One Year of Blogging - Lessons Learned
I’ve been writing this blog for a year now, and along the way, I’ve learned a few things.
These are just my observations, what’s worked for me, what I’m proud of, and what I’m excited to explore.
But before all of that, let’s take a look at the numbers.
Top posts by # of reads
Making Board Games Your Business (2,230)
Now Accepting Submissions (2,206)
The Anatomy of a Card (1,580)
Finding My Voice
I’ve always enjoyed writing and sharing insights into what I’ve learned. I wrote Magic: The Gathering strategy articles, wrote reports as a Wall Street Analyst, and in college worked as a tutor and a middle school science teacher.
The blog felt like a natural extension of that predisposition.
I knew I wanted to contribute content that added to the discussion and presented a new angle. Which is why I steered away from general board game discussion and review - where I don’t feel I have a lot to add that is differentiated - and for the most part haven’t focused much on game design (although I do from time to time talk design theory).
My favorite articles to write, and the ones that perform the best fall into two categories
Deep dives into topics that aren’t covered as extensively elsewhere
Topics where I present a unique approach
Proving Competency
One of the biggest challenges with the blog, and ultimately largest successes, has been proving competency. After all, we’re a new company (Kickstarting our first game in June), and there was rightfully some skepticism around my opinions, and ideas.
Some of that skepticism was and - more rarely still is - expressed in negative or hurtful ways. But, it’s taught me a very important lesson.
I had to write content the fox could be proud of
We need to prove our competency and professionalism in every piece of content we put out. We don’t have a back catalogue of successful games, sales, and reviews. And often the first interaction someone has with us is when they first see one of our articles (80% of our total site visits are from unique IP addresses).
This has fostered a sense of rigor, has encouraged me to do that extra bit of research, and at the end of the day has, I believe, made us a better publisher.
I think it has also built trust with the communities we interact with, and share our content with, regularly. Our friends and peers on Facebook and Reddit know who we are, what we’re trying to build, and the resources and effort we’ve put behind the company.
The Future of The Blog
I’m excited to continue to evolve the blog and have a couple of new areas that I want explore. Hopefully you’ll find them as interesting as I do.
Transparency
One of our central goals is to increase transparency in board game publishing in order to help future designers bring their games to market, and help board game enthusiasts make better, more educated, decisions around who and what they support.
As we launch our Kickstarter for Nut Hunt, I’ll have a lot of on the ground insight with hard numbers around what worked, what didn’t, what it cost, and how it was implemented. I’m really excited to share breakdowns on our campaign economics and the nitty gritty of everything from marketing, to video content, to manufacture, to fulfillment.
Acknowledge the Diaspora
I think a weakness of a lot of board game publishing content is that we often don’t acknowledge the vast range of what it means to publish a game, and the range of skills and capital investment different designers and publishers have available for their projects.
Plains by Chippy for Magic: The Gathering somehow felt appropriate here (plus it’s one of my favorite game arts of all time)
Advice that is excellent for one segment of creator might not be applicable to another – or in the worst case, might even be harmful.
I’ve tried to touch on the diaspora in a few of my posts by presenting different business models with a range of monetary investment. But, I think there’s still plenty of space to explore through this lens. Everything from making prototypes, how to advertise, and whether crowdfunding is the best way to come to market.
A Guide to Follow
So far, the blog has been a bit of a scattershot of topics. I find something interesting to latch onto, do my homework, and share it. Often it mirrors what I’m working on for the company, but just as often it’s inspired by a random tidbit I recently read or saw.
My ultimate goal for the blog is for it to be a resource for designers and prospective publishers who are starting in on their journey.
So, I want to be more thoughtful around how I organize my thoughts, and the topics that I cover.
Especially once we have further social proof through a successful crowdfunding campaign or two, I think we’ll be well positioned to write more content as guides for new creators, and reflections on our process and how we would approach it if we had a do-over with the benefit of hindsight and all the knowledge we picked up along the way.
Who are your favorite board game publishing content creators?
