Interview with Seelyon

Passion comes from many different places, and the best leaves in every one of our topics have heaps of passion and experience behind them. Seelyon's leaves are a reminder that passion and actual experience decided whether a leaf is okay or great. From reading his leaves, you can clearly tell he's played the games he writes about. It shows in his writing, and deep expertise on the topics. I interviewed Seelyon as part of the author interview series for the Zujava blog, where he shares his writing experience, how to make a great video game leaf, and promotional methods. Here's what he had to say:

How long have you been writing online? Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, and why you decided to start writing online?

I've been writing online for just over four years now and like most people it started off as a hobby. It started from writing guides for various games on forums and quickly grew to blogs and other writing platforms. Before long I was hooked and found myself spending less time in games and more time writing about them.

I started writing online since I loved sharing my knowledge of games with others, I'm always the person who researches and researches a game until I find the most optimal method for playing (and beating the game).

Gaming is a passion of yours. Three parter: What makes a great game, what's your favorite game of all time, and what makes a great leaf about a game?

A great game for me creates a connection with the characters that you are playing. I want to also be able to play or discuss the game with friends but have enough customisation within the game that we could take about a particular level and area and have finished it in two completely different ways.

My favourite game of all-time is a tough one, there isn't a game genre I haven't touched and there are definitely stand-outs in each genre but to give one the overall title is tough. I'm going to have to give it to the Diablo series (with number 3 right around the corner), I have easily clocked more hours on this game series than any other, the lore in the series is so deep that you definitely feel connected to the world not to mention the game play is extremely addicting and it also encourages playing (and saving the world) with friends. A great gaming leaf should give the reader the impression that you've had a lot of hands on time with the game and that you know your way around its mechanics. The leaf should also make sense for people who have never even played or heard of the game before, while its not possible for all gaming pages, its definitely possible on the majority. The last point is that you should include plenty of pictures and videos, games often have amazing graphics and so many of them fall under Fair Use, so you'd be silly not to use them to attract and engage your audience.

What do you like best about writing on Zujava?

I love writing on Zujava because it is a new platform, getting in early lets you be apart of the website's direction as well as creating good relationships with all the members. Zujava is easy to use, has great page layouts and of best of all its free. I also like that Zujava is a revenue sharing website that way you don't have to mess around with your own affiliate accounts, this is great for people just starting to write online.

What promotional methods have worked best for your content? Which ones do you rely on the most?

Since most of my audience is gamers I find my best promotion comes from forums and other gaming sites where people are always asking game related questions. The best promotional method for me is simply writing great content. If I create the best resource on a given topic, it spreads pretty quickly in the gaming world and before long you've got tonnes of links and traffic. If you could give just one tip to other authors publishing on Zujava, what would it be? After reading this start writing! Whether your goals are income or not writing more and more pages improves your skills, income potential and your overall portfolio. But don't forget to check out other people's pages too, you'll never know when you get a new idea or a new way of doing something.

Which leaf are you most proud of, and why? Is there a back story to the topic of the leaf?

The leaf I am most proud of is definitely my Games Like Roblox leaf (its also my newest).It covers a gaming genre that I haven't played for a long time (building games) and I enjoyed trying all of the different games (I actually tried about a dozen with only five making the list). I also got the chance to use the new Zujava Poll feature. The back story of this lens starts back in the early days of Minecraft's development when I was big on sandbox building games. Recently I decided to play some more of this genre but didn't want to go back to Minecraft, so I decided to check out Roblox and then from there I played several other games in the genre. I then decided that a leaf on this topic would be a fun idea and after some quick keyword research I found it was a fairly popular search term as well. This story also makes a great point, you never know when or where you'll get your page ideas and you'll often be surprised of their traffic potential.

What would you like to see next on Zujava?

I'd love to see the community and number of pages continue to grow. I'm looking forward to new modules and more detailed traffic statistics within Zujava so its easier to analyse the basics right on the website.

Super Mario Bros or Angry Birds?

Super Mario Bros hands down. Not to say that Angry Birds is a bad game, its very fun and addictive. But I favour towards Super Mario Bros it was one of the first games I ever bought for my Gameboy Colour and it kept me busy for more hours than I care to say.