Tempting as it is to talk about the current paid content brouhaha, I’d rather slip adjacent to it and talk about something which I think plays into it. I’m talking about the hustle in the board game content space, and the apparent struggle to make a splash in that pond.

I’m still relatively new to all of this. Punchboard is approaching three years old, and that’s not really that long. There are a load of people writing and recording who have been doing it for a lot longer than me, and there are people who have started since I started doing great things too. Conversely, I’ve seen people drop away and stop creating things too.

One of the things I’ve become more aware of over the last couple of years, post-Covid, is a slew of new faces and channels. The most obvious place to see this is in social media channels like Instagram and Tiktok. Some of them I follow, some I don’t, there are no hard and fast rules, it depends on what I like. One of the things that really strikes me is how hard some people appear to be trying. I’m not talking about the effort put into what they’re creating, but more the sheer number of posts/videos being made, and the apparent emulation of others.

There are spaces in hobbies which exist now that didn’t in the not-too-distant past. Lifestyle and ‘Influencer’ channels are commonplace now. I had to put Influencer in quotes because I feel my skin crawl when I even type it, let alone say it. I know some people do it as a living now, but I’m from a generation which is still coming to terms with it.

Instagram especially has a proliferation of Influencer-style channels. I’ve followed a bunch of these over the last couple of years, which means when I open Instagram now I see a lot of very similarly-styled posts. People smiling and standing in front of shelves of games, maybe thoughtfully taking one down. Maybe a paragraph of text, maybe a done-to-death meme, a smorgasbord of hashtags, and then it’s scrolled out of sight, into oblivion.

Let’s be clear here about something. I’m not saying posts and posters like these are bad, far from it. Anything which spreads the love for the hobby is great. The problem is the grind. These posts scroll off the screen, never to be seen again, replaced by other people doing the same thing, which means if you want to be seen - pretty fundamental if you want to influence someone - you’ve got to keep putting posts out.

This leads to people starting to try to game the algorithm. Nobody knows exactly how the algorithms work, but there are clues. Clues which lead people to post more. To push for more followers, to get those likes, thumbs and hearts. Peer pressure and the fear of insignificance are real problems.

This isn’t a question of “Why are you competing to be seen?” as much as it is “Why are you making content?”. It’s a genuine question, not me being disparaging. Why did you want to start making posts, videos, reviews - whatever it is you’re making? In the vast majority of cases, it’s going to be because you have a love for the hobby. A love you want to share with other people, to get them as excited and enthused as you are.

It’s undoubtedly the reason I started Punchboard. I want more people to discover, play and enjoy board games.

Somewhere along the line though, for some people this original ‘why’ gets lost, and the clamour for growth takes hold. It strikes me as being for two primary reasons.

Money. Cash. Dollarbucks. People hear about Youtubers and Influencers making lots of money, and because of the low barrier to entry to those platforms - i.e. anyone can create an account and start posting - it makes success seem easily attainable. “If I can get a million followers, I’ll be an Influencer for my career!”. Focus quickly shifts to turning your platform into something to make money. Sponsorship, paid previews, sponsored posts, Patreon, Youtube ad revenue, etc.

The difficulty with making money is that you need a lot of eyes on your work to make any kind of money. How do you get those eyes on your work? Growth, growth, growth. Pump videos into the Youtube slot machine and hope for a jackpot.

I’m going to come back to money shortly.

Even if you think of yourself as a bit of an introvert, if you’re putting your stuff out there on the internet, it’s because you want people to read, listen to, or watch it. It’s ego, it’s validation, and you know what? There’s nothing wrong with it. Self-esteem and self-confidence can be really hard for some people to come by - I speak from experience - so having an outlet to grow those things is good.

I want people to read my reviews, I want people to read newsletter posts like this one. It doesn’t mean I think I’m some kind of authority. After all, everything I write is a matter of opinion, this included. I want people to think “Adam has written something moderately interesting.” This want to be validated, to be seen, to be talked about, is another big driver for wanting to grow quickly for some people.

“I want my videos to be highest on Youtube searches.” “I want 10K views on my Reel.” “I want my reviews to be top on Google searches.” “I want to be the new Tom Vasel.”

None of those things happens if your blog posts get five reads, your videos get ten views, or your Instagram posts get liked by a few people. What do you do about that? You ask for follows, you spam links to your work all over the place, you post as much as you possibly can and you do whatever you can to get more eyes and ears on what you’re making.

This is the big question, right? What’s the problem with trying to get a million followers? What’s the problem with wanting to make a living from what you’re doing?

Let’s start with the ego side. Why not grow your following and your visibility? What’s the harm in that? The answer is none. There’s no harm in growing your presence. The harm, for want of a better word, comes when that growth becomes your focus. You stop caring about what you’re talking about in favour of saying more things.

If you’ve ever found yourself staring at a blinking cursor and a blank page in Wordpress, or with Instagram open and your brain spinning, trying to think what to post, then you’re already in the wrong place. You’re saying something for the sake of saying something, not because you’ve got something to say. That’s not why you started your channel. You’re posting to be seen or to keep a self-imposed schedule, lest you be chewed up and spat out by the algorithm.

So what? So what if you don’t post something for a week? Does it really matter? Ask yourself this question: If I only post something when I have something to say, and take the time to say it properly, will the quality of my work increase, or decrease?

I don’t want to spend much more time talking about money. It’s a sore point in the board game media world at the moment. Let’s just say that if you go into creating something with your goal to be making a living from it, you’re doing it for the wrong reasons.

Of the huge number of board game people you see, hear, and read out there, how many do you think are making a full-time living from it? And making good money for that matter? The answer is not many. I’m not going to name names, but off the top of my head, I can think of five or six channels that do this professionally. Professionally as in, making their content is their sole source of income. The people I know who do it full-time work bloody hard at it.

In my job I work a 40-45 hour week, I get a decent salary, and I get paid holiday and sick leave. The people I know making their living by talking about board games work 60-80 hour weeks, with no holiday, and with no sick leave. They work under incredibly stressful conditions with some crazy deadlines, and their health often suffers for it. Physically and mentally. Ask yourself, is that what you want? Then ask yourself - if I spend 60 hours a week working with games, maybe playing the same one to death over and over again because I’m getting paid to make a how-to-play video, am I really going to enjoy board games as much as I used to? What do you think?

Maybe you’re thinking “Well actually I already have a full-time job, board game videos will just be my side hustle”, then some of the same things apply. Do you have the mental capacity to work 40 hours a week somewhere, and then come home every night to spend the next few hours making videos because you have a contract with someone? Will your home life suffer for it? You social life? Will you have to give up other hobbies, including going to your games club?

Now, it’s important to note that some of this might happen naturally. Over the course of a number of years your income from your hobby increases to the point where you can take the plunge and go for it full-time. That’s a very different thing to going into it with a mindset of “I’m going to start a Youtube channel so that I can get rich”. Speak to some full-time creators, and ask them how rich they are. Just make sure you’ve got a tissue handy so they can wipe their eyes from laughing so hard at the idea of being rich.

I just want to finish this with a little bit of… I guess you’d call it accountability. I’m not blind to the irony you might read into my talking about these things. Yes, I have an ego that loves being stroked when someone out-of-the-blue tells me how much they enjoyed something I wrote. I love it when a designer tells me I captured exactly what they were trying to convey. But my urge to grow my following died off very quickly.

My Twitter and Instagram followings climb, but they climb very slowly. I don’t put any effort into trying to grow them. I want any growth to be true, organic growth, and I don’t care how long it takes. Those of you who follow me on Instagram may have noticed that I post there very infrequently now because I just don’t like it. I find it difficult to have conversations, and the sheer volume of cookie-cutter stuff that scrolls by and just disappears into the digital ether saddens me.

I don’t post clickbait, I don’t go asking for follows or likes, but I do make a concerted effort to make sure my SEO is good. Being able to find something even just a week after it’s been posted is the bane of platforms like Tiktok and Instagram, so making sure Google and Bing can find the things I’ve written is important to me. I put a lot of time and effort into my writing, and I don’t want it to be ephemeral and just ‘poof’ - disappeared like a new Google product.

Let me just finish up by saying that I don’t make any kind of money by running Punchboard. I do not, and will not, take payment for previews or reviews. I don’t do sponsored posts. I do have a small group of supporters that I’m incredibly grateful for on my Ko-fi membership, but I’m not ‘making money’ from it. For clarity, I get £23.50 per month from my supporters, but my hosting costs me ~£16 per month, my Google Workspace costs me £9.20 per month, and my domain costs me £1 per month. So at the moment, I make a loss of about a fiver every month. The superyacht is going to have to wait.

The TL;DR: Do what you do for the love of it. This isn’t a race, it’s not a competition, no matter how much it looks like it. Take your time, make something you can be proud of, and don’t burn out, you wonderful people.