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.