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.