The Idea
Working Title – SHATR (So Here Are The Rules)
Idea – A website that explains the rules of a game in under one minute.
Why it needs to exist – I have plenty of friends and family that love to play board games, drinking games, etc.
A common problem is the amount of time it takes to explain the rules of the game to someone who is playing for the first time. This process is rarely easy; the person who regularly plays the game can have a hard time dumbing it down and no one has the patience to read through the rule card.
The objective of each SHATR page would be to explain just enough of the rules that a player would need to get started (since most games are best learned by just playing a round).
Building the Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
Being a content website, it’d be pretty easy to launch the first version.
- Buy the domain
- Use a website builder like Webflow, WordPress, etc to start blogging
- Write your first five articles with specific emphasis on making it as quick and clear as possible on how to start playing the game.
I looked at the top trafficked pages for GameRules.com and looks like you could start with Solitaire, Monopoly, Cards Against Humanity, Codenames, and War.
I would break up each article into sections for:
- The Objective
- What you need to know before you start (keep this as short as possible!)
- What you should know by your third game (additional information that should be explained to them as the game is played)
- Strategies
Further Content Ideas
Board games and card games seem like the most intuitive place to start. From there you can also do drinking games (beer pong, kings, etc) and tailgate games (cornhole, ladder, etc).
Written content is a good place to start because it is quick and cheap to produce and has good potential for search engine (SEO) traffic.
Ideally, you’d like to get this to a place where people can Google “[Game Name] SHATR” any time they are playing a new game.
But from there you can build it into a YouTube page where you physically show the quick tips and rules they need to know.
Monetization
To keep the site running and build initial revenue, I would start with ads and affiliate links for the games that you’re writing about.
Eventually, the goal would be to try to sell to a company like GameRules once you build your traffic up.