The web is has been flooded with flash arcades and similar entertainment sites and it is becoming very hard to become profitable. You need to get traffic any way you can and you need lots of it. Most flash arcade owners don't have a large budget to promote their site with. You need to find an effective way to get your site quality traffic that doesn't cost a lot.

Free arcade banner exchanges like funklicks.com are great for flash arcades and similar entertainment websites. If you don't know what arcade banner exchanges do I will explain. You signup for free, upload a 100x100 banner ad, specify what website or URL it should link to, then paste a few lines of code onto your website where you want the banner ads to show. Many arcade banner exchanges show your banner ad on someone else's arcade every time one of their banners is displayed on your arcade. The others will send a genuine visitor to your arcade when one of your visitors clicks a banner on your website. Most arcade banner exchanges have a Click Through Rate (CTR) of 4 to 5%. That is several times higher than other ad companies.

Some people dislike banner exchanges because it is sending your visitors to your competitor's website. If that were a real problem then the big arcades wouldn't use them or have Google ads either. Visitors are just as important as profit because on the internet you can't make any money without them.

Most arcade banner exchanges will give you free impressions, usually a several thousand, or clicks when you signup. Some will only give you the free credits after you send a certain amount of impressions or clicks. Free credits are great for some quick traffic.

When using a banner exchange you it is important to treat your banner like you would an ad on Google AdWords. Try different banners and delete the ones that don't perform as good as the others. Your CTR mostly depends on how attracting your banner is. For example one of my banners has an average CTR of around 9.5%. Animated banners perform way better than still ones. You can have a bar at the top or bottom of your ad that says something along the lines of, “Play Free Games.” The typical flash arcade user is male, so if you can find some sexy pictures of anime girls your can raise your CTR greatly. Make sure they are all family friendly pictures because it might get taken down or you could even get banned.

Try not to just throw all the banner exchange codes at the very bottom of your site. Try to put them in places where they are likely to get clicked. It's never a good idea to put banner exchange codes too close to games because they will distract your users and will turn them away from your site. The higher you place the banner code the more traffic you will send and that will bring you more as well. You should also think logically when putting multiple exchange codes on your site. For banner exchanges that work with clicks put their code in places that are more likely to have clicks. The same goes for the ones that work with impression. If your site statistics show that the visitors from one exchange are more productive their code should be placed better also.

If you have yet to sign up for any arcade banner exchanges it is a good idea to start thinking of places on your arcade where you have room for a few 100x100 banners, and when you do signup keep in mind all of the tips in this article.