I think it's a great idea. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. I started App-reciation Reviews about 2 months ago myself. It's hosted by blogger.com and we don't have thousands of readers but so far we're enjoying the experience and have made a lot of good connections. We've had occasion to work with amazing developers too, and are continuing to. If you do decide to go ahead with your review site, let me know. I'll definitely support your project!
Its not about being negative, its simply about being realistic. If you can't pay for your own domain, thus resorting to WordPress or something similar, its going to be harder to find your site. Also, Google a question about an iDevice game. Chances are, TA, STP, iPTF, or many of the other big names are going to pop up. Getting your site noticed would simply require a lot of work, and more importantly, a lot of luck.
If you're going to make a review site, then prepare for a whole lot of naysayers. Big Albie wasn't very well recieved when he review his first game and people were complaining about how he was probably a shill for developers and he was spamming up the forums. He was persistant and eventually made a name for himself and probably going to be the same for you if you're serious about doing this
I say don't let anyone discourage you. Having your own website can be a ton of fun, especially with a forum on it. But don't think for a second that it's going to be easy. Back in 2004, I had a lot of "Internet friends" from various message board and chat rooms. Like you, I wanted to start my own gaming site (granted at the time iPhone didn't exists, so this is a little different). Me and some friends started a team together and made our own gaming site. And that is my first recomendation. Get a team together, based around friendship and a common desire. I had one friend who just turned 19 and had the money to fund our project (just domain/hosting). Another friend good with graphics to help our site look good. I had some coding experience to put the site together. And we had a lot of friends who loved to review games. After about a year we had a couple hundred members and were averaging 1000's of posts a day, had lots of people viewing the mainsite, and a TON of lurkers playing on our arcade (we have over 500 flash games with highscores). We all enjoyed the experience very much. Never made a dime, we actually lost a lot of money in work hours and hosting- however we all loved what we did. Its 2010 now and my website is over 5 years old. It still lives, but has died down a lot and changed it's focus away from gaming. We lost most the original staff and all our game reviewers, leaving the mainsite a static block of information unipdates for over a year . But we still have a decent group of everyday members on the forum, and a lit more that visit back every now and then. It goes to show you what member loyalty can do for a website. I cannot be certain if TA stopped reviewing games or posting news that this community would stay in contact, but the ability to do so us something I think every forum should strive for. My point is, if you are going to do this site, play your strengths and invite like-minded people you trust to join you. If you have a site like all other sites, you may fail. But specialize in a way to make you unique and you can make it. If you are good with graphics, make iPhone wallpapers based on games you review. If you are good with coding, make decent web apps/games iPhone users can play on your site. If you only have a knack for reviews, might want to specialize. The app store has waaaay to many games to cover your bases. And it would be hard to compete with sites like TA for news on all the hit titles. Perhaps try and be known for reviewing ALL the apps of a particular genre. iFPSer.com, all FPS, all the time! Review all fps games, allow users to constantly change their vote for best fps, so you can have a page showing what the community sees as the best? Perhaps special 'sub-sites' where you provide info(news/tips/tricks/gamertag database) on the best fps (CoD,Nova, MC:S). Or possibly only review games at a certain price range. Best free games, best games under a buck, games worth the $9.99+ Then you would have a user base all there for only one thing (wallpapers, free web games, fps only). Your members should have somethig in common to talk about, begin making friends, and wanting to stay because they want to see the people, staff, and content they know they like. Then they tell their like-minded friends about your site. Word of Mouth does wonders. Anyway that is my very long two cents on the subject. Because for years I have encouraged people to make thier own websites. For me it's been something I loved as a teenager in middle school, and continue to love in my early twenties as a working, married man with 4 kids. Everyones got to have a couple hobbies. This was one of mine.
^ that is very nice advice MexicanJesus. I look at the little sites every now and then and come to appreciate the voice & tone of certain reviewers. I don't see why you shouldn't try this out, Nonstickron!
