I have just opened a mud related site which offers listings to free-to-play muds. I have a question for those of you who have websites.

How long does it take, on average, to get traffic flowing through your web site? Do you have any suggestions for increasing visits and/or users of a website? At what point do you give up and throw in the towel?

I've already listed with the major search engines. Promoted the site on various other mud-related websites and message boards. The site is at the three week mark. The first week and a half there were quite a few new muds listed. After that there have been none. Is it time to give up and close the site, or should I wait a bit?

Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Common mistake people make is to give up. Nothing works on the first try, it takes time.

Naked women usually generate traffic.

Just kidding.

The only thing you really can do is to hang in there or compromise the integrity of your site by widening the appeal. I recommend the former since the latter essentially destroys the purpose of your site.

Word of mouth is a powerful tool and finding an audience where it was presently not known to exist is another. Try posting on forums that might have potentially-interested players but not necessarily those familiar to MUDs to begin with. Role-playing or gaming forums are one such possibility. If you have any semblence of a budget, try advertising on sites that offer it.

Good luck and take care,

Jason

Or improvise and put Naked women in your meta-tags!

Yes games in development can be listed. The only requirements that I have are that the game be free-to-play, follow licensure requirements and give no in-game benefits for donations.

Thanks for the support. I'll stick it out a bit longer and keep fishing around for forums to promote the site on. There is no advertising budget really since the site itself does not allow advertising--very low overhead for right now.

Thanks again!

I think there is only a demand for so many mud listing sites..when the number of sites exceeds the demand, then you are going to have to get creative and do something better or different than what the dozens of other mud listing sites are doing. From my player's perspective, your site doesn't have anything to offer that I can't find better at TMS or TMC. Things like the ability to search for MUDs by different criteria (alphabetically, RP or not, PK or not, etc.) Otherwise it's like playing Russian Roulette with my time by picking random muds that likely will not be my cup of tea. I can give you several ideas that you may or may not want to use if you want to pm/email me.

Anyway, don't give up. It's only been three weeks, and personally I would check weekly stats for up to 6, 9, 12 months to see how you do in visitors.

Word-of-mouth is usually the best advertising, but to start off with, it will mostly be your mouth. Share with your friends, post in mud forums, even webmaster forums ("how can I improve my website" "how can I increase traffic" etc) will help get traffic, and likely you will get several that may bookmark it.

If you are looking to add listings, why not contact muds directly by email? Most mud admins will realize that any free advertising helps their mud, so it's a win-win situation.

What Rathik said is true, you do need to offer something that the others don't. Take a look at how TMC does submitions and searching, then improve upon it. I think they have the most "options" for mud admin to fill in so players can search for something specific. Look on TMS/TMC forums and you can find quite a few "feature request" threads, take some of those ideas that the bigger sites didn't.

You've got to make yourself stand out a bit more, saying "no ads" and "no for-profit games" isn't enough to draw players to it, as quite often they can filter those out(to a point) on these sites.

You know, you're right. I can't compete with sites like TMS, TMC, Mud Slide, Mud Bytes, or Mudmagic. I don't have the overhead or the knowhow to create a site of that caliber. I guess it's time to put my efforts into what I want to do most and that would be my education. I've decided to close Mud Wire.

Thanks for pointing those things out.