Should D12 partner with another gaming site?

I've been talking to Fendi and Vexer about a way to bring new players to Dominating12 for the past few days.

One of the more interesting options I suggested was for D12 to partner, or affiliate themselves with another online gaming site. Since Risk is mostly a strategy game, I had suggested an online Chess website. It would bring players to our site that are already familiar with the concept of strategy (unlike many other games).

Basically all that would change is there would be a button or link on the front page saying something along the likes of "Play online Chess free at xxxxxx.com!). And in turn, on their front page they would have a button or link saying something similar for D12.

We have not contacted any sites about this as of yet, because we want to get member input from all of you guys. Do you think its a good idea? Is Chess the right type of game we should partner up with? If not, what would you suggest?

more players is a strong asset. But how many would be to much? what kind of usage would crash the server?

That is a good question, and I'll have to ask Fendi about what our estimate capacity is.

That will most likely be taken into consideration if/when it comes to choosing a site to partner with. We may choose one that is similar in size to our own, or smaller or bigger depending on what we can handle.

Right now the server is near capacity but we are able to upgrade the server (and double the cost) with a push of a button at any time.

We will also need someone to create a banner ad for us.

That's something I can also do if we don't find someone else.

I wish more people would answer or just discuss this because it will play a big part in the future.

We could have just gone ahead and done the changes without informing anyone but we chose instead to give the community an opportunity to have a say in the decision making...but not sure how many see it this way..

I think that this can make the site grow, but personally I have no idea in which order of magnitude, so I can't give an useful opinion. It would also depend of the size of the partner site.

I also think chess sites are a good place to look for new players. The probability of gathering quality D12 players will be higher than in most other websites.

even if it means higher priced premium you have my vote in the affirmative. No one is a noob forever and if new players stick around they will get better

Increasing the site awareness in the general interwebs. A friend of mine found the site by luck (glad he did) but that was luck. How well does the site advertise or make its presence known on the webs?

advertising is expensive... some free word of mouth is great. tell your friends, post it to face book....

im happy with it more good players = more good games.

Some SEO may help. Many sites are ranking higher in search than D12. A few hundred dollars a month

That question is what prompted me to start talking to Fendi about this. As it stand now, D12s only means of advertising are word of mouth, and a few Risk game review websites out there.

The partnership idea came to mind because it's a simple way to increase our members without increasing the cost of the site (with the exception of having to increase server size), and it lets us piggyback off another sites advertising.

Twinning with a chess site? That's nice!

I like strategy games, Risk and Chess are my favorites!
But they are so different... There aren't probabilities in chess!

Anyway my favorite correspondence chess site is GameKnot.
It's well-made, the time is usually set to 3 days per move.
They already have a link to play Backgammon, since... probabilities!

gameknot looks like a great site but it's probably too big. We would have to pay them to put a link on their page. What we need is a site that is not too much bigger so that we can just exchange links without either site having to pay each other.