I Posted A Blog Once A Week For A Year, Here’s What Happened - 2025

By JimmiWazEre

Opinionated tabletop gaming chap

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TL;DR:

I posted (approx) once a week for all of 2025 and Domain of Many Things pulled in 35,000 visitors. A handful of posts went big on Reddit, but the real long-term wins came from evergreen content that steadily attracts readers via Google. Search traffic is finally compounding, Reddit is increasingly not worth the stress, and affiliate links proved to be a small but real revenue source (£50 since May). The biggest personal gains were clearer thinking about TTRPG design, improved home games, and learning what kind of writing actually sustains me. 2026 is about writing ahead, being more deliberate with promotion, and figuring out whether monetisation like Patreon makes sense at all.

Introduction

That has got to be one of the most clickbaity sounding titles I’ve ever written, but it’s accurate I promise!

This is my 2025 roundup for Domain of Many Things covering what the numbers looked like, and what I learned from sticking to one post a week. At the end, I’ll do a short Q&A and if you’ve got extra questions, throw them in the comments and I’ll answer there too.

The Year in Numbers

Jumping right in at the beefy end then: According to my Squarespace analytics, DoMT has had 35,000 visitors in all of 2025, which works out on average to be about 2,900 per month. This is a bit misleading though, because when I started this blog in January 2025, I closed the month on a whopping 305 visits, whereas in July, when I turned out 3 of my most popular posts, I pulled in 6,237 views.

So it’s fairer to say that since May, I’ve been rocking roughly 4,000 visits per month on average. For a one-person hobby blog, I reckon that’s a real audience rather than a handful of mates being polite, and I’m supremely grateful to each of you for your patronage.

Speaking Of Popular Posts…

These are the 10 most popular posts that have brought in the most traffic since going live in 2025:

Views | Post Title

4454 | 11 TTRPG Ideas So Cool You’ll Want Them in Every Game

3348 | D&D’s Best Intro Campaign? I Ran Lost Mine of Phandelver For My Group

2344 | 6 Games That Nail What Rules-Lite TTRPGs Should Be

1971 | Very Belatedly, The Monster Overhaul Is The Best Damned ‘Monster Manual’ I’ve Read

1906 | Combat in Mothership rpg really doesn’t have to be complicated

1471 | The Rusted Colossus 03: | How To Prepare Room Descriptions in 4 Steps

1096 | Chariot of the Gods for Alien RPG: Wot I Think After Running It

1088 | What Do You Think Happened? A Game Changing Plug and Play Mystery Mechanic From Brindlewood Bay

957  | The Seven Elements of West Marches Play

882  | The Easiest TTRPG Crafting System You’ll Ever Use (and Actually Enjoy)

One thing I’ve learned quickly: raw views can be misleading. Some posts spike hard (usually because Reddit notices them), then flatline. Others quietly bring in readers every day for months.

To get a better sense of “evergreen” performance, here’s the same list as views per day:

V/D | Post Title

23.9 | D&D’s Best Intro Campaign? I Ran Lost Mine of Phandelver For My Group

19.1 | 11 TTRPG Ideas So Cool You’ll Want Them in Every Game

13.5 | 6 Games That Nail What Rules-Lite TTRPGs Should Be

12.3 | Very Belatedly, The Monster Overhaul Is The Best Damned ‘Monster Manual’ I’ve Read

8.6  | The Seven Elements of West Marches Play

6.9  | The Rusted Colossus 03: | How To Prepare Room Descriptions in 4 Steps

6.1  | Chariot of the Gods for Alien RPG: Wot I Think After Running It

5.3  | Combat in Mothership rpg really doesn’t have to be complicated

5.1  | What Do You Think Happened? A Game Changing Plug and Play Mystery Mechanic From Brindlewood Bay

3.3  | The Easiest TTRPG Crafting System You’ll Ever Use (and Actually Enjoy)

The key reshuffle is that Phandelver climbs to #1, Mothership combat drops from #5 to #8, and West Marches jumps from #9 to #5.

So what other insights do I have about this? Well, the Phandelver post was tricky to write, there was a lot to talk about and I was relying upon my memory of a campaign which had spanned many months. Not only that, but if the campaign itself was part of my prep work for this post then the work for this post was huge. That said - I think it paid off for two reasons: I had a real campaign to talk about, and it’s a well known module that people Google every day.

On the flip side, the post on TTRPG mechanics was a joy to write about. It was presented as a listicle, and basically gave me the opportunity to highlight my favourite thing from each of the games on my shelf (at the time). There was barely any prep work required and the post just flowed through me. I had absolutely no expectations that it would go viral on Reddit, and the response totally floored me. I’ve tried to catch that lightning again since, and I’m still not sure what the repeatable ingredients are, if you’ve got a theory, I’m all ears?

I also want to talk about some posts that I wrote in October and December which I really enjoyed and put a lot of effort into -  They didn’t make the top 10 cut but I’m hoping they’ll have evergreen potential, let’s go and fish out their numbers:

What’s in a Core Dice Mechanic? This one pulled in 636 views, at 10.1 per day. Meanwhile, The Five Variables of a Core Dice Mechanic That Matter pulled in 878 absolute views, but at a rate of 19.5 per day.

That’s fantastic news - they didn’t make the top 10 posts because they’ve simply not been live long enough yet to pull in the absolute numbers, but looking at their daily averages as they stand today, they would take the number 2 and number 5 spots had they been old enough. I’m well happy with those, Also: yes, I still need to write the final post in that series.

Traffic Sources

Back in June I did a bit of a midway review of the year so far for the blog, and apart from Reddit, one of my key gripes at the time was that Google was basically pushing nothing my way. Things have changed a lot since then. It took until July, but from then on Google gave me month on month increases in visitors. Nothing to retire over ofcourse (That’ll be next year - I’m sure) but definitely great signs I’m heading the right way:

Month | Traffic From Search Engines 

Jul | 165

Aug | 432

Sep | 654

Oct | 950

Nov | 1215

Dec | 1317

The big win here is that search traffic appears to be starting to compound, slow at first, then noticeably month by month. Long may this continue!

However, as Google was picking up, my appetite for Reddit was dropping. I’m genuinely grateful for the early boost, but it was anxiety inducing. Some posts did very well, but it felt like most sank - and then when the wrong kind of person showed up being an arse, then it could sour my whole association. The lesson for me there was that I can’t build motivation on a platform that rewards chaos and hostility. At least, not with my current level of Reddit-foo.

Anyway, thanks to Google (eugh that feels dirty to say), I’m not so reliant upon Reddit now for views, and I don’t really have to share much over there anymore. Never say never ofcourse, if I think one of my posts will truly do well then I might brave back into those murky waters again, but for now I’m happier without that toxicity and anxiety.

Moolah, or Rather - The Lack Of It!

As you all know, a guiding value for me with DoMT is that I’m very much against the enshittification of (everything) the internet. That means that this website will continue to operate (probably at a loss hohoho) without any banner ads, popups, paywalled content, or paid for reviews. That said, I’m not against money - I’m particularly fond of eating and being able to pay my bills after all!

Well, if obnoxious advertising and selling my integrity are out of the question, then that leaves me with only a few options for generating revenue: Affiliate sales, where if I talk about a game, I’ll generally chuck an affiliate link up to DTRPG, PayPal donations, and capitalising on my growing brand in order to develop and sell something.

Since I don’t have enough of a brand, or a big enough community behind me, or even anything to sell - that last one’s out. Additionally, no one has made any PayPal donations to me this year either. Times are clearly hard for everyone - but if you wanna buy me a New Year’s pint, you go right ahead, link’s in the footer!

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, affiliate links have been the only source of revenue so far. Since May I’ve made $71 (That’s about £50 in real money), which won’t pay for anything exciting,  but it does prove that the mechanism works. Who knows - with better placement and better matching, it could become meaningful over time.

And that means it’s definitely going to be worthwhile putting more of an effort into finding affiliate partners, and their respective sales to highlight in posts and in my growing newsletter: the Mailer of Many Things.

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Q&A Time!

As I said at the start, if you have other questions for me, I’d be delighted if you chucked them in the comments BTL, and I’ll answer them there. In the meantime though, here’s some of the things that my imaginary version of you wanted to know:

What surprised you most about running the blog this year - good or bad?

The viral Reddit hits. I’m not social-media-savvy enough to predict what will land, so when Phandelver, Monster Overhaul, and 11 TTRPG Ideas popped off it properly floored me.

If you’ve got a theory on why those did well while others vanished without a trace, please tell me because I’m genuinely curious.

Which post mattered most to you, regardless of traffic or engagement and why?

Hmm it’s a toss-up between my Emergent review and the core mechanics series - for totally different reasons.

With Emergent, that was the first time that I’d solicited an indie dev for them to send me their game in exchange for a fair review. That raised the stakes for me a lot - I owed them a deep dive and I really didn’t want to disappoint them but I still wasn’t going to pull punches. I was so happy to discover that I not only enjoyed reading the game, but that the devs were stoked with my review afterwards. 

With my series on core mechanics, the popularity of them is nice, but really I’d have still codified my thoughts on the subject if it was only for me. I have such a passion for TTRPG mechanics and the different ways they all approach doing similar things, and the differences that those make that just simply getting it all down in writing was extremely cathartic. I’ll be referencing those posts for ages.

Where did the blog underperform, and what do you think the real reason was?

Definitely underperforming in terms of views generated by syndicating to social media. I’ve said it before but I’m not great at Reddit or Bluesky. They can feel like places where you either shout into the void or get dragged for sport. There are myriad others that I could be using too, but it seems like it’d be a full time job for someone with an incredibly thick skin to get the most out of all of them.

Maybe something for 2026 is for me to develop my social media manager skills, there’s definitely a lot of opportunity for growth in that direction that I’m not currently tapping into - If you’ve got a genuinely useful resource for learning social media without turning it into a second job, point me at it.

Also, I’m a little bit gutted that my series on “The Rusted Colossus” dried up. A combination of burning out and distractions lead to that particular project finding its way to my back burner. I hope I can pick it back up again in 2026 - GOZR is a nifty little system, and I feel like it’s criminally underrepresented by modules and online hype! I guess what I discovered there is that long-running personal projects require a different kind of energy than commentary, and I underestimated that.

How has writing regularly changed how you think about the hobby itself?

It’s made me constantly hungry for ideas. I’m forever jotting notes on my phone while I’m playing, reading, or just thinking. Everything is content.

That’s good and bad. It adds a layer of obligation to the hobby… but I’m also learning far more about design than I ever did before, and it’s improved my home games (especially house rules).

If you stopped the blog tomorrow, what would you feel you’d actually gained from it?

I’ve gained practical skills: building a site, sorting email/domain stuff, and just getting comfortable publishing in public.

Bigger than that, I’ve started to see rulesets differently. I’m hunting for elegance and concision now and if I ever write my own game, this year of reading and reviewing will be where I cut my teeth.

To 2026 and beyond!

• One thing I’ll do more of: Writing a backlog so weekly posts don’t feel like last minute homework!

• One thing I’ll stop: Being willfully ignorant of how social media works. I’m going to put a concerted effort into learning what I can about how to do it properly and then I’ll make a decision about how to take that forward.

• One thing I’m unsure about: Patreon. Would you want one, and what would make it worth it for you?

Conclusion

Happy New Year truckers! There’s been ups and downs, but there’s no regrets from me about DoMT. I’m looking forward to its continued growth and expanding the community into 2026. See you on the other side.

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials - it really helps me out and costs you nothing! If you’re super into it and want to make sure you catch more of my content, subscribe to my free monthly Mailer of Many Things newsletter - it really makes a huge difference, and helps me keep this thing running! If you’ve still got some time to kill, Perhaps I can persuade you to click through below to another one of my other posts?

Catch you laters, alligators.

I started a Gaming Blog in Jan 2025. How’s It Going?

By JimmiWazEre

Opinionated Tabletop Gaming Person

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TL;DR: I started a blog in January 2025. It’s been great and occasionally soul-crushing. I’ve learned some things — Us indie creators should stick together.

Intro

Back in January, a mere boy with a dream, I started up Domain of Many Things with next to zero knowledge about creative writing, front end web design, back end website management, SEO, or social media. I did however have a niche in mind where I have a mega passion, and a love of the Alien films and cassette retro aesthetics.

Somewhat inconveniently, I also had some principles! I’m North of 40 and I try to be one of the good guys. I lived through the start of the internet as a teenager, and the wildly optimistic promise that it came with - free at the point of use, democratised information for all, totally unenshittified. I wanted, and still want to offer a community resource that adheres to those values - I’m not here to exploit some easy money out of people.

That means that whilst this is very much a side-hobby with dreams that it might one day pay for itself, I have absolutely no interest in obnoxious banners or popups, no interest in producing zero effort content churned out by LLMs, and no interest in loading my content with vaguely incorporeal SEO terms so that I might please the ever distant and neglectful Internet Lords at Google and friends.

Mostly, I just want to share my ideas and find some meaning in knowing that maybe I brightened someone’s day.

Initial Expectations

Just Lol. On top of a full time day job as a database engineer, I figured that if I turned out one well thought out article a week, the combination of syndicating it on social media, and organic traffic from search engines would give me a decent number of views. Views which I could convert into newsletter subscribers by offering exclusive freebies, and from that self selecting fan base, maybe even earn some affiliate sales to make this thing self sustainable.

As time went on, I’d build a following on social media accounts like BlueSky and Reddit, and form a community that would keep me motivated and inspired, as well as a ready made audience of folks engaging with, liking, and sharing my content.

Let’s review that shall we?

What’s Gone Well

The Website Is An Asset And A Place to Share My Voice

I’m really happy with the website design, especially since I had to learn everything on the fly. Like I’m actually proud of it.

It feels unique and easy to navigate, and thematically nods towards the cool things I enjoy such as retro futurism, pixel graphics, and of course, Alien!

Additionally, I’m pretty happy that the blog has found it’s voice - it feels genuinely me, warts and all - and in a sea of soulless AI generated content and professionalised corporate speak, here’s to hoping I come across as refreshingly human. A little bit of 2002 in your 2025.

I’ve made new connections

I’ve had the huge satisfaction of being able to use this platform as an excuse to speak to game designers I admire, and lend a voice to passion projects that otherwise do not get the attention that they deserve.

I hope that in time I can reach out to other bloggers and build a sub community with those guys - a place to share ideas and support, and make some new mates. That sounds like it would be cool.

Kind Words Have Made My Day

It doesn’t take much, but when a single person takes just a moment to leave me a few kind words about my work, it completely makes my day. I’m not just shouting into the void, I am reaching people.

That’s a great feeling, it costs nothing except kindness, but it fills me with the kind of motivation I need to keep going.

If you’re one of those people that’s said nice things on here, Reddit, Bluesky, or over email - thank you sincerely :)

Month On Month Views

Brace yourself if you didn’t expect super low numbers!!! Buuuut, whilst the graph below shows that I have good months and bad months, my viewership trendline is going in the right direction. That’s probably the most important thing in terms of measuring the health of DMT since everything else is built upon this foundation, so it’s good to know that whilst it may only be rising steadily, it’s still rising.

Mailer of Many Things Subscribers

Mailer of Many Things subs are steadily rising - I love these guys and what their actions say about my work. That they trust me, and enjoy my content enough to make me custodian of their contact details to stay in touch.

These are the folks who’ve slunk (slunked? slinked? …whatever) over to my Subscribers page, left me their email, and then lived happily ever after knowing that they’re never going to miss a post. Be like those guys!

Some major challenges that Younger Naive Me totally did not see coming

Is Google KillING the Indie Web?

Not so long ago, if you’d have Googled “Domain of Many Things“ then this site wouldn’t even be on the first page. Thankfully that seems to have recently changed! However, despite being ‘high’ up the results tree for low volume topics such as “GOZR” and “Mothership RPG”, there’s no sign of this site listing anywhere with a chance of visibility for “D&D House rules” or “TTRPG House rules” - arguably one of the most frequent topics I’ve written about so far.

To give that some meaning, of the 10k visits DMT has had from Jan 25 - mid Jun 25, 9k of them have come from social media referrals, and less than 200 have come from Google and other search engines. Of those 200, a good chunk will be bots, trackers and trawlers.

Add to this the rise of AI-generated summaries on Search Engine Results Pages, which, while arguably consumer-friendly, essentially pull content from sites like mine and present it for free without users ever needing to click on my link. Combined with Google’s algorithm prioritising large, ‘trustworthy’ brands, primarily its own, like Reddit and YouTube - it’s starting to feel like Google is slowly killing the internet as we know it.

I’m still here though, still publishing, daring to dream. I shall not be browbeaten by a sodding search engine owned by a mega-corporation that’s starting to resemble Weyland-Yutani more and more each year. Blogging has had to adapt to find new ways of being seen.

A Nice Little Cathartic Rant About Social Media Trolls!

More tea, vicar?

As you can see, with Google and pals accounting for exactly 1.99% of incoming traffic, all hope of survival comes down to successfully syndicating posts on social media and building from there. (If you know something I don’t, and have a better idea - please get in touch!)

Of the two that I use, Reddit and Bluesky, Bluesky is still in it’s problematic infancy (there’s very little engagement unless you’re famous or established, or find yourself in a popular starter pack) so Reddit’s the key one, but it’s a double-edged sword. I owe it most of my traffic - and sadly also most of my migraines.

You see, Reddit’s great because it has these huge ready-made communities with thousands of likeminded people who’re united behind their interests. Happily for me, that includes subreddits for TTRPG fans.

However, be still my beating heart, because the biggest groups have also got strictly enforced rules on how frequently you are allowed to share links to your own content, usually once per week. Great for deterring spammers and people trying to sell you things, but for people trying to add value in the TTRPG blogosphere - you’ve only got one shot to make your week’s work worthwhile. That’s a lot of pressure.

Side Note - I mean, I get it - there’s a lot of low effort AI slop shovelers out there, but I have literally come across people asking a question that a) I’ve written about, and b) justifies a long form answer, but if I’ve already shared a link once this week, or plan to do so then I’m simply not allowed to point them to my blog.

I want to make this crystal clear - these communities have bootstrapped themselves up to something huge and valuable, and their custodians have every right to protect that. Their rules are in effect - I respect that.

However, I want you to keep this little situational setup in mind, as it neatly brings me to the fundamental problem I have with Reddit - the trolls and haters simply have too much power thanks to the ability to anonymously abuse the downvote system.

OK, so, you remember that weekly post you’re allowed to make, that one that you’re totally reliant upon to deliver traffic to your website for that week, and upon who’s success you depend upon to give you that little motivational dopamine kick? Yeah, that’s the one…

That post can be, and is; regularly killed off at birth by just a small handful of users downvoting your post for no better reason than they disagreed with it, or even more petty - because they’ve got a personal vendetta against posts that fail to meet their own warped definition of acceptable “self promotion”.

Bear in mind, Reddit’s own rules state that downvoting is only supposed to be done in the case of posts that don’t marry up to the community’s niche or low effort posts that add nothing. Certainly not just because you subjectively disagree with a post, or it’s right to even exist.

So let me teach you how to suck eggs. Here’s broadly how I think Reddit works: If a post is upvoted and commented on it becomes more visible, therefore more people will find it and of those, more people will comment. This creates more visibility and the cycle repeats, it’s called going viral. After exactly 48 hours, Reddit itself draws a hard box around this virality and removes the post from the organic results pages in order to make space for new posts to gain traction. It’s the circle of life, baby.

Flip that though, if the very first thing that happens to your post is that some bored hater sees it and downvotes it out of spite, well my buddy, from that point onwards your post is in a death spiral and is likely going to get buried. You can easily identify these unfortunate posts, because after a few hours they’ll have next to no views, no visible upvotes, and only one or two votes in total. It doesn’t take years of playing Cluedo to see that this murder was committed by ‘two haters’, ‘on Reddit at the opportune time’, ‘with the downvote system’.

Those who can’t create, jealously destroy. Maliciously downvoting new posts without a legitimate reason is just about the most harmful and spirit crushing thing that these guys can do to independent creators, and that’s why they love to sit around all day on social media looking for the opportunity to do it.

Think about it - We had one shot to get seen this week, and for a blog like DMT that’s potentially thousands of views that didn’t happen because of the bitter malice of a tiny number of users. Sadly, this turns Reddit syndication into a miserable little game where you have to ‘post and pray’ that the first few interactions react with enough upvotes to counter the highly motivated inevitable bad actors.

Don’t get me wrong, it is wonderful when a post survives that crucial first 30 minutes, and even more so if it then goes on to become viral. But it’s in the minority of cases. It’s such a shame, because even with just one post a week, as long as that one post wasn’t arbitrarily strangled off at birth, then passionate independent bloggers like DMT and many others would have a much easier time being able to carve out a following.

Want Indie Sites Like DMT to Flourish? Here’s How You Can Help!

Firstly - Thank you for being here and reading this post. It’s not my usual content, but I figured that folks might be interested in some real talk this week. Time will tell if I was right.

Got a blog yourself? Get in touch - we should have a Discord server or something and unite like when the Power Rangers combine all their droids into one big unstoppable machine! Seriously, I reckon there’s something in this, hit me up.

Here to read? Reach out, drop me an encouraging comment and let me know what you’d like to see next - it’s actually quite challenging to know what kind of content will go down well or not, so if you’ve got some thought’s about what you’d like to read my take on - chuck them below the line!

Follow me on Bluesky and Reddit, and engage with and share my posts - it all helps enormously!

If you really want to be a total boss, sign up to the Mailer of Many Things for monthly updates and some exclusive freebies (like my android app that simplifies managing random encounters at the game table).

Conclusion

Phew. OK, this was a bit of a cathartic exercise and I certainly don’t intend on making this a regular occurrence. I really hope that it’s been an interesting insight for you all into what’s happening behind the scenes, and to all my bloggers in arms, I hope you see this too and know that you’re not alone! Take care and stay safe out there, the internet can be an unforgiving place.

Hey, thanks for reading - you’re good people. If you’ve enjoyed this, it’d be great if you could share it on your socials, and maybe think about subscribing to the Mailer of Many Things! Either way, catch you later.