How do I increase the income on a gaming blog I own?

[sa_ill]

Background;
I started a gaming blog in 2012. I, and a handful of other people would actively post content on it for the next 3 years. We did so because we had advertising deals with select gaming brands, that I was lucky enough to secure. Then the contracts ran out, and I was left with no choice but to implement Google Adsense. Google Adsense makes me around $1 per day, with around 60 - 100 visitors per day. The blog has over 1000 blog posts (reviews, benchmarks, interviews etc.)

I later got involved with other ventures and the blog took a backseat. Now, I had to shut my new company due to new government regulations regarding my product (damn you tobacco lobby), and I am considering reviving my gaming blog.

The cool thing is that Tech PR companies still actively approach me for coverage, and majority of them dont hesitate in sending me games/hardware to review.

My target is to reach $50 in ad revenue per day.

In all likeliness, and considering realistically, how do I reach this target?

Edit:
Considering my life situation, I need a steady source of income. I am willing to grind daily, putting in the hours to make this blog reach its goal. Then in the future I can consider hiring a freelancer to take some work load off me. Undergrad students are more than willing to blog for freebies and a "stipend".

 

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[sa_ill]

Bump

 

[Lex DeVille]

We did so because we had advertising deals with select gaming brands

What stops you from reaching out to past companies or new companies for sponsorships? Get one company to sponsor you and you hit your target income without spending any money. Get cash flow and use it to hire professionals and start treating your blog like a real business.

 

[sa_ill]

What stops you from reaching out to past companies or new companies for sponsorships? Get one company to sponsor you and you hit your target income without spending any money. Get cash flow and use it to hire professionals and start treating your blog like a real business.

60-80 visitors per day isnt remotely enough to entice them to sponsor on my blog. For sponsors, i need atleast 10,000 visitors per day.

 

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[Lex DeVille]

60-80 visitors per day isnt remotely enough to entice them to sponsor on my blog. For sponsors, i need atleast 10,000 visitors per day.

Entice them with something else.

 

[Kid]

Youtube channel?

 

[Chris McCarron]

Background;
I started a gaming blog in 2012. I, and a handful of other people would actively post content on it for the next 3 years. We did so because we had advertising deals with select gaming brands, that I was lucky enough to secure. Then the contracts ran out, and I was left with no choice but to implement Google Adsense. Google Adsense makes me around $1 per day, with around 60 - 100 visitors per day. The blog has over 1000 blog posts (reviews, benchmarks, interviews etc.)

I later got involved with other ventures and the blog took a backseat. Now, I had to shut my new company due to new government regulations regarding my product (damn you tobacco lobby), and I am considering reviving my gaming blog.

The cool thing is that Tech PR companies still actively approach me for coverage, and majority of them dont hesitate in sending me games/hardware to review.

My target is to reach $50 in ad revenue per day.

In all likeliness, and considering realistically, how do I reach this target?

Edit:
Considering my life situation, I need a steady source of income. I am willing to grind daily, putting in the hours to make this blog reach its goal. Then in the future I can consider hiring a freelancer to take some work load off me. Undergrad students are more than willing to blog for freebies and a "stipend".

Hey I had a movie website that used to get around 180k visitors per day.

Do an SEO audit, get more backlinks and promote the hell out of the website.

Good sources of traffic are social media groups, forums and Reddit.

Start pumping out video content and within that content actively promote the website.

Lastly, exclusives. Websites LOVE news and if you have exclusive information then they'll gladly cover the story.

 

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[Metz]

Hey I had a movie website that used to get around 180k visitors per day.

Do an SEO audit, get more backlinks and promote the hell out of the website.

Good sources of traffic are social media groups, forums and Reddit.

Start pumping out video content and within that content actively promote the website.

Lastly, exclusives. Websites LOVE news and if you have exclusive information then they'll gladly cover the story.

This.

So I have a gaming-related website and know your struggle quite well. The biggest issue is you're fighting for a slice of a very saturated market. Even with great SEO, social media presence, and video content, the kicker is you need to find something that makes you unique that people can't get anywhere else.

For instance, my site's been around since 2013 and we considered ourselves an "indie gaming news" blog where we focused on smaller studios and giving alternate takes on news compared to the mainstream sources. Nothing really stuck there EXCEPT our listicles featuring our top 10 quotes from different games. When I was just starting out, I averaged maybe 20-40 views a day (the site was based on Squarespace which didn't have great SEO-friendly features at the time -- at least in ways I could get them to work.. but now the site's on Wordpress) but one day when I came home from work, I saw that day had over 7,000 views. Apparently, my article on my favorite Max Payne 3 quotes went briefly viral on Reddit because someone random reposted it while I was at work.

I didn't think much of it at the time but between that and other articles vastly outperforming my other content (especially news since it's not very evergreen), I moved away from being a part of the gaming journalism side of stuff and instead I'm building a niche in gamified entrepreneurialism -- essentially applying game theory to building businesses, side gigs, or just self-improvement. Now my site has three pillars: the enjoyment of gaming (reviews, previews, and just talking about games), creating with gaming (development and design, content like videos, streaming, modding, etc.), and learning with gaming (that game theory piece I mentioned).

But it's that last piece that's helped the site grow tremendously over the past two years. I've got a pretty active Discord community of gamers who also love freelancing, content creation, and collaborating/networking and it's provided for very interesting conversations with people on LinkedIn when I share more business-oriented content from my site that catches their eye. As far as monetization goes, the site's value generation has been indirect; the people I've met through its community have provided mutual opportunities for my other ventures that, in turn, I can reinvest some of that profit into content production to hopefully get that sweet ad money. Still, Google's algorithms can be finicky at times -- I talked with an SEO guy and changed up my stuff, got four times as much traffic but then Adsense was like "lol something's wonky so we're just gonna deactivate your ads for a week or two to figure out what you did" even though everything was in line with the best practices Google wrote. My point being: if you want to be successful and have more control over your revenue with this, you'll have to find some way beyond just Google ad revenue. But that comes later compared to finding your niche.

Still, looking at your About page, I can tell you're passionate about what you're doing and you care a lot about it.. but based on that description, what sets you apart from the pack? I don't mean that to sound judgmental or to put you down. It's a question I had to ask myself to break out of my own rut and every other at least quasi-successful person who started their own little site or channel started finding success after answering it too. But I suppose I have two other questions for you:

Why did you start this website in the first place (what is your passion for gaming, creating content, and building something like this)?

And what is something you're super passionate about when it comes to gaming?

I have some ideas that I'd be down to share with you if you'd like to hear them.. but that would depend on your answers to the questions above if you're willing to humor them. You're doing great work though. I know it's a slog but as long as you keep working at it, the journey gets easier (or, at least, you just get better at traveling along the path).