Why Large Sites Ignore Small Sites...
I think there is a very common misconception in the arcade world as to why large traffic sites seem to ignore or not care about small traffic sites. I'd like to help clarify this for you some.
First of all, people running large sites typically manage their site as a business, not a hobby. In order to be successful, you have to pay attention and focus on the people who send you the bulk of your traffic.
If you're familiar with the 80/20 rule, it basically states, as it relates to an arcade site, that 80% of your traffic will come from 20% of your partners. So if you focus on that 20%, you're much more likely to grow a successful site.
A lot of small sites also don't realize that big sites just flat out aren't set up or capable of trading small volume numbers... for example, a lot of sites are going to send a minimum of 500 visitors daily just by adding one game plug for you. So if you're only capable of sending 20-100 visitors daily, you'll find it hard to get a game plug.
They would love to trade with you, but it doesn't make business sense to trade so unevenly.
Secondly, for some reason, many small sites are 'naggy' or 'needy' in all their communications. I actually got an email from someone that said:
'I sent Booty Arcade 16 hits in the last 10 days and I only got two back, are you trying to scam me?'
Do you have any idea how annoying that can become to large sites? 16 hits!? I serve well over 100k daily visitors to my site, I can't be bothered with everyone who thinks their 16 hits are the most important thing in the world.... not because I don't care about that person or their site, but it doesn't make any difference to my site. My time is much more valuable and better served making sure that people sending me 5k daily visits are happy and taken care of. That is where the money is.
Another thing I notice is that I don't see established arcade webmasters really poking around these forums. By established, I mean large traffic, 50k + daily visitors. Consider this, while these forums have some value, if you really want to build a true business and large arcade, why are you giving and taking advice from people who aren't doing that much better than you are? There is so much more to running an arcade site than I've seen posted in this forum, arcadewebmasters or the like. Everything you need to run an arcade site successfully is basically right in front of you, study sites that are successful and copy what they do. If you copy what people do that have 1k daily visitors, then you should expect to never have more than 1k daily visitors.
What BootyArcade and StumpyGames have done is we've developed a system now that can trade with all sites, large and small... and it's working great. Right now, I only trade with around 100 sites actively, but it's automated... so I can afford to take on small partners because they don't require any time except to set them up initially and then it's on auto pilot for me.
I hope that gives you a little insight into our world and helps you understand that we don't just not care about small sites. We all started at day one at some point and we were our own first visitor to our website... while some may lose sight of that, most don't. It's just that most sites aren't capable of trading small volume numbers anymore and the hassle it would require to do so isn't worth it.
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