How Do I Monetise a Gaming Site?
Hi there!
I’m Licheus. Like many of you, I’m new to this online money-making thing. As I upgraded to Premium little over 2 weeks ago, I’ve been having a great time with the development of my site and the community interactions.
A Little Bit of History
Lately, I’ve ran into a problem though (who doesn’t, right?). I’ve previously been able to drive traffic to niche gaming guides (Dota 2), having little over 100 000 views on 4 guides in total. These were pure passion projects with no monetary claims involved. I thought in my naivety that I could transition straight into making money out of this, as it’s something valuable to the community and I can create decent and highly specific content.
The Problem of Monetisation
However, monetising tastefully seems harder than I first thought. I think coming across as a sellout would damage my brand. Naturally, I turned to my mentor here at Wealthy Affiliate, EddySalomon, for advice. He looked at my site and agreed that it might be difficult to monetise. Though he also liked what he saw and hinted there may be more to this. I’ve been advised to reach out to the people here at Wealthy Affiliate – maybe one of you would have experience with monetising gaming content?
Asking for Help
I never would’ve thought about creating a blog post or ask others for advice, as I generally don’t want to be a bother to people. But Eddy told me not to be like that, and to be honest with you I already know how great the community here is. If nothing else, I think it’s good training for me to reach out to you guys. =)
Goals and Scope
My goal for now is just to make any kind of money – not big money at all. I am perfectly fine with anything as I’m experimenting a bit in the beginning of my journey. I think getting any kind of cash flow will help in getting my feet wet and acquainted with the process. Anyone who can help with that or provide any type of input is more than welcome to comment.
Links for Reference
Here are my original gaming guides in the form of imgur albums
Here is some original Dota 2 content on my site at licheus.com.
Thanks for reading!
// Licheus
Recent Comments
12
So to sum up all, Licheus wants ideas on how should he monetize a gaming niche? I think you should put that at the start or end of your article so folks know exactly what you want. lol
I would recommend changing your post title to:
How Do I Monetize A Gaming Site?
Hehe, you think I'm a bit wordy and not getting straight to the point, eh?
This is all too true true. I'll work on that. :D
yes. because that's pretty much your main issue. You just want advice from the community on how to go about monetize a gaming site.
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You can approach a gaming niche a multiple different ways
If you are targeting computer gamers you could review hardware parts, keyboards, mouses, headsets, harddrives, chairs, desks oh I can type forever.
Hand held gamers you could target accessories as well same with console gamers.
There are many options here.
update: you could even publish your own guides and sell them. Or give them away to build an email list.
Thank you for the fast answer!
I am targeting computer gamers for now. Hardware could work as I've had some ideas in that area before, thank you for putting light on that!
If there is software or affiliate links around programs or anything like that, it would also work and maybe blend with the site a bit better? Have anyone seen any examples of this?
Thanks again!
// Licheus
If you dig there are so many software affiliate programs. Hopefully someone on here could give you better direction on where but I remember people on here saying they were promoting computer software.
Hardware is great though, i have thought about doing this myself eventually.
Thank you, this is promising to know! =D
Aren't you happy that you posted this blog and asked for help?
lol
Great answer @HuyNLe1989!
Most of the gaming stuff you can review and promote are probably right on amazon. So becoming an affiliate of them would be the easiest starting point.
Later you can search for other affiliate programs once your site is built and you have been writing content for a while that is ranking. I'm sure most of the companies that create these gaming products probably have their own site and affiliate programs. When in doubt you can email them or just look at the bottom of their pages for an affiliate or referral link. But I would start with amazon.
I bet if you do a search for a "gaming product name here review" you will find blogs that are doing this. Initially you may want to focus on certain product categories like gaming chairs or something. Then expand into other categories. I imagine this niche will be very competitive. So you want to start with a category that isn't too competitive where you see other smaller bloggers competing. So starting doing google searches of various types of gaming product reviews to see what comes up.
I would also recommend focusing on very specific models to make it easier for you to compete and rank.
So let's say you decide the gaming category you're going to pick is gaming chairs.
And let's say there is a gaming chair company called SoftCushions that sells various models such as.
SoftCushions No Sleep Gamer Chair
SoftCushions Girlfriend Hates You Chair
Then what you want to do is write an individual review article for each model:
SoftCushions No Sleep Gamer Chair Review: Is it worth buying?
blah blah..'
Then you would create a new article for the next model, etc. This way you'll have tons of content. And you're more likely to rank for individual models which is probably less competitive than writing one article about SoftCushions Chairs.
I hope that make sense.
Yes, I actually am happy that I posted this now, hehe. This gave me some fire to take on a new angle.
And thanks again for the great follow-up. My idea was to do somthing like that. It's great to have a detailed outline.
That's great Licheus.