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.

How to generate more traffic to your virtual pet site.
Virtual pet sites are easily mistaken to become huge with little-to-no work, but you’re wrong. Many pet site owners don’t SEO (optimize their pet site for search engines) and that’s what’s really killing the community as a whole. Why not allow guests to access certain pages? Why not give them a tour of the game? Let them gain access to certain features such as; games, etc. If they like your game - and your content, of course, they’ll sign up eventually. So, in this article we’ll try to give you some tips on how to generate more traffic to your virtual pet site.

Submit your pet site:
Have you ever heard about Topwebgames? What about Apexwebgaming? Submit your pet site to these two directories and search for “games directory” on google and submit your pet site to all of the gaming sites online today. Another good pet site-directory to submit to is unlimited web games. The more directories that list pet sites on their directory, the more we’ll get noticed.

The more we get noticed, the more pet sites grow in general, right? Yes. A lot of game owners don’t recognize virtual pet sites as an online web game, why? Because we lack the audience of other game owners and we don’t have the features to compete with the millions of online games online today. We need more features, we need more content. Why rely on the pets system to grow? Add more features to attract even more players, become more of a virtual pet site. Don’t try to be the #1 virtual pet site on the web, but try to become the #1 web game on the web!

It’s your virtual pet site, who cares what other people say or do. You want to grow, right? Be unique, try everything. Introduce flash games if you can - especially if you can hire a flash programmer to make the games for you. The more flash games you have specifically designed for your virtual pet site - the more kids you’ll attract. Aren’t the kids, teenagers, and adults the main audience for your virtual pet site? Yes, of course and if you try to cater to just one you risk losing out attracting the whole audience.

Neopets became large because it was created for college students but then after it became a success, it attracted the kids and teenagers. Don’t try to cater to just one audience. You want them all!

SEO your pet site:
You need to optimize your pet site to get ranked on the search engines. Your site has virtual pets right? Well, change your title tag on your index to something like “Virtual pets: your pet site here” and its description should read something like “Pet site name here is a virtual pet site where you can adopt many virtual pets, play games and interact with thousands of pets users!”. You want to grow from word of mouth correct? Well, the best way to do it is by getting listed on the search engines. If you need help with this, feel free to ask me. Your referral system is the key to your pet games’ success, the more links you have; the higher rankings you’ll have the search engines. The less links you have, the lower your ranking will be. If you don’t care about SEO, then good luck to you on becoming a successful virtual pet site.