Although I think he may increase ad earnings if they were on both pages.
What made you think of making that a site?
From there, growth was organic/"viral," in that people shared it amongst themselves. I've also had some traditional media (NYTimes, Toronto Star, etc.) cover the site, but that was after traffic was already pretty high.
I tried social shares but they resulted in virtually nil traffic. There is the top right Like and Tweet buttons, and an option to share after you complete a puzzle.
After 4 years I get <10k views per month, and only rank high for "sudoku with pencil marks" searches.
I think it's clear that my site isn't viral material, but honestly I'm not too sure how yours works in that regard either!
Why did you end up removing the social share buttons?
Thanks.
1. The background looked kind of cheesy. It's not a huge deal, but a solid color would look nicer.
2. There's a timer the second I load the page. If I'm trying to relax with Sudoku, this site is not for me. It looks like you can turn it off, but I know people who will just leave once they see the timer. Timed games are pressure-inducing and not fun for them.
3. I don't know what the various tools shown do. Why would I need a pencil tool for sudoku on the computer? Can't I just type the number I want? What's the one that looks like a checkbox? Why is there an error check? Other sudoku apps just mark it in red if it's wrong. (These are things I would think as a normal user. Obviously I read the tooltips, but most users will not.)
Overall impression - hard to use, not fun. Plus, a little late to the Sudoku trend. There are thousands of Sudoku sites and mobile apps. What would be my incentive to use yours? If I already have one I like, why would I switch? Also, I have ad blocking turned on, but if there were ads and I saw them I would never come back to your site. (Obviously different people have different feelings about that.) I can pay 99 cents for a great Sudoku app on my phone with no ads.
The thing is that I'm not sure quality is the problem - it's already a vast improvement over most high ranking sites (but not apps). My challenge is getting people to the site in the first place. As you said it was already a crowded niche.
I'm not really banking on this site taking off anymore, but I worry my next one will have the same "non-sharing" issues. I thought with social sharing you might have a shot at getting noticed in a crowded niche.
I personally think the background was completely fine for it being made 4 years ago. If you were to remake it then possibly a solid color would be a better choice now.
I am also turned off by the timer. I'm not sure how many players prefer timers, but maybe putting it hidden away on the top right or somewhere that isn't blinking at you every second would help users like me.
Everything else seemed good to me. If there were ads I probably wouldn't play personally (sorry adblock is on) because as the last person commented I already have a paid sudoku app on the phone that is ad-free.
I think it's hard to get users to go from their phone to browsers for sudoku (if you were only targetting web-only users then it's okay) because of how good the interface is on touch panels. If you were trying to get users to move from the phone I think you need some gimmick that utilizes more of the screen space or something that the web provides that mobile can't.
A question, if you don't mind: does the "embed" thing works? I mean, do you see people embedding your game on their websites?
I'm curious because I have a similar website and I'm considering doing the same. Thanks!
Of course the value was not for visitors but for links to your site. One quality link might do a lot for you, so it's hard to say whether it'll be worthwhile.
I think my problem is that sudoku is simply saturated. But not many sites have pencil marking ability, and my site ranks high on Google for that.
I believe that as well. Anyone that is big on sudoku today started in 2005.
Looking at your website, there's nothing that suggest anything out of he ordinary.
Yet, you've reached a lot of audience through sheer luck.
What year did the share happen and how long did it take?
Not an insane amount of money, of course, but enough that you can consider the project successful if you're getting a solid amount of views.
My largest project, http://sleepyti.me, gets about 1.5 million unique views per month. The revenue Google Adsense brings in is not nearly enough support myself, but it's enough to make the effort feel solidly "worth it" in terms of development time and hosting costs (which are very low at this point).
How (or if) you should be monetizing depends on the nature of your side project. If your "side project" is a business -- say, designing WordPress themes -- then you should sell your product! If it's something that gets 50 views per month, maybe it's not the best candidate for monetization (and is instead a portfolio/resume builder). Either way, gaining experience building things is almost always a good thing.