If you just need someone to walk you through the process of setting up your blog quickly and easily, check out step 5.
While passion is a great reason to start a video game blog, there are many other reasons why starting one is a great idea:
- Create a career and make money in the esports or gaming industry.
- Create a community of gamers around the topic you’re most passionate about.
- Become a game influencer in the niche or mainstream industry.
- Get exclusive access to early game releases and other new technology and hardware.
- Be the first to receive updates on games before they launch.
- Attend invite-only gaming conferences and press events.
If that got your heart racing, here’s how you can make it happen.
1. Decide the Focus of Your Video Game Blog
Your first step is to decide what your video game blog focus will be.
- What direction do you want to take?
- Who do you want to blog for?
- What is the main purpose of your blog?
Answering these questions will help you hone in on the specific focus or direction of your gaming blog.
Without a clear idea of the goal behind your blog, you’ll have a hard time trying to decide on the specific niche or the type of content to produce. So this is a very important first step that you should take time to think through.
For instance, your goal might be to help 100 people get really good at fortnite.
Picking a clear focus for your blog will help prevent you from experiencing the type of information overload that causes many beginner bloggers to give up on their blogs before the results start showing because they couldn’t keep up with the level of information available to work with.
You basically need to establish a brand that people will recognize. Just like if you started a movie blog, you need to find a way to make a name for yourself.
For example, you can be the best video game blogger who writes about everything to do with Grand Theft Auto.
Or,
You can be the go-to expert who knows all there is to know about gaming graphics cards and writes awesome in-depth reviews about how they work with streaming on Twitch.
Get the idea?
With that goal in mind, it will be easy for you to take the next step, which is choosing the right niche for your new video game blog.
2. Choose Your Video Game Blog Niche
There are lots of different gaming niches you can focus on. The trick here is to not try to focus on too many things at the same time. No one has the ability to cover everything, but every new blogger can cover something.
If you really want to stand out in the gaming industry, then you need to focus all your energy on one topic.
So, instead of writing about video game news, posting about game tips and tricks, reviewing gaming hardware, and selling merchandise to fans, pick the gaming topic that interests you the most, or the one that you’re most passionate about and focus on only that.
You can always expand your niche later, but when you’re just starting out, it’s vital that you pick just one niche.
Picking a niche comes with the added advantage of helping you connect with your ideal audience more easily. Also, if you’re writing about just one thing, it’s a lot easier to go into detail and write more in-depth posts that your readers will find valuable.
Below, I’ve listed some of the most popular video game blog niches to help you make your choice.
Gameplay Walkthroughs
Gameplay walkthroughs are probably the best way to get started. They are certainly one of the easiest. All you have to do is to play the game that you want to write about and create high-quality, unique content about it.
There may already be a lot of content out there, but if you bring your own unique style and voice, you will be able to stand out in a sea of gameplay walkthroughs.
Game Development Topics
This is a complex subject since it involves you actually knowing about it. It’s not something you can simply ready about and then write your own blog post.
You either have to have experience as a video game developer or programmer to be able to give advice on this topic. If you want to take it a step further, you can also discuss people can get employed in the gaming industry as well. Though there are already sites devoted specifically to game jobs, it doesn’t mean you can’t take a small portion of that traffic yourself.
Game Reviews
Writing game reviews can be difficult at times, especially when you have big names in the industry (like IGN, Metacritic, and Gamespot) already reviewing the games. But, don’t let this put you off. Your viewpoint may be just what is needed to connect with your audience and bing an interesting angle or twist to the subject.
Gaming News
Gaming news is a very broad topic. Even if you were to choose this as your niche, you’d still have to dig a little deeper to find a specific sub-topic to focus on. There’s a lot to talk about and if you choose this niche, you’ll have endless topics to discuss with your audience.
Choose a certain game, category, or genre to focus on so you can keep up with the news and avoid getting overwhelmed by too much information.
Console Reviews
You can focus on doing reviews and unboxing of gaming hardware. You can write posts for your video game blog, as well as do video reviews to upload to YouTube. Make sure you help your audience make the best choices by covering all the details of the product you’re reviewing.
You need to be extremely thorough, and extremely honest in all your reviews. Your audience can smell a phony from a mile away, and if they feel like you’re not being honest, you’ll lose them.
Streaming Channel Blog
Another direction you could go, if you already have a Twitch or YouTube channel, is to create a blog for your video game streaming channel. Of course, this means a lot more work for you, especially if you’re doing all the blogging by your self. But, you can always team up with a friend so that one of you runs the blog while the other focuses on the streaming channel.
Esports News and Events
This is a popular niche and the last few years have seen a massive expansion in the esports industry. There are already lots of popular gaming blogs dedicated to this topic, including TheScoreEsports, ESPN, Gamurs, and EsportsObserver.
But there’s always room for new bloggers willing to create high-quality unique content. Starting a blog focused on esports events would be great, and you would have a very large audience to market it to. But, don’t try to cover all the news. Niche down, for instance, by writing about teams and events only.
Any one of the gaming niches or categories listed above would make a great choice as the topic for your new video game blog. As I mentioned earlier, focusing on just one topic will help you keep your articles value-packed and relevant.
Once you’ve settled on a niche you like, you can move on to the next step where we cover how to choose the right blogging platform for your blog.
3. Choose Your Blogging Platform
To get started building your video game blog, you first need to have a reliable blogging platform. There are countless options available to you, both free and paid.
Most beginner bloggers tend to opt for the free platforms like Tumblr, Blogger, Squarespace, and Wix when starting their blogs, but that’s a big mistake. If you want to grow your video game blog and (eventually) make money from it, then it’s a good idea to start with a paid platform from the beginning.
This is because free platforms come with a lot of limitations that will make it hard for you to make your new blog a success.
Here are some drawbacks of Free Blogging Patforms:
- Few customization options
- Unprofessional look and feel
- Very low monetization potential
- If you violate terms of use, you could lose your blog (and all of the content you wrote)
- They (technically) own your content
You can see why it’s not a good idea to use a free blogging platform if you want to be taken seriously.
I personally recommend that you use WordPress in combination with hosting. If you don’t know what I mean, stay tuned. I’ll explain in great detail later in the guide the exact steps to take.
WordPress is a popular self-hosted blogging platform. It offers a great alternative to free blogging websites like the ones mentioned above.
With WordPress, you get easy one-click installation, quick updates, and a user interface that is simple enough for beginners to handle without a huge learning curve. Listed below are some of the benefits of using premium WordPress.
Benefits of Self-Hosted WordPress over Free Blogging Platforms
- WordPress is stable, reliable, and easy to use
- The platform is flexible and offers amazing customization features
- Easy to optimize site and extend functionality with 50,000+ plugins
- WordPress is well-optimized for SEO and there are many other SEO tools to gain a bigger advantage
- Massive community of developers and great technical support
- You can use different media formats on your blog
- It’s easy to monetize your video game blog any way you like
- Using WordPress is free, you just need your domain and hosting
Here are some interesting statistics about WordPress:
- At the moment, over 35% of all websites on the internet use WordPress
- 22% of all newly registered domain names use the WordPress self-hosted platform
- For the past 8 years in a row, WordPress has been the fastest-growing CMS
- WordPress offers over 50,000 plugins and over 3,500 themes
Is that enough to convince you that WordPress is the best blogging platform? I certainly hope so. It’s what I use, and what I recommend to all my readers. With WordPress, you will be able to start a great-looking video game blog with all the functionality you need to create awesome posts.
Now that you’ve chosen your blogging platform, it’s time to choose your domain name. So, on to step 4!
4. Decide Your Domain Name
A domain name is the name of your website or blog. It’s the address on the internet (or URL) where users will be able to access your website.
While you can have a domain name that is different from your blog name, it’s advisable to ensure that you use your blog name as your domain name to avoid confusing your visitors.
So, for instance, if you want to call your new video game blog ‘AwesomeGamingBlog’, you’ll then need to get the same domain name, ‘www.AwesomeGamingBlog.com’.
There are certain things to keep in mind when choosing the best domain name for your gaming blog. This video explains each of the 10 steps in detail:
1. Buying a .com Domain Name: This is a good idea because .com domains are what the internet was built on and they still lead the pack.
2. Stay Broad With Your Domain Name: Don’t choose a video game blog domain name that is too focused as this will limit your ability to expand and grow in the future. For instance, a specific name like GTA V Reviews will force you to stay in one very small niche, whereas a name like Great Gaming Reviews leaves you more room for expansion.
3. Keep Your Domain Name Short: Shorter names are best because they are easier to remember and type. Aim for a domain name with less than four words, if possible.
4. Alliteration is Key: Alliteration refers to the use of two or more words that start with the same sound or letters, such as Polygon Players or Gamer’s Guide.
5. Get Creative to Find Your Perfect Domain Name: If the name you want is already taken, use creativity to find one that is similar. You can find other words that mean the same thing. For instance, if the name you wanted was Game Zealot, you could use Game Fanatic… or something like that.
6. Add Extra Words: If you’ve tried everything else, you can add extra words to get the name you want. For example, the blog name Pocket Gamer could become The Pocket Gamer or you could add HQ to make it Pocket Gamer HQ.
7. Think of a Concept: When coming up with a domain name for your video gaming blog, it helps if you come up with a concept around your blog. Imagine what you hope to achieve with your blog in the future, and that will help you come up with some possible names.
8. Use Tools to Generate Names: There are certain name generation tools that you can use if you’re still stuck. Websites like InstantDomainSearch and LeanDomainSearch offer helpful suggestions for blog names.
9. Don’t Purchase a Domain Name: If your name is already taken, you might find it being offered for sale for hundreds or even thousands of dollars. It’s not worth wasting your money, so just get a standard domain name and focus on growing your website instead.
10. Don’t Get Stuck Here: This is perhaps the most important point on this list. Don’t get stuck at this stage. Take a couple of hours to go through this process, brainstorm a few names, and pick the one you like best, and move on to the next step.
To help you with your brainstorming process, I’ve listed 5 popular gaming blogs, and why their domain names make sense.
5 Popular Video Game Blogs
1. JoyStiq: The name of this blog is short and memorable. ‘JoyStick’ was probably already taken and the owner got creative to come up with something different that still (kinda) meant the same thing.
2. That VideoGame Blog: This name is simple and easy to remember. It’s a name that is suitable for the general nature of the blog which is dedicated to providing interesting articles on almost everything in the games industry.
3. Nintendo Life: This name is short and sweet. The video game blog niche is reflected in the name, which lets the reader know what the blog is about.
4. Game Informer: This is a great name. It’s short, unique, and lets the visitor know that this blog is the go-to place for news, game reviews, culture, etc.
5. Gaming Fanatic Reviews: You don’t have to wonder what this video game blog is all about. It’s all in the name.
5. Buy Your Domain Name and Hosting
Now that you have decided on a name for your video game blog, you need to register your domain name and get blog hosting.
Hosting is simply the space on the internet where your video game blog is going to live. Blog hosting providers are companies that offer services to keep your blog files on their servers and ensure that your website is always available for your readers to find online.
I recommend Bluehost for beginner hosting because they are reliable and they offer affordable prices. Also, they have the best customer support in the industry.
Below is a YouTube video and screenshots showing you the exact step-by-step process, choose whatever tutorial that works best for you.
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