Are you a gamer? I’m not but I have many cousins who are. I also have many friends in my age-group that are die-hard gamers; it’s odd that even their spouses are gamers!
Gamers spend thousands of dollars on their “rigs” – one of the last places I worked, the gamer there routinely would shell out $300 – $1,000 for high-end video cards not to mention all the other “goodies” needed to run games at the highest possible resolution at the best possible speeds. I mean, the last thing you want is to be playing something like Grand Theft Auto 4 and your system halts because it has to load some graphics.
One thing you will notice about games, like World of Warcraft (WoW), Grand Theft Auto and the like is their staying power. They just don’t die. They have cult-like followers that eat, sleep and breathe these games. They know everything about them. I swear, if there was a way to hack the games and put their faces on the characters – they would do it (who knows… there probably is — I’m not a gamer so don’t spend a lot of time on it).
But there is something else you should notice about these games is that there are small industries built around them. For example, do a search for Grand Theft Auto – in Google there are over 30,000,000 sites indexed for the term Grand Theft Auto (without quotes)! I’ve spotted maps, additional cars, skins, editors and utilities for the series of Grand Theft Auto games.
Mind you, I don’t have a clue how you would use these and what they are all for — but hundreds of thousands of gamers out there certainly do.
Have you also seen the hype and buzz generated for Grand Theft Auto?! Here is some information from CrunchGear:
“That” game comes out today, I think, and one of the best parts of its launch is seeing how the regular, non-gaming press handles it. For example, the New York Times, has a cute little story describing gamers’ “craving” for the game. All the bases are covered, including the numbers (five million copies expected to be sold in the next two weeks; the industry as a whole is already up 63 percent over last year’s numbers), pithy analyst quotes (”People say that if consumers are down to their last $50, the last three things they’ll buy are milk, eggs and video games”), and man-on-the-street perspectives (one college student would give up his cellphone to buy it, but not food—sensible!)
Then you’ve got glowing reviews from the likes of the Chicago Sun-Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, which calls the game a “cultural revolution.” Not sure I’d want to be associated with quite that phrase, but I get what they’re trying to say: the game is big.
And wouldn’t you know, “grand theft auto 4 cheats” is the number one item on Google Trends right now. In fact, three out of the top ten, or 30 percent, are GTA-related.
So you’re probably thinking – what the hell does this have to do with running a internet business? Well – a lot.
As I mentioned there are small industries built around some of these games. This is a perfect example of a niche business or niche opportunity. They would not exist unless the games were out there, and they add additional value to the games by giving the users that play them what they want — the ability to customize the games.
This is nothing new, for those of you out there that remember Doom do you remember all the add-ons you could get for it? I remember pac-man monsters plus loads of others!
You see this niche business on the Internet today as well, in the form of plug-ins, and widgets for WordPress and popular social media sites like Facebook. Many of these are free, but if you could build a “must have” add-on and sell it you could effectively monetize your work. Even if you give it away, the traffic you build to your site would be immense. The next step, of course, is to monetize that traffic. Sure AdSense would work — but remember, you are now targetting an entirely NEW group of individuals — the webmaster.
Webmasters needs differ from the average jane/joe. Most are not going to fall for AdSense — but if you target them with well placed information on related products then you could have a winner. A few fine examples that I can think of are:
- MaxBlogPress (at maxblogpress.com) - they offer several FREE WordPress plugins/widgets and at the same time monetize the traffic to their site effectively by targetting webmasters with tools that they can use.
- Semiologic (at semiologic.com) – offers quite a few freebies; but once you download some of their themes and try to access the additional items you see that you need to purchase a license to use them. Again they’ve targetted webmasters with something specific — not Adsense.
As you build your internet business, consider the niche you are targetting then ensure that you capture that niche by offering relavent advertising and products that will help that webmaster get the most out of their site — most webmasters want to know how to monetize their traffic but this is not the only thing that they want or need.
I will talk about an excellent method for getting into the minds of webmasters in a future post. If you’d like to get instant notification of the post, just subscribe to my Blog Alerts at the top right of the page. I don’t spam and you only receive an e-mail when I update the blog.
Anyway before I head out… here is something for my cousins and others that hit this post looking for something related to Grand Theft Auto – CHEAT CODES!
These are from CrunchGear…
We’re still working on getting some face time with the game before launch, but CVG already has 16 cheat codes posted. That was quick.
Health And Weapons – GTA-555-0100
Weapons – GUN-555-0150
Advanced Weapons – GUN-555-0100
Health – DOC-555-0100
Wanted Level Down – COP-555-0100
Wanted Level Up – COP-555-0150
Climate Change – HOT-555-0100
Spawn Cognoscenti (Mafia Car) – CAR-555-0142
Spawn Sanchez (Dirt Bike) – MBK-555-0150
Spawn FBI Buffalo – CAR-555-0100
Spawn Turismo – CAR-555-0147
Spawn NRG900 – MBK-555-0100
Spawn Comet – CAR-555-0175
Spawn SuperGT – CAR-555-0168
Spawn Police Chopper – FLY-555-0100
Spawn Jetmax (Boat) – WET-555-0100
If you’re a Grand Theft Auto fan – enjoy!
Technorati Tags: gamers, gaming, grand theft auto, Internet Business, niche business, niche marketing
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