Peggle is very easy to pick up and play. There are no complicated controls to memorise, and the core gameplay isn't based on having quick reflexes. Simply aim the ball, release the ball and hit the orange pegs.

Given the previous point, Peggle seems extremely shallow. However, beneath the surface there's a lot going on. There are then Peggle Masters to play as, and each has a different ability. Each special ability has its strengths and weaknesses, and choosing the right one can make a big difference.

The game also has a challenge mode, which includes scenarios such as clearing the board of all pegs, racking up a high score or beating a level starting with only one ball.

It's a silly game that doesn't take itself too seriously. Rainbows, sparkles and a unicorn. What more could you want?

Despite being a simple game on paper, everything about the execution shines. Clearly a lot of time has gone into making it look and feel great, and it pays off. Each board has it's own beautifully drawn background, the menus woosh in and out smoothly, and the sounds are cheerful and fit the game perfectly.

There's certainly skill involved in playing Peggle, but luck plays a huge part too. You only need to look at the $45 billion spent on US lotteries every year ³ to see that people like to take a chance. You might not win a million dollars at Peggle, but the thrill of uncertainty is still there.

Perhaps the gameplay is a little too simple. There's plenty of fun to be had, and the extra powers add some more longevity, but after a while it gets a bit repetitive.

Peggle seems ripe for downloadable add-ons, yet so far there has only been Peggle Nights. Considering how many games offer some pretty poor DLC options, it's surprising that there aren't more levels for download.

Peggle is also the sort of game that's ripe for a level editor. It certainly doesn't need one, but levels made by family and friends could add so much more.

It's not uncommon to find yourself saying "just one more go" whilst wanting to ram your controller through the screen.

Peggle is a simple idea, but the execution is highly polished. Even if each level is just a collection of a few peg co-ordinates, there are still hand-drawn backgrounds, music and a friendly interface on top of it all.

Experiment with chance in your designs. This doesn't mean adding slot machines, but adding risks for big rewards.

Some of the later challenges are very tricky, but the game still enjoyable even when you lose. It's almost like watching a near miss in football - exciting, even if there was no goal.

There's no mistaking that Peggle is a casual game. Very casual. It's a quick fix, and it's perfect for players that want to sit down for a bit and de-stress. However, there's plenty of extra content for people who want to go digging.

For example, the scoring system can be quite complex, but learning how it works can mean the difference between a good score and a great one.

Polishing a game takes time and effort, but it pays off. Make your game fun to use as well as play, and take the time to make it really sparkle. People will notice.

Try Peggle Deluxe

This is one of the easiest ways to buy traffic. All you have to do is write a short textual advert about your product or website, and then target keywords that people search for. It's quick to set up, and you know visitors are looking for what you’re offering because they searched for it.

On the flipside, there's a lot of depth to AdWords, and it takes a long time to get really great results. Throwing down a few dollars is only the start, and you’ll lot of your time will be spent on optimising your campaigns and weeding out under-performers.

Project Wonderful is even easier to use than Google AdWords. Create a graphical button or banner, select the criteria for sites you want to advertise on and you're away.

Project Wonderful has the advantage that ads are extremely cheap, as you pay per day, not per click or impression. It's a good way of getting lots of hits, and the campaign option makes things even easier. However, it's quite easy to spend a lot of money and end up with little to show if you're not careful.

Manual bids that are tailored to each site you're bidding on seem to work the best. They takes more work, but the responses are generally higher.

Below are stats for the top three bids I ran.

According to Text Link Ads, the real power of this method comes from the increase in search engine ranking for your site. They recommend you leave your ad running for several months to evaluate it, as search engines take a while to update.

Over a five month period, I saw no change in my ranking. Having said that, I was trying to rank on very competitive terms, so it may be better for niche phrases instead.

These are statistics from the sites that ads were placed on. As you can see, the links themselves didn’t bring particularly good traffic compared to other methods.

Although you can pay for Stumbles, I'm putting it in the free category as you can get good results without paying. Stumblers generally fall into two categories: People who will stay and read, and people who will leave within a few seconds. This dramatically skews the visit time down and bounce rate.

StumbleUpon brings in a big spike of traffic at the beginning, and quickly tales off after a few days. It continues to bring in visitors over time, and sometimes you’ll get secondary spikes. There’s also the chance that visitors will stumble your other content, leading to more spikes.

For the main page, they were quite poor, but for articles and resources it works much better. Your best option is to add tips, hints or guides to your site and have them stumbled.

Articles about unique qualities of your product will perform better, as long as you go easy on the sales talk and concentrate on writing something of value.

This is a simple technique, but it can have good results. The process involves writing articles that target certain keywords. Each article will contain a link to your site in the article footer. This article is then submitted to article directories, which generally rank high in the search engines. For example, if you're selling a solitaire game you could write about tips for playing the game and include a link at the bottom of the article.

It may sound a little bit spammy, but it isn’t if you provide value to your readers.

So far this has been one of the best methods of traffic generation I've used. It takes effort to research and write your article, but the traffic quality is extremely high. An article I wrote over a year ago still sends a good amount of traffic which converts extremely well into downloads and sales.

Article marketing is a topic I’ll be writing more about in the future.

Find a blog that relates to your topic, and make a relevant comment that contains a link to your website. As long as your comment is useful and the blog gets a reasonable amount of traffic, you'll get visits. Depending on your contribution, you may also develop a relationship with the blogger which can bring more traffic.

The first result in the table below is the result of a single trackback I made three years ago. It's brought several hundred visits (and still brings in a dozen or so a week), but the traffic doesn't convert. This technique works much better for getting blog readers rather than customers.

This is similar to blog commenting, but the link to your site goes in your forum signature. Again, the benefit here comes from generating an online presence, rather than raw traffic power.

These are the top three forum referrals to sodaware.net

Think of a problem you face daily, and write a blog article about solving it. Its simple, quick, and if you get the title (and problem) right you can get a lot of exposure and links.

I get a lot of traffic to one "how to" in particular, but the vast majority of visitors don’t stay for anything else. This makes sense, seeing as they're searching for a solution to a problem and not for games.

The best advice I can give is to treat this method like writing a recipe with one of your products as the ingredient. This way you’re providing something valuable, and also encouraging downloads and sales.

I tried an automated submission programme a while ago, but I’m yet to see a single visitor from any directory.

dmoz.org is worth submitting to, but as it's human edited it can take a while to get added.

I've entered blog carnivals as well as hosted them, and the results have been a little mixed. Hosting brings in a decent amount of short term traffic, but I suspect it's mainly people who submitted articles that visit.

It’s a good way of getting a few more readers for your blog, and be good for spreading your site around.

I tried these out in my $19.95 experiment and absolutely hated them. I think they cheapened the look of the site, and most of the banners contained images I didn’t really want to see. The other problem is you have to make a lot of impressions to generate any decent amount of traffic.

The "For Developers" section is where I put articles, source code and tools for other developers to use. It didn't bring in much traffic to begin with, but posting about some of the resources on forums helped.

This is a five minute method that works well, but if done incorrectly you’ll end up looking like a spammer, so use it wisely.

Find an article on WikiPedia that relates to something on your site, and add a link to it in the "External Links" section of the page. Remember that WikiPedia monitors links that are added, so if you don't add value to the topic you'll find your link nuked (and you could also be banned). For example, my interview with Hanako Games is on the Hanako Games WikiPedia page.

As with text link ads, the real benefit here is getting links and increasing your search engine ranking.

This one is a little hit and miss, although it's not as bad as some of the other methods. You add your link to a directory, and its position is dependent on how many other sites you visit. For example, visiting 30 sites may put you on the first page, which will get you more visitors.

The downside is that most people are only visiting your page to increase their own rank, but the traffic isn't as bad as I expected.

This is just a small sample of the various method of traffic generation techniques out there. If you’re trying to increase your site’s traffic, just remember to measure what your visitors are doing, not just how many you’re getting. Sure, it’s nice to see big numbers in your hit counter, but that means nothing if they don’t stay and buy from you.