4 Ways To Make Money From Your Gaming Website
So you’ve got the site ready? From pictures of Michael de Santa to highlights of a Challenger rank Teemo player raking in kills after kills. You have a killer website and your content is top-notch as well as having insane server and hosting support.
But, are you going to run the website forever without bringing in any money? Well, if you do then you probably don’t need this article. Otherwise, read on as we list out several ways to earn an income while running your gaming website. Read more below or if you click you will see some gaming themes!
Before we start out, here’s a checklist:
- Do you have a great website? If not, head on over to our themes page to get some great themes for your site.
- Do you have great content? No one’s going to come to your site if you have nothing but generic review articles. Make it valuable to your readers.
- Make sure your website has an excellent load speed and is optimized for mobile. 71% of online readers leave a page that takes more than 4 seconds to load, so if you need help, take a look at our themes that are optimized for mobile as well as having minimal loading speed.
Once you’re all set, let’s head on with the article!
Affiliate Links
Affiliate links are the bread and butter of most gaming sites. If you don’t have one, you should act immediately as a ton of brands and companies are promoting affiliates nowadays.
A large number of brands have figured out that word of mouth through relevant channels and personalities are better than busting an extravagant amount of budget on fancy advertising.
As an example, popular gaming site Polygon earned a fair share of its revenue from affiliate links of various Steam titles. Another gaming blog mammoth, Destructoid also owes its profits from affiliates on various gaming products and titles.
The popular gaming store, G2A is infamous for giving commissions to affiliates, but a recent crackdown on their policies have led them to being doubted and boycotted by a significant number of gamers. Another website that can be used by gaming website owners is http://www.videogamespaymybills.com/affiliates/, an affiliate site that pays up to $50 per sale.
Sponsorships
With the massive influx of startups and entrepreneurs in the tech scene, getting a sponsorship is no longer a big deal as it was in the past and that’s good news to you.
Popular YouTuber PewDiePie’s earnings of $12m a year is heavily supplemented by his sponsorships with various brands, most notably Disney who cut off their deal after a recent controversy involving him in racial issues.
In fact, getting a sponsorship is so easy that Razer has implemented a page specifically for sponsorship requests as well as HyperX. Team Vulcun of League of Legends fame even got themselves a sponsorship from Adidas of all brands.
Having a good following and good content is all you need to get a sponsorship nowadays. How the sponsorship will come is decided by you or your team, but you should always be on the lookout as well as present opportunities for brands to sponsor you. Be it through ad spaces, blog posts or promotions, you can sleep well knowing that a consistent stream of income is no longer impossible with sponsorships.
Selling content (eBooks, guides, services)
Selling e-books has been the name of the game for a multitude of internet gurus and motivational experts. With the numbers popping up daily, many expected the e-book fad to fade away, just like many past social trends.
Yet, in 2017 the e-book industry is still strong and growing day by day. The shift from motivational speeches to the new “get shit done” agenda has seen e-books rise in popularity particularly among millennials.
In the past, gaming websites used to sell magazines as a way to supplement their income, for example PCGamer. Nowadays, e-zines are the buzz and every major online gaming site has one nowadays, thanks to publishing platforms such as Medium and Issuu.
So, how can you capitalize on this? Start off by writing great content, and then branch out by writing something exclusive and valuable to your readers. A great example of this is the Story Bundle by Destructoid once again.
To put things into perspective, 1,000 e-book sales at 1.99 can net you more than $10,000 after taxes and fees. So, think about it.
Subscriptions and Paywalls
Subscription-based content isn’t anything new, but as traditional web ads start to fall out of favor, paywalled content can generate high income when done right and with integrity.
Surprisingly, large publications have found that adding a subscription service actually boosts the revenue they get from their ads. A number of general-interest publications are reporting as much as a 1.5x increase in ad revenue with the addition of subscription plans. This form of content monetization is leading to an increase in searches, paid subscriptions and online advertising clients.
The a-la-carte, or micropayment, option is an effective alternative to a subscription plan. You also see examples of this in action on iTunes and YouTube. The micropayment gives viewers cheap access to what they want to see at that moment.
The Wall Street Journal for example has an estimated 550,000 thousand paying online viewers and that number continues to grow. The paywall system is turning out to be the answer to one of the biggest challenges the news industry has faced. The digital age could have easily destroyed mainstream media, but adding membership software to the equation has saved it.
Installing a paywall plan requires you to add a snippet of code in the right place on your website. Using the online tool, you select the type of paywall service you want and then add the code it generates to your pages. A paywall hides the content from view and gives the buyer options to make a payment to see more.
Conclusion
These are some of the ways to earn money through your gaming website. If you are interested, check out our Skywarrior gaming themes over here for great website designs and themes!
