Starting game review site! Any money in it?

i have been a passionate gamer in pc and ps3 myself and it has been a long time dream to start a game related site or a blog. Now the dream has come and just registered a domain.

i have few questions to anybody here running a game blog or review site...

1. where to get front cover pictures of games?
2. is it legal to publish screenshots of a particular game? will there be any issues?
3. How much $$$ i can possibly make from such sites?

Anything else i should know about.. i have also no problems in spending some money to get pictures of games, if need be!

 

From one old school gamer to another - its going to take a lot of time and work. Your competition is going to be pretty tough. Companies like PC Gamer have their own magazine and website. Companies like Valve software have their own forums. So the big players in the gaming market already have most of the traffic.

My son and I started a gaming website about 11 months ago. The domain name was not that great and the traffic has been really low. The site might get 25 - 50 hits a day. With some gamers, and especially kids, they think they can do everything better then you. If you post a video on youtube, it has to be really outstanding, or else you start getting comments like - "stupid noob".

Last week I moved my sons site to a new domain name. Hopefully people will like that name better then the old one.

To promote my sons gaming site, I started a youtube account, bought fraps, recorded in game videos, and started posting the videos on youtube. Rarely do I get any positive feedback from the videos.


1. where to get front cover pictures of games? - I use screens shots from when I am playing the games.


2. is it legal to publish screenshots of a particular game? will there be any issues? I have never had any problems.


3. How much $$$ i can possibly make from such sites? Your traffic will determine that.

The gaming market is very competitive and flooded. A lot of people open sites about a certain game instead of a general gaming site. So when people get bored with that game, they stop updating the site and move to the next game.

When I started my main forum 3 years ago the market was already flooded. But I was able to promote my site and get it well established. Even though I was able to do that with my site, my sons gaming site has been a whole different story. It has taken a LOT longer then I would have ever expected to get any amount of real traffic.

 

Thanks ~kev~ +rep

no, i meant cd cover artwork.

i read somewhere that if your blog is making money, then it is necessary to get permission from game publishers to be on the safer side.

 

its a little saturated, but just work hard and use social bookmarking

 

1. where to get front cover pictures of games?
Go to the game producer website,then from there you can rip it.

2. is it legal to publish screenshots of a particular game? will there be any issues?
No coz you not publishing the content of games.

3. How much $$$ i can possibly make from such sites?
Very tricky question.If you manage it well with lot of active member then its not possible to earn $10/day.

 

Snatch the covers from amazon.

 

Games are popular so the traffic is there but olso is a very competitive niche ...

But where is traffic there is $$$

Regards

 

Im sorry but to be honest, don't bother with this idea, you're just wasting your time - way too competitive and no real $$ besides advertisements.

Next time do some research before buying your .com

Good luck

 

Thank you! does anybody know how to capture a screenshot while playing in in PS3 or xbox console?
I have few other questions, and i would be more clear if it rephrase it.

1. i plan to record video of gameplay and upload it to youtube.
2. i plan to capture one or two screenshot image of game and publish to my blog

will the game publishers come after me with copyright infringement?
i am really worried about these things on copyright and any advice/help is much appreciated.

 

Why not other niche? If you plan to use CPA then it is fine but for Google Adsense, game niche is low paid one.

 

If you offered something different in the form of reviews you would develop an audience. See what is currently going on in the marketplace and then look at the gamers comments. If they are asking for more in depth reviews, do more in depth. Maybe cater to a particular audience, so only review games for a particular gaming niche and offer reviews that would interest them. Some people simply want to know if a game is good, but there are many others who want a more in depth review experience. Just go at things from a different angle and you will develop an audience.