Hello everyone.. I've been working on this game development tutorials blog for almost 1.4 years. Most on my posts are related to shaders & mechanics such as inventory, path finding, ocean shaders/buoyancy system, platformer game tutorials and so on. And im writing more of them. But I doubt if my work is quality & should i continue it or not. As my initial thoughts were to make the blog self sufficient enough so it pays its hosting & domain, but since i am not earning anything, will it be a good idea to leave it? I suspect my quality might be an issue, so i need honest feedback on it.
Need feedback if I should continue my Godot tutorials blog or not
Can you add a feature to the blog that lets people provide feedback, and a note asking them to say whether they find it useful?
mujtaba-io As my initial thoughts were to make the blog self sufficient enough so it pays its hosting & domain
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for almost 1.4 years.
Ha-ah. I have two tutorials that haven't brought in half a guilder or even a quarter of a dinar in two years.
Although they are definitely working (I use them myself in my work) and there was positive feedback.
I know someone who has made nothing in 10 years(!) of developing free games.
but since i am not earning anything, will it be a good idea to leave it?
It's a philosophical question. There is no guarantee of making money.
DaveTheCoder Can you add a feature to the blog that lets people provide feedback, and a note asking them to say whether they find it useful?
It's not a guarantee at all.
mujtaba-io
First things first:
- dark background
- categorized navigation
xyz I can add these right away.
Tomcat yess i understand.. there is no guarantee.. i thought providing good value to readers will at least make the site self-sufficient and pay its hosting.
DaveTheCoder I have a comment section enabled at the bottom, but I never recieved any comment, I dont know why... maybe very few people scroll down to the bottom of the page..
mujtaba-io I can add these right away.
While I like the dark theme too, ideally it might be good to make the option to choose, to switch.
i thought providing good value to readers will at least make the site self-sufficient and pay its hosting.
Alas. People don't appreciate free stuff.
I have a comment section enabled at the bottom, but I never recieved any comment, I dont know why...
I've encountered a situation where comments were not accepted — it wasn't set up correctly. But it seems to work here.
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mujtaba-io Next:
Your body text typeface looks like it's a bold, and the size is too big. Use something more standard. If you don't have a better idea, use the font this text is written in or the font from Godot's documentation.
With the light on dark color schemes, it's often good to set the text color slightly off-white to avoid harsh contrast. The amount of off-whiteness depends on how dark is your background. Try to make it pleasant to read.
Section headlines are also too big. Use smaller font size and you can tint it in some light but more chromatic color to make them stand out a bit. Also there should be more vertical space before a headline than it is after it, so it gravitates toward the body text it announces. You currently have the same amount of space before and after.
Use bold, italic or slight colorization to emphasize names (scenes, data types, files etc...) in the body text.
Make sure that your Godot's UI skin colors play nice with your website colors (currently they don't)
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xyz You have quite a bit of content there, which is not immediately apparent by looking at the front page. Consider presenting more of it by organizing thumbnails in a grid. Captions/headlines may for example be written inside images (on the bottom ) or below images. Use the most attractive image (or even its detail) from each project for the thumbnail.
If english is not your native language, run your texts by an ai proof reader before publishing.
Eliminate all dead or otherwise non-functioning links.
Some articles look like stubs. Not sure you want to publish them like this.
Try to get more indepth with topics you cover. This will provide more value to your readers and they will more likely engage via comments or sharing.
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A couple more tips that didn't work for me, but maybe you'll have better luck. (I mean, it definitely got more page visits, but didn't bring in any money.) Talk about yourself on game related sites. Like here now. Put your games on itch.io.
…and maybe my eyesight is bad, but even disabling the ad blocker I didn't see on the site, and where can money be carried?
@xyz yess this is great advice. content mostly is hidden and only accessable through deeply looking into 'all posts' page, and i'll improve it as well. -- @Tomcat yess i posted some tutorials here & got some views from it, and i'll definitely take your advice. and, adsense is enabled but i dont know why ads did not show...
i'm really grateful because you guys are so helpful. i initially got some downvotes for posting my tutoriasl on reddit, so i though more people will find it unpleasant. thank you guys!
mujtaba-io and, adsense is enabled but i dont know why ads did not show...
I don't mean ads, I just didn't see a “donate” button.
i initially got some downvotes for posting my tutoriasl on reddit
If you don't get spit on on Reddit right away, you can call it a success.
It is not visually appealing and looks dated. Consider checking out other successful tutorial sites then learn to replicate their design then add your "flavor" to it. Honestly as long as it is easily navigated and looks up to date, I wouldn't waste time to mess around with site design too much. Just use available theme you like and just change logo, colors etc.. Remember that people comes for your contents.
If you want to make money off blogging then you have to do a lot of social networking, marketing, seo, even put money to advertise. How about keep doing it as a developing journal for yourself.
but i'll work on it as well- Edited
If you want to make the site "prettier", Google provides a wide assortment of free tools and resources: https://material.io/
This video includes an overview on using that site:
The video is part of the Google course "Android Basics with Compose", which uses Android Studio, but the tools on the site can be used more generally.
mujtaba-io just added a donate button.
Since I don't have a positive outcome, my suggestions should be treated very skeptically. But some considerations seem reasonable to me.
- It is desirable to make several payment options. You live in a freer country than I do and have more choices: Buy Me a Coffee (not available in my country) and Ko-fi. Patreon can be inconvenient in that it has a subscription format.
- People live in different environments and the price on Patreon may not seem too humane to some. It is probably better to break it down into tiers and offer a lower price at the first tier.
- As you already have a few games, you can publish them on Patreon and itch.io (with a link to the relevant tutorials) at intervals of a week to a month and thus be visible in the news for a while.
Lots of nice tutorials there! Thank you!! I personally like the look. And now I found the donate button. Is this a montly subscription only on Patreon?
Perhaps a good idea to also add a Paypal-Button or other options (as Tomcat mentioned).
Thought about putting a little introductory text on top about you and that you also appreciate donations? I see you have a nice "About me" with all that but it's quite hidden at the bottom.
in this day and age, you better add decentralized wallet address too.. why should peoples pay corpo tax?