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Traffic for six-month-old online gambling website that focuses on African-American gamers tops 250,000 page views a month. In just six short months since its launch in late 2003, traffic on AAGamer.com has climbed to an average of more than 50,000 visits, 250,000 page views and 1,600,000 hits a month. More than half of the visits are repeat visitors

"We're thrilled to see that the site is taking off," said Roderick Woodruff, VP of marketing and co-founder of the online gambling website, AAGamer. "But it's not all that surprising given the huge popularity of video games among African Americans. About 60 percent of our visitors say they buy one to five video or PC games every three months and 15 percent buy more than 10 games in a three-month period. That's a lot of games."

Statistics bear him out. Recent data from Forrester Research show that blacks are more likely than whites to be hardcore video gamers. Action-adventure, fighting, and traditional sports games are particularly popular among blacks. And data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project showed that blacks are 45 percent more likely than whites to have played a game on the Web.

"The mini-games on our site are extremely popular," said Woodruff. "We're planning to expand the number of AAGamer mini-games available on the site to include games with an ethnic theme and the ability for players to compare their scores. We also plan to offer shopping on the site, since blacks are big online buyers of video games and other products that we think will do well among our visitors."

According to Forrester Research, blacks are more likely than other Web buyers to purchase a number of items online including video games (12% more likely), phone, cellular and Web service (28%), consumer electronics (6%), music (9%), videos and DVDs (9%), clothing accessories (30%), footwear (34%) and jewelry and luxury items (37%).

Woodruff and his spouse, New York Times best-selling author Connie Briscoe Woodruff, are the founders of AAGamer. "The feature articles and game reviews are also getting a lot of hits, and we attribute that to the A-list group of writers we've recruited," said Briscoe Woodruff, who edits the articles and reviews. "People know quality reporting when they see it."

Rod Woodruff adds: "We may be starting out small in that we don't have a zillion dollar budget but we think we've got a hit on our hands with AAGamer. And we've got big plans for the future."

Writers who contribute to AAGamer include George Jones, former editor-in-chief of Computer Gaming World; Damon Brown, who has written for The Source, IGN, Gamasutra, MSN.com and other media; Kayode James, content manager for the Gamer's Association of Trinidad and Tobago; and Marvin Greene, a recent addition whose work has appeared in U.S. Black Engineer and Information Technology and the Black Collegian.