If you run a website relating to Game Maker one of the ways you can promote it on other similar websites is through the Game Maker Affiliation programme. Here are five tips to help you get the most out of the system which has now delivered over 26 million impressions.
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.
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.