Hey guys – it’s Brandon again, the owner and EIC here at Niche Gamer. I wanted to address a few things in this new update.
Recently, we announced changes to our commenting policy that really shook things up a bit. The response has been incredible, and we couldn’t be happier. Now, I’m going to update you regarding our Patreon and overall progress.
We changed up our Patreon a bit so we could focus more on content for the website, as we don’t really have the manpower to handle reward tiers for the Patreon yet. We want to provide more tangible, fun things for higher reward tiers, so for now we’re only offering ad-free browsing.
We got a new advertising partner that we’re on a trial period with, and the rates we’re seeing are definitely the best of the non-Google advertisers we’ve tried so far. This combined with your support from Patreon will finally give us a real, supportive budget we can work with moving forward.
Traffic for the site has been consistent with a gradual uptick, which is essentially what we’ve seen since I launched the site a few years ago. We try to avoid clickbait or topical style material, instead our focus is on consistent and informative content. I don’t like capitalizing on things for clicks.
I wanted to briefly address the direction of the site and the recent changes we’ve implemented. We had some changing of staff, mostly due to me feeling like we were going in the wrong direction. Now, we’re mostly pursuing my original vision: a hardcore, unfiltered gaming hub.
For now we’re focused on further optimization and tweaking of our new custom layout, as well as further troubleshooting and cleaning up of our database (we have tens of thousands of images and articles, it’s a mess after multiple server migrations).
Earlier this year we tried to launch new features for the site: user blogs and dedicated game pages. We weren’t really ready to launch those features alongside our new layout, so for now those are on the back burner. Please know that we want to launch these features ASAP, for you!
Our goal is to keep providing you constant news updates, reviews, and original content – while also providing a fun and censorship-free platform to encourage discussion and community. We hope you continue visiting the site, supporting us, and most of all – enjoying the games we cover!
If you haven’t backed us on Patreon, check us out! We also accept one time donations via our PayPal, over on our donation page. If you simply want to keep browsing the site for free, please consider whitelisting us so we can remain independent and keep the lights on.
We ❤ you, our website and community is nothing without your continued support. Expect regular updates every month from now on, as well as new Mika designs once again!
