One of the sites I really like is Rock, Paper Shotgun as it’s more of a less commerical webzine but still more ‘professional’ than an amatuer blog. The four writers are all British freelance writers (Kieron Gillen writes some big named Marvel comies for instance) and they contribute to the site to not only make a bit of extra cash but also write excellent and humorous articles.

And I’m right there with you. I really enjoy my job, but writing is one those ways I’ve always defined myself. I don’t expect it to be easy, nor do I expect it to be quick. I do expect it to be possible.

My thing, though, is that I’ve had Adsense ads on just my post pages. And my traffic is pretty consistent, and I thought I got a few pennies for impressions, but on my analytics page, I am seeing whole weeks going by without any revenue being earned and then a day or so that “spiked” into a dollar or two. I guess those are from clicks, but I wonder about the impression conversion rate.

Makes more sense now!

The whole monetization subject is a tricky one. Can people make decent money from MMORPG blogs? Honestly I’m not sure because it’s such a niche genre although, then again, I’m see for-profit sites like MMORPG.com and Massively and I assume they make a reasonable income. It’s never going to be easy though and first and foremost the writing should always come first. I couldn’t write a blog almost ever day of the week if I didn’t love the subject material.

One of the problems of our “niche” is that we don’t have a product to really ebook up and sell. Like you said, monetization is often looked down on based on the negativity associated with RMT and microtransactions. Sure, we have themed posts that could tie together into a single volume, and I guess we could work them together and make a sellable product, but would that work? I’m not so sure. Such is the life of any arts/humanities lover trying to make a living doing anything related to what we’re good at/love. If you ever need a partner putting an ebook together about MMOs (or anything else for that matter), let me know. I’d love to collaborate on something like that.

I did a cost analysis last week, actually, of what I would need to be able to sell to make a living selling nothing but Kindle ebooks of my fiction. I don’t know if I’ll ever be /able/ to do that, but it’s a fun exercise nonetheless.

The one thing I still struggle with is just getting my blog out there. Monetization or not, I want people to read, enjoy, and discuss what I write. Like I said a while back with you via email (to which I still need to reply–I’m bad people! I’m sorry!), I feel I’ve hit a plateau and very much would love to get new people involved with my blog.

I think you did it the right way, though; you made the site pretty. Until recently, I was unhappy with how my blog looked. With the redesign I did this week, I found that I am much happier sending people there as it looks like a legitimate piece of cyperspace now (in all browsers, I hope! Heh).

But I think I’ve rambled long enough.