Virtual Pets Blog

Creating a virtual pet site and succeeding.
Many pet site owners want the best out of their virtual pet site but they really don’t know how to make it large. So, how can we make it large? Well many new pet site owners try to get into the business to make money, however; you won’t make money right away. You need the right amount of features, content, and various virtual pets for the users to adopt. If you start off with 15 virtual pets for the users to adopt - with customization from paintbrushes to costumes, then the users will really love your pet site. They want to customize their virtual pets, play with them, feed them, and breed them.

So, what’s the next step after the pets features are completed? Well, the users need things to do. So if you have a ton of food items for the users, then create a food quests that asks the users for every single food item in your items’ database but if the food item is retired, then make sure the quests doesn’t ask for it. Another good quest game would be a quest that rewards users with items from the NPC character (you can only obtain these items from this quest) and continue from there. Make the items very unique, rare, and very high in rarity.

Games: Users want to see a various selection of games. If you can’t afford flash games, then create php games from “random”, “Guess the number”, “raffle”, “lottery”, and “quests”. These features will keep the users playing especially the quests game. If you want to limit the quests then make sure you also have another feature for the users to do while the quests are timed or 10 times per day quests… If you can get sponsors to create flash games for your pet site, then so be it. Neopets did it, so why can’t you? Try to establish your site has a great virtual pet site - with a great economy for the users to make money. If the users can’t make money, then they won’t play.

Don’t promise. If you know you’re having trouble creating a new feature or can’t fix a certain bug, then don’t promise your users that new games will be out soon - or bugs will be fixed. Fake promises are a huge turn off to your users and if you lie, then your veteran members will most likely leave. If you’re a lazy owner, then your staff members will be lazy too and not try just like yourself. You need to be very dedicated to your pet site if you hope to succeed. The greatest pet sites weren’t created in one day, not even one year. But it has taken them a few years to take off.

Art: If you’re trying to attract all age groups, then create art for the kids, adults, and teenagers. Most teenagers tend to like “bloody” images or other type of art. While the kids like cutsy images. Marapets is a prime example of a cutsy virtual pet site and look at them now, they continue to grow even though everyone says their art is ugly. Adults seem to fall into the same category of the kids because they like cutsy as well (at least that’s what we think). Just because your pet site has great art that doesn’t mean you’ll succeed, you need the features to back up the art.

Social networking: Do you want your pet site to have a great community? Well what better way to do it with social networking. These features includes blogs, messaging, forums, profiles (with comments), friends list. Social networking is a huge feature for any type of virtual pet site and without it you won’t succeed. Your users want to interact with each other and if they can’t, they’ll leave. If you don’t know what social networking is, then check out myspace for an example. They’re the biggest social networking site on the web today.

Part 2 coming soon.