When I first started doing work as a creative writer for certain websites around the web I started to learn the basics of how WordPress worked more and more and the potential to make some money from a blog / website if I set one up myself. I knew I wanted to start a blog about something but I knew it had to be something that would offer unique content and be on a topic that is popular enough to earn some money from.
It was around the time the game Call of Duty: Black Ops was the biggest game out there in August 2011 when I found my gap in the market. I was trying to find out about all the Call of Duty map packs that were available for Black Ops, a fairly common search term on Google, yet there was no dedicated place with information on all of them, thats when Callofdutymappacks.com was created.
Since it was my first time ever setting up a WordPress site I had to read a few tutorials on how to set it up and investiage the best company to host my website with. I’d experimented with Apache and hosting my website myself but at the end of the day it just wasn’t a viable option.
I asked on the Photoshop forum I was a part of to help me design the header image of the website and then tweaked and changed the rest of the website how I wanted.
Learning HTML:
I had previously designed website completely from scratch using Dreamweaver at GCSE but WordPress was much more complicated and in order to make certain tweaks to the design you need to go down into the HTML to edit it. Since setting up my website I have learnt a great deal more about how HTML works and how to edit it.
Along with learning HTML my website has taught me about visitor trends, how Google ranks web pages, advertising types, advertising techniques, advertising placement and so much more related to how the world wide web works. It’s been a brilliant learning curve.
In less than a year my website is ranking the number 1 spot for search terms such as “MW3 Map Pack” and Modern Warfare 3 Map Packs” which is fantastic news as it is driving my high levels of traffic which in turn is making me money.
I update the website on a regular basis in order to maintain a good search ranking. Overall the website has been a brilliant learning experience and has taught me about all sorts of web services, programs and marketing techniques as well as social networking which I find a valuable asset.
Sticking with the times (Updating CodMapPacks to 2014):
As with any solution, eventually it begins to look tiresome and old fashioned, if you look at the screenshot above of the site in 2011 you can tell it just wouldn’t cut it with todays web standards. So I invested a few days in 2014 updating the look and layout of the site to make it more efficient and look much nicer. The screenshot below speaks for itself:
