Check the performance of your banners. You can see the click-through ratio of individual banners uploaded to your account. If the performance of one banner is significantly lower than others in your account consider why – how is it different from the banners which are getting more clicks? You can pause or delete poorly performing banners at any time and upload new banners if you have a new message or design.

Don’t upload multiple identical banners. Uploading a particular banner and linking URL combination more than once is pointless. Because of the credits system (every time you show a banner your banner will be seen once) there is no benefit to flooding the system with identical banners. They simply divide your statistics between multiple pages and the banners can also be shown in the same GMA block on other members sites which wastes the impressions.

Good: 4 different banners

Bad: 4 identical banners

Have a static banner. GMA gives members an option to restrict animated GIF banners from appearing on their site by affixing &angif=1 to the end of the URL in the banner display code. If you don’t have a non-animated banner you will never be seen on these sites.

Place one promotion code on every page of your website. Promotion codes display from one to ten banners at a time in lines, rectangles, squares or as a single banner.  It is easy to find space to fit a code.  Remember though – you are only allowed to place one code on each page, if you use more duplicate banners may appear on your site which wastes advertisers credits and can result in a system ban.

Make sure you have at least one active banner in your account. There are currently more than 3.5 million credits held in accounts that do not have an active banner.  The owners of these websites have helped to promote other Game Maker user’s websites but are not reaping the benefits by having their site advertised elsewhere on the network.

How to get the most out of Game Maker Affiliation is taken from: GameMaker Blog

But wait, hold your horses – do you think that our good friend Nate is responsible for this? The explanation to this seemingly miraculous event is simple: he had outside help from somebody insane enough to help him.

So, here’s some bits from the stuff HCG wrote, without further ado:

As  you all may  know,  I am  currently  learning  Java and C++. This may be a surprise to you all but C++ and Java’s syntax closely  resembles  the syntax  for GML.

Oh my god!

I am sick and tired of new games on YoYo and the GMC. Why may you ask? Well I meant, not all of them. A good amount of them. There are many users posting games that have been called: “Unnamed Platformer,” “Unnamed RPG”, “Unnamed TDS”. Why make a game, without a name? How about you get a name  for  the game before the  release?

I still don’t know what “Adbarlian Castles” means…

When you call a game Unnamed,  it makes it seem like its an example/tutorial edit.

Your games have names – and they still seem like example/tutorial edits!

Wowza! There are now 2 interview gm sites. I recall last issue, we spoke of the 1st one.

In a very positive light indeed.

Review for “Coredase” – if I can read this horrible font right:

Finally, a game that strays away from all the violence and harmful nature.

Sounds like a decent review so far…

…I gave this game an overall rating of 6 stars not only because he’s my friend, but because this game is truly a masterpiece.

Once again, the Prodigy Game Magazine presents unbiased opinions (as if reviewing their own games wasn’t enough). Hey – it’s what they he promised us with issue 1:

“We are not politically correct at all. We give out intense news, previews, and reviews.”

Intense, indeed!

The rest of the magazine is the usual stuff: interview, another review… a few typos there and there. Somewhat readable.

The world is coming to an end.

Prodigy Game Magazine becomes a semi-decent publication is taken from: GameMaker Blog

Here are some stats collected through the service on the way to 5 million button impressions. Includes browser/OS usage of people viewing the banners, country reach and total impressions per month.

This data is collected from a large number of GameMaker websites so the information gives an insight into GameMaker users worldwide.

Download: GMA-5M-Stats.xls

5 Million GMA Impressions is taken from: GameMaker Blog

I will take this opportunity to release some data collected via the system. The country, browser and OS share of all pageviews delivered by GMA can been seen in GMA 2M stats.xls

This is one of the largest collections of publicly released data from a Game Maker site, and whilst not everyone who saw ads served through the GMA is a Game Maker user, this is a good approximation of who uses Game Maker and/or who plays games made in Game Maker.

GMA 2 Million is taken from: GameMaker Blog

As this milestone figure has been reached I am releasing some statistics showing how impression and click counts have grown up until the end of January 2008. Also released is data which shows that banners have been displayed to residents of 140 countries and browser usage stats which show that over 80% of GMA ads are displayed in the Mozilla Firefox browser.

I’m not sure of what use this data can be, but I imagine it is one of the biggest amounts of data about Game Maker users that has been released recently. Should help some IE lovers realise that they are in the minority and may be helpful if you are setting up any Game Maker supersites.

.xls of GMA stats

1 Million Impressions for GMA is taken from: GameMaker Blog

Game Maker Affiliation 2007 Stats is taken from: GameMaker Blog

For the next stage of my plan for World Wide Web domination (in the GameMaker sector anyway) I need to conduct some research.

I have been experimenting over the past couple of months with different banners in my signature at the Game Maker Community. I even added an avatar, of a female, to see if this would have any effect on the response rates of my ads. However I need more data. Therefore I am looking for volunteers.

Now, don’t think this is a begging message asking for your help in exchange for nothing, it isn’t. So much so that I am willing to pay you to post at the GMC in exchange for you placing an image like the one below into your signature.

A simple, static but dynamic 361 pixels wide by 73 pixels high banner. The banners will be used to promote the Game Maker Affiliation Service which I feel needs a good promotional kick to get more members registered.

So far as I am aware this does not violate any of the signature rules as no reward is being given for clicks on the banner, only for the placement.

There will be limited places available, but I would like to both collect data and get more people familiar with the service. I am particularly interested in members who are frequent posters in both the Community and Website Announcements sections of the forum. I am also looking only for members who have been at the GMC for at least 6 months. If you think you fit the criterion then get in touch.

Get Paid to Post is taken from: GameMaker Blog

That’s 500,000 extra high quality exposures for affiliation banners dynamically rotated across 23 Game Maker related websites.

But do these banner views really increase traffic? The answer is a simple yes. 2,954 site visits have been received by members via banner clickthroughs.

Launched in May this year the Game Maker Affiliation Service makes exchanging links with other relevant sites as simple as possible. Simply register, upload your 88×31 banner and copy and paste our customisable code onto your website. Then, each time your webpage is viewed affiliation banners will be dynamically collected from our server and displayed on your site. Likewise, your banner will be displayed on other member’s sites across the Internet.

Unlike traditional affiliation there is no need to constantly update codes on your website and no risk of broken images or out of date links. You also get rewarded for every banner you show, so the more banners you show the more your banner is seen elsewhere. Simply upload your banner, copy and paste one code onto your site and GMA will do the rest.

http://gamemakerblog.com/gma

</shameless promotion>

Connect with other Game Maker Websites! is taken from: GameMaker Blog

I am quite obviously not the worlds best designer, but I am more concerned about whether or not you understand what the site is about and how it works.

If you have any comments, criticisms etc please post them here .

GMA: New design is taken from: GameMaker Blog

In particular I am going to be looking at the results so far from my graphical ad for the Game Maker Affiliation Service. An ad is offered by MarkUp to people who contribute content to the magazine.

On the day MarkUp 5 was released two people joined the GMA and actually got their account set up correctly, which seems to be hard work for some people, not sure why. So this is just a quick note to say that the targeted audience that read MarkUp do respond to adverts placed within it.

Ad results is taken from: GameMaker Blog