When I first changed what I wanted to write about on my blog I knew I wanted it to be about gaming and tech, I also wanted to keep the lifestyle aspect because my blog is very personal to me and to be able to speak honestly about my life and everything that I love was something I refused to stop doing, but I was so unsure what to do with gaming or what I wanted to speak about so I chose to speak about the things I was passionate about in terms of raising awareness such as disabilities and sexism with reviews of games I have played in the mix, one day a friend said why don't you apply for game codes to review on your blog because gaming can become a very expensive hobby and your reviews are great. I was clueless about how to approach doing this and carried on writing about games I already owned so I would at least have a fair amount of reviews to show to PRs when I approached them about writing about an up and coming game but when it came to emailing games PRs I would often get ignored, I understand why I would get ignored, to be honest, and a lot of it has to do with the vast amount of people who apply to review games, so I would never bare a grudge against them for this. I still carried on pitching and emailing until one day a PR emailed me back and told me to sign up to a site called Gamespress, which has all the latest news and press releases for games, it's a fantastic site for those who want to start up a gaming news website and also provides details of PRs for certain games.
My coverage for Terminals so far (I have more reviews to complete)
I use Gamespress a fair amount still, and often find it's the best place for me to find out gaming news as soon as it's announced rather than waiting for a gaming news site to publish it, even emailing PRs through them was a bit daunting, but one time I emailed a PR interested in reviewing a game and they said sure why not sign up to Terminals and apply this way and that is where the doors to game reviewing opened for me, I was very nervous about applying for codes for games as I was convinced that I wouldn't get anywhere but this year alone I have been sent 8 gaming codes to review via Terminals and seeing as we are just over halfway through this year that's pretty good for someone who applied for games not too long ago and the great thing about Terminals is that they accept blogs like mine so long as you have your own domain which is one thing I think is very important because I feel that since having my own domain I have been taken more seriously.
What I do want to make clear here is there are a lot of people who have emailed me and messaged me that I don't know (I don't mind friends doing this so much though) demanding I get them a game code or that I tell them how they can get them for free and they have no intention of reviewing the game they just want something for nothing and it's completely the wrong way to go about these things, as a content creator I work very hard on the content I put out there especially when it came to upping my views, in December of 2016 they dropped dramatically as I wasn't well and hadn't been writing any posts but since then my views have doubled and I have more people than every reading my content because of the hard work I put in.
I have a few tips that I personally feel help when it comes to being taken more seriously and being accepted to review games:
- Most important one have content to show before applying to review a game, that way people can see what your writing style is like and how you rate games.
- If you have written elsewhere previously about gaming show your work off in a tab in your menu, the fact that I wrote elsewhere gave me a good advantage.
- A good clear layout keeps the focus on what is written on the blog/website, back when I started I had so many things in the sidebars that became distracting and people weren't staying on my page long enough to read my content.
- If you're not the best at grammar use the free version of Grammarly, it can help you more than you ever know and make your posts sound more professional.
- Review a game fairly, if you disliked it review it in a constructive way, remember developers worked hard on the games and if you want to be able to review more games slagging off developers isn't the best way to go about it.
- Post at least once a week on your blog/website
If you don't get accepted on Terminals due to not having a domain there are other places to apply such as Keymailer who are very similar but honestly I still prefer Terminals, I like that I can add my coverage to the site so they can see what I have reviewed without me having to email them the review which is what I still do when it comes to sponsored posts on here. I can't take all of the credit for applying for games as a few times now my friends have tagged me in posts about games developers looking for reviewers which I'm so thankful for! One of my close friends Jamie actually introduced me to the developers for Omensight (Spearhead Games) and told them I would love to review their game they sent me a code that same day via Twitter messages so in a way I also think it comes down to who you know and it's important to make good relationships with not only PRs but also the developers who worked on these games. I haven't yet been sent a physical game copy of a game but that doesn't bother me too much as I have lots of digital games I buy over getting a physical game
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