An Update About Me

This post is an update about my blogging, game design, and financial status. It won't interest you at all.

Last June I decided to give some combination of game design and/or blogging a chance. I quit technical writing with a few months of money in the bank.

As far as game design goes, it's harder than you think. Ideas are ridiculously easy; and even making a basic game from an idea is easy. It's knowing when to stop and try the game out that's hard. I haven't seriously given it the attention that it deserves.

The guys with the license to Hebrew Apples to Apples asked me to make them cards and promised to pay me for each card that I made and which they accepted. I made several hundred red and green cards, but haven't succeeded in getting in touch with them, even though they wanted it done by last September. I think they might be scatterbrained, or just very heavily busy.

As far as blogging goes, there are several ways to earn money from blogging, one of which is to hire yourself out as a corporate blogger. The day that I quite my technical writing job I got an offer to be a corporate blogger for an online entertainment site. Unfortunately, they had no clue as to what a blogger really does, and I didn't know enough to tell them before I started working. As a result, that didn't last more than two months.

I got another corporate blogging job right after that one, this time for an online game site. With my new experience I ensured that they knew what I wanted to do before they hired me. It all sounded good on paper, and I was promised that I would start blogging as soon as the site was up.

Unfortunately, I was told that the site would be up every two weeks, only to discover after two weeks that it would be another two weeks. In the meantime I was asked to do marketing material, web content, letters to potential partners, Power Point presentations, and so on. All of which I could do but basically detested.

After four months of this, I quit. Even as I was quitting I was told that I shouldn't quit because I would be blogging Real Soon Now. Well, it's eight weeks later and they still don't have a real web site up.

Now I'm back to where I was when I first quit technical writing. I have enough in the bank for a few months. I have this blog which doesn't look like it's ever going to earn massive amounts of money because it's too unfocused and not in a high paying niche. Right now it makes about $100 a month from ads and affiliate income plus a few free games and a lot of nice friends and contacts. No donations.

I have a new blog on game news, Purple Pawn, which I want to build into a kind of 1UP/Boing Boing for tabletop games, if I can just get a few more editors and then start getting some inbound links; I've got a few guys helping me right now who are doing a great job.

I have to pursue the Hebrew Apples to Apples just to put it at rest. And I have to look for more corporate blogging jobs.

I just need to prioritize: I'll concentrate on some game designs and a few good articles for this blog. Then I'll look for corporate blogging positions. If I don't get one by Passover, I'll go back to technical writing.

Yehuda