History of a Roleplaying Blog

The Beginning

Several months ago, in November of 2008, I started a blog about roleplaying called, RoleplayingPro.com. Back then, I viewed DungeonMastering.com as the JohnChow.com of roleplaying blogs. DungeonMastering had around 3,000-5,000 RSS followers at the time, which dwarfed all other roleplaying blogs. I think the next closest was Gnome Stew which was somewhere in the 1000’s. Very few roleplaying blogs had even over 500 RSS subscribers, with the vast majority of them not even breaking the 100 RSS subscriber mark.

Initially, I had no goal, no plan, and no idea what I was doing. All I knew was that a lot of bloggers were making tons of money out there blogging about what they loved. I tried blogging about a few so-called money making topics. I saw a lot of potential there. But I also saw hundreds of other bloggers following the same trail I was, trying to become the big fish in a pond already full of big fish and where every fish your size is trying to become the big fish too. I knew that I would never succeed on a topic that so many other were more passionate and knowledgeable about than I was. I didn’t like blogging about money; I just thought that is what you were supposed to do.

Once I realized that it was okay to blog about what you love, even though there may not be the potential for millions and billions of dollars in your niche that is when I became free and started making progress. I began writing weekly posts on RoleplayingPro about topics that I felt strongly about. In the beginning, the only people viewing and commenting on my blog were my gaming buddies. Half of the time, the stories I wrote involved stuff about them. It was an exciting first couple months. Even though my RSS subscribers were around five to ten, I really didn’t care. I was having fun blogging by having my friends read the blog.

After a while, I started to develop in the 25-30 RSS subscribers’ area. I noticed I was starting to get regular readers that seemed to be commenting on a lot of my articles. This really started to excite me when I would see the same person come back time and time again. Then I’d go over and visit there blog and leave comments for him. So I started networking with other bloggers in my niche and discussing things related to our niche.

The Blog Takes Off

Once I started to realize that this blog had grown beyond just me and my gaming buddies, I started to think of it in a little bigger of a picture. I was getting a few readers now. They were coming back. This whole “make money doing what you love” thing started to be somewhat of a slim reality.

I really felt like if I was going to do this blog correctly, and potentially make money off of it, I was going to have to begin socially networking with other bloggers and learn more about searching engine optimization. At that time, I felt the easiest way for me was social networking. So I joined the RPG Bloggers Network just a few months after RoleplayingPro had been created. It was the best move with the blog that I ever made. Right off the bat I was getting twenty or more hits from the RPG Bloggers Network each day. This lead to more comments. Which lead to me commenting back. Which lead to me checking out these commenter’s blogs. And finally I started becoming good online friends with some of the other bloggers in my niche.

By this point, the blog had been up for several months and a few higher up industry people were giving me kudos on the site and a helping hand every once in a while. My RSS subscribers were hovering around 50-75, but I still wasn’t publically showing that. I had decided that I was no going to visibly publish our subscriber number until we got over 100. I felt that by the time we hit 100 subscribers, we’d have more subscribers than 75% (maybe more) of the other bloggers in the roleplaying industry.

Around this time, opportunities started to come knocking. Alpha Omega offered me a review copy of the game book. It was one of the first things I was given for free just because I was running the website. When it showed up on my door, I loved it. In a short span of time, I received free accounts on roleplaying-themed websites, I received free video games to review, and I received free miniatures for gaming. Although, I wasn’t making money, I was seeing the fruits of my labor.

These gifts that I received really gave me juice to be able to work even harder on the website. I put out a call for another blogger, not really expecting to get anyone. Despite my expectations, John Lewis showed up. I couldn’t have picked a better partner. John is extremely knowledgeable about many parts of roleplaying that I am not. When he joined and started pumping out some great material for me, it allowed me time to sit back for the first time since I’d started the blog months ago. Instead of spending all my extra time creating new content, I was now able to spend time on other things since John was building content for the blog as well.

I started focusing on more social networking, tweaking the site and its gadgets, and even looking into search engine optimization (SEO). Meanwhile, our blog continued to hobble past the 100 RSS subscriber mark. I created some goals for the year of 2009, which included reaching 500 RSS subscribers, improving the look of the blog, and finally making actual money off of the blog.

The SEO Era

One day, I made a huge breakthrough. I started to get the bigger picture. I started to realize that RoleplayingPro wasn’t my baby and wasn’t going to be my big moneymaker I had hoped for. I realized that RoleplayingPro was just the first seed that I’ve planted in the internet ground to make money doing what I love. After learning more and more about search engine optimization I realized that I was going to have to start changing my writing style. I was going to have to change what I write about. And I was going to have to change where I write for.

I started to see RoleplayingPro as the focal point for my roleplaying moneymaking network. I realized to be successful, I not only had to continue to do the social networking that I was, and write good solid blog posts, but I had to start SEO and work more on it than on my actual blog.

I started writing blog posts that you could say, reader-wise, they were subpar. I tried to write the articles to be a good read, but more importantly I placed important keywords strategically into each article. Sometimes it made the articles look or sound a little funny to a casual reader, but I had to see if this ‘SEO’ stuff would work. From everything I’d heard, I figured it would take a couple weeks or even months to tell. But the first night, I saw one of the SEO’d articles I wrote get listed in Google in the Top 10 for a particular keyword in less than two hours. And that is what hooked me in and signaled the beginning of my quest to learn how to SEO blogs, websites, and bend the Internet to my will.

Not long after this discovery, I started working on backlinks. I’d heard that backlinds were the key to getting ranked well in SEO. Certain types of backlinks help more than others. I didn’t know exactly what I was doing, but I knew in general that just getting links was going to help. So I started e-mailing everyone I could in the RPG Bloggers Network and asked for reciprocal links. It took a lot of time and effort, but I got about a dozen in the first day or so.

From Day 1, I’ve wanted to get my blog to the top of Google’s list for the word, Roleplaying. It is why I named my blog RoleplayingPro. I did have one highly linked to article that was floating on the fourth or fifth page for the word roleplaying, but not my actual primary blog address. But after I got a dozen or so of those backlinks locked in, RoleplayingPro.com was firmly planted at rank 35 and 36 for the keyword, “Roleplaying”. Sure, it was more than just those backlinks, because I’d been accumulating them for the past nine months or so. But that day was the day that finally pushed me over the hump. I felt like I was finally on my way.

I began looking into other methods of creating backlinks, like Squidoo and Hubpages. I’m also looking towards creating a second roleplaying site similar to RoleplayingPro. It would cover the same topics, build up page rank and keyword authority, and hopefully I could use it to bounce off and give link juice to other websites of mine, creating a full network of roleplaying related websites.

That is pretty much where I am at now. The blog is nine months old. We’re hovering around 170-180 RSS subscribers. I feel free to offer great content to our readers. But I also feel free to work on building the website and making it rise in the search engines. At this point, I’d almost like to pick up a third writer to work with John and go completely full time into SEO’ing and promoting the site. I doubt that will happen but we’ll see. RoleplayingPro.com has a bright future. It’s already come further than I thought it would come. And I can’t wait to see what kind of roleplaying future awaits RoleplayingPro.

Related Article: Everything I Know About Roleplaying, I Learned From D&D