Brian Vaughan

The (Re)Launch of ArcadeDog

Posted by Brian

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ArcadeDog is one of my oldest sites, I have had it since 2003 believe. The site used to be powerhouse for generating revenue. It came on the scene before all the arcade sites were popular all over the internet, and it reaped the benefits.

However I started to neglect the site, quit updating it. I let it fall into the deep dark regions of the internet. Well finally I am starting to revive it. It has been coming along quite well. Have a new script powering the site now, also have a new template in the works. One thing I have to say though, social media sucks.

Now some of you had a heart attack right there I’m sure. Let me explain since the relaunch of ArcadeDog.com a couple of the games have gotten “stumbled”. Now this has brought in HUGE amounts of traffic, this month already over 8k unique visitors. But the traffic is all mostly trash. Sure one or two people MAY actually come back but its mainly just a waist of bandwidth. It made my CTR go way down on my ads both from Adsense and from AdToll. I guess the traffic wouldn’t be as bad if all my ads were CPM based, but they are all CPC, so its just bad. Hopefully the flood gates will start to dry up there and things settle back down to normal.

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Relaunching PurePimps.com

Posted by Brian

After a long period of not getting anything done with this site, this past weekend I finally got the ball rolling again, and will be relaunching PurePimps.com.

A little bit about the site. PurePimps was/is one of the original ‘pimping’ games on the net. To my knowledge it was the first one ever to reach over 10k users. There were some problems with the previous owner, and the site basicly just started to shut down. I helped run the site for a long time, doing what I could here and there to keep it up, but it just wasn’t enough.

Over this past summer me and the previous owner were talking about the site and he said he would give it to me, the domain at least he no longer had the site backup. I searched and searched for one of my own, I did find one but it was old and not very good. I used that back up at first but it ended badly and once again the site just shut down.

But now for the present, the site is back up running a brand new script. New features, better administration, better everything. Hopefully I will be able to bring the site back to its glory days of the past. It will take a lot of work to get the site going again but will be worth it. The site had a great community behind it before, and I am convinced that it will once again. A few of the older players have already came back after I contacted them informing them that it was coming back. Only the future will tell but things are starting to look better.

Here is a brief explanation of the site

Pure Pimps is a turn based strategy game for those who want to beat the crap out of opposing pimps! Do you think you can be top pimp and control the streets? Are you capable of pimping hoes for money, dominating cities and doing everything else a top pimp should do? Can you prove you’re tougher than the other pimps in the game? This is pimp war at its most lethal!

Feel free to join the game, and play for a bit. Once it gets running full steam again there will be cash prizes being handed out on the game for winners of the rounds.

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Progress on PurePimps

Posted by Brian

Well its been a while since I updated everyone on the progress over at PurePimps. Things are going…pretty good so far. I have been working on the layout trying to get it back to the original look and feel of the site, and progress is going very well so far. Take a peek at it PurePimps v2. Not quite sure why I am calling it v2, since really I am wanting to get it back to v1 look and feel.

Quite a few of the older players have already came back and signed up on the site, 91 at the time of this writing. Which I think is great since I haven’t advertised it being back up and running at all. Loyal players there that kept checking on the site to see if it was back up. Those are the kind of people I want there and playing. I hope to have everything there running 100% before the end of August, so I still have quite a bit of work ahead of me, but I still think I can reach that goal.

The stats for this month have been nothing short of amazing, I am truly amazed it is doing this well in the first real month of testing now. Hopefully it will continue to gain more and more steam. I have even made the first credit sale already, which surprised me, I had intended on lower the price of credits, but now I wonder if I should since obviously people will pay the current price.

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Recipes Recipes Recipes

Posted by Brian

Another website of mine RecipeKid, I have finally started posting more to it and getting it back up and running full steam. My goal is be adding at least 2-3 new recipes per day to the site. This is in an effort to try and get more visitors to the site, and more organic visitors to the site through search engines.

Right now I am at a hard decision, I really think I need to change the URL structure of the site, and get rid of the date in the URL’s. Doing this I think would firstly make the site look better. As well I think it will help more in the SERPS later on down the road. But the problem is it will hurt the site in the SERPS right now. Odds are I will end up leaving it how it is and regretting it later on down the road, I hope not though… What are your thoughts? Change it or leave it how it is?

At the moment I am monitizing RecipeKid in two ways. First with Google Adsense, which so far, hasn’t done all that great, though that is probably because of placement. I still need to do a lot of work, and trial and error to get the ads in the right place. Secondly I have signed up and been accepted with Text Link Ads (you can get $100 in free links there right now (the listing for RecipeKid can be found here)). Right now those are the only two ways I’m trying to make money from the site, and that will probably stay the only way for a while, I will eventually start some Amazon ads with the site, linking to cookbooks and other kitchen related items.

So again back to my question earlier should I change the URL structure of RecipeKid?

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Another Update about PurePimps.com

Posted by Brian

Doesn’t it feel like I just wrote a post about this not long ago? While oh my look at that I did. Oh well here is another one anyways. So as I was saying earlier about me having a backup, I got it work, completely. So now it is back up and “running”.

The first test round will be starting in a little while to make sure that part of the script is working as it should be. I tested it out briefly before making the test “live” so hopefully there shouldn’t be a problem and within the next week or two we can really go live. Once going live, I plan on starting to advertise the site heavily to get more players on the site, and bring it back to the glory it once had.

So feel free to come on over to PurePimps.com and give it a try while in the testing phase, stick around and you could even win some prizes once we get totally up and running on all cylinders.

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