enough I found out about it on Digg, and it looks like this site's main purpose is to compete with Digg. The site is www.spotplex.com. The primary difference from what I can see is that spotplex bases the ratings of posted articles not on the input of the users, but instead directly on the viewing habits of the users. The more people you get to your article, the higher it gets rated.

I think inherently this system has a few flaws. Not everyone likes what they read. It's hard to tell if a user liked something unless you time them, but even then the results won't accurately reflect the feelings of the readers. The second main flaw I potentially see is that if your site is already highly trafficked then you have a great advantage over the casual blogger for example. I have decided however to give it a try. I put the code on the blog, and hopefully within a few weeks I will be able to report on wether or not it really works for me.

Introducing the Calendar and Next Weekend's Event

This is going to be an information packed post so hold on for your life! I added a google calendar to the sidebar late last week, the most observant of you probably saw it down at the bottom. I moved it up to make it more visible. All test event's will be posted on that calendar. Next weekend I am planning the first test of the summer. Mainly the goal of this particular test will be to see how the game handles being situated on a different machine. This will also be a good chance to confirm that the caching system is indeed improved, and will be a good chance to expose people to the new help files and socials that Sliis has been so helpful to write up for me. For more information on the test please visit:

http://groups.google.com/group/Dynamic-MUD-Testers

Please respond to the 'Roll Call' I would like to get an estimate for who is still interested in testing, and hopefully get a good idea of who might show up.

New Blogger Layout

Like I mentioned previously I am going for a new look and taking advantage of the new blogger features. I have added a couple of new features that might not be familiar to people who have been regulars here. I went through all 192 posts and added labels. Please bear with me, many of these posts likely could use some more and better labels, please feel free to email me if you spot a label that is out of place or should be added. You can quickly browse posts that have a particular label by clicking on the link for that label on the right. This is a nice and simple way to see all the old specification posts from the first months of the blog.

Another new feature that I added is a list of the five most recent comments on the right sidebar. Just as a bit of information for anyone else who might use blogger and want to know how I did this. In order to add the comment feed add a new feed page element and set the url to http://yourblog.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default. This seems to work pretty nicely.

The last addition was a set of buttons at the bottom of each post to make it easier to submit to some of the content and link sharing networks out there. Here are some links to get you started if you want to do something similar:

t-a-w.blogspot.com
consumingexperience.com

I hope to add another sidebar feature in the near future with direct links to all of my articles and major posts about big things, such as what is Dynamic MUD, and my post about MMO Business Models. I'm not sure when I will do this but I would say probably next week or so depending on how things go.

I think these layout changes are for the better, what does everyone think about the new layout?

I Want Your Feedback

I think ultimately players should have a chance to give back to the games they play. And even more so some of the best ideas and opinions are from the people that play the games, not the ones who design them. At the same time I think the game designers should have the ultimate say as to what does and doesn't make it into their games. For this reason I'm posting an email address for those that have opinions that they want to share directly with me on various ideas or features. Or if you just want to say hello, have questions, or are looking to join the team. I can't make promises but I will do my best to be helpful.

-Toraux

Tags: Game, Games, MUDS, Multi User Dungeon, Online Games, Game Design, Programming

Alexa Update

I mentioned alexa in an earlier post, and how the alexa rank was slowly improving. It still is. As of this morning The alexa rank for this page is 1,482,132, up from 6,352,160 when it was first ranked. I'm not absolutely sure, but I have a feeling that at this rate I could at least begin to approach the top 100,000 if this trend continues. I'm pretty sure it is all a result of using the SearchStatus toolbar for firefox. In other related news FeedBurner subscriptions, and Technorati rank are up, and Blogtopsites rank is down.

I'm going to make an attempt to try and write posts every day again. Hopefully next week won't be as crazy as the last few were. A lot of the times I would have posted this week it was a contest of sleep versus posting, and for the student sometimes sleep is just more important.

Later,
-Toraux

Tags: Alexa, Blogspot, Technorati, Blogtopsites, Traffic Ranking, Google Pagerank, Game, Games, MUDS, Multi User Dungeon, Online Games, Game Design, Programming

Subscribe for Email Updates

We'll I have a free moment, and I found another FeedBurner trick. On the publicize page you can select an option on the left sidebar called email subscriptions. This allows users to subscribe to your feed and get updates via email when you update your blog. This feature supposedly only will give you the same text as the feed provides (meaning you can limit the number of characters in the message using the Summary Burner. If you frequent the blog and would rather not keep checking it needlessly, you can subscribe on our sidebar here, or:

Subscribe to Dynamic Mud News by Email

I really wish I knew about FeedBurner sooner, its basically exactly what I wanted a while ago but never had, I would definitely recommend it.

-Toraux

Tags: FeedBurner, Game, Games, MUDS, Multi User Dungeon, Online Games, Game Design, Programming

Multimedia on Websites

This is mainly a rant... so be prepared. While web surfing a bit today between homework, studying, etc I came across a website discussing some new MMO. Unfortunately for me the website all but 'required' IE 5.0. I run linux most of the time, so rebooting to view one website isn't on my list of things to do. To my further disappointment, to view with firefox I needed to download some plugin, I think it was for flash or shockwave... something to that order. Screw that. Personally I don't think its good practice to require any sort of spiffy technology to visit a website. Especially a commercial one. If you at least leave a simple version for users then the low bandwidth, low tech customers can still get access. I remember when most sites had frames or no frames options.... why not flash and no flash these days? If your website uses multimedia, and does something like this then I applaud you. If you don't, you won't get my money, or traffic. I think this is especially important for game sites in this genre. People who play MUDs and other online text games generally are looking for the low tech, low bandwidth alternative. Why pair a text game with a flash website if thats the only option? I remember visiting an paid for ad once to find this kind of situation... needless to say I didn't get past the front page to the site, and their money went down the tubes. All I'm really saying is.... give users low tech options whenever possible. If not, you loose customers and viewers.

-Toraux

Tags: Game, Games, MUDS, Multi User Dungeon, Online Games, Game Design, Programming

FeedBurner Tips

Like I mentioned the other day I registered for FeedBurner. I've only been using it a few days, but I've picked up several techniques to help improve it's ability to drive users back to your site (instead of just reading through the viewer). I figured I would share some of the things I've figured out so far and help save someone else the time.

Under the sidebar option titled Summary Burner, you can set whether the feed is a full feed, or a teaser. You can select how many characters are displayed, basically giving your readers a tease to what is in the post, and directing them to return to your blog page. This is especially helpful if you don't have Google Adsense for feeds, and aren't eligible for the FeedBurner monetization feature. I'm currently using this, though I think I'll likely be tweaking the number of characters in the coming days to make the teaser enough to tease, but not so much to be the whole post.

Ok, I guess that was only one tip. I'll provide more if I discover any other ones. :P

-Toraux

Tags: FeedBurner, Game, Games, MUDS, Multi User Dungeon, Online Games, Game Design, Programming

Site Changes

I made some changes to the template this morning, so I figure I'll go over them. I removed the site search... hasn't been used by anyone for almost a year, so it was basically just taking up valuable space. I also registered for feed burner, so you should see an icon for that on the right too, feel free to signup for the feed using your favorite feed reader. I also changed around the way the Google Adsense referrals are displayed. I found a site that uses icons next to the signup buttons to help draw attention to them. It seemed to work quite well for them so I decided to try it. Ultimately this should help draw a bit more attention to the referrals and help get more people signed up. I personally only use two out of the three services, but the two I use: Firefox and Google Adsense are great, and I would definitely recommend them. Google Adwords is supposedly good too, but I have yet to have a direct need to advertise for anything, maybe in a couple years when I'm trying to pick up more players.

Here are the icons I'm using, I had Qyae fix them up to work with the black background...




I'm also trying my best to use the competitive ad filter to start blocking out some of these ridiculous ads we get through adsense. I'm going to need to start writing about games again just to get better keywords for adsense to read :P Anyway, back to the grind.

-Toraux

Tags: Adsense, Firefox, Advertising, Game, Games, MUDS, Multi User Dungeon, Online Games, Game Design, Programming

Alexa Rank

About a week ago I was doing some further research into the Alexa traffic rankings. I ended up downloading a cool firefox toolbar that will show you google and alexa ranks for the site your viewing. When I initially installed it my site read as ranked 15th, this being a result of it being on the blogspot domain. I did more research, and found that most blogspot.com blogs are ranked based on the blogspot domain. Now a week later after using the toolbar, I have an alexa rank (in the millions). From what I understand this toolbar works similarly to the alexa toolbar, and boosts alexa ranks of pages viewed with it active as much as the alexa toolbar. This is advantageous because this toolbar doesn't have the same 'spyware' issues that people have been associating with the normal alexa toolbar. The toolbar can be found: Here. I recommend installing firefox (there is a link in the sidebar), and installing this toolbar if you do any webdevelopment or website promotion.

-Toraux

Tags: Alexa, Blogspot, Traffic Ranking, Google Pagerank, Game, Games, MUDS, Multi User Dungeon, Online Games, Game Design, Programming

Blog Top Sites Now Working

This morning I checked my stats, and noticed another hit originating from the blogtopsites admin page. This time when I loaded my site up, and logged in to blogtopsites I could see that I was ranked. I'm not sure why they kept denying me before, but now it appears that everything is fine. Starting out ranked 105th out of about 170 something blogs in this category, it will be interesting to see how much new traffic this builds for the blog, and how our rank changes through the coming months.

-Toraux

Tags: BlogTopSites, Game, Games, MUDS, Multi User Dungeon, Online Games, Game Design, Programming

Text Link Ads - Don't Bother

A little over a week ago I posted about text link ads. I want to fully revise my opinion on them so I'm writing a new post. For the record I cancelled my account with them, and the only really good thing I have to say is that they did cancel my account when asked in a timely manner. The service seems like a reasonable one, but has several major shortcomings. First of all its impossibly to become an advertiser unless your either in or close to the top 100,000 on alexa, and have a good link popularity. This means it is really only effective for the websites that get good traffic, it is NOT good for those of us who are just starting out. Secondly advertisers can always renew at the same rate if they want to stay on your site. So even if new advertisers have to come in at a higher rate those who stick around could still be paying the same low rate they started at, even if your traffic triples. I think the service is good if you have a big site, but I think the rest of us really need to be informed, don't even bother signing up unless you have the rankings needed. That being said, google adsense works for anyone, it might be slow but at least you earn. Theres a link on the sidebar. :)

-Toraux

Tags: Advertising, Monetize, Text Link Ads, Making Money, Google Adsense, Game, Games, MUDS, Multi User Dungeon, Online Games, Game Design, Programming

Blog Top Sites

So as I mentioned the other day, I applied to blogtopsites.com in an attempt to drive a bit of extra traffic to the blog. Two days later the blog still isn't ranked. On the "add blog" page it does say to expect 24 hours or so to get ranked, but still no luck. Furthermore this afternoon my listing completely disappeared. Not only is it not ranked but now the listing is gone. I made a second attempt to add the blog after that, but by tonight it was gone again. I'm not really sure why this is, but it is definitely frustrating. I sent them several messages, hopefully the issue will be resolved soon.

-Toraux

Tags: BlogTopSites, Game, Games, MUDS, Multi User Dungeon, Online Games, Game Design, Programming

The Scoop On Technorati

A little over a week ago I posted on Technorati.com. After a week of using this service I have a bit more insight into how it works and whether it is really worth it.

Ultimately the concept is definitely there, this kind of service could definitely build traffic if you are ranked high enough, and for me brought in several people over the course of the week. I found that one of the major flaws with this service is the very long and often variable amount of time it takes to get your posts indexed. On several occasions it happened as quickly as within a half hour of posting (using a manual ping). On other occasions it took longer then overnight. I also found that the times and time since posting listed on their site is often incorrect. I do not really know how the internals of the system work, but it seems to me they either need more specific instructions for making your blog compatible with their robots, or they need some better software design. This spotty service is very frustrating at times, and I would venture to guess that it is the reason I haven't received more traffic from the site then I have. Often my posts only appear after a few hours, by which time they are already off the first page of their tags because of their age. The service is helpful in many ways, but I really wish they would improve. I did manage to change all the tag links to point only to my posts with those tags, so all the newer posts' tags should point to my posts.

I tried out another service starting yesterday, signing up for and installing some code for blogtopsites.com. They haven't actually ranked me yet, but I think it will be in the top half of the video game category. Maybe I'll have some more insight into this in a week.

Anyway, back to preparing for today's classes. Later,
-Toraux

Tags: Technorati, BlogTopSites, Game, Games, MUDS, Multi User Dungeon, Online Games, Game Design, Programming

Text Link Ads

Update: check here.

As I mentioned last night, I found out about another way of earning money advertising on your website. Text Link Ads works by placing a set of sponsered links on your website, and they pay you per 30 day rotation of each link. You could get $5 for every link on your site per month, regardless of clicks. This has an advantage over google where your earnings rely entirely on the quality and relevance of the ads that they place on your site. There is a disadvantage to this method of advertising, however, when I signed up for the service I was told my traffic does not meet their minimum traffic requirements. Apparently an average of 5 hits a day isn't enough for them ;). The site did offer to periodically check my traffic and email me when I do meet the requirements, so hopefully before too long I will be raking in some extra cash from Text Link Ads. So in conclusion, if you have more web traffic then me you should give this a try and make some extra cash. I hope this helps someone get closer to their dream of not needing to work anymore. Text Link Ads

-Toraux

Tags: Advertising, Monetize, Text Link Ads, Making Money, Game, Games, MUDS, Multi User Dungeon, Online Games, Game Design, Programming

Not Updating...

Im not sure, but I was under the impression that these things should update quite quickly on Technorati. Apparently that isn't true. Three hours later and it still isn't indexed. Im going to try this one and see if it magically works better this time around. If I can figure this out I might have some good advice on the best way to get your blog indexed from blogger.

Later,
-Toraux

Tags: Technorati