How To Start a Successful Flash Portal / Arcade
Old time readers could remember Michael Edlavitch‘s Hooda Math, because two years ago I blogged about its case history and how Michael built from scratch a 10,000 visitors/day Flash Arcade site.
A lot of time passed (actually two years in Flash related industry is really a big amount of time), and guess what happened to Hooda Math? It turned into a 2,000,000 visitors/month portal.
Michael shares with us the milestones of this long time ride:
Arcade growth can be determined by 4 stages: in-house games distribution, sponsorships, site-locks, and exclusively hosted.
Packt Explorer author Emanuele Feronato posts the process to follow to build a profitable Flash portal. As you can see from the pictures, a great site design is not the top priority!
Instead focus on how you source your games and getting the balance right between posting lots of games to get traffic, and minimizing outgoing links to keep traffic.
1. Create original games and distribute them on other portals, pointing back to your site
2. Sponsor games on FGL, focus on promoting your portal through spamming, SEO, and more.
3. Site locks: prevent hosted games from linking to other portals. Keep your traffic.
4. Exclusively hosted games: so people have to come to you to get some games.
It goes without saying that to build a successful Flash arcade without a colossal budget you need a niche focus. It won’t be a surprise that Hooda Math focuses on math games.
