Programmer or Writer?

Posted 8/6/08 - Joshua

For sports bloggers, it is often necessary to be both. They must both maintain and grow the website aspect of their blog and write all of its content. This is not the most ideal situation since there are many of us who are not suited to both. However having all the control can be a good thing especially when the money starts rolling in.

For a long time I both maintained and wrote content for the sites I worked for. Since both of them are a full time job, and at that time writing was extra income for me I found it to be quite distracting to worry about the direction of my work as well as it’s content.

To put it more simply I am not the best web programmer out there, although I can do it. The other thing to consider is I don’t really like programming or marketing for that matter.

Way way back in the day I was the webmaster and chief writer for a website dedicated to the local Detroit Rock band scene. When I started that site I built the web templates, I wrote all the content and I started to notice something, while doing both, both suffered. In the end my writing wasn’t as good as it could be, and my web design was far from as good as others.

Once I made the decision to bring someone else on board to handle the web side of things, the sites popularity grew by leaps and bounds. At its peak we were doing 250,000 hits per day and our message board was quite lively.

My next really big online wiring job was doing political commentary for a site a friend and I launched. In this case I was writing and programming with the help of another writer. Still by doing both, both suffered.

When I finally made the move to be a sports writer I decided then and there that I wasn’t going to do both. I was going to write for somebody else’s site or blog and let them deal with the day to day headaches of running a site for profit.

After three years of doing this I have found that there is a market for online sports writers, and one does not need to manage their own blog to do so. Even in today’s world of push button web publishing it is still hard to do both effectively. I am not saying it is impossible, because it is not. There are many self run, self written blogs and sites that do quite well. This is more of a personal choice. I would rather write to my full ability, then write and manage a site. If you think running a site is not full of daily headaches you are quite mistaken.

Three years ago now I started writing for Fantasy Insider Online, a few months ago I started writing for Sports Business Digest, and I also write here at the Sports Dollar. I also run a NASCAR blog called Front Vailance where I use all the tricks you learn about here.

By far my favorite job is at FIO. There I have no responsibility for the day to day business of the site. I submit my stories Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday and someone else is left to post them, and deal with the advertisers and all of that.

For me it works quite well, for those of you who can better manage your time between programming and writing keep it up.


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