You love gaming, and you want to make it work for you so that your passion becomes your income.
This is 100% possible!
If you want to monetize your gaming website, utilizing some key strategies will make the process more effective.
Ads
If you have a large following or get a lot of traffic, you can bring in significant income by selling ad space on your website like Solitaire Bliss does here.
Of course, these ads should be relevant to your target market without drawing financial resources away from your site.
In the beginning, you might have to do the footwork reaching out to other companies to offer up paid ad space.
There is plenty of room to make them want to come to you, even if they’re the ones paying.
You can even use a service such as AdSense, which creates code that you can embed into your gaming website.
Depending on your site’s traffic and impressions, they pay you a relative amount.
If you own a game, you could also sell adverts, which are small popups that come in between levels on your game.
Other companies sell that ad “time” to you, and then you get a kickback when your players purchase their game.
The drawback is that oftentimes when people “buy” your game, they do so for an ad-free experience.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing means that you advertise for another company, and when someone buys their product or subscribes to their program, you get a cut of that profit.
What could be easier, right?
Some businesses, such as Amazon, will simply send you a link that you place on your site.
Want to work smarter, not harder?
You can cross-promote other products that you sell and still receive the kickbacks.
Let’s say you’ve created a merchandise line of outerwear, tips and tricks books, or gaming figures.
Link those up with an affiliate marketing program to get the original profits plus the affiliate portion.
Paid Website Access
If people subscribe to your website for blogs, updates, and gaming tips, you could always create access levels.
You want people to come to you and then get hooked, wondering what else there could be on the other side of the door.
Keep the free version of your gaming website inclusive, exciting, and updated… but don’t give away all the goods. Think about it on the same level as playing a game.
Once you’ve completed a level, you want to know what’s next, right?
Offer a member-exclusive version where people can get higher-level tips, insider access, and community connection that they wouldn’t be able to receive for free.
An example is Farmville.
It is free to play, but you need to pay for premium features.
Building an Email List
Email marketing is not dead! You just need to finetune your emails to turn leads into players/purchases. The first step is to find your target market’s “need.”
What are they looking for that they can’t find somewhere else?
What sets you apart and will make your leads choose you to fulfill that need?
It’s essential to make your emails personal but not cheesy. What information do they want that will make them “stop their scroll”?
Email marketing can be closely connected to your member-only access on your gaming website, which we described in the previous strategy.
The merchandise that comes next.
Keep everything connected and seamless, and you’ll come across as professional and desirable.
Merchandise
If you’ve created a game or a line of merchandise (e.g., hats, sweatshirts, stickers, bags) around your brand, this is a great way to bring in the bucks.
Merchandising works double duty, too, because when people walk around wearing or sporting something with your name or game, it makes you even more recognizable.
Maybe you haven’t gotten there yet, but you still want to utilize this resource. You could retail another gamer’s line that you want to support or be affiliated with.
You would then ask for a portion of those proceeds since you’re doing the advertising for them. Then, when you create a line in the future, they could return the favor.
Wrapping Up
There are so many options to make money with your gaming website. These are just a few of the easiest and most accessible ways to bring in a passive income.
If you’re even more tech-savvy, though, you could sell assets from games or graphics that you’ve created or even write blogs and tutorials to sell on other people’s platforms.
The sky is the limit when it comes to monetizing your website.
You want it to bring you financial success while still being something you enjoy! Try adding a few of these strategies into your development and watch the dollars roll in.
Remember—you don’t have to do things better than the other guys to stay at the top. Think about what you do the best and let that work for you.
