So thebitbag.com was finally born. I threw it into the sea of hundreds of other gaming sites. Wordpress was my savior and gave me the content management system I wish I had years ago. I could easily add content via an admin panel and it would save it to a database. No more html uploads.

Now I needed content. I had lost my contact list and didn’t even know who was who in the industry anymore. When I was doing vgt.com, Dave Karraker was at Access PR. At the time I started thebitbag.com, he was still at Sony. My Microsoft contacts had disappeared too. They were a 3rd party company that MS didn’t use anymore. I was starting all over again and unlike before, it was going to be much tougher. My goal this time however, was to do everything right that I had done wrong before. That meant search engine optimization and traffic farming in the hopes of selling ad space.

I first starting going to all the game publisher’s websites to get press information. My initial stop was Capcom.com and surprisingly, the same two people that were working there 8 years ago were still there. I let them know who I was and that I had started a new site. They added me to their press list but they now had strict rules in regards to review materials. You had to have an Alexa rating of at least 100,000 to request games to review. “What?!?! What the fuck is Alexa?!” is all that crossed my mind. Thanks to Google and a few searches, I found alexa.com. When I first searched on thebitbag.com, we were ranked 9 million plus. All that came to mind was that I was never going to get any kind of review materials if all the game publishers used Alexa.

I continued my search for contacts. I went the long and hard way to get a Microsoft contact. They were really cool and gave me all the names and email addresses I needed. I put together an intro letter, making sure to note that I used to run vgt.com in the hopes that someone remembered me. After my first contact was made, Microsoft offered full support and sent some games for review. I continued my search and looked hard and long for Dave Karraker’s info. I could only find his Sony Europe email address. I dug even harder for about a week and managed to find his email address on a press release. I sent the same letter to him and Sony offered support without question. I think Dave remembered me from when he was back at Access PR. Another ace in the hole. Getting Sony and Microsoft were the hard parts. Everything else came easy after that.

Every month I was gaining more support from other publishers. I got Sega, Activision, SNK, Atari, Midway, Koei and a few others. Capcom still allows access to their press site which is good enough for now. I was grateful that these companies were supporting our cause. I always make sure to thank them whenever I can.

I put together a staff of writers, some old and some new, and started pouring out content. The deal with the writers was that they get to keep any games I send them to review. Some day we’ll have advertising and then I’ll be able to actually pay them. For now everyone was on board and enjoying the benefits of writing reviews and posting news.

My first agenda was for the writers to not score their reviews. I hate review scores and will never use them again. If someone comes to our site looking for advice on a game, the best thing they can do is read the review. With all the hoopla about review scores lately, I think I made the right decision.

Over the course of this first year, our Alexa ratings have climbed to 308,000. We moved several million and continue to climb at a rate of 100,000 per month. All I want to do is break 100,000 so I can send an email to Capcom asking for every version of DMC4 from Sega Saturn to Playstation 3.

What I’ve learned about this industry is that every site is giving the same exact info. If you aren’t breaking news you aren’t making news. If you aren’t making news you’ll never get the traffic you need to sustain yourself through advertising. I’ve watched this trend through the entire year. There are sites like Gamespot, IGN and Kotaku that have huge followings. Why would any of their readers come to thebitbag.com to find news that is already on the aforementioned sites? So after researching, reading and scanning several sites I discovered that the only way to be a mover is to find a niche. I’ve found a few untapped niche’s that I’m going to exploit starting next year. The news and reviews are standard fare for any game site, but you need to have something else. Herein lies the whole problem with starting over from scratch. VGT.com was popular on a very small scale. Back then there weren’t many people using the web, especially gamers. If I kept vgt.com alive, I could have had the motherload of traffic by now.

So the adventure continues. That’s the story of how I got into game journalism. I’ll never regret it because honestly, gaming and writing are a part of my life. This time I’m in it for the long run. There’s more hard work ahead but I’m ready for the challenge. I’m hoping I can turn this into something really big. If it never reaches critical mass, I’ll always have my day job.

Stumble it!