Runescape Affiliate Advertising

On 21st October I migrated all the information from my original runescape site onto my new runescape help site. I have also looked at the adserving features for the associated runescape blogs and have now implemented banner adserving throughout my mini network.

The next step is looking to increase the potential affiliate sites that will agree to run advertising throughout their sites - and for them to check if they are able to implement or integrate it into their site.

At this stage, there is no direct advertisers available and the main adverts that are running are affiliate based. This is primarily to have some adverts running in order to gather up more information and statistics to be able to approach others for direct advertising opportunities.

Once sufficient statistics have been gathered up I will be in a better situation to assess the demographics of visitors to the network and as a result will be able to identify direct advertisers - which will help ensure long term development of both the site and the network.

Runescape Merchandise

Runescape is a very popular MMORPG and with it there has been some merchandise brought out by players that can be bought as gifts for special occasions such as birthdays or christmas.

I have added the ability for people to check a selection of the items available on my runescape help site and it has its own section - runescape merchandise.

I plan to add further direct links as I continue to develop the help site and I am currently looking at implementing a banner rotation to my site (as well as related blogs) that will carry direct links to various merchandise available for runescape.

I am also considering offering some merchandise myself, although I haven't quite looked into designing them yet as I am working on several different aspects of my site behind the scenes. I do intend to keep this section updated on the development, although it will likely be sporadic posting rather than any set pattern.

Runescape Search Engine

There are numerous useful Runescape help sites available on the internet, however, it is not practical to be able to search each one individually when trying to find what you want. This is the reason why I have started a Runescape Search Engine that I believe will enable all runescape players to find whatever they desire about runescape.

The idea is that over time I will ensure only quality runescape help sites are included in the runescape search engine. This means any query within Jagex rules should easily be resolved by browsing the results or entering more specific search criteria to get what you need.

It is much better than the previous runescape community search that I was using as the new search will be taking results from websites that I include in the index whereas the previous search was taking results from the whole web, many of which were not relevant to runescape users.

An additional benefit is that any user can simply type the word they are want to find help on without the need to have runescape in front of it - this can bring much better results in context (although sometimes it may be required to put runescape in front of a query if the results are not specific enough to resolve your isssues).

Hopefully all runescape players will see an enormous benefit from adding my new runescape search engine to their favourites list (bookmarking it or whatever), and using it anytime they have a specific runescape query.

Happy surfing and scaping (or surfscaping).
Latona

New Site Name and Testing new Search

I have now restructured my original help site and relaunched it on its own domain name.

The new site can be found at : http://www.runescape-help.net/

The new runescape search facility is part of Google Co-Op and adds to what was previously being used as now I can add and remove the sites that should contain all the results that runescape players want.

The added control that is offered by the Co-Op enables me to ensure results are better suited to the community needs and wishes and enables me to exclude sites that are obviously of no use whatsoever.

As I add and refine the pages and sites to include in the results of the community search, they will become much more useful.

In addition, on my new runescape help site any player wishing to write any runescape guides can simply register and submit their guide for approval. Again, over time this will enable my own site to much better handle the requirements of the runescape player community.

Latona.

ps. Remember to bookmark my new help site - http://www.runescape-help.net/

pps. Remember to tell your friends about my new site as well so that they can contribute any guides they may want to make as well.

***Update***

Since Jagex announced EoC I let the domain name expire and as such the main site is no longer live. There is a host of other runescape fan sites containing a wealth of information that need user participation to continue being useful to the runescape community. A friend has started a wiki site dedicated to 07 runescape at http://07.runescape.com and I am sure will gladly accept any help building up the site content.

Community Driven Runescape Search Help

I have just signed up to a Swicki that will become a useful community driven search portal for all Runescape players.

The idea is simple, when people perform their normal searches they can provide feedback to the usefulness of the resources they found were. As time goes by, the useful resources will become the first found results and thereby helping all players find more useful results for their query.

It should be noted that the search portal is intended to be a helpful resource that stays within Jagex rules for any Runescape search and as such the sites that it returns first should also adhere to Jagex rules. Players are requested to report any sites violating Jagex rules in order to make it much more effective.

The long term affect will naturally help all legitimate runescape helpsites and ensure people will be able to find more relevant results quicker without having to trawl through the mountains of spam that is normally returned in most search engines.

Social Bookmarking

I have added social bookmarking below each post as this is a growing aspect of websites - especially blog style websites. It will enable people to add to their social bookmarks page and share with their friends. It is kinda similar in style to viral marketing, but instead of informing your friends of interesting sites, you are letting your friends find sites that appeal to you.

Below each post is 10 social bookmarking links that will allow people to add to their favourites and share with their friends. There are many more social bookmarking sites available on the internet, however, I felt 10 was sufficient for now and have chosen some of the more popular ones to prevent too much clutter at the end of posts.

Hopefully in the long term, the social bookmarking, viral marketing and constant development of links and content will help make the process of establishing my runescape helpsite a lot easier.

I have had a few ups and downs in the search rankings, and there is a considerably higher number of people that visit the main site when I make an appearance in some of the top pages - however, still relatively young for a website, I quickly disappear in the search results again and then only a handful of people find the site.

I have noticed though, that around 10% or so of visitors come back to this site again, whether they find it through a different search term, or have it bookmarked. I do encourage people to bookmark the main site at least as it will give you access to all the blogs associated with the site also and can act as a kind of runescape portal.

Viral Marketing

Since I have introduced several blogs to cover various aspects of Runescape, I was hoping to have the word of my site spread further among the runescape players. However, the main way of finding my site still appears to be through search engines.

I have registered on some forums and tried to make an appearance on some to get the word out that my site exists. Although daily traffic appears to increase slowly but steadily, the main problem is still with getting the site more interactive via the forums or any of the blogs.

For anyone reading this particular post, they can help my site by telling their friends - this is the viral marketing aspect. The blogs offer an ideal way for people to tell their friends about my website existing, as they can simply forward a link to their friend via email (the picture of the letter below each post makes it even easier).

Basically, if any readers find any of my posts interesting or useful, or even some parts of the site, then I would appreciate it if you could share this with your friends and forward any posting that you feel would be of interest to them.

As always, I am on the lookout for guide writers and am especially interested in quest guide writers as I am looking to add more content to my main site over the next few months in the hope of catching up to the same level of content as other established sites. Any help to achieve this is appreciated, so I ask if you know anyone that is wanting to write guides, or has already written guides, then let them know about my site.

Thanks.

Latona.

ps. Dont forget to bookmark my site and visit regularly as I plan to update both the main site and the associated blogs on a regular basis.

pps. Dont forget to tell your friends :P

Another Launch?

I recently found an interesting site that lets you edit in and make your own Newspaper Clipping. I thought I would try it out and see what it looked like.

Here is the result - it took me a couple of minutes but it looks ok.

Website Promotion

Over the last month since launching my site I have undergone 3 site re-designs due to internet explorer not following the W3C standards and thereby causing some issues with the overall look.

I have settled on a simple design that has so far been fluid on all screen resolutions and browsers. I hope this will continue to be the case as it really has detracted from me adding more quality content guides about runescape. I know I have a lot of work to do to catch up with the established help sites, but it is gradually getting there.

Originally this blog was going to be solely about the development of my runescape help site and how to get a foothold into the playerbase given the amount of paranoia around new runescape sites coupled with the advertising ban ingame ... it is truely a challenge to get established as a honest source of help.

I realise now that it is impossible to solely keep on topic, but I have created additional blogs about various aspects of runescape and I will use those blogs to keep on topic and provide an informative niche area within the game.

This blog will therefore become more of my general views on any aspects within the game, any aspects with my site development and any other aspects relating to site promotion and becoming established as an entity.

One main problem is the ability of bad websites to gain a lot of traffic playing against the rules of the major search engine guidelines but at the same time outranking my site that I am trying to develop in the true spirit of the web. I continually become disheartened when I see other bogus sites outranking mine, especially on google where my site has virtually disappeared and sites that copied some of my content outrank me due to them having been in existence before my site... truely demoralising.

Runescape Player Owned Houses

Player Owned Houses:

Since RuneScape classic there have been people wishing to get into developing their own player owned houses on RuneScape. The game developers took their time in delivering the eagerly awaited addition to the game ... the question is was it worth it?

There will be many people who love everything to do with their own house on RuneScape, but there may equally be as many people who detest the introduction as it has had a great affect on the whole virtual economy.

Almost 1 month after the release, there is still large amounts of players that are unconvinced about what player owned houses or POH has meant to them. On the whole, there has been heavy investments by the early people who managed to get their construction skill to level 99 and have the ability to create everything offered by Jagex.

Change is inevitable over time, and my personal opinion is that I am glad they have released it as it finally means there is no further talk of what might be involved, but instead some grumblings of things that were not involved.

A new Runescape Marketplace is afoot

Currently I am working on a new runescape marketplace that I am hoping to give some interactivity to my website and some usefulness to the people visiting it. The numbers of visitors has been increasing daily since starting to show on some google search results. Hopefully this is a good sign and that it continues in the same direction.

The marketplace will ideally serve as an alternative to runescape forums themselves ad people will find great use from them. Time is yet to tell if it will catch on and help people in runescape to find the items they are after.

Edited: I abandoned the marketplace system as the script was no longer being supported and I was unable to get a reply as to whether or not I would be able to adapt the script for my purposes.

Runescape Royal Trouble

Jagex updates continue before I catch up. I am still working alone as the people that have volunteered to help out have failed to deliver. Nothing new or unexpected there then.

I can understand it that people are eager to help a new website develop especially amongst a community they enjoy. However, not many people realise the amount of time, energy or effort that is required to try and build a new part of that community.

There is too much distrust among a large number of Runescape players for them to readily accept a new helpsite as legitimate... I guess it will only prove itself over time.

I urge any player who is interested in writing guides for runescape to step up and register on my site (www.runescape-help.net) and together we will gradually get caught up with other successful sites and then will be able to be more innovative.

Runescape help, guides, tips and making money site

Recently launched helpsite for runescape. Currently looking to develop the community and receive some feedback for future development of the site.

The help site is article based and all runescape players can register to submit their guides or tips. However, the guidelines should be followed as the aim is to build a comprehensive interactive runescape help site.

The aim is really to get at least 10 guide writers who are willing to work together to build up the site. All guides will be considered provided the guide writer is the original creator of the guide.

Blog Created

This will be a retrospective blog on the evolution of my website which I am currently trying to finish off and release officially by the end of this month.

After the website is launched I will continue to Blog some information on a regular basis detailing any major changes with Runescape and such like.