Dressing Up Games - Monetisation and Optimization techniques

One of my friend just brought my attention to a new site: The Dressing Up Games. I love researching sites, understanding how everything works and learning about monetization aspects of online projects, so I was really excited to learn about another player especially knowing that site belongs to the niche I was attacking all along.

TheDressingUpGames.com used a very simple technics: get all the games you can and see what will work. I noticed they used games from Stardoll, Roiworld, The Doll Palace, I-Dressup and many other popular online destinations.

Site uses GSS (probably 3.1) engine, that I reviewed before, but is obviously very -very hand optimized and I suspect many elements were recreated or heavily modified. GSS is very slow by it's nature and I noticed that TheDressingUpGames was very -very fast.

I checked the page source and found
""
as the first line. I checked other GSS sites and none of them carry that, so obviously some very special caching has been created for the pages. What was even more interesting is after login I found the following there
"
so caching engine is still used (pay attention that md5 is still the same) but now we see "DYN" there (probably for dynamic).

Monetization is only done with Adsense, I think owner could of do a much better job there, but I guess it brings the money he/she is looking for.

Game selection is really interesting. All categories are at the top ( I would probably put them on the side because it is way too many of them there) but site does not look busy at all, I guess large font and spacing help to get a "non-busy" page feeling.

Color selection and theme is light pink/white /yellow/.blue (I guess a perfect slection for the audience). I was stumbled many times trying to figure out what colors go with pink, and I guess now I know that warm yellow and white will work. I also liked the background flower (I suspect that could be a stolen idea from dress up girl, but hey... it works, flower loads really fast and makes user understand that "page is loading, please wait")

Another interesting element is "keyword cloud". I think cloud should be done properly and leaving everything the same size does not achive the goal, but still this was the first dress up site that implemented it.

Another site with games

As I mentioned before, cartoon dolls are very addicative. Over time all dolls arena slowly migrated to Dress Up Games. We notices appearances of sites like Girly Games and DressUpGames.com.

Interesting that DressUpGames.com is only an aggregator of all coolest games and sites like Girly and Makeover Games are monetizing games themselves. Dollzmania is again on top of the list with bunch of sites already spinning, but others are slowly entering the arena and I am suspecting they will catch up very soon.

New Dress Up

My friend told me about this new wonderful dress up site and I really enjoyed it. I love playing dolls: paper dolls, cartoon dolls and online dress up dolls. New Dress Up offers hundreds of brand new games that I've never seen before. I really liked the layout and organization of that site.

Flash games are nothing new to the net. I've seen sites filled with arcade games and pointless action games for years, but dress up always stayed away. Only recently I found about nice integration of flash and stardoll and i-dressup. I think New Dress Up Games is another wonderful addition to this fashion site-games mix.

Plan the Perfect Birthday Party

Help your child plan the perfect birthday party this year with help from websites such as The Doll Palace and a bit of your own creativity.

Birthdays have meaning for all of us, but nobody appreciates the annual celebration more than children. Favorite themes, games, cake and friends come together for one special day in honor of your child. She waits rather impatiently all year for that special time, and as it draws near, begins to plan. Help your child plan the perfect party this year – one that will stay with her forever.

Keep it Small and Simple
Birthday parties that are huge affairs can be fun, but they are also overwhelming for the guest of honor. There isn’t much time to play and have fun if the birthday girl is running between guests trying to keep everyone happy. So, instead of inviting an entire flock of best friends try to narrow it down to a lucky four or five. That way the focus is on fun and not peace-keeping. (It will also be less expensive for you, the resident checkbook.)

Think Outside of the Box
Boxed invitations and decorations can be fun and easy, but they don’t have the same special meaning that more custom ones do. Help your daughter make her own invitations using cartoon dolls or pictures from websites like TheDollPalace.com. Her birthday party decorations can use the same dolls or the same theme. Each invitation, placemat, and gift bag can be personalized by your young artist and that helps make things even more special.

The Activities
Birthday party activities change with age. The younger children need a bit more structure to their games, while older children will probably disappear into your daughter’s room for hours on end. Discuss plans with you daughter to see what she thinks would be fun, and help her research some alternatives to Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Donkey.

There are endless choices of how to spend time during a birthday party. Dancing, bowling, putt-putt golf, movies, sleep-overs, make-overs and more are all possibilities, and you may be able to get even more creative depending on the season and where you live.

The Food
Pizza is a staple of birthday parties, but it doesn’t have to be the only choice. Fire up the grill or bring in some take-out. If pizza seems to be the easiest choice, be sure you have a variety of toppings or consider buying pre-made crusts and letting the guests make their own. Not only will it add a bit of novelty to the meal, it will entertain the girls longer than you might expect.

Cake and ice cream are standard, but they don’t have to be basic, either. Consider cupcakes to decorate or custom ice cream sundaes. Cookie cakes and ice cream cakes are delicious and might be more welcome at a summer party or if you’re someplace unique like the beach where it can be hot or complicated to bring a traditional cake.

Have FunWhatever kind of birthday party you plan for your daughter this year, just remember that the most important thing is not how well it all goes or how much thought you put into it. What is most important is how much fun she has with her friends and how much fun the two of you had together making plans.

Cartoon Dolls

I would like to start this blog from informal introduction.

I am in the area of making cartoon dolls. According to The Doll Palace cartoon doll origins came from traditional paper dolls. Much like traditional paper dolls, cartoon dolls offer a base with clothing and accessories for creating the perfect look. Unlike the paper dolls of our past, online cartoon dolls have an entire virtual world complete with vocabulary dedicated especially to them.