Hey Niche Gamer Nation, this is Brandon here. For those who don’t know me or what I really do for the site, I’ll give you a brief explanation.

I manage the back end of the site, the news feed and the overall direction of the site, the public image, and most of the major decisions regarding our stance on things. I’m also the founder and owner of Niche Gamer, so you could say I deeply care about the name, the brand, and the community that has formed around the website.

We’re a gaming website that truly cares about our fellow gamers as our customers—not the advertising companies, publishers, and so on. I cannot stress this being our core goal with Niche Gamer enough.

It flows from this that relying on advertising revenue is simply not a sustainable and/or ethical practice for us. We don’t want to keep focusing on numbers of views every day; instead, we want to focus on the quality of our content, the amount of exposure we can give those unloved games, and the mutual love for games we can share with our fans.

I want to make it bigger and better, but sadly I only make enough money at my day job to cover my own bills for my family and such. I don’t have the capacity to fund the site any further out of my own pocket, so I’m looking to you guys to help me. Consider this a proposition before we actually launch our Patreon thing—I sincerely want to know what you want out of Niche Gamer.

Specifically, I want to know what would make you happiest when you fund the website on Patreon, if you do. To be clear, our Patreon will remain entirely optional and I don’t believe in locking away content just for the people who fund this website. However, I do think it would be cool to have reward perks for those who essentially invest in the website.

These could be exclusive Mika (the mascot) designs, wallpapers, t-shirts, and various other cool merchandise (I can even get giant magnets with Mika on them). What I want to avoid is the potential for breaching ethics, i.e. having a reward tier that allows people to publish things on the website, therefore opening the door for developers to essentially “buy” ad-space.

Again, I want our Patreon to remain entirely optional, while the website will continue to exist and put out new content. The issue here is that with our fanbase growing, there’s demand for more content, as well as better quality content like original features, interviews, video productions, and so on. We simply can’t really do as much as we’d like, due to us not being able to do this full time.

All of the funding spending with our Patreon will be disclosed every month, and I will not be taking a salary until the website is able to function independently, i.e. with a core staff of writers and staff who get paid to put out good, rewarding, and fun content. Me taking a salary is the least of my concerns as I can survive on my own, but Niche Gamer is my pride and joy—I want it to grow and become a truly formidable gaming outlet.

I’ve always looked at Niche Gamer as a dream project of mine, but also as an investment, and I have lots of plans outlined that will grow the website, the community, the brand, and the quality of our work. I just can’t do all of that without your help.

Please let me know what you’d like to see in our Patreon, our reward tiers, and let me know of any concerns you may have.