Monetizing a gaming website – Dos and Don’ts

Gaming is not only one of the most fast-growing, but one of the most universally-fast-growing industries in the world. Everybody loves video games, no matter their nationality, race, gender or any other characteristic.

With the internet becoming more relevant and prominent in everyone’s day-to-day life, gaming is just more accessible and wide-spread to all different groups of people.

With the increased participation and discourse online, the actual process of playing your favourite games, at this point, is just a part of the whole gaming industry.

People are now spending hours upon hours watching other people’s gameplay streams or just discussing the games online with gaming communities.

Therefore, there are a lot of different solutions that you can offer to your audience and monetize your traffic.

Online Game Referrals

If you have an online presence with a decent amount of following that trusts your opinion, you can refer them to an online game that’s looking to increase their player base, or to an actual gaming platform like Steam.

There are usually tons of options for both, but make sure to conduct diligent research and find out what’s best for your specific audience before making any recommendations.

If referrals really are your thing, you might want to look into Online Casino websites. You’d be surprised if you saw how many people play online poker in New Zealand. Most of the online casinos offer very lucrative referral commissions as there’s a huge interest.

You can take this a level further by researching what extra promotional offers are available for specific locations around the world.

For example, there may be a large sign-up discount for members of specific countries, and if that’s the case, referring them with that specific promotion will help them get a better value and increase chances of them actually signing up, making this a very good monetization strategy.

Game Reviews

Game Reviews are one of the best and most appreciated ways that you can provide actual value to your audience. With so many games being available on the market, and at the pace the new ones are being released, it’s easy for gamers to be overwhelmed.

A well-researched, informative review is appreciated by everyone, as it helps you make a well-informed decision and save a lot of time, money and frustration.

There are multiple ways you can monetize your reviews with, but the most effective one would be to use affiliate links or something similar, where you’d be getting a fixed commission each time someone completes affiliate’s required action-whether that be purchasing something, subscribing to a monthly plan, registering an account, etc-after clicking your link.

Streaming

Streaming, in particular, with the popularity that it has gained, has caught a lot of people by surprise. Most people never expected that so many gamers would be interested in simply watching their favourite games being played by other people.

If you feel that you’re entertaining enough, you can stream pretty much everything, and it doesn’t even have to be video games.

The main income source from the streams would be subscriptions from your new viewers and donations from the existing ones.

Things to Avoid

As you can see, options are abundant if you want to generate income from your gaming website.

However, there are a few things that you need to remember if you’re looking for longevity and satisfaction for your followers.

Don’t promote something that’s not useful

For one, you need to always make sure, that whatever service, product or narrative you’re pushing, it needs to be something that you’re absolutely sure will be useful and helpful for your audience.

It may be tempting to join an affiliate or referral program of a game or some service because of its high commissions, but at the end of the day, your goal and the main focus should be providing something that can bring your audience value and build long-term trust, not short-term profit.

Don’t promote something shady

This brings us to the next point, which is to make sure that the service you’re promoting is safe and trustworthy. If and when your viewer invests in a product based on your review or promotion, in their mind, their satisfaction or dissatisfaction will always be based on and attributed to, your opinion and recommendation.

It’s because of this that you need to be wary and careful about what you endorse, as one bad or off-mark recommendation may be remembered by your customers for a long time, damaging your credibility.