Niche Gamer March 2016 Patreon Update and 2015 Recap

mika

It’s been awhile since we’ve had an update for our Patreon, and for that I am truly sorry. As founder and Editor-in-Chief of Niche Gamer, I can’t thank you all enough for selflessly supporting our site for the past several months.

Now that tax season is behind us here in the offices of Niche Gamer, I wanted to get us caught up with a long-overdue Patreon update, as well as go over our growth through the remainder of last year.

First up, we’ll talk our Patreon growth and how you guys have been supporting us. In the beginning of last year, we started with earning roughly $300 a month in Patreon pledges. That grew to roughly double the amount in the fall of last year, which is when we lost our Adsense account.

Here’s a breakdown of our earnings from July onwards:

  • July 2015 – $325.00
    • All for staff salaries
  • August 2015 – $516.00
    • All for staff salaries/game reviews
  • September 2015 – $569.00
    • All for staff salaries/game reviews
  • October 2015 – $572.00
    • All for staff salaries/game reviews
  • November 2015 – $558.00
    • All for staff salaries/game reviews
  • December 2015 – $571.00
    • $350 for Staff salaries, $200 for site development
  • January 2016 – $572.00
    • $350 for Staff salaries, $200 for site development
  • February 2016 – $494.50
    • All for staff salaries/game reviews
  • March 2016 – $536.50
    • All for staff salaries/game reviews

As you can see, we mostly only put our Patreon funds towards staff salaries or game review reimbursement. Towards the end of last year, we put a bit of our money towards the development of our new website/design. Our server costs and various small updates and upgrades were covered with the small amount of money we make from advertising.

While I’m not ready to talk about when our new design and features will roll out, I will give you a teaser of what to expect:

  • User blogs
  • User reviews
  • A revamped review scoring system
  • Dedicated game pages/encyclopedic amounts of information
  • User-powered wiki-pages

And more. I’ve been in talks with developers and we’ve been prototyping these new features to make sure they not only look professional, they are professionally done and function to the expectations of our users. We also refuse to give up our focus on a minimalist, functional/easy to browse, and yet slick/attractive design.

We’re looking into a way for users to be able to monetize the content on their blogs as well, but first we have to get all of our own ducks in a row – most especially with finding a viable Adsense alternative. Our biggest concern is reporting on risque or controversial content and getting our advertising pulled, so we’ll see.

As for our traffic statistics, I hope you’re as pleased with them as I am:

  • July 2015 – 250,000 unique visitors, 500,000+ site views
  • August 2015 – 270,000 unique visitors, 500,000+ site views
  • September 2015 – 250,000 unique visitors, 500,000+ site views
  • October 2015 – 300,000 unique visitors, 600,000+ site views
  • November 2015 – 330,000 unique visitors, 660,000+ site views
  • December 2015 – 320,000 unique visitors, 640,000+ site views
  • January 2016 – 330,000 unique visitors, 660,000+ site views
  • February 2016 – 350,000 unique visitors, 700,000+ site views
  • March 2016 – 380,000 unique visitors, 800,000+ site views

This is all organic growth, thanks to you all spreading the love and sharing our articles! We don’t put any money into advertising for our site.

From now on you guys will be getting a Patreon update from the previous month on the first of the next month. No exceptions – we won’t be tardy with our updates from now on. Things with my personal life got a bit hectic for the better part of last year, so I’m hoping to bring on more staff and delegate roles more from now on.

I hope the main thing you can take away from this update is that all of the money we earn goes right back into the website. If you like our content, please consider pledging on Patreon, or even doing a one time donation via Paypal.

My goal with Niche Gamer is to make our operations, progress, everything as clear to you all as possible. We are nothing without the support of the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of you all – I couldn’t be more thankful for how far we’ve come.

Brandon Orselli

About

Big Papa Overlord at Niche Gamer. Italian. Dad. Outlaw fighting for a better game industry. I also write about music, food, & beer. Also an IT guy.

  • Mr0303

    Congrats Niche Gamer. You are one of my favourite gaming outlets and I’m glad to see you grow. The viewership count certainly has an upward trend. Here’s to another successful year.

  • King of Bros

    Here’s to an even better 2016.

  • Bitterbear

    Add some budget for the mascot’s arms.

  • TsukuyomiMagi99

    This is what I love about you guys. You do something that no other site does and be straight up and honest with your consumers. When I get the money I will happily donate to show other journalists how game journalism is supposed to be done. Keep up the work guys, you’re one of the few gaming sites I actually trust.

  • 7-D Sensei

    I use to donate $25 to the patreon but lower it to $5 cause i support like 3 other patreons.

  • Stevosan

    So, is the mascot meant to resemble one of the Hyperdimension Neptunia CPUs? Because I always think that when I see her. :P

  • EinMugenTenshin

    That’s quite the growth in viewership there. Guess it shows people are happy with your coverage of things.

  • Yabloko Molloco San

    pls lewds of the niche gamer mascot

  • Cy

    I’m glad you guys are doing well. You totally deserve it. You’re not just passionate about games, you’re passionate about transparency and standing up for gamers–something that’s sadly rare in games journalism. b^_^d

  • RPG

    Congratulations to everyone at Niche Gamer. I have been actively following the site since pretty much the beginning, and I have to say it is has since then been my favorite gaming news site, and it has been really pleasing and exciting to see it continually grow and get better. I frequently check in to this site everyday, eager to find any updates from all of you.
    Here is to all of your accomplishments thus far Niche Gamer, and for the ones yet to come.

  • Narmy

    “We also refuse to give up our focus on a minimalist, functional/easy to browse, and yet slick/attractive design.”

    That’s good news. Too often sites change things just for the sake of change and end up not considering how the end user feels. (I’m looking at you, Youtube)

  • Immahnoob

    Good to hear, I want you guys to live on and take down the popular but unethical sites.

  • ekrow

    Very cool! Keep up the great work!

  • Chocolate ISISCream

    I was banned permanantly with 4 different accounts on neogaf. Stumbled upon here and have been on daily ever since.

  • Didney Worl

    Glad to hear you guys are doing well. I first heard about your site when it was involved with GG. And while I don’t consider myself “of the movement” anymore, I still enjoy coming to this site, because sometimes you’ll talk about some awesome games I would’ve otherwise never heard of. It’s also nice to see a gaming site so committed to being transparent and ethical. Since you’ve guys have been around, we’ve seen the closures of Joystiq, GameTrailers, and now, possibly (hopefully), Kotaku. Of course, I also love the community too. When the day the site redesign comes, I’ll be there, spamming YouTube videos :P
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZXCrw3DHbc

  • VLX

    Good job Niche Gamer! You should be proud of yourselves.

  • Dammage

    In the words of the great Tak Fuji, “Love you guys”!

  • NukeA6

    I originally came to this site because someone suggested this was a videogame site that didn’t play the politically correct trend. It ended up being one of my favorite sources for gaming news and I’m glad you’ve got increased traffic stats.

    Thank you for setting the example.

  • Some furf

    That delightful steady growth. You guys deserve it.

  • Dom Fass

    Fighting the good fight! No to censorship and the bullying of sjws! Keep art unchanged and in its original form!

  • Tyrone Jackson

    For me, this site has become one of the few remaining gaming safe havens. No SJW crap, very, very little (if any) censoring of “triggering comments”, and information about gaming that ACTUAL GAMERS want.

    It’s good to see those visitors/views climbing like that. Keep it up!

  • Fear Me I Am Free

    You guys keep at it. I love your work and you are probably my main gaming site now.

  • For many years, I’ve been merely a reader on quite a few gaming sites. Haven’t been to those lately. But this place made me more than just a reader, but a commenter as well (with many witty images).

  • Narmy

    She’s a futa. :^)

  • LaunchShipCaptain

    I enjoy this site, I can easily filter by platform, I enjoy JRPG and more niche games that are no longer covered by large gaming sites, and there is no SJW sillyness making me feel like I’m some kind of weirdo for liking japanese games everyone used to play in the 80s and 90s.

    The site design is also simple and loads quick, topics are presented in a nicely ordered list, some sites put topics all over the place akin to the Windows 8 interface, this is clean and easy to read. (also, the background is dark grey, awesome, this is the only site in my favorites that doesn’t require me to turn on NoSquint addon to make it darker).

  • Here’s are graphs and statistics of Niche Gamers’ Patreon: https://graphtreon.com/creator/nichegamer

  • Stilzkin

    You’re the best thing to come out of GG

  • catazxy

    keep up the good work

  • Neojames82

    I’m glad you and the other staff are still kicking ass, Brandon. You are truly a breath of fresh air that gaming journalism needs. And just as a bit of a morale boost.

    Polygon’s Alexa ranking:
    http://traffic.alexa.com/graph?o=lt&y=t&b=ffffff&n=666666&f=999999&p=4e8cff&r=1y&t=2&z=30&c=1&h=150&w=340&u=polygon.com

    Kotaku’s Alexa ranking:
    http://traffic.alexa.com/graph?o=lt&y=t&b=ffffff&n=666666&f=999999&p=4e8cff&r=1y&t=2&z=30&c=1&h=150&w=340&u=kotaku.com

    IGN’s Alexa ranking:
    http://traffic.alexa.com/graph?o=lt&y=t&b=ffffff&n=666666&f=999999&p=4e8cff&r=1y&t=2&z=30&c=1&h=150&w=340&u=ign.com

  • I wanted to make an addendum: the growth we’ve had is all organic and possible because of you all, we haven’t paid for advertisements to push the site. I can’t thank you guys enough!

  • Well we did exist before GG :p but we did get a lot of growth from it, which is awesome!

  • Stilzkin

    Should have clarified that it was the best thing for me, since I discovered this site through it ( ˘ ³˘)♥

  • Zanard Bell

    Here’s hoping you get more hits, but it’s always a wonder to know that this site operates in the amount it would take to build a mid-range PC.

    More power, NicheGamer.

  • Nagato
  • ScarredBushido

    i found you guys because of sankaku lol regardless i will continue to come seeing there is a lot of anti SJW and anti-censorship people here also the mascot is pretty cute xD

  • Shinobu

    As long as you guys keep pumping out news I’m gonna keep on commin’.

  • DynastyStar

    it is worth noting that the guys at GameTrailers are back under a seperate name on youtube making thousands of dollars on Patreon.

  • Mighty No. 56008

    Hoping you guys have years and years of success. Cheers!

  • passthegrenadeplease

    Seeing those six digit numbers is insane in a good way, color me surprised. Keep on trucking niche gamer, you the real MVP.

  • Didney Worl

    I wasn’t aware of this until you told me. While they do have one review on their channel so far, it seems like their main focus will be streams and podcasts.

  • Didney Worl

    It was a terrible, user-unfriendly site redesign that ultimately killed GameTrailers.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vaw5aPTcwU

  • Galbador

    Very interesting to read and congrats for such a good growth. Looking forward for this website, especially for what you guys stand for: transparency and true journalism unlike Kotaku and co.

  • Galbador

    NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! XD

  • Obbliglol

    After GG and when Eurogamer started really selling out and not talking about video games anymore, I found myself with nowhere (other than Siliconera) to look up my niche news – Japanese games have only become more unpopular with the puritanical mainstream press (guess what was front page on EG after the FFXV reveal? A game which is basically Half Life 3 for some people? Friggin’ Alison bloody Rapp!) and I am so pleased I found you guys. Keep up keeping up, and you’ll definitely continue being my morning perusal site where I catch up on everything.

  • DynastyStar

    yeah I haven’t followed them personally.

  • The_Last_Ride

    awesome sauce

  • Noodles

    Congrats guys. I’ve been following this page for a few moths now. I don’t usually comment because English is not my first language and sometimes I fear I can’t express my thoughts as well as I’d like. But you have been doing a wonderful job and have become one of my favorites sites for gaming news.

    So, just keep up the good work ;)

  • Davorbasic

    Have you tried gematsu?

  • Obbliglol

    I go on there periodically, but if it’s being recommended to me, I’ll pop it in my bookmarks!

  • Davorbasic

    Oh I see

  • Felkyr

    Looks good.

  • Felkyr

    Right. I feel so guilty I was only able to help out one month. I’d love to be able to support continuously. Things like this need to be supported.

  • TsukuyomiMagi99

    Hey even the smallest bit of help matters! You can’t give what you don’t have! Just do what you can!

  • Chocolate ISISCream

    Cuck.

  • Anderino

    I’m glad you guys are doing so well! You’re one of my main games info and one of a handful of twatter accounts that’s gets twats send straight to my mobile.

  • SiliconNooB

    A gaming site where gamers are still welcome in [CURRENT YEAR]!