Casual online gaming has grown into a massive industry over the last few years making huge sums of money every year. And although there are some big players who you almost certainly wouldn't be able to compete with for the main keywords (like 'free games'), there is still space in the market for small sites focussing on lower traffic keywords to get traffic. The great thing about having an arcade site is that once it's up and running it takes very little time to maintain, and if you use scripts like the ones below you can get an arcade website up and running in no time as well, and without needing to have any programming or technicial skill. Just get a hosting account, upload the files, and then log in to your control panel to make simple modifications. And if you take the simple option of using google adsense to monetize your site, it is worth knowing that games related sites do quite well from adsense income.

 Let's start at the bottom of the market with a free script from AV Arcade. It's actually not a bad script for a freebie, with a choice of 'skins' for the design, easy upload of new games, a decent comments and 5 star rating system, top players list, seo friendly urls and an ad placement system to easily place adsense adverts across the whole site.

You have to leave the copyright and link to AV Arcade on your site unless you want to pay $10 to remove it, which is quite reasonable. The way they make their money is selling game packs - the actually script doesn't come with any games. You can set up a site without buying one of their games packs, but it will probably take you a long time to build up a decent inventory. If you want a more unique design they also offer custom skins designed just for you.

The Arcade Trade Script offers you a farily standard arcade website, but with the unique addition of a built in traffic trading system and link exchange which might help you to build up the traffic to your new site. Another unusual feature is that users can alter the template that they view your site in. It includes seo friendly urls and a rating system, but no comments. The cost is currently $74.95, but that does include free updates and supprt for life and acces to the support forum.

 Arcade Builder is one of the, if not the, best selling arcade website script. Although you don't get the traffic exchange system and other marketing aids you get with the arcade trade script, the actual website that you will get using Arcade Builder is much better.

Here are some of the best features: seo friendly, superb designs easily modified, banner manager and game sponsorhip system to sell advertising, 1-10 rating system plus comments, membership and newsletter system, built in search and 'add this game to your website' code.

There are various options to buy Arcade Builder, beginning with just the script download and 250 games for $47 (plus $25 if you want to remove copyright) to $97 for the script, free installation to your hosting account, over 2000 games and copyright removal.

I think the scripts above cover most of the range of options available for creating an arcade website with a full script, so for my fourth option I thought i would go off on a bit of a tangent.

Everyone knows wordpress as the premiere system for creating blog website. It's effective, easy to use and very reliable, as well as being free. Using custom themes and plugins you can use wordpress to create virtually any kind of website, including a games arcade.

Visit this site for the official MochiAds theme and plugin which you can use to create an website using MochiAds games, which feature in game adverts to help you make some money from your site.

For an example of a website created using this plugin and the theme which goes with it take a look at this site which I made: Free War Games