If you’re thinking of starting a gaming blog or you’ve already got one up and running, you might want to consider monetising your hobby. With the right strategy, you can transform your blog into a lucrative side hustle or even a thriving small business. To get started, below are some top tips for monetising a gaming blog:
1. Identify Your Audience
Gaming is a massive industry, which means your blog is unlikely to appeal to everyone. With more than 2.8 billion gamers worldwide, it’s impossible to deliver value to everyone. By choosing a specific niche, however, you can whittle down your audience and provide genuine value to blog visitors. By doing so, you will increase the number of subscribers you gain and boost the monetary value of your blog.
2. Avoid Being Repetitive
When you are posting content regularly, it’s easy to be repetitive, which puts people off and stops them revisiting your blog. As well as making sure your posts are varied, you’ll also need to ensure that your blog offers something different to other gaming sites out there. Whether you focus on a range of different games, such as Ruby Fortune and FIFA, or feature content that spans different platforms, devices and consoles, make sure you find a way to keep delivering something new and fresh to your readers.
3. Feature Relevant Ads
Advertising can be a great way to monetise a blog, providing adverts don’t have a negative impact on user experience (UX). If you want to generate revenue from your gaming blog, make sure adverts appeal to your core audience. This will increase the click-through-rate (CTR) of ads on your site, which will keep advertisers happy, but users will also be happy to see advertising content that’s of interest to them.
4. Post Affiliate Links
Affiliate marketing is a popular way to monetise any type of blog and it’s a strategy that can certainly be used with a gaming blog. When you post an affiliate link, you’ll receive a commission or flat fee when a user clicks on the link and makes a subsequent purchase. Again, you’ll need to make sure that the links you feature are relevant to your audience if you want to make a profit and optimise the UX.
5. Offer VIP Content
Blogs are typically free to view but there’s nothing stopping you introducing a premium section for paid subscribers on your blog. While you might need to build up a strong subscriber base before this becomes a realistic option, creating content that users are willing to pay for is a sure-fire way to turn your blog into a profit-making endeavour.
Launching a Successful Blog
Blogging might be easy in theory, but it can take quite a bit of work to engage your audience and generate an income from a blog. By creating great content and consistently gaining subscribers, however, you can capitalise on the popularity of your blog and implement a variety of monetisation techniques.