Hello, I’m James Wynne, owner of CSG and former freelance writer for video game media sites, like GameZone, and I have a proposition for you. Have you ever wanted to write about video games for fun and eventual profit? There’s an opportunity for you here at CSG, if you’re willing to put in 75% of the effort I ask of myself.

CSG is what you might call my side hustle, a hobby I enjoy and want to turn into a source of income. It’s a website that I put money and time into, with the hope that it will one day see a small return. I’ve been working on and off with this site for over three years. In that time, it has gotten me a handful of jobs with other sites, writing about video games for real money.

The sporadic nature of the site’s past activity is due to the fact I was paid to write elsewhere, and couldn’t manage to write for both work and recreation. I’m now done with writing for other people, and I want to bring consistency to my own personal endeavors. To that end, I need help.

Specifically, I’m looking for two people to help me increase the site’s output and visibility by writing a steady stream of short articles. I will not be asking a lot of them, but writers need to be dedicated to completing the small minimum workload that is expected:

1 news article per day. (2 paragraphs minimum)

1 opinion article per week. (5 paragraphs minimum)

1 “Top 5” article per week. (6 paragraphs minimum)

That’s not much, especially when you consider news articles are simple affairs: Answering who, what, when, and where is most of the article. If that sounds like too much to ask, then please don’t waste your time reading any further.

There will be slow times and no pay for a while. When pay does come, it will be low pay for an even longer time, and it will likely never amount to anything more than supplemental income. Writers must not be easily discouraged, as quitting after a week is simply a waste of time for everyone involved. From personal experience I can promise, those that persist will eventually find some worthwhile success.

What’s in it for these writers?

I’m not going to sugar coat it and tell people they’ll get exposure or big payoffs: Writers won’t be getting paid for a while, and the view counts are lower than most. I’m working towards getting ads placed on the site, but that’s dependent upon an increase to the views per month. Consistent writing has grown the site’s views from a couple hundred per month to thousands, and now ~15,000 expected this month due to my solitary efforts. Those numbers are chicken scratch, but they are growing fairly quickly.

Writers can keep any money they generate via ads, once implemented, and/or clearly labeled affiliate marketing. After I return to real work in June (been dealing with health issues), I intend to begin purchasing advertisements for the site to help increase views, and hopefully pay for some larger articles out of pocket.

Additional secondary benefits include me editing all articles and providing feedback. There’s also the slight possibility that writing at CSG could lead to paid opportunities at other web sites. I know that sounds lame, but it has happened to me several times over the years. Furthermore, credit will not be taken away from CSG writers, even if they leave, and I will even encourage them to leave in pursuit of potential paid opportunities.

If you or someone you know would be interested in working with me, please send a writing sample to my work email:

jwynne@csgmagazine.com

Please note, these samples do not need to be extravagant. Link or attach something you wrote in the past, or write a two paragraph news article.

Finally, as you can see with my masterfully crafted featured image for this post, I am currently terrible with photoshop/illustrator. Skill with such programs would certainly put an applicant ahead.

Thank you for your time, and I hope to hear from some of you soon.