When was the last time a game took you by surprise? A game that wasn’t even on your radar and you had barely acknowledged as being out there – suddenly you’re playing it (or reading about it) and you stop and think ‘wow, this is really something special’. I find that we tend to research these purchases far more than we research anything else we spend money on, and that tends to leave us reluctant to splurge on something we’re not 100% sure about.
I don’t look into many of my games before buying them. I sign up for humblebundle monthly just so that I get a surprise selection of games I’ve never heard of each month, and in those bundles there’s usually one or two REALLY neat ones that catch my attention.
Yoku’s Island Express is one such game. It came from the latest humblebundle and I had never heard of it before. It released May 2018, so it has been out a while.
The reason I love it is because I’m a sucker for pinball games. That’s right folks, I LOVE pinball. Rollers of the Realm? I was all over that one. Yoku’s Island Express uses pinball mechanics and it’s just an absolutely beautiful game. One I typically wouldn’t have even given the time of day, because lets face it it’s niche and none of my friends have played it.
So what are your surprise games? Ones that you had never heard of that just caught you off guard. Let me know in comments, and as always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.
Besides participating in Blaugust and tossing a mentor-esc post or two (or more) about that in here for the month, I also have a few set goals I’d like to acomplish gaming-wise. I’m currently playing World of Warcraft and Minecraft – minecraft is the bedrock edition with some friends, WoW I’m playing on both the Hyjal and Argent Dawn servers (Horde vs. Alliance). I’d like a weekly goal to complete the Celestial Tournament in WoW, along with the various battle pet dungeons so I can finish collecting the pets that come from those instances. I’m also keeping up with my auction house runs, I have a character on each account doing that at the moment.
I’m hoping to finish collecting the pets from the two latest zones, I think I’ve gotten all of the ones from the under water one, now I just need to finish the mech zone. It’s a smaller zone and easier to navigate for sure.
In minecraft I’m working on building myself a castle and then some farms. I’d like to find some cats and explore the latest update since I’ve never played the default game before.
I’d also like to make my way through some of my steam library. I have so many games that I’ve never played before, and since I subscribe to the monthly humble bundle I’m always gaining more, too. I started off by playing ‘Cinders‘ which is really quite beautiful even though it released back in 2012. It’s a visual novel where you make choices and follow a certain well known fairy tale and make decisions that can change the way you might remember the story. I purchased it for the artwork, and have zero regrets. So far the tale has been well done, and I can’t wait to see what my next decision will be. Empathetic? Make my sisters suffer? Depends on my mood.
As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.
I’m going to start this post off by saying that there’s a pretty hefty stigma concerning monetizing your blog. A lot of people don’t believe in it, don’t want it, and don’t appreciate those who do. That’s perfectly OK, we’re all allowed to do as we wish with our little areas of the internet – but this post is for those who DO want to monetize so I’d appreciate any comments left being useful to that line of thought.
I have no issue posting advertisements on my site. I’ve done it for years, and it helps pay for things like hosting costs and domain names. Writing is a hobby for me and if I don’t make any money off of it that’s OK too, but I’d rather have those costs taken care of.
One important thing I learned from the get-go was to be reachable. You can find an email address on my mail sidebar for contact information so that any prospective advertisers can reach me. I get a handful of emails every month with requests, and I answer every one of them. I don’t always say yes, but I’ll get into details about that a bit later on. So if you’re looking for people to reach out to you, make sure they can.
Consistency is another key factor. You’ll want to be making regular posts, showing up in google searches, and all that good stuff. I don’t do anything special for this in regards to my own site, but it may be something you want to focus on.
You don’t HAVE to say yes – but it sure doesn’t hurt to listen to the pitch. Over the years I’ve heard a few different ones, but the most common I get is:
A post they write (sometimes they’ll pay more if you write the post), with a link or two to their product/site (gambling sites are pretty common), that’s relevant to your site (in my case, gaming). You leave it up as a regular post, sometimes for a set duration, and basically just forget about it. I’ve received anywhere from $75-250USD per post. I have a set amount of money that I’ll accept in these cases, and I turn them down if they’re not willing to meet my fee. I used to feel bad about accepting these paid advertisements – but honestly, it hasn’t affected my traffic and I haven’t seen any negative effects. In my top years I would have 1-2 a month, with lots of posts spacing them out.
I used to get requests for sidebar advertisements, or a page with a listed donor / sponsor, but these have become pretty far and few between over the years.
Occasionally I’ll get a request to test a product or to check something out. One year it was a VPN service, and I have no problems writing a review about something. I make sure to mention that I’ve gotten the product for free (even though it is not currently law here in Canada) just for honesty sake. Again, it’s just an advertised or sponsored post here and there that doesn’t interrupt the natural flow of my site – you’ll have to figure out what works for you, and try to blend it seamlessly.
We feel bad about a lot of stuff in life, and we tend to be really harsh critics of ourselves. I used to try to hide any advertisements that I was getting towards my blog, but honestly, I’m proud that I’ve managed to make a bit of side cash from it. As long as I’m not passing viruses or negative vibes to any readers (be sure to check out the links yourself, safely, before any linking occurs!) a post here and there is hardly a cause for concern.
It is almost August, and with it comes Blaugust. I’ve signed up as a mentor, and I’ll be making some posts throughout the month for those beginner bloggers, those thinking about starting, or even veterans who are not sure what they want to do. Hopefully someone finds them useful, and if not at least I’ve had a good time posting and working towards my personal goal of posting every day for 2019.
Onward!
This site used to be called MmoQuests, and I kept that name for a very long time (12 years or so). It was the first rendition of my blog, and I chose the name based on what I was writing about at the time, which happened to be EverQuest / EverQuest II – along with many many quests. As the years went on I started to feel that the name of the site was no longer relevant. It started to bother me. I would avoid blogging, and I wasn’t feeling inspired.
I made the decision last year to change to NomadicGamersEh – bringing my love of all kinds of gaming to the forefront (as well as the fact that me and my family are Canadian gamers). I felt MUCH better about the site, and I didn’t feel constrained to write about quests, or mmos. I know it was just a name and I could always write about whatever I wanted, but it felt like an invisible wall pressing down on me. I knew I’d have to make my way back to search functions, tell my audience (what little I have) about the change, get other sites to update their links but I was pretty sure the end result would be worth it.
I have no regrets about changing the name. Since the change I’ve been writing more often, and I don’t feel the old restrictions. I spend a lot of time writing about knitting and fiber arts, even though it says ‘gamers’ in the title. I feel like my site can grow with me, especially as my children grow up. Whether it was all in my head or not I just wasn’t feeling happy about the site, and even though change is pretty scary, I’m really glad I took that jump forward.
If your blog isn’t exciting you any more try to pinpoint why. Do you feel that invisible wall stopping you from making a post because you don’t feel like you have anything relevant to say? Maybe it’s just time to make a little change.
Don’t know what Blaugust is? Well, it’s a community event where you attempt a few goals in regards to blogging. It could be blog every day, blog on weekends, write about a specific topic, something that challenges you. This will be the 6th year that I’ve had the pleasure of participating in Blaugust, and I’m pretty excited because so far in 2019 I’ve managed a blog post every single day. Now, you might not want to blog every day – and that’s great, but I had started this blog back in 2006 and absolutely loved writing – then I had kids, and suddenly my 20-30 posts a month became 5 and sometimes even less than that. Now that my children are 3 and 1 I want to be able to devote more time towards those things I used to do and remind myself that I’m not JUST a Mom. I’m blogging every day to prove to myself that I can do it, because I enjoy it.
You can find all of the details about Blaugust over on Belghast’ site. There’s also a discord set up to share posts, share ideas, and just generally mingle and get to know your fellow bloggers. Have you never had one before but always wanted to start one? We can help. Need some motivation? Look no further. To help out there is everything from a colourful schedule to a media kit, and I promise, no one bites.
stargrace 
