Roast my 10+ year gaming blog that hardly makes me any money.

[sa_ill]

I quit my cushy job 10 years ago to work on my growing gaming blog.

The blog covers gaming, esports and tech.

I barely get any visitors (around 100 a day). Back in the day, like 4 years back, I used to get average 1500 a day.

My life is kind of a mess, I need to raise my income in order to sustain myself and my family (I'm married, no kids). Please roast me blog and if possible, guide me how I can monetize it?
I need clarity whether I should continue posting content and investing time on it.

 

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[Kung Fu Steve]

I quit my cushy job 10 years ago to work on my growing gaming blog.

The blog covers gaming, esports and tech.

I barely get any visitors (around 100 a day). Back in the day, like 4 years back, I used to get average 1500 a day.

My life is kind of a mess, I need to raise my income in order to sustain myself and my family (I'm married, no kids). Please roast me blog and if possible, guide me how I can monetize it?
I need clarity whether I should continue posting content and investing time on it.

Focus is like a laser beam that can cut through any obstacle... or at least that's what someone told me once.

There are extremely high-quality blogs on gaming, on esports, and on tech... why are you trying to compete in all 3 arenas?

Why not choose one and build from there?

My first thought on design is the images and display ads are all over the place. Hard for my eyes to focus. Where do you want me to look when I first hit the page? Mobile is even tougher. I'm getting a Sephora ad the second I pull it up and I can practically guarantee I shouldn't be shown Sephora ads... You logo doesn't even fit on the mobile version.

The ads repeat themselves... Here's a screenshot on mobile just now...



I hope you see what's wrong with this. Not to challenge your intelligence but if you don't understand here's the deal: if I came to read an article you wrote... I can't even read the article. I will never return to this site because of that. I scroll down and see the ads look like a header you wrote "How fast you want to get fit? Colorful announces release of geforce rtx..."

It's all over the place.

At the bottom of the page there's 124 pages of blog articles I will NEVER scroll through.. that's a crazy amount ...

This is why nobody is coming back to your site:


I'm so confused by all of this... Download a free ebook? Biggest games in 2023... Sephora! Woo!

Here's my recommendations:

1. Get yourself a new modern theme for your blog or make one. Model successful people in your industry and find something that's working for them.

2. Pick ONE arena you're going to compete in and REALLY try to be the best. Look at your competitors and try to do it better. Nicer images, better writing, good ideas, whatever it is. But if you're going the eSports route, do that. If you want to do tech review, do that. Pick a lane.

3. Get rid of all these stupid adsense ads.

4. Create well-placed ads with affiliate links on Amazon or wherever you intend on sending people with recommendations SPECIFICALLY for the audience you're serving. I'll take a wild guess and say your video game demopgraphic isn't into body building or sephora.

5. Start writing SEO-driven content that when people search on Google or Youtube questions about certain products, games, or whatever that your articles and videos pop up. "What's the difference between...", or "The best _______ to do..."

Remember, you're not just dealing with nameless, faceless numbers on the internet. These are actual people who are coming to your site because of something you said or did. Make the experience enjoyable for them so they keep coming back. Don't just write content for robots, write it for them.

6. You need a newsletter.

Alright that's a lot of stuff. Get to work!

 

[Oso]

I quit my cushy job 10 years ago to work on my growing gaming blog.

The blog covers gaming, esports and tech.

I barely get any visitors (around 100 a day). Back in the day, like 4 years back, I used to get average 1500 a day.

My life is kind of a mess, I need to raise my income in order to sustain myself and my family (I'm married, no kids). Please roast me blog and if possible, guide me how I can monetize it?
I need clarity whether I should continue posting content and investing time on it.

You seem to be a bit torn in too many directions.

Used to be a semi-pro in the Street Fighter 4 (AE) days. Still have some connections in the MLG scene. The huge thing now is Esports, especially Esports coaches and managers. The only issue with this is good players generally don't follow people, teams, or websites that aren't backed by people who were or are at the professional level (or, at the very least, people that are known in the communities). Even then, it tends to be game-specific, so perhaps you could break it up to be genre-specific?

Perhaps something along the lines of interviewing pro-players, team managers, coaches, etc. on how people can better their game, strategies, practice, how to build better teams, etc. based on their preferred genre. Release the interview and then create some type of custom content that's related to the interview topic. This would ultimately create multiple websites and (in the longer term) give you the opportunity to have multiple streams for income, marketing, etc. It would also allow your content to be a bit more niche and consistent. I think your biggest hurdle here is going to be finding and maintaining credibility backed by either consistently amazing reviews (time and SEO) or past/current professional players. Most professional players will happily agree to interviews as it's free marketing for them and it adds to their legitimacy/cements their place as "expert at <insert game/genre here>.

As a quick side note, tech blogs are still huge, especially review blogs. With that, however, I'd encourage you to further niche down in tech (seriously, everyone reviews phones), if you go this route. Hell, even something like a tech blog for people who collect old tech would be interesting and would give you a solid opportunity to standout amongst the sea of low-quality content. Good luck!

 

[Private Witt]

Are you solving any problems?

 

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[sa_ill]

@Oso and @Kung Fu Steve
Thank you so much for a detailed look at my website, and for taking the time to give me a comprehensive feedback. I have never got this level of constructive feedback from anybody, are you advice has certainly cleared my vision.

3. Get rid of all these stupid adsense ads.

• I think right now I will disable Adsense completely, and focus on building my audience before enabling affiliate ads. Also, you are probably getting unrelated ads because we are not collecting cookies. I will start collecting them to give relevant ads.
• I have hired a freelancer over the weekend to work on a more modern design for the website. I like this layout a lot. Any thoughts?

• Pick ONE arena you're going to compete in

  As a quick side note, tech blogs are still huge, especially review blogs. With that, however, I'd encourage you to further niche down in tech (seriously, everyone reviews phones), if you go this route.

  I have had this in my mind, that we should focus on one core competency (esports). But the thing is, the website has a solid database of high quality tech reviews and benchmarks. Should I just let that slide? In the years 2014 - 2017, we should to give awards to good products, that used to be used by the brand to promote their product. So, I'm a little confused about whether I continue the tech reviews. Plus, I have built relationships with brands who send me products to review, they are a good incentive especially when I work with freelancers.

 

[Kung Fu Steve]

@Oso and @Kung Fu Steve
Thank you so much for a detailed look at my website, and for taking the time to give me a comprehensive feedback. I have never got this level of constructive feedback from anybody, are you advice has certainly cleared my vision.

• I think right now I will disable Adsense completely, and focus on building my audience before enabling affiliate ads. Also, you are probably getting unrelated ads because we are not collecting cookies. I will start collecting them to give relevant ads.

There are a million ways to get compensation on a platform like this. I think adsense is short-sighted if you want to turn it into a real business. Affiliate commissions, white labeling product, participating in prouduct launches, direct advertising... But none of that matters until you build up that audience first.

I know money might be tight but the longer you can delay asking people for money, the more you can ask for.

• I have hired a freelancer over the weekend to work on a more modern design for the website. I like this layout a lot. Any thoughts?

I'm a horrible designer. I now have a full-time designer on my little team and I can never quite articulate what things should look like.

I think that theme is a little corny but I'm also what they call an idiot

My only advice is not to model bottom of the barrel. Model larger blogs, news sites, media companies. You might not like certain media companies but you know they've spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to figure out how to get you to stay on their site longer. Don't just model what some 20 year old kid thinks looks cool.

• 
  I have had this in my mind, that we should focus on one core competency (esports). But the thing is, the website has a solid database of high quality tech reviews and benchmarks. Should I just let that slide? In the years 2014 - 2017, we should to give awards to good products, that used to be used by the brand to promote their product. So, I'm a little confused about whether I continue the tech reviews. Plus, I have built relationships with brands who send me products to review, they are a good incentive especially when I work with freelancers.

Taking advice from strangers on the internet is always questionable so take my thoughts with a grain of salt.

You've got to choose one. And you've got to be okay with doing that one thing for the next 3-5 years.

So if you hate tech reviews and aren't willing to do them nonstop for the next couple of years, don't do it. Even if you've got some momentum there. If you don't care and you've already built those relationships then yeah, why not utilize them.

If you are just obsessed with eSports dive in... But always be careful of turning your hobby into a career (take it from me).

Either way, you're 100% committed or you're not committed at all.

 

[Mister]

I saw recently this site on twitter: https://zathong com/ (point is missing at the com)
It's in the gaming niche and perhaps you can find some inspiration there but it looks like the site got hit from a update.

(Im a beginner in SEO but just as disclaimer )

As @Oso & @Kung Fu Steve already said your content to broadly spread for now and suggested niche down.
You have 9 niches that you write about.

In that current time of SEO (and most likely the future) it's all about to have authority in one niche.
Let's take the site that I mentioned as an example.

He chooses one niche → Game Builds
He did research on his competitors and choose new games → Which gave him the ability to rank fast and high
Then he wrote a ton of content → He has over 7k sites that show up in ahrefs, so he covered all characters

Now what can you do ?

From here on you have 2 ways how you can do it.
1. Pick a niche that you already cover
2. Pick a niche that fit your site (Gaming)

Here a framework on how to pick a niche
1. Pup up ahrefs or a similar KW tool ( Should work with other tools also)
2. Go to Keyword Explorer
3. Choose your target country
4. Choose max KD from 30
5. Type in your niche in, including from field ( idk whats the name in english)
6.Click on the keyword an look up how big the sites are that rank for the top 10
7. The best outcome is to find a keyword that has 3-5 sites in the top them with a DR lower than 30.

Trough that, you know you can rank with your site that has a low DR.

Then when u try to rank for a KW that is dominated from DR 90, u will take years to rank it.

When you look at the site that I mentioned, you will see that many of the Top KW have low DR site ranking for it. Which means you can also rank for it.

When you picked your niche, you fully cover everything in that niche.

So how you have your niche and want to start (After your KW research)

1. Create a basic structure of your site and keep the niche / content in mind

For example, what the site that i mentioned did.

Homepage -> Game -> Champion overview (+ other subjects) -> Champion Build

The basic structure is important so that users can easier find other information. Which is also important for the Google crawler.

2. When you have your basic structure+ content which you want to write, you can start writing.
A few thinks to keep in mind:
-Internal linking
-Structuring of content via tags / category types

3. Keep consistent and follow the plan.


To the Roast

1. I don't really like the way the website is structured

Homepage
The Homepage should be a page where people find the following information (Also it only rank for your brand name)
-What is this page about
-What can I find here

You should link to important pages and not just the last pages you uploaded.

I would do something like that:

H1: Illgaming
-What is this page about
-What can I find here

Most liked post (which has affiliate offers)

A overview on all subjects you talk about

Why are there now 2 menus ?

Category
You just add each content to each category, which results in having 30 pages of content.

Do you really expect someone to go through all of them ?

It should have a logical structure

Game-Reviews -> PC, Xbos, PS4->Ego shooter, Strategy, survival etc. -> The games of each category

Article
https://illgaming net/best-online-games-for-pc-in-september-2022/

H1:
The Post is no Guide so why naming it guide ?
The "September" will hurt u more than it is worth.
Just 2022 is enough.

All p:
Its basically how air which not answer the search intent.

When someone searches for " Best online games for pc 2022". I dont care how much the came has in sales or when it was releast.

I want to know: Why its good, Why should i play it, for which player is it good.

Then a button to get the official page.

"Your may also like" should have articles, that are similar to the post, so it should link to " Best xbox games 2022"

Also there is no internal linking, with that much content you can easily find some pages to link via text.

https://illgaming net/corsair-carbide-spec-02-spec-03-review/

H2: All are f*cked up

First picture: How can i read the information when there is you logo?

Pictures: Have no alt

You can build a review buttons with "Check price" which leads to a affiliate partner

No internal linking inside the text

Break the text in smaller paraphrases so that it is easier to read

____________________

You have a content block on the right side with "Top 10s" but non of the content is a top 10 list.
_________________

You build yourself a small asset which you can transform and make something out of it, but there are everywhere some things you need to improve.

The biggest things are:
Stick to one niche

Also, I highly suggest that you look at the yours top competitors and take some notes on what there are doing.

Good look

 

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[Johnny boy]

Are you solving any problems?

10 affiliate marketers just killed themselves after the sudden realization they had after reading those words.