I once had a moron trying to diss Nine Over Ten 9/10 in an online discussion on how small video games related blogs can make money. Said moron was on the negative side claiming its difficult and while I mentioned it’s do-able with plenty of hard work, he replied that he rather not have a blog filled with junk (huh?).
Cryptic sticks and stones aside, here’s tutorial 101 on how to get your fledging video games blog to earn some cash. First up, you’ll need traffic and for that to happen you’ll need to a. have unique content and b. utilise some blog aggregrators.
If you are planning just to recycle news from big video game websites such as GameSpy and Gamespot as well as uber-blogs such as Kotaku and GoNintendo, don’t, as you are just trying to be an aggregrator. The playing field is saturated as it is with these kind of leechers.
The whole point of being “niche” is that you have your own unique selling points, but do make sure that it is something that you like to write about in the first place. I know of a blogger who highlights video game software updates and patches, while there’s another one who blogs about everything under the sun with regards to a certain retro machine.
The use of blog aggregrators is a form of disseminating your blog’s updates to Internet users. The list is long but some notable ones if you are a video game blogger would be N4G.com, technorati.com and digg.com. Since I’m Malaysian, I make full use of Project Petaling Street, Blogged.my as well as Innit to reach out to local web users. Tools like pingoat.com help blast multiple blog aggregrators on your behalf at a push of a button; essential in my book.
The next step would be to sign up with Google Adsense, in order to have ads to appear on your blog. The more traffic you attract, the higher chances of ads getting clicked. Another way to earn money would be to post up affiliate links for products sold on online e-commerce websites such as Amazon.com and Play-Asia.com.
Just to show you how well it can go for a small blog like Nine Over Ten 9/10, the following is a chart on the number of visits and sales generated by Nine Over Ten 9/10 for the past 100 days for an e-commerce site I’m affiliated with. Profit for the year to date is in excess of USD 200.
This pretty much proves that you CAN make some money from a small video games blog, but you’ll need to be prepared to do alot of work from diligently writting posts, utilizing aggregrators and linking up with other blogs. Frankly speaking, I have quite a number of people copying Nine Over Ten 9/10’s format for the past 2 years with a majoritiy of them failing within a year. The reason why they fail is that the owners aren’t motivated enough to persevere.
And regarding the earlier mentioned moron. The last I check he was trying to come up with a blog along the lines of Nine Over Ten 9/10. Looks like it too has fallen on the waysides. So much for a big mouth.
Good to see that you can succeed in this. I have a competing niche games reviews blog as well, but I haven’t really updated it due to time factors. After reading your post, it has motivated me to jump-start it 🙂
– MENJ
Hi Menj. Thanks for dropping by! Mind swapping links once you have that blog up. I wouldn’t call it competition, more like similar interest blogs.
This is interesting. Great to know that you make your game blog successful. I believe everyone who are work diligently will be success also. I am inspired by you 🙂
maybe he thinks it’s junk cos he couldn’t find what he wanted on it. i’m just saying. people are weird like that.
Making money with Adsense it’s becoming harder and harder. Couple of years ago, Adsense program was really hot
Nowdays, affiliate earnings are much more rewarding. More and more publishers go into CPA networks everyday. Adsense is paying penny per clicks .. Too bad .. I actually enjoyed it while it lasted.
@Alvin: Thanks man. And all the best with your blog too!