Introducing BJK Games

Beej's Magic & Monsters is rebranding and expanding. This is step 1. The reason is simple: Google sucks, capitalism sucks, TTRPGs rock.

Some recent events, both personally and professionally, have made me rethink the way that I handle my online content. Blogging/emails and TTRPG stuff like supplements and adventures.

The name Beej’s Magic & Monsters is no more, so I’m going to be doing stuff under the name of BJK Games from now on. I’m going trying out some different kinds of content diversification (continue reading til the end for the deets).

Why? Because Google is awful, and the state of SEO is miserable.

The HCU/EEAT updates have decimated any kind of traffic and revenue coming from my blog at Geek to Geek Media (including referral affiliate traffic to DMs Guild and DTRPG).

This is very common nowadays. They prioritize their own products and investments (have you noticed a major increase in Reddit results lately? Yeah…) in the name of “helpful content,” and de-rank content written by actual human beings in favor of plagiarized AI chaff.

The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realized that trying to have any level of success with content creation when relying on organic search traffic for discovery is a losing game.

At least for now. So what’s the plan?

Here’s the plan:

I mentioned looking for other names a while back. I decided that I wanted something that was still tied to me as a person and writer, but also would work as a creative brand that could be expanded. I settled on BJK Games.

Over time, I’ll swap my DTRPG profile and content over to that, as well as start making it my social handles (already happened on Threads).

More immediately, though, here’s what I am doing to get BJK Games rolling and hopefully become sustainable:

1. Create Free AND Subscriber-Only Content (Substack or Patreon?)

I want to be able to really embrace the community and create content that’s only available for subscribers. I haven’t fully decided whether to keep that here on Substack or if that should be at Patreon.

I know it’s kind of biased to ask here at my Substack, but which do you prefer for getting your subscription/members-only content? Patreon or Substack? Both?

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Since SEO has been a real travesty over the past year, and it doesn’t look like it’s getting any better, I am going to focus on creating any new blog content on one of these platforms instead of a traditional WordPress blog.

Then, I can build out subscriber-only content for games (or otherwise, like my fiction) on that platform since they’re both set up to handle that now.

2. Write RPG Content for DMs Guild and DTRPG

I’m going to write more for D&D and make more content for other games (Dragonbane, of course, and likely Shadowdark in the future). I love doing this, and I think there’s a decent future in it with the right marketing.

3. Sell 3D Prints

I’ve gotten into 3D Printing a lot, and I love it. I love printing terrain and minis, and I’ve even started a fledgling Etsy store called BJK Games, where I’ll be selling Fat Dragon Games tiles and minis, Milestone Heroes tiles, and Brite Minis miniatures.

My long-term goal here is to be able to create all-inclusive 3D adventures for people. I will write a dungeon adventure and then print the monsters, NPCs, and entire dungeon and ship it physically to the party. All that it’ll need is painted and brought to the table. (I’m not the best painter, or I’d offer them pre-painted for a higher price.)

This is just a very rough draft of the first room of an ice dungeon I was tinkering with using Milestone Heroes terrain.

I don’t know if there’s a market for this, but I really hope they’re is because I think it’s pretty cool. Eventually, I look to have set packages that are ready to go, each with its own premade adventure.

I’d love to be able to take commissions—like someone wants X type of dungeon and Y kind of adventure with Z kinds of monsters, and then I create something wholly unique for you and your party. (If this sounds like something you want right now, btw, shoot me a message to work something out!)

So yeah, that’s what I have going on. Thanks for being awesome and coming along for the ride. Let me know what you think! And don’t forget to tell your friends!