Month: March 2008

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Webkinz – A Game Review For Parents

If you are a parent of elementary school aged children then you know what a Webkinz is – a stroke of marketing genius to help separate us and our kids from our money.

These fuzzy stuffed animal pets, that aren’t really even pretty, have become the rage with the elementary school set. Buy a Webkinz animal and get a code to logon to Webkinz world online. Although I think that the push of the website is to encourage our kids to buy more and more, that is your decision as a parent to feed that or not, but what about the website, is it safe and fun?

The online games are fun for kids and very easy even for the youngest Webkinz fan. As bad as the Webkinz animals look in real life online they are adorable and their actions and movements are cute in the online world. One of the big features of the site is the addictive and fun games. The Webkinz dollars you win are used to purchase items for your Webkinz house and garden. I found the house stuff to load slowly and be annoying as a parent to watch load, but my two girls age 11, are absolutely ga-ga over them. Webkinz encourages kids to log on every day to search for gems, that you install in your Webkinz crown.

I took a look at the games and for kids, they are fun and creative. There is a chat area, but you must select the sentences and cannot write your own text guaranteeing a safe environment for all. The kids love this site and I think that it is nice, fun, and safe.

My one big issue is the focus on consumerism. Some parents may be sensitive to this and others not care at all. The site features a pet of the month, encouraging kids to buy it each month so that they will have greater access to unique items and games if they have the pet. Encouraging kids to log on every day to get the gem of the day is another ploy. Oh and how about the discount and extra perks to own three, ten, and twenty Webkinz. Each Webkinz costs between $13.99 to $16.99 so the dollars start to add up fast!

If your kids have just told you they don’t care about all of that, the least expensive place we’ve found to buy them is at Hallmark. There we paid $13.99 versus $17.50 at Limited Too. So Webkinz can be fun, is surely safe, but you may be spending more than you want for the stuffed animals to feed your kid’s desire for more. For us, I have now limited the animals to three each!

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Building Traffic for Your Blog or Website

There is no silver bullet sorry. Building your traffic is hard work and requires commitment.

Here are several things you should not do as they do not work:

1. Do not buy traffic from sites on the Web. What they supply are scammy redirects, fool people into visiting your page, embed your link in spam. You will not reap real site visitors. The traffic that is generated is there by accident and typically will stay under several seconds.

2. Do not use PPC content networks to build traffic to your website. The truth is that content clicks are notorious for not converting into sales. Typically these clicks may come in as well for a few seconds and surf off. If you are paying under $.25 per click it may be worth the expense, but make sure you have limits on what you will spend in content. When you stop paying, your traffic will drop like a rock.

Here are several things you should do as they do work:

1. Work over your content, make sure that it is user centric. Provide value to your readers and make your site the very best that it can be.

2. Create informational pieces that you give away for free that instructs people on hot topics in a helpful way. In our case we have Outlook tips and computer tips. Use these pages to garner site traffic in a legitimate way as well as build your overall site authority and organic placement in the process.

3. Work forums and industry blogs. Leave helpful and meaningful comments with links to your site in your signature. Do no be an infomercial in your post. Again, offer something meaningful.

4. Blog a minimum of five times a week and make your content great! Focus on helpful and informational. You will find that a well written blog will add to your site, keep readers engaged, and will over time improve your organic as well as traffic results.

It is hard work to build your site traffic, but you need to make a commitment and really work your program. Do it in a haphazard fashion and you will simply reap haphazard results.