Gaming as a whole is a huge industry and it attracts a wide audience in terms of demography, age group and location all around the globe. The ease of starting a gaming content website has contributed to this popularity. The information can be presented online in the form of game reviews, gaming event information, e-commerce shops and products, blogs and vlogs, streaming communities and countless more formats. Creating a website that accommodates gaming content is easier than ever with the use of gaming niche WordPress themes and plugins.
Let’s see 3 examples of how you can start a successful and potentially profitable content site within the gaming niche.
#1 How to create a gaming community magazine site
Discussion driven sites around a certain topic can provide perpetual source of content. That’s one of the reasons that the number of community driven magazine websites are on the rise. Gamer online communities are vibrant and there are plenty of web services that cater for these groups. Just to mention a few – there is the Discord app, Steam’s community, thousands of gaming related Facebook groups and even Reddit is stuffed with gamer specific subreddits (for example r/PatientGamers is a good one). Some of the largest gaming online magazines also have community sections such brands like Game Informer, PC Gamer Club, My IGN and so on.
To get started creating a community focused content site you will need to choose the right WordPress theme and suitable plugins to go with.
Adding the community functionality
Plugins will add functional bits and you want to choose a good one for the social/community part. There are many solutions. Some people swear on forum plugin which I find a little bit old-school and dated. Others recommend using plugins like Buddypress which add capabilities to your site for registering profiles, having discussion walls and groups and messaging. In general, Buddypress is good but the lack of product updates and development behind this plugin always put me off from using it. Certain theme authors develop their own functionality for the community parts that includes member profiles, rating system, badges, clan and match templates, leaderboards, achievements and content submission system.
Top suggestion of gaming community WordPress themes:
- PlayerX – A High-powered Theme for Gaming and eSports
- Arcane – The Gaming Community Theme
- BoomBox – Viral Magazine WordPress Theme (although not gaming specific, this theme has all the functionality to create a good social magazine site on any niche, the post reaction system and the Zombify plugin for community is really comprehensive)
#2 Build an iGaming and poker review site
An often overlooked segment of gaming is “iGaming” or more commonly referred to as gambling. It represents a massively lucrative part of the market and the majority of this industry moved to the online business arena a good decade ago now. Needless to say that many websites are targeting this audience and the WordPress products catering for them are more sought after than even.
Apart from online casino games and sports betting, the next on the popularity ladder is Online Poker. The infamous card game is known and played by millions and it’s probably the biggest in the US out of all countries. The multi-million dollar prize tournaments have attracted international attention throughout the past 2 decades. The huge personalities that players have built up for themselves turned the image of poker into a cash making career possibility in gaming.
To find good poker rooms online you need good and honest information. That’s why trustworthy poker review sites like BeathTheFish has an important role so members of the poker gaming community can read about the best sites to play poker at from the US and globally.
If you were going to build a WordPress site in the poker niche I recommend looking into these themes:
- iGaming WP specialist providers like VegasHero.co
- you could also do a keyword search for “poker” on ThemeForest – Mercury theme is decent there and it has a poker demo.
The content opportunities within the poker world include writing about upcoming tournaments, publishing about bonuses and reviews of US poker sites, writing about poker strategies, related news and so on.
#3 Create a gaming live-streaming site
Climbing interest towards eSports, console games and the appearance of new video-streaming sites like Twitch sparked a new wave for live-streaming content. Many streamers make a decent living from playing games and showing their gameplay live and acting as a host of a one person broadcast show. Youtube is obviously the main place for live video content and Facebook providers a platform for gamers to stream too but rapid changes of the terms of use on these giants always make channel owners wonder if they should diversify their online presence elsewhere.
However there’s always a risk that a third-party provider takes down your channel so it’s common that these streamers form a group and build their own website where they are in total control of what is published and who they are showing it to – especially if the website has its own members section. The smart thing to do is to send traffic to your own website from the large streaming networks and grow your own little community of audience.
If you wanted to create a live-streaming content site you should probably choose a functional theme that provides options for video players, media content and live-broadcasts. Some of the best choices are:
- GoodGame – Twitch Integrated WordPress Gaming News Magazine
- PixieHuge – eSports Gaming Theme For Clans & Organizations
In Summary
There are a myriad of ways to making a content website in the gaming niche, the possibilities are literally endless. It’s a growing space that appeals to many and that what makes it so hot on the web. Most of the content is digital which is easily consumed and purchased on the internet, so its checking the ease of accessibility box on any webmaster’s list.
The tools provided by WordPress developers are very comprehensive to built a quality website and even without much coding knowledge you can literally just “add good content” (and that’s important – hence the saying “content is king”) and you set yourself up for success.
