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Are you here to get information about how to monetize personal gaming blogs?
If you were a video game blogger, would you be running your dream blog?
For people who enjoy playing video games, creating a steady source of income by doing what you love has become easier, and easier with multiple opportunities coming up as the gaming industry as well as the esports market develops itself.
Let me give you some data: In 2019, the gaming industry raked in a whopping 151.9 billion. 70% of gamers are age 18 and above. (Source).
Have you heard of Twitch, the world’s leading live game streaming platform? Twitch is currently valued at 15 billion dollars. Twitch has over nine million users. The most active Twitch channels have millions of viewers each (Source).
Can you imagine all those Twitch followers reading your personal gaming blogs? This post tells you how to make that happen.
By the time you are done reading, you will know if running personal gaming blogs is right for you. The end of the post shares how to start personal gaming blogs if you decide video game blogging is for you. Then, you will discover how to make money with your personal gaming blogs. You can work directly with gaming influencers to boost your blog.
This post goes over the following steps you need to follow to run personal gaming blogs:
- Ask yourself important questions.
- Find the “right” major in college.
- Start writing on the internet.
- Sell your services online.
Since video games became the biggest entertainment industry in the world, and e-sports has evolved to pay some of the biggest prize pools of any event – look at The International – opportunities in this area became more common.
With opportunities blossoming around this area of the industry new career formats have started to emerge such as content creators, streamers, professional players, coaches, and blog writers. Granted that they aren’t mutually exclusive, but not everyone has the talent to become a pro player or coach, that’s why video game blogging and content creation have such a massive draw, anyone passionate enough can give it a shot!
In this piece, I will share ways in which to make a career out of games, specifically playing, reviewing, and writing about them. Surely, there are other ways to get started with your journey but the following are the most common, at least from my experience and peers around me.
But before I share that there are a few things that are essential for longevity and success, so let’s briefly review them.
Can you make a living running personal gaming blogs?
Do you have the personality?
Clearly, there aren’t any defined personality traits that either define a writer, a gamer, or a content creator, yet there are some things important to consider when pursuing a career writing about games.
Particularly, I don’t think your age, extroversion, introversion, or gaming preferences matter, as long as you can safely say yes to the following questions:
Do I enjoy playing every genre?
While you might jump into writing imagining that you will suddenly be writing about your favorite titles, and the newest triple-A games, unreleased masterpieces, that just isn’t the case. Truthfully, you’ll be tasked with playing all types of games, and while enjoying every genre is a stretch you must like games in general. And you need to have enough experience with different titles, and classics from different genres from which you can benchmark and draw comparisons.
For example, if you won’t play horror games, never touched Dead Space, Resident Evil, or if you don’t play Roguelikes, Platformers, how are you supposed to communicate what makes each title unique? Of course, no one expects you to have played every single genre, but having a solid foundation, open-mindedness is essential, everything else you can study, read, and play.
Can I set aside my biases, and preferences to make fair comparisons?
This one is a very hard question to ask yourself, and even harder to honestly answer. But ultimately, players and people are relying on your unbiased opinion to make a purchase decision, or to get them interested in a title. Even if you hate shooters, it is your job as a writer to objectively look at what went right, what went wrong and to fairly assess how this game stands in comparison to its peers.
Most genres are very mainstream, and knowing what pleases and attracts the audience, as well as what is the best, most well-respected titles in any given genre has become increasingly easier. The hard part is in being able to recognize what is bad even though you like it, or good even though you hate it. A good starting point is to find a game or genre you hate, play a game and try your best to find the good and bad, and compare with what was written by your peers.
Do I enjoy reading?
What makes a great writer, is of course being a great reader. Reading has a proven track record of increasing your vocabulary, grammar, and expanding your views of the world. All of those are amazing things for anyone who wants to write anything. The aforementioned skills are extremely valuable as they help you better articulate your thoughts, after all being able to tell compelling stories, and engage your audience is the biggest difference in receiving new job opportunities, and one-time gigs.
Since I have not particularly met anyone who writes for a living and isn’t interested in reading, I believe this is an essential trait to possess in order to pursue writing as a career. That being said, you don’t need to read anything in particular, comics, personal gaming blogs, gaming news, blog posts, and any sort of literature are enough.
Am I able to play a game I am not interested in for countless hours under a deadline?
One of the most common miss conceptions is that this job will be indefinitely fun. At times you’ll be granted games you come to love and enjoy thoroughly all the way through. And those moments are the ones that make this such an amazing gig. Receiving games, sometimes unreleased games, and getting paid in exchange for reviewing it, writing a piece, or covering it, that’s the awesome part.
But there’s also the other side, where you receive a game, you might not enjoy, a genre you don’t like, or a topic you aren’t interested and there are countless hours of stress and plain unenjoyment. Take for example Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, which is by all means a great game, but if you dislike it and have to finish its one-hundred and sixty-hour campaign in ten days while taking notes and publishing personal gaming blogs, gaming might not look like fun on 16-hour workdays.
Ultimately, there’s a balance between enjoyment and passion, and discipline and hard work, but making sure you can do something for long hours without letting it influence your perception of it, is a very taxing thing.
Do I have other hobbies to fall back to?
This is why this last question is of the utmost importance. Gaming for a living means studying, playing, reading, and immersing yourself in it deeply. And once you are doing it as your main income source such as by selling 07RS gold, sometimes you can’t turn off the writer in you and you start personal gaming blogs, and sometimes you don’t even want to play anymore.
I know it’s hard trying to imagine it, but try covering an entire day of e-sports, after eight or ten hours and still feeling excited or anxious to jump into a casual match with friends, it’s hard.
Unless it’s a game you are extremely passionate about, chances are you might need a different outlet, and that’s where your other hobbies come in handy. Especially to decompress, and change topics for a while, things like music, physical activity, reading, running, drawing, climbing, hiking is some of your options. I once had a dream that I would always enjoy playing games no matter how many hours I clocked in, but you will need a different source of entertainment and fun.
How do I start running and monetizing personal gaming blogs?
There are countless ways, but the two most prominent forms of getting involved are the academic way or the DIY way. One of them is the more traditional, and the other is the internet-enabled, content creation form
Academic Route
Going into college with a degree in communication, journalism, or creative writing is the best major for college students to get into the industry. For the sheer networking potential alone, you are set up to eventually find yourself an opportunity. Teachers, alumni, and even other students might have acquaintances that can help you get a foot on the door, be a mentor, or guide you in the right direction.
Being a student obviously equips you with the necessary skills to become a writer. And some of the courses have internship programs that will provide you with job opportunities in companies that might interest you either in gaming or in an adjacent industry that can provide transferable experience. This is a smooth transition to running personal gaming blogs.
Do It Yourself
The internet, as well as various companies, have become addicted to storytellers, and good content creators. This is a very broad, and accessible entryway towards blogging, where you command your own articles. While this doesn’t require tuition, it will require some investments to get you started, but as a gamer, you have surely invested in a library throughout the years.
The journey of DIY is often the same, you feel dissatisfied with what is being written, and decide to share your own thoughts with the world. Eventually, you decide to start writing your thoughts and sharing them on the LinkedIn homepage, Facebook, or Medium.com. After doing that for a while you inadvertently created a portfolio for yourself.
Now with something to show, you sign up for freelancing websites (Fiverr.com, Upwork.com, Contra) and sell your services for a small amount of money, or you start applying to websites that interest you. With a lot of self-published content and hard work, you’ll eventually land a gig that offers you a chance to become published, maybe even get a game code, an unreleased title, or free games to write about.
Providing great service and delivering original heart-felt content will help foster a relationship with recurring customers. Sadly, not every author gets their name published, and they become ghostwriters.
Bonus Tips to Monetize Video Game Blogging
If you want to be a player in the video game blogging industry (pun intended), there are three websites you need to be familiar with:
- Twitch
- Discord
- Roblux
Twitch Following
The importance of having a Twitch following to generate an audience for personal gaming blogs cannot be overestimated and has been detailed in this post.
Discord
Discord rose to fame as a home for the personal gaming industry, so administrators of personal gaming blogs should be aware of Discord’s importance in the video game industry.
Discord groups are called servers. Video gamers meet in groups called Discord servers and chat about their games. An administrator of personal gaming blogs should tap that market.
Roblox
Roblox is a platform where gamers stream their games and watch others play games. They also chat about their games. The chat is uncensored. Anyone interested in personal gaming blogs or video game blogging should also be familiar with this website.
Personal gaming blogs FAQs
How do I create a gaming blog?
Start by playing games and reading about games. Make sure you have a passion for them. Study journalism or communication in college. Then, start writing on the internet. Finally, sell your services at online agencies.
Do gaming blogs make money?
Yes! Gaming is a lucrative industry.
What is the best video games website?
You will find a great deal of information about personal gaming blogs on YouTube. People videotape the game. You will enjoy watching the 3-D effects in YouTube videos that show personal gaming blogs.
Wrapping up: A guide to personal gaming blogs
While that journey is common, it is not set in stone, the one thing I highly encourage is to just start blogging for yourself, and sharing your thoughts with those close to you, and you’ll eventually have a body of work to show. The DIY route worked for me and now I’m a full-time video game writer, I hope this gives some insight and guidance to those lucky and passionate enough to pursue this as a career.
In closing, this A-Z guide on personal gaming blogs helped you understand if running personal gaming blogs is right for you. You also discovered how to start gaming blogs even to the point of beginning in college with the right major. Then, this guide concluded with strategies for monetizing your personal gaming blogs.
Readers, please share so bloggers who are passionate about gaming and are looking for a content niche consider personal gaming blogs.
Authors: Janice Wald and a Contributing Author
Janice Wald is the founder of MostlyBlogging.com and co-founder of the Mostly Blogging Academy. She is an ebook author, blogger, blogging coach, blogging judge, freelance writer, and speaker. She won the Best Internet Marketer Award and the Best Blogger Award at the 2021 Infinity Blog Awards. Wald was also nominated as 2019 Best Internet Marketer by the Infinity Blog Awards and in 2017 as the Most Informative Blogger by the London Bloggers Bash. She’s been featured on Small Business Trends, the Huffington Post, and Lifehack.
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