Posted 6/30/08 - Kellex
Good Monday morning everyone! We were recently found by a supposed MMO douche guru over the past couple of weeks that continues to remain "Anonymous" and of course this guru also deemed it necessary to flame up our Top 50 Sports Blog rankings that we put out during the 1st quarter of this year as well as this blog in general. Feel free to go check out the amazing conversation and worthwhile constructive criticism! (Can you smell the sarcasm in that sentence?)
Anyway, the idea here is that this blog is basically the only one of its kind and is really incomparable to just about any other blog. We've been grouped in with MMO blogs, internet marketing blogs and of course sports blogs but I'm not sure it's really fair to put us in with any of those groups.
We've never claimed to be experts as the idea for this blog is completely new and seeing as we've only been doing this for 6 months now it would be ludicrous for us to call ourselves anything but "learners."
One thing that I think you should take away from this blog or post is that staying true to your own thoughts, ideas, and goals is what it is all about. The internet is full of lamers like this "Anonymous" guy that get off on trying to bring down any success you may have encountered.
The only way to win in this game, is to follow your senses by sniffing some things out, tasting a little cheese and seeing the road ahead. These are blogs aren't they? They are supposed to be your personal take on our particular niche; make sure you keep it that way. And thanks again to everyone that reads our little attempt at entrepreneurship; we couldn't do it without you!
(Btw, stay tuned for the 2nd quarter rankings! We should have them out some time at the end of this week.)
Time to join ClickBooth to help monetize your site, don't you think?
Posted 6/30/08 - Joshua
So at this moment I have writers block, and I have it really bad. Usually on Fridays I write at least two NASCAR posts. I do this as the cup teams practice and qualify. Today that just wasn’t working for me, so I broke my usual routine, grabbed my laptop and hit the road searching for inspiration.
Usually when this happens to me I end up at a cigar store or the local Starbucks and inject myself with coffee and nicotine and find inspiration. After two rather large iced mocha’s I wasn’t feeling it. After spending 50 bucks on cigars I still wasn’t feeling it. (On a side note don’t smoke cigars, they cost more then drugs.)
So I took what was left of my Government stimulus check and went out to get some new ink. As I write this I am getting two of my older tattoo’s touched up, a few new ones and some nice background pieces added to really complete my left shoulder. Ironically, about two weeks ago I tore my rotator cuff in that arm and this is the only thing that has really made me feel better.
So why would I share all of this with you? Well the point here is when you have writers block, and it will happen, don’t panic. We talked earlier about finding things to do to keep your sanity, but we sometimes also need to find things that help to inspire us. Even sports writers have to be creative, and sometimes it is hard to find that creativity.
I am sure my critics in the legitimate media will take this as another swipe at their profession. Well that is fine; I do whatever I need to do to write. I can write anywhere and in almost any situation, and to be more bluntly if the so called legitimate media were doing their job then I wouldn’t have mine.
I don’t let myself get trapped into what people think is normal or traditional. It would be my advice to all of you that do whatever works for you, write what you feel and success will follow.
Look at me getting tattooed as Metallica jams in the background; I am not exactly Walter Cronkite, or Michael Wilbon. Really that is the point. Sports bloggers are a new breed and we do things our way. This is called progress and every time I turn onto PTI on ESPN I hear Wilbon trashing my profession, when really he should be watching his own back cause one day soon one of us will have his job. That and the Washington Post will be out of business.
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Posted 6/29/08 - Kellex
The Sports Dollar Job Board has had a solid first month thanks to our initial June 75% off coupon code. Well that coupon code will expire in 2 days, so if you need to fill a position on that sports blog of yours, you better do it now!
Using the coupon code "sportsjob" you will get an automatic 75% off your posting which will run for 30 days or basically the entire month of July. Pretty solid deal huh?
The job board is definitely something you need to look into as we've seen the first hand success it can bring. We were able to find 2 new writers for each of our blogs and I know others such as the Red Zone Report and Cuzoogle have also had quite a reaction to their postings. There are countless bloggers out there looking for work, get in now!
Time to join ClickBooth to help monetize your site, don't you think?
Posted 6/29/08 - Kellex
This edition of DollarBall will act as somewhat of a special edition as we take the top sporting stories from the past week. These would be the stories that had major play on big sites like Digg, YardBarker, BallHype and even sites that got mentioned on SI or Yahoo. You should be able to use this as a reference guide or idea generator for your next big linkbaiting piece!
- Top 10 Players Not Drafted in the First Round - Hoop Doctors
- Shaq Freestyles on Kobe - TMZ.com
- The Jheri Curl All-Stars - Home Run Derby
- Morning Look: Four Portis Costumes - DC Sports Bog
- The Shrinking Frame of Roethlisberger - Busted Coverage
- A Blogger at Training Camp - Sporting News
- Interview with BallHype Creator Jason Gurney - BallHype
- Zombie Kickball - Steady Burn
- Ballgirl Makes Incredible Catch - Break.com
- Hottest Women of Euro 2008 - Sports Crunch
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Posted 6/27/08 - Kellex
I still can't stand Twitter for the most part but I do have both blogs hooked up to Twitterfeed to at least notify all of my followers if a new post has gone up. So if you hate Google Reader and don't want to subscribe to our feed, then feel free to follow us on Twitter.
Time to join ClickBooth to help monetize your site, don't you think?
Posted 6/27/08 - Kellex
If you were lacking on post ideas over the last couple of weeks you should have looked towards the NBA and its NBA Draft. Each sport has events that take place that just fuel the blog world and in order to create a top notch sports blog, you need to hit on these events and exploit the hell out of them.
The NBA Draft was the most recent, and just to give you an idea of its power, we'll throw up the top draft posts from BallHype so you can see how creative people can get.
- Hollywood NBA Lottery Mock Draft - The Money Shot
- OJ Mayo's NBA All-Food Team - NE Patriots Draft
- Top 10 NBA Players Not Drafted in the 1st Round - Hoop Doctors
- Ballads and Rhymes: Draft Previews in 30 Words - Daily Basketball
- NBA Wonderlic Test - Word of Isaac
- 25 Ways to Guarantee Yourself as a Bust - Le Basketbawl
- Frederic Weiss (Forgotten) 1st Rounders - Legend of Cecilio Guante
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Posted 6/26/08 - Kellex
Even with a nasty sore throat in full on "suck" mode, we did have a chance to post this up late last night on the possibilities of NBA draftee's turning into "busts." It's worth a read and it actually got some nice play from Digg today thanks to a certain someone who has been filling up the NBA season with ridiculous videos.
Check out our 25 Ways to Guarantee Yourself as an NBA Draft Bust.
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Posted 6/26/08 - Kellex
What up! Sorry for the lack of posting today, but I'm feeling sort of under the weather and pretty much passed out last night instead of prepping for today. I was training a few people over the last few days and their grimy little paws were all over my mouse and keyboard which I'm assuming, is why I'm now getting sick. Bleh!
So instead of some preachy grow your sports blog post, how about a video showing that big time sports figures really do some pretty cool things. Steve Nash and Claudio Reyna put on a charity soccer (footie) game in New York recently and had a pretty amazing turnout of fans and other stars.
Thanks to You Been Blinded for this video and to see more visit his page. Show some love to Baron Davis!
Time to join ClickBooth to help monetize your site, don't you think?
Posted 6/25/08 - Kellex
This is the second post in our latest series which will cover the process of selling advertising space on your sports blog!
Create a Blog Version of a Media Kit
Once advertisers decide your blog may be a potential site for them to put some ads on, they may come asking for your stats or reasons as to why they should be forking over the cash for that banner ad. At this point, you should have a media kit ready to be sent over to not delay your chances at landing that next big advertising deal.
In our previous post, we covered your "Advertise" page and I'm hoping you have completed that task already. Your media kit on the other hand, will essentially be your "Advertise" page except it will include even more info and should be personalized to the possible advertiser.
What should your media kit include? Here is an example of how we have ours laid out:
[TITLE]
[WEBSITE AND CONTACT INFO]
[INTRO PARAGRAPHS]
[STATS]
[ADVERTISING OPTIONS]
[CLOSING PITCH]
Title and Layout
As a blogger you should have no reason to make this thing over 2 pages long. Our layout above suggests a simple title that includes the names of your blogs followed by your contact info and website addresses. I wouldn't worry about making this as pretty as you would a resume, since most media planners are simply looking for the meat and potatoes, otherwise known as your stats.
Your Purpose and Stats
From there we recommend that you cover in a couple of brief paragraphs, what your blog is about and why it would be the perfect fit for the potential advertiser. We've thrown in the fact that our basketball blog is featured regularly on some of the big time sports sites which bring in thousands of targeted visitors per day at times. Anything to help right? Get creative!
Your stats (and the most important part) come next. Make sure you include your PageRank, Alexa rank, monthly pageviews, monthly unique visitors, number of RSS subscribers, if you have email list capabilities, and your Technorati rank. If you can think of other stats or worthy bragging material, make sure to include them. CTR anyone? Maybe some graphs?
Your Options and "the Close"
You'll want to make the advertiser aware of their ad possibilities with your site. We always include separate banner, text, and availability sections to help make the decision easier. Including price in this section is up to you but try to have a reason why you are or are not showing pricing.
Your closing statement should reinforce everything you've just covered through the entire media kit in a straight to the point sort of way. If the advertiser is having any concerns up to this point, then this is your last chance to seal the deal so go out with a bang.
This may seem like a daunting task, but once completed, you can keep it on file for years to come and make simple updates as needed. It is a worthy investment of time.
Questions? Let me have 'em!
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Posted 6/23/08 - Kellex
Blogs come and go. Most fail. Some make it. And some really make it. You can now consider Cuzoogle to be in that last category. This is a blog that I've watched blossom into something remarkable over the last few months and it's been through a ton of hard work, laughs and an amazingly talented guy.
It's author, Cuzzy, put up a post the other day as sort of a motivational piece for bloggers to look at and realize that those dramatic initial results they are expecting, are possible. Obviously you have to have some talent and an understanding of the way the blog world works, but if you play your cards just right, you can hit the big time within a couple of months.
He is a master at linkbaiting, building relationships, and creating original pieces time and time again. If you haven't check out Cuzoogle yet, you should head over and read the piece titled, "If you build it, they will come."
Congrats Cuzzy!
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Posted 6/24/08 - Kellex
In light of the most recent Shaq vs. Kobe battle, it looks like Barack Obama has jumped on the freestyle bandwagon against his opponent covering what appears to be some foreshadowing into his eventual win in the Presidential election.
(I'm sorry, I just couldn't help myself with this one. Somebody should make t-shirts of this!)
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Posted 6/24/08 - Kellex
This post probably seems a little late, but for those of you not up on things, we thought you should all be aware that the new Firefox 3 has been released.
Firefox was shooting for over 5 million downloads on its release day and ended up crushing that number by hitting well over 8 million by the end of the day! In just 72 hours, it had hit 14 million and that number could be double within a week or so.
Here is a list of first impressions of the new browser. More here.
I'm not sure I like it quite yet compared to the last release. I'm sure it will grow on me and I'll start to see how beneficial these new updates are, but I really grew accustomed to the old one. Let me know what you all think. Are you impressed? Is the address bar history driving you as nuts as it is me?
If you don't have the new version, you can download it below:
Firefox 3 download page.
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Posted 6/23/08 - Kellex
The word on the internet streets is that Google is in the middle of its latest PageRank update this week. I've heard rumblings from bloggers who have already seen their PR fluctuate, rise or drop so this could mean some movement is in the works.
We're interested to see where we fall with the Sports Dollar. We took a very interesting approach to this blog to see how our PR could turn out. Seems stupid that we didn't follow our format with Le Basketbawl seeing as it dropped a PageRank 5 (PR5) within 2 months, but we wouldn't be doing what we are doing if we weren't testing out systems and then reporting them back to you.
So if this is the week, expect to see your blog and ours on the move!
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Posted 6/24/08 - Kellex
I ran across this post the other night and thought that it needed to be shared immediately. Here are 5 Firefox extensions that show you things like PageRank or Alexa rank of the page you are on, the quality of backlinks, and a link analysis.
One issue: with the new Firefox 3, I was not able to install the first add-on which sucks because it looks like the best one. Hopefully soon, it will be install-able? (nice word there)
If you don't want to go to that page then here are your quick links. For descriptions go here.
1. Smart PageRank
2. SearchStatus
3. SEO for Firefox
4. Inbound Link Quality
5. SEO Link Analysis
Did you know you can sell links on your site with Text-Link-Ads?
Posted 6/23/08 - Joshua
Everyday the Sports Dollar brings all kinds of really useful tips on how to blog and make a little money. Today I want to do something a little different. Today I want to focus in on how to survive a typical blog work day.
For me this is really a grind. I spend anywhere from 8 to 10 hours a day in my office, between two computers. And for those of you who think this isn’t a job well I got news for you, I do the same thing my parents do for the government. They sit at a desk 8 hours a day and I’ll tell you this, I am way happier with my career than they are.
However some days, hell maybe even most days, I need to take little breaks from the research and the writing, and from the school work. Yes my friends I even go to College online.
Besides from checking in on my son, changing a diaper or two, or just taking some time to play with him I have constructed my office environment with one thing in mind, how to keep Joshua sane as he writes and researches all of his stories and blog posts.
I have all the usual stuff a die hard sports fan has. I have a TV that is essentially on a sports channel all day long. I also have Sirius Radio which when on is usually on the NASCAR channel. I have my laptop set up to play DVD’s if needed. But since I am online anyway I have found a few sites that really help me with the stress of it all.
The first is AdultSwim.com. There I can watch some short video clips of hilarious shows, or play truly off the walls games that just make me smile. But recently I have been spending a lot of my downtime over at Hulu.com.
Hulu offers clips or whole episodes of just about any show one could think of. I found them in a search for old News Radio episodes, but recently my downtime has been spent catching up on older American Dad episodes.
My wife has even got into the act when school or something has her all stressed out; she goes and watches old SNL clips on Hulu to help her cope with her online stress.
The point of this is, yes we could all waste all of our earnings on fancy toys to help us deal with stress, or we could put our earnings into our pockets and go to Hulu and watch cool stuff for free.
Time to join ClickBooth to help monetize your site, don't you think?
Posted 6/20/08 - Kellex
In the beginning of this blog's life, we ran our initial 100 Fluffs(tips) to Building a Better Sports Blog that received a good reception. Well since posts like that gave us enough love to keep doing this, we thought it was time for 80 more!
1. Seriously, get rid of the Minima template.
2. Join the YardBarker Network.
3. Work your way to the Entrecard "popular" list.
4. Start tracking stats with Sitemeter.
5. Download Firefox's "ShowIP" add-on.
6. Install Compete.com's toolbar.
7. Post to the Sports Dollar Job Board.
8. Make sure your "Subscribe" buttons or links are everywhere.
9. Create a solid "Advertise" page.
10. Utilize a "Contact" sheet.
11. Check out other money makers than Adsense.
12. Join BlogBurst.
13. Continue to interview your mentors.
14. Hire people to help!
15. Add 10 new Stumble Upon friends per week.
16. Create a Google Group specific to your niche.
17. Create a MySpace page for your blog.
18. Keep running creative polls.
19. Dabble in BlogRush.
20. Check out this list of sports affiliate programs.
21. Join in on the Sports Dollar/Juiced Sports forums.
22. You better have your own domain by now.
23. Get yourself a custom look.
24. Still on Blogger? Think about WordPress.
25. Create your own images with GIMP.
26. Cut down the number of blogs in your reader.
27. Get rid of all those spammy widgets!
28. Create a Blog Catalog group.
29. Add 1000+ friends to your Blog Catalog account.
30. Have fun with Flickr.
31. Install the URL Fixer.
32. Join in the Twitter craze.
33. Create an Adwords account for keyword research.
34. Track clicks and site layout with Crazy Egg.
35. Check your page load time.
36. BlogRolled.com may be worth a look.
37. Don't fall for scams like these.
38. Utilize this Web 2.0 directory.
39. Read Publisher Spot for the latest reviews on affiliates.
40. Do not leave long breaks in between posts.
41. Join in on the Blogger's Choice Awards.
42. Do not overuse videos.
43. Do not use irrelevant videos.
44. Cut down your Digg and BallHype usage.
45. Find 10 new niche specific blogs a day.
46. Comment on them.
47. Use Twitterfeed.
48. Get creative like this.
49. Pay close attention to you competitors.
50. Laugh off hateful comments.
51. Create an enormous email list.
52. Use "Recent Visitors" widgets for MyBloglog and Blog Catalog.
53. Sell advertising.
54. Start a blog challenge.
55. Ask your readers their favorite topics.
56. Ask your readers if they if they've subscribed to your blog.
57. Write a 5 part series.
58. Google News will help you break news.
59. Force advertisers to pay via PayPal.
60. Cut 3, 6, or 12 month advertising deals.
61. Get a press pass to an event.
62. If other blogs run contests, participate in them.
63. Reduce the number of posts that show at a time.
64. Give away 11,000 Entrecard credits.
65. Trade banners with friends.
66. Find a way to write about Erin Andrews.
67. Post Youtube videos to Digg and BallHype.
68. Don't claim that as if you created them though.
69. Use a recent comments widget.
70. Use a top commentators widget.
71. For the love of anything, please use a full RSS feed.
72. Use "nofollow" on links if need be.
73. Add a search bar.
74. Stay consistent with a color scheme.
75. Join the Wicked Fire forums, but be careful.
76. Write press releases monthly.
77. Create a monthly newsletter.
78. Read Daily Blog Tips.
79. Asks friends for Digg's, Stumble's, Hypes, and Barks.
80. Read the Sports Dollar!
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Ldmstudio Directory
Posted 6/19/08 - Kellex
Our friends over at ReviewME have started a new text link selling idea that actually seems worth trying. It's not one of those weird shticks like TNX.net that wants you to practically turn your blog over to their intrusive script to get it to work correctly.
This new site is called BlogRolled and the idea is to basically take your existing blogroll and sell links to it. There is absolutely no installation involved and all you need to do is manually place an advertisers link on your blogroll if they have purchased one from you. (Google is going to hate this!)
Sounds too good to be true? It probably is, but with the service just being released today, I have not had a chance to test it. I've definitely signed up for it and will let you know if I see anything weird going on, since the last thing I want to do is endorse something crappy for any of your blogs.
One thing I did notice was the difference in link prices they had initially set for this blog compared with Le Basketbawl. They must be basing those prices off of PageRanks which is not unlike any other text link selling service.
Give it a try and let me know what you think! I'll be working it and will hopefully be able to do a review before long to let the rest of you know if it's worth it or not. BlogRolled.com is the place!
Posted 6/18/08
Mitchell Blatt, owns Juiced Sports Blog and loves to Stumble. Click to friend me on SU!
How to Install Link Vault and Start Building Tons of Links
About a week ago, I wrote a post on how to build lots of links through a program called Link-Vault.A few people in the comments section had further questions—specifically how do I install this [stuff]?—so I am going to address installation today.
A quick review for anyone who missed the post: Link-Vault uses a disguised code to automatically put links onto each page of your site and you earn credits to have your customized links appear on other network sites.
It is fairly complex to install though, so here’s how:
First, you must have a Wordpress blog or other hosted blog—it doesn’t work with Blogger. Also have access to your ftp. If you don’t have an ftp program but you do have Wordpress, you might want to get an ftp program. They are pretty cheap (about $20) and give you good access to editing and uploading files on your site easily. I use Fetch for Mac OS, and I hear Cute FTP is pretty good for Windows as well as Mac.
So, once you have an FTP program, Part 1:
Go to “site setup instructions” on Link-Vault, and they will tell you:
Create a file called lvqi9reotDrtCX3zzS.php or download (right click, Save Target As...)
All you do is click the download link and the file downloads to your desktop then upload the file into the index file of your FTP. You would log into your FTP program. It would give you a list of the pages and websites on your account. Click to the folder labeled mysportsblog.com and open it, then drop the file into that folder.
Basically, dragging and dropping into FTP is all you’re going to be doing to set up.
Part 2
Create another (empty) file called qi9reotDrtCX3zzS.txt (download), upload here : http://yoursportsblog.com/qi9reotDrtCX3zzS.txt and give it read/write access (use your ftp client to change the properties of file once uploaded).
Again, download the file and upload it. For this specific file you have to give it reading and writing permissions, which lets the links be written in. To do that, on Windows FTP, highlight the file and go to File > Properties, and put check marks in all the boxes for reading and writing, which would put your permission level at 666 (my favorite number).
Part 3
There is some code in a text box that you should copy and paste into the footer theme. That code is the link code.
Part 4
This isn’t necessary, but recommended, an automatically updating file that updates the link code, making it more disguised. You just download then upload it again.
Part 5
Click a link to turn test mode on and test links will show up on all pages if you installed it correctly. Then turn it off and click a link to check setup and activate at the bottom of the page. After you pass the check setup, you will slowly begin receiving link credits.
Enjoy the links!
Time to join ClickBooth to help monetize your site, don't you think?
Posted 6/17/08 - Joshua 
So over my first couple of posts I have talked about style, and how to get some traffic to your blog. If this were a step by step process, or a blogging by numbers class, the next step would be to become an affiliate of some website so that hopefully you would start earning some cash.
This is not an easy decision to make. There are literally hundreds of website affiliate programs out there. So how does one filter through all of that and get hooked up with the right one?
Well first of all you might want to try one that doesn’t offer money but offers an insight into just how much traffic you have, and how willing that traffic is to click on your ads.
For this kind of tool I generally turn either to Pepsi or Mountain Dew. Every summer they have some kind of campaign that bloggers can use as a website campaign. Again this does not offer money but the Pepsi sites monitor exactly how many people have clicked your ad and ranks that against everyone else doing the same.
Right now on all of my blogs I am using the Dewmocracy campaign to monitor my readers and their habits. So far the results have been about what I expected.
Of course after reading the Sports Dollar, I also have a BlogBurst account that also monitors blog hits. For our purposes though, the dew widgets are better because they show how many of our readers are clicking our widgets.
Now to get paid I have two favorite programs that have been pretty successful for me. The first is www.barrystickets.com. This is a sports ticket site that offers affiliates a 10% commission on all sales made through your link. I average around 100-250 bucks per month between my blogs and my cut of these banners on www.fantasyinsideronline.com.
The good thing about this program is they specialize in sports tickets. Since our readers are generally sports fans we have a built in market for this kind of market. The bad thing is over the last few months as the economy has become soft my numbers have been off as more people just cannot afford to go to sporting events.
In this case I have gone back to an old favorite, which is www.allposters.com. I first got hooked up with them when I used to write TV and movie reviews. In that context, I made a lot of money with my readers hitting my links and buying movie posters. I myself have a large collection of movie posters I bought through them.
The great thing is they also sell sports posters. Over the last few months I have switched over to sports poster links and while I am early in that switch over, the results are very promising.
They have this cool widget that can link to 20 different sports themed products and it switches every time my blog page is refreshed. It is a very cool program.
Hopefully with that all of you can start making some money. I would also like to add that we at FIO are looking to build a network of NASCAR related blogs to help us reel in bigger advertisers. If anyone out there is interested please e-mail me jlobdell@fantasyinsideronline.com.
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1. Commenting (Yes I brought it up again!) - It really is a huge deal if you want to make some friends that will continue to link, participate and spread the word on your blog. I’m am the worst at this and always tell myself that I don’t have time, but the truth is, I need to make time.
2. Link Lists – Almost as important as commenting and some would argue that it is more important. You’ll notice that we ran our “DollarBall” post yesterday for the first time in a while because it’s time to start growing again. Link it up to your peers and the chances of them returning the favor are pretty high.
3. Guest Posts – Asked anyone if you could guest post lately? This is something many of us feel uncomfortable doing, but it’s also something that you have to do. What’s surprising about guest posting, is your idea machine (brain) immediately starts flowing once someone says “yes.” Your post will likely be better than your every day posts and should help bring in a ton of new readers to your niche.
4. Social Bookmarking – We’ve hammered the hell out of this in the past and will continue to until something better comes along. Through our search bar or category list you can find tons of information on these with our favorites being Stumble Upon, YardBarker, and BallHype. We don’t mention Digg all that much anymore as it has basically become useless to sports bloggers unless you have a new and creative video that no one has seen before. YardBarker at this point, tends to be dominating the rest.
5. Interviews – Plain and simple, ask someone if you can interview them! Think about how you would feel if someone asked to interview you. Would feel good huh? I’m not sure that anyone, aside from maybe a pro blogger, has turned down an interview when asked. Throw together a quick 5-10 question list and send it off in a well written email. You may have instantly gained a reader just by asking!
Posted 6/19/08 - Kellex
- BlogStorm ran this list of the top 10 Viral Marketing campaigns of all time. Some that were way before my time, but some that I also remember very clearly. I think he forgot the Tiger Woods bouncing ball though.
- This is over a week old, but has been one of my favorite pieces to the "cowpetition" over at John Cow.
- A look at various online business models through Court's Internet Marketing School.
- Strategic Profits asks "Are you really an entrepreneur?"
- Another contest to win some Market Leverage stuff; this time through Zach Johnson.
- Need a new WordPress theme? Here are 2 free ones, courtesy of Blueverse.
- Garry Conn asking if Google made a wise decision in the purchase of YouTube.
- Is this just another BS attempt to coax you into thinking you can make $100 a day?
- A great read on "Getting Others to Talk About You" from XFEP.
- A "sort-of" review about Entrecard and its eventual doom. Thanks Turnip of Power.
- Need a new affiliate? Check out PublisherSpot.
- Slow growth in your blog? Here are 5 reasons courtesy of PureBlogging.
Did you know you can sell links on your site with Text-Link-Ads?
Posted 6/16/08 - Kellex
Besides people searching for "the sports dollar" my top keywords have to be those directed at "sports blogger templates." Blogger is obviously still free and possibly the most widely used blogging platform that contributes thousands of new blogs to the blogging world daily. There are also countless blogs out there dedicated to providing templates for this platform and from our stats, people are really looking for sports related templates.
We'll also mix in some WordPress themes to let the Blogger users see what is possible with a blog template. You become pretty limited with Blogger and making the upgrade to WordPress can mean big things to come. (Of course we still need to make this jump. Soon people!)
Here is a list of sites you can pull, what we feel, are the top sports blog templates.
Pyzam
This site also made our list of the Top 5 Blogger Template sites and remains one of the top still to this day. They offer you a ton of options and color schemes but seem to lack much originality. You'll find way too much Minima going on, but the site will still give you a nice range of colors and background images that should give you a solid base to begin a transformation of your blog.
BlogSkins.com
This is an interesting site of Blogger templates with the templates provided by users. Not a ton of high quality templates for Blogger but you'll definitely have a wide range of sports minded themes. Take some time to browse through and you may find a hidden gem.
Template Monster
OK, not a Blogger template site, but Template Monster is definitely carrying a ton of very high quality sports minded themes. They are also not free, but may be worth a look if you are a starting out a blog and going straight to WordPress. This also has an affiliate program that you can sign up for here.
Free Wordpress
A solid sports WordPress theme list that you should check out. These are free templates that offer you a pretty solid range of what many sports blogs can look like.
Classic Websites
Another WordPress site. None of these are free but it should give you some more examples of sports blogs and your template options.
Time to join ClickBooth to help monetize your site, don't you think?
Posted 6/16/08 - Kellex
Sorry for the lack of posting over the weekend! We finally had some nice weather up here in the Northwest and there was plenty of golf and beer to be had, US Open to watch, and birthday parties to attend. But we're back now in full swing with a great week ahead!
The final round of the US Open is on, the sun is still shining, I'm chowing cajun burgers at 10:38AM and things just feel good. I hope everyone else had a solid weekend!
Have you signed up for the PepperJAM Network and eBay.com, their newest affiliate?
Posted 6/13/08 - Joshua
So before any of us can think about ads and dollars we must figure out how to get traffic to our blogs. There are many ways to do this, and we can do just about all of them for free.
First and foremost create a separate myspace account for your blog. Sure, friend it to you own profile and keep it in your top friends. Once you get a blog myspace, do a search for people interested in what your blog is about. For me I did racing and then NASCAR. Then sign into that account everyday and set a number of people to invite, when I started I was doing 25 a day. When we launched Fantasy Insider Online we were adding at least 50 friends a day.
In the end I would say about half of the people we invited to be friends on myspace became traffic to our sites and my blogs. Remember that when setting a number of invites per day. Half is a pretty good number, but I would bet the average is around a third.
Once you have a blog myspace account you will need an avatar and a banner with a link to your blog. There are several sites online where one can customize their own banner and avatar, or you can try and get a buddy of yours to make it for free.
For me I used a different viral marketing method to get my avatars and banners made. I joined livejournal.com and found many communities where up and coming web graphic artists where looking for stuff to do to help promote their skills.
In fact my corporate logo and the logo’s I was using to promote my own football venture came around this way. It can be a very useful tool.
Once you have a myspace blog account, an avatar, and a banner with a link, then we must find a social network site that is specific for the sport we are covering. Since I do mostly NASCAR stuff I joined Infield Parking and used a similar strategy there.
I searched for sports social networking sites and came across this article, on “Sports Social Networking Sites"; hopefully there is something there for you to use. I am willing to bet there is a specific sports networking site for everything one can think of. In fact there is infield parking which is run by Dale Earnhardt Jr. and The Race Space which is run by part time driver and Hollywood stuntman Stanton Barrett for racing alone. I have profiles on both and use them to drive traffic to my collection of blogs and websites.
With the exciting news delivered by Kellex about Yardbarker teaming up with Foxsports.com, submitting articles to Yardbarker is a great way to drive traffic. My first 10 or so articles for Fantasy Insider Online were submitted there and he positioned me as a fantasy racing expert.
Now I get many emails from sites wanting a specific article and the great thing about that is they pay. Starting this year I teamed up with Mock Draft Central and was offered a four article run every January as a fantasy NASCAR preview. They pay 25 bucks an article, and hey money is money.
The main point here is there is an unlimited amount of free ways to help promote your blog. Make use of as many of them as you have time for. You will be quite surprised at the effectiveness of them.
Have you signed up for the PepperJAM Network and eBay.com, their newest affiliate?
Posted 6/12/08 - Kellex
The category list is something I'm on the fence on and hopefully that fence doesn't have razor wire. My category list currently has 22 categories that I'm sure need some defining. This is the first time I've used an actual category list since Le Basketbawl has a mind numbing 176 categories!
With that being my first attempt at blogging, I made some initial mistakes like using a new category for just about every single post. Smart huh? Some day I'll take on the task of slimming that down but until I have 4 extra hours on hand, I doubt that'll be happening any time soon.
How do you all feel about a category list? Do you like it listed on a blog? Do you ever use a category list? What is the max number you like to see? 5? 10? 20+?
Ours will definitely be minimized since I've already noticed a couple of categories that are technically the same thing or could be merged, but I think I like using it. It definitely gives readers looking for a specific thing a nice way to browse a site, but after looking at some of our tools I can tell it also rarely gets used. (Maybe once our traffic goes up?)
Let me know what you think!
Have you signed up for the PepperJAM Network and eBay.com, their newest affiliate?
Posted 6/12/08 - Kellex
I ran into MyBlogValue.com from a ton of different blogs today and thought I'd run it since everyone else seemed to be. (Follower!) The thing is completely ridiculous...
The Sports Dollar is worth:
$253,320
Le Basketbawl is worth:
$1,752,620
OK, obviously I'm either doing that wrong or like I just said, this thing is completely ridiculous. Some of the big time blogs came in at $1.8 million and Le Basketbawl is no where near those. Was still fun to see, I guess.
Time to join ClickBooth to help monetize your site, don't you think?
Posted 6/11/08 - Kellex
I used to consider myself the king of NBA linkbaiting pieces while I was writing up whacky lists and covering other fun topics that would get picked up by the big dog sports sites. My BallHype NBA ranking had cracked the top 20 within a month, Extra Mustard was my buddy, my readership was growing exponentially, and then one day my brain went "blah!" and it all started to slip away! I wasn't creative any longer, I hated writing about actual games, there were no controversies, and my linkbait dominating days were over.
Was the end near? Actually, this was probably the greatest wake up call I could have asked for. Linkbaiting, if done correctly can take a brand new blog and make it an instant power which is what happened with Le Basketbawl.
The problem? I was essentially a one trick pony that was only good at writing goofy top 10 lists and pushing out what I thought was "breaking news." There was no depth to my writing and you could tell that my brain was wrecked in trying to come up with the next great list or news blurb. You could also tell that my readers were a little bored and had moved on from my cheesy wannabe contests and "forced" material.
Why was this good? It forced me to write. It forced me to concentrate on a style and stick to it. Once you leave the linkbaiting phase of the blog life cycle, it can become difficult to continue to write on a regular basis when you aren't seeing the dramatic numbers steadily flowing in. There is nothing more disheartening than taking a few hours to write what you thought was a deep and well researched piece only to see it flutter out of sight and grab little response.
But Le Basketbawl is fine now isn't it? I ended up taking a long break to figure out what the hell I was going to do and what approach I was going to take. During the break, I started this site (which I freakin' love) and soon after my life as an NBA writer was renewed, the NBA Finals kicked in, BlogBurst, Ball Don't Lie and Stumble Upon showed me some basketball love and now I've got the smile back.
The meaning? If your blog is rising in an early stage, make sure to dabble in the linkbaiting game, but please do not make it your only outlet. Write one to two linkbait pieces a month and use the time in between to really define your style as a writer. Remember to shoot for the long haul rather than the quick fix.
I'd love to hear your stories! Has your blog hit rock bottom after some major linkbaiting pieces? Has your brain cramped with linkbait-itis? How did you recover or did you recover?
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Posted 6/11/08 - Kellex
I need to apologize. I feel dirty. I'm ashamed. Hose me down with holy water. Peel away my blistery skin. Take me out back and punish me.
Why? Because this is a post simply to give me an entry into a contest on another blog. What makes it so filthy though, is that it's a John Chow contest.
Companies love him and you can understand why with the amount of targeted traffic he reaches on a daily basis. Well, the latest company to rub his Chowzer, is Market Leverage. They've sent him a solid Nike gym bag full of crap that he is giving away to anyone that comments on the post and then follows up by writing about it on their own blog. (Yes I have officially sold out today. Give me a break, it is hump day right?)
Prizes include: A Flip, iPod Nano, $200 AMEX card, and a flash pen.
I figured I could be ashamed for one day and hopefully you all won't run away! Plus I'll be making it up to you in a couple of weeks when I run a sick little giveaway. :)
Did you know you can sell links on your site with Text-Link-Ads?
Posted 6/11/08 - Kellex
The first thing I'd like to do is acknowledge Dannie from Sports Blog Earnings and his positive look at BlogBurst while I was hating the hell out of it. BlogBurst ran an initial push back in April by recruiting any basketball blogs they could find that would be willing to join their network.
I jumped on the idea but after seeing nothing early on from it and the fact that they denied the Sports Dollar from it had me quickly forgetting about the service and moving on to other ideas.
So what happened?
Well sure enough, Dannie was right about its potential to put your blog posts on major sites and deliver some nice traffic. During these NBA Finals, I've been linked up to NBA.com on 2 of the 3 games and man, did Le Basketbawl feel the love! Not only was it linked up, but it was one of the top posts linked during the entire running/streaming game which obviously had thousands of visitors simultaneously checking the score for updates.
The first line in this image is the traffic that the BlogBurst post to NBA.com has delivered to me so far tonight for game 3 and the second line is from game 1 on 6/5. (I grabbed that 408 visitors number at 11PM PST and the traffic is still flowing in, so that number will look drastically different by now.)
Those may not seem like Deadspin or Big Lead numbers but they are the exact readers I am looking for to come to my NBA blog. These are die hard NBA fans that are following the game play-by-play online and also browsing around to the top blogs at the same time. Can you get any better than that? My Google Adsense sure loves BlogBurst! These numbers are also pulled from my Google Analytics which for whatever reason always recognizes far less visitors than my other stat trackers. (Anyone else notice that?)
How can you utilize BlogBurst?
Write a game preview! Write something buzzworthy! Don't swear (too much)! Here is the bullet list pulled from the BlogBurst site on how to get the "in's":
- The more frequently you post, the more likely a publisher will be to find you. Minimum of one top-notch post a week.
- Our publishers tell us that they are most interested in unique perspectives, make sure your blog offers a distinct voice. We don’t want novels, but we do want full-length essay-style posts with unique content.
- Stay away from posts that just link and summarize content from other sites.
- Spell-check, grammar-check, polish it up.
Tell us Dannie!
I'll leave this post open for Dannie to possibly write about on his blog or respond via comment as to how he got linked up to the Chicago Sun Times. Was it a game preview of a Sixers-Bulls game or just an interesting piece on them?
For the rest of you, if you haven't already, you will want to sign up for BlogBurst and try to break their code to get some play on a major site; the results speak for themselves.
Time to join ClickBooth to help monetize your site, don't you think?
Posted 6/10/08 - Kellex
This is a very nice free tool that can be used to see many things including whether or not your current layout is optimized correctly. If you are not familiar with Crazy Egg, you should go to their site now to check it out and start running a free test.
The tool allows you to track a certain number of visitors to your site and keeps track of what the visitors are clicking on by showing you in a clean and visual manner. I would recommend that you run a test on your index or main page to see what your readers are clicking on the most. From there you can pick other pages to run the test on such as your most popular Google searched page or a new linkbait piece you have just released.
This will give you a pretty good idea if your ads are receiving enough action and if your site needs some adjustment.
Let me know if you have any questions!
Have you signed up for the PepperJAM Network and eBay.com, their newest affiliate?
Posted 6/10/08 - Kellex
Some extra good news was released last night from the Yardbarker camp that you all should be very excited about. Yardbarker has formed a partnership with Fox Sports that will allow it to share its network's blogs' content with the sports super power.
If you are a part of the YBN, and write interesting top 10 lists or other humorous content then there is a good chance your work could be grabbed and released to thousands of people through Fox's sports site. They aren't looking for your boring old recaps and game previews; they want the stuff that blogs are so good at, being creative!
Right now the process looks to be a little clunky but the crew at Yardbarker hopes to automate it in the near future.
As a sports blogger, you should be very eager to submit articles that could be used. Hitting Fox's site may not be as good as Extra Mustard, but it should still bring you a ton of useful traffic. Join the YBN and start cookin' up that magic sports blog material!
If you have questions or concerns about this new idea, you should contact Dewey and let him know you are interested. Also, feel free to let me know if you have any questions!
Did you know you can sell links on your site with Text-Link-Ads?
Posted 6/9/08 
Mitchell Blatt, Juiced Sports Blogger and AirRaid Stumbler who wants to friend you.
Cool Trick to Get a Ton of Links
You can get high as Ricky Williams in the search engines by getting dem links. Everyone knows that. But how do you get lots of links? Other than writing good content?Here’s a nice, free, and easy technique to build extra links without doing any other work. I’m warning you it only works if you host your site, so it won’t work for Blogger, but it will for Wordpress.
The site you can use to build links is Link-Vault.
What Link-Vault is is an automated link exchange network. What sets it apart is that it puts different urls on every page load, thus getting your url onto more websites and on different websites. If you url were only on the same website, the PR juice flowing would be greatly devalued. The fact that it loads on so many different pages at different times means that on some loads, the spiders will see it and credit you with links from multiple websites. This increases PR.
You simply set up the code and files and then ignore it as you build links. You can customize the links and have them link to any pages you want with custom anchor text. You get credit for links shown based on a points formula involving how many pages you have and links you show, how much traffic you have, and how much PR you have.
The only problem is that Google doesn’t really like link exchange networks, but Link-Vault combats this fact by offering code with hard-to-spot codes in it to direct the links, and changes the code ever so often. Google may be good, but they don’t have the resources of Bill Belichick yet, so it is pretty hard to get caught.
This is a good tool whether you want to promote your sports blog or various pages of it for various keywords or if you have multiple websites you want to promote. Building organic links from good content is a must, but having these extra tools is what can put you over the top.
Time to join ClickBooth to help monetize your site, don't you think?
Posted 6/9/08 - Joshua
The idea for me coming over here and offering advice on sports blogging is to one, give you the real skinny how it is and how we can all make a little money doing it.
The second is keeping the Sports Dollar readers abreast of the biggest mistakes a lot of the bloggers out there commit. As one of the people that look to employ such people, here is a little run down on some things that would automatically make me navigate away from a certain blog.
For all of the major sports there is a news cycle, or the amount of time that a story lives and is interesting to readers. Obviously I would want writers for any of my websites to understand this and not submit stories after their news cycles have expired.
Basically in Baseball, a writer has a window of two to three days. Since teams play each other in a few games at a time a baseball story has a 3 day life span.
In NASCAR and NFL however a writer has essentially an entire week. For the most part these two sports compete on Sunday; the storylines last a little longer. Since most of my background is with NASCAR racing, a writer could talk about anything race related all the way up until Wednesday. After that most of the attention is on to the next contest.
Basketball and Hockey are a little trickier, since the teams play schedules against different teams most nights, these stories have a shelf life of about 24 hours. Let me be blunt here, if I know something happened on Monday and I see someone reacted to it in a blog on Thursday I am not going to read that. It has died on the shelf. A new story has taken its place and well, someone may have missed an opportunity to get discovered.
The next big thing I look for in blogs is originality. Please do not regurgitate the same crap I already read in my morning newspaper. Jim Rome has a saying,”have a take, and don’t suck.” These are words for the sports blogger to live by. Do not be afraid to say something the main stream media is afraid to say, or doesn’t say. The mainstream media is in shambles and that is why we see such a reliance of news moved over to the blogger. Be yourself, and be original.
The last thing I want to mention here is to pick the sport you like the most and then know that sport. I use to write general sports articles about every major sports team in Detroit. It got me noticed, but they were very lacking in skill and in originality. Now, since most of my focus is on NASCAR and the top division of NASCAR in particular, my stories and blog entries are far superior.
If I wanted homogenized opinion from a group of group thinkers I would be watching ESPN’s Sports Center instead of reading your blog.
Ok that is it for this week; please e-mail me your blog address so I can start checking them out!
jlobdell@fantasyinsideronline.com
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Posted 6/8/08 - Kellex
Some of you may have noticed that the Sports Dollar Job Board is seeing little posting action these days, which is understandable to us. We created it, pumped it up for 2 days and then let it go to see what may happen. We posted 2 positions for Sports Writers/Bloggers and James from NE Patriots Draft also posted 2 Marketing positions.
To date, these are the only posts up which may seem weak, but it's what I've seen on the back end that really has me drooling. So far, the Sports Dollar position has had 149 views and 23 applications submitted while the Le Basketbawl position is falling just behind it with 98 views and 9 applications submitted.
What I also need to point out is that no one that I deal with on a daily basis applied, so in other words these positions were found by complete strangers that were simply looking for work in the sports blogging world. It should also be noted that these were found via search engines even though I haven't promoted or optimized this job board at all.
This job board is linked with Simply Hired, Myspace Jobs, and LinkedIn to name a few. Those are huge job databases that eager sports bloggers are using to try and find work.
Now what I'm going to ask you all is, "What are you waiting for?" Is it because you don't have a position to fill? If that is your answer then I call BS. Everyone needs to start thinking outside the box here. This is not your basic job board; you could easily set up a position for a Guest Sports Blogger and you would have the position filled within a week.
The sports blogging world is blowing up right now! The people that applied for positions with my two little ol' sites didn't care that the positions were voluntary. (Although there may be somethin' somethin' worked out behind the scenes, if you know what I mean.) They just wanted a forum to get their material out there! Get creative with the positions you need!
You've all been given the June 75% off coupon code and not one person has used it yet. 75% off means you can post a position of any sort for $2.50! Some of you have also been given other special codes that you should be utilizing.
What I'm saying is, the time is right to think bigger with your blog. There are thousands of writers or artists out there that would love a chance to join your journey.
Have you signed up for the PepperJAM Network and eBay.com, their newest affiliate?
Posted 6/8/08 - Kellex
This is the first post in our latest series which will cover the process of selling advertising space on your sports blog!
Creating an "Advertise" Page
If your blog has been growing steadily over the past few months and you have secured some solid traffic and a PageRank, you may want to think about selling some advertising on your blog! Selling advertising, although a pain in the ass sometimes, will easily provide the highest income on your blog. (Unless of course you are an affiliate marketer or Adsense freak of nature.)
The first step in this process is to create that "Advertise" page. Take a look at ours and see the set up we've gone with. You should list out each spot that you have potential to advertise on even if those spots are full already. You may also want to list the stats of your page including your PageRank, Alexa graph, subscriber count, and any other number you think will entice potential advertisers.
Notice that we have chosen to display the pricing for our ads. Including the price has been somewhat of a talking point amongst blogs as of late. Many think you should leave it a mystery or at least leave the potential advertiser wondering enough to inquire about the ad spot. If you can get someone to at least ask your price, you may be able to work out a system or price that both parties would agree on.
On the other side you can do like we've done and list the actual price for the spot. Our argument is that we only want serious advertisers to contact us. (I'm a busy man, and I don't have time to deal with empty offers!) Of course this option may scare away some advertisers, but we are also letting them know that we are serious about our ad spots and that premium advertising isn't found just anywhere.
If you don't have an "Advertise" page, then how is anyone going to know that you have space to sell?
Thoughts or questions on this first section?
Time to join ClickBooth to help monetize your site, don't you think?
Posted 6/6/08
Guest Post written by Michael "Cuzzy" C. of the sports/Raptors/money making blog, Cuzoogle.com! Make sure you check out part 1 of the 25 Traits of Successful Sports Bloggers.
25 Traits of Successful Sports Bloggers: Part 2
13) Positive - If you write articles in a negative-tone that criticize others' or discourage others, I generally will stop reading your sports blog over time. I get tired of negative views pretty fast and I bet a lot of readers do as well. Readers will take a look at a couple of posts, see the negativity throughout and won't hesitate to leave and never look back at your blog again. Now don't get me wrong I know the negative side can spark a good debate and bring in a load of short term traffic but it should not be the overall tone of your sports blog.
Keeping a positive writing voice is something that you should always try and maintain and in the end it will really help you maximize your results. Most People love reading sports blogs that have a positive, funny and entertaining author. It takes a lot more skill to write something with a positive spin and be entertaining than it is to resort to put down humour all of the time.
Don't forget that a positive attitude should not only be taken into account for sports blogging, it should be taken into account for your overall life. Without a positive outlook and the building of positive relationships, blogging won't be that much fun.
14) Enthusiastic - Everyone loves a writer who can show a lot of enthusiasm through their sports blogging voice. When writing my own posts I try to be as enthusiastic as I can stand without going over the top. You should try this as well since you really don't want your readers to get bored. An upbeat tone is a great way to convey content on your sports blog.
Try to be as enthusiastic as possible towards your favorite team or player no matter how bad they are playing; your enthusiasm could rub off on the crowd. Do something to fire up your readers because the chances are good that it will help you become more successful. As a sports blogger you are already passionate about sports so let it show in your writing. If you can be enthusiastic everyday, there is a better chance people will enjoy reading your sports blog.
15) Responsible - Successful sports bloggers take responsibility of all their actions when it comes to their blog. Taking responsibility of actions simply means letting readers know when they made a mistake, how they are learning from a mistake, and following through on any promises made. It is very difficult to stay subscribed to a sports blog when a writer tells the readers one thing, then never follows through or provides an explanation for not following through. If you are going to promise something, you have to deliver.
In a world of thousands of sports blogs, you can't leave a reader hanging because it won't take much for them to click elsewhere. Ask yourself, do you take responsibility for your mistakes and actions when it comes to your sports blog?
16) Independent - You can't be completely dependent on others to show you the way to success online if you expect to succeed one day. At some point, you have got to take your own action, come up with your own goals, and know what it is you want to achieve.
I try to seek help and offer up help as much as possible to figure out any nagging issues, but that only goes so far. A lot of blogging knowledge comes with experience and how long you have been doing it for. The sports side of it is the easy part but sometimes the blogging side of things can really frustrate you. Being more of an independent thinker, coming up with your own fresh ideas, and learning from yourself is key to becoming more successful as a sports blogger.
17) Goal-oriented - What are your online goals for your sports blog? Do you even have any yet? It really helps to set solid and smart goals that you think you can realistically achieve. I bet you have seen a lot of sports blogs without a clear-cut focus and to be honest it is really a time killer.
An example would be of a sports blogger that does not know what topic to focus his or her time on and makes a huge list of categories in the sidebar. I have always been bad for this and this is one area where I am trying to improve on and scale back my goals. After going through it I now think it is much easier to be successful as a sports blogger if you set an achievable goal to work towards.
Successful people know that goals are important and realize that having good goals to work towards can keep them motivated, focused, and excited. How boring would it get if you had nothing pushing you to make your sports blog better everyday? If you don't have any online goals yet for your sports blog, ask yourself what you enjoy about sports and list the items. Force yourself to pick one item and one item only from the list. Then, blog about only things related to that item. It can be difficult, but keeping your sports blog's goal focused is key to success.
18) Balanced - Successful sports bloggers understand that staying well balanced is crucial to their future success. There are a number of things you must learn to balance your sports blog. They can include promotion time vs. time spent writing articles or balancing sports blogging with daily life. It can definitely get tough and any one who runs their own sports blog knows this. You may initially want to overwork yourself in pursuit of big money and begin to lose sight of things that really matter.
Successful sports bloggers know how to keep the right balance to achieve optimum results. Too much time spent promoting and not taking the time to develop good content is a setup for failure and vice-versa also applies Are you having trouble balancing your sports blog?
19) Purposeful - What is the purpose of your sports blog? Do you want to make money (duh)? Do you want to share with others how much you know about sports? Do you just need a place to rant about your team? Whatever it is, it really helps to understand the purpose of your sports blog in relationship to your personal values.
If I really didn't enjoy sports blogging, I would probably stop doing it and start focusing more of my time on other projects. Successful sports bloggers understand their online purpose, share it with others, and are passionate about their experience because of it. You have to understand that purpose is not the same as your online goal. Purpose is the reason for which you are online in the first place. Successful sports bloggers want to be online and are not forcing themselves to run a blog. They truly want to be doing it and everything that comes with it is like gravy.
20) Efficient - How efficient are your work habits? I will admit that from time to time I get caught up with life and am not able to stay focused on my sports blog even though I do always try my best. Sometimes when doing up a new post I will stop and have the urge to check my email, blog stats, how many tweets I have or feel compelled to check out Entrecard.
I have recognized this behavior and every time I have an urge to check my e-mail I try my best let it pass (unless it is the girlfriend). Why should you try to curb your e-mail urges? Because checking e-mail during the middle of a blog post is inefficient. Successful sports bloggers usually have a daily blogging routine that they stick to and incorporate into their life. It usually is as simple as a certain time period each day to work on your sports blog and let nothing interfere with that time.
21) Competitive - As a sports blogger it is pretty much built in that you are competitive already so this trait will be very common. I am always up for some good competition in my daily life and of course the blogosphere. You need to be somewhat competitive if you want to be a successful sports blogger.
What do I mean by competition? It can include friendly challenges with other sports bloggers such as networking to run a contest where the winner of the contest is the sports blog with the highest RSS subscriber count on a certain day. Simple things like that is great to see in the sports blogosphere even if your blogs should be bitter rivals based on the topics (Lakers-Celtics).
If someone asks me to have a competition and it does not involve a lot of money, you can bet that I will be willing to join. Being competitive also means being up-to-date with your advertising, producing quality content, and keeping your sports blog up to speed on the latest trends (Twitter for example). Not to get to philosophical but in the end it is important to realize that your only competition is yourself when trying to become successful as a sports blogger.
22) Honest - Honesty online is crucial to success. If you cannot be honest with your readers and admit your mistakes to others, you will never build trust or a good relationship with your readers (if that is your goal). Being as honest as possible with your commenting crowd is key and I really think that most readers enjoy that.
Successful sports bloggers are not afraid to admit their shortcomings or report the trouble that they ran into along the way. I will not hesitate to post about a time that I failed or ran into serious problems because I realize that there is always something to learn. From that others can learn from the problems or mistakes you have made. Be honest with yourself and be honest with your readers. Don't report huge monthly earnings just to draw attention to your sports blog and impress readers. Who really cares? Sure it can work for some (John Chow) but most people in the sports blogging world don't really care.
It is a terrible thing to lie to your readers and give them false hopes by displaying skewed information. If you are one of the big sports blogs, those starting out are going to try and follow your lead, so don't trick them. Read a successful sports blog once and you will know that they are not afraid to admit their mistakes!
23) Focused - Staying focused on sports blogging is very difficult for anyone that has not had much blogging experience. Starting out in sports blogging, I only posted about once every few days. Then I finally decided it was time to step it up. I really challenged myself to make a conscious effort to post everyday without excuses. It got to a point to where I felt bad for not posting and it became addicting. Now because I have the time to do it, I am posting three or four times a day.
While I am writing posts, it can be difficult to stay focused when others are emailing me, the dog is bored and wants to play or there is something on TV I want to watch. You need to fit all that in with your sports blogging. Over time I have developed a good strategy that seems to work out for me and really helps keep me focused. Getting into a daily blogging routine also helps. Think of it like your business or job (that you like) and that will help you be more focused.
Successful sports bloggers stay focused on their online projects and know exactly what move to make next. Are you focused, or do you get lost for hours once you open Facebook or Twitter?
24) Unique - Being unique is always something to strive for and incorporate into your online image. Who really wants to read just another sports blog? It really helps when you can think of your own interesting content and not flood your posts with regurgitated ideas that myself and others have read on all other sports blogs and websites.
Can't think of any ideas? Surf around the Internet and look at other blogs, listen to music or watch a TV show. Something will trigger a new idea. I like to think of it like this. What would be interesting and entertaining enough to get on the front page of Ball Hype or Yardbarker?
If you are a sports blogger you have an idea of what readers want so put your own spin on it. Most successful sports bloggers were the first of their kind and put forth the best effort in the growing niche. Sure you can choose to start another sports blog but don't make it a blog that someone refers to as "just another sports blog." Create an image to stand out from the crowd, and make it something memorable!
25) Patient - Fitting trait for the end of a list don't you think? Initially, sports blogging is not a very good investment. Your time spent sports blogging is worth much more than what you will initially be earning. If you are willing to stay in the game for the long-term, I think you will be very happy with the results. Successful sports bloggers understand that in the short-term, it may be very tough to get traffic, earn money, and get recognized. However, once you have stuck around for awhile with consistent content, you will be recognized as a reputable source of solid information.It is great if you can throw a huge contest to celebrate the start-up of your sports blog, or get a load of traffic initially, but most sports bloggers are not that fortunate. Write these words down and live by them - patience is a virtue that successful sports bloggers have.
Make sure you check out other posts from Cuzzy like his ongoing "Rolling a Blog Joint..." and his "Babes of Survivor!"
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Posted 6/6/08 - Kellex
I'd like to introduce everyone to the newest writer here at the Sports Dollar, Joshua Lobdell! We've been busy during these first 3 months and thought it was a good idea to bring someone on to help share their views and success stories in the sports blogging world. Josh comes to us as a very successful online writer with hopes of something greater.
I may be somewhat of a cheeseball, but I asked him to write me a post that we could use as an introduction to our readers. Here is his take...
Who I am, and why you should care.
Hello to all you wonderful Sports Dollar readers. My name is Joshua Lobdell, and I, like many of you am a sports blogger. The powers that be here, have asked me to come along and share with you some of my wisdom on how to make a little cash writing sports blogs.
My Qualifications
I know what you are all thinking, “Who is this jerk off?” and “What makes him think he can tell me how to make money writing my sports blog?” Well in a little more than three years I have transformed from a writer, writing general sports stories on a weekly Myspace.com blog to the Head of the NASCAR department at www.fantasyinsideronline.com, a member of the fantasy sports writers of America, a full member of the NASCAR media, in line for a vote in the upcoming NASCAR Hall of Fame, and I make enough money doing this that it is my full time job working out of my home. This saves me a load of money on my taxes each year.
As soon as I finish my College Degree, I am in line for a beat writer position with mlb.com covering one of the 32 teams of Major league baseball. Once there, I will be a member of the Baseball Writers of America and after ten years I will also have a vote for the Baseball hall of Fame.
There is success out there to be had, but this is not an easy endeavor. First things first you must think of this as a job. It will take a lot of effort, networking, emails, business cards, appearing at events, and all that other stuff that makes things work.
Over the past three years I have labored at a great many things to get myself to this point. The main idea of me writing here as a blogger is to tell all of you how I did it and the other as a Department head is to show some of you what specific website editors are looking for.
At FIO I have the final say on every NASCAR writer we employ and I also have a minor say in the other sports writers the sites employ. With that base of knowledge I can show all of you how to avoid things that would make people like me move on to another blog instead of yours.
Also in the near future I will be hiring more writers, and this could be a very good way for some networking to occur. In this business one must always have an open mind, and the email you neglect to send is probably the one that doesn’t open the next door.
My History
Enough of all that for now, let’s look a little more at my unique history. I learned all of my promotion skills while serving as the Director of Community Relations for the 5 time World Champion Semi Pro Women’s Football team Detroit Demolition.
Before I did that, I ran a website dedicated to the Local Detroit Music scene and managed a few bands. I also spent some time as a GM of a movie theater.
What these jobs all had in common was the ability to get people to come to where I was and spend their money. It is with that idea that I embarked on my sports blogger career.
As you might have guessed I live in
Based on the traffic I see each day I would gather that I reach about 100 thousand people a day. Not to shabby for a guy sitting at his computer dissecting NASCAR stats and personnel moves.
Is this a legitimate career yet? Honestly no, but it does affect my tax return so that is a nice start. Honestly, I don’t even know what a good income doing this is, my family doesn’t want for anything and to me that is the measuring stick of success.
With all of that being said I look forward to showing all of you how to build a successful sports blog, for whatever your measuring stick of success happens to be.
Time to join ClickBooth to help monetize your site, don't you think?
Now, you may think, John makes $30,000 a month, he knows blogging, so he must be right, but I think, John makes $30,000 a month, he’s got an ego bigger than China, so of course he thinks people want to see him talk about his daughter Sally.
Lately John has been posting a lot of videos of himself talking about something completely un-related to blogging, like traveling, China, or his daughter Sally, but even if he was talking about blogging, I still wouldn’t watch the videos.
Let me tell you why videos in blogs suck.
You guys are reading this right now and skipping sentences and paragraphs (or maybe even the entire article) that you don’t like. You know what to skip because you see the words on the page and you can see what paragraphs look interesting or if the article looks interesting as a whole.
With video, you can’t skip to the good parts, and you can’t even decide if the video looks good. You just see a screenshot and make a jump of faith. A few minutes in to the self-absorbed jackass prattling on about whatever, you decide, the first minute sucked, so the next five will probably suck, too. Does it take five minutes to read a blog post?
This is not to say all videos are bad. Here’s when to use videos.
Use a video of something related to make a point or entertain the reader. DON’T USE A VIDEO OF YOURSELF TALKING. That is what blog posts are for. You get a keyboard type out the same s%$t you speak, but a lot faster.
Use a video of the athlete you are writing about doing something funny or making a good play. Use a video of Will Leitch getting bitch slapped by Buzz Bissinger. Use a video to add to the post. That’s my point.
Now here are some more reasons John Chow’s post was retarded if you wish to read more Chow bashing.
He lists a bunch of reasons why people should use videos that make no sense like:
As a money making blogger, you have to keep an eye on the market to see where it’s headed. The next Internet isn’t on the desktop. If you stay there, you’ll be left behind.
Low Cost of Entry
… If you have a digital camera (and who doesn’t?), chances are you can add videos right now.
Having said that, keep in mind that the future of video on the Net is Hi-Def. If you’re in the market for a new digital camcorder and have some money to spend, you should consider getting the HD model.
Videos have their purpose: they should be used to enhance posts, but never use a video of yourself unless you want the publicity of being bashed on the Sports Dollar.
Time to join ClickBooth to help monetize your site, don't you think?
Posted 6/4/08 - Kellex
At this point in the game, I'd have to say "yes". In a comment the other day at Yardbarker.com on Cuzzy's 25 Traits post, I saw someone that was surprised that people are making money at sports blogging. It actually brought a smile to my face as I instantly realized the potential of this site and everyone else's.
This is a wild guess, but I would suspect that 80% of sports bloggers have no idea how to market or monetize their site. I would also take that a step further in saying that the majority of those 80% have no idea that they can even make a dollar at doing this!
How are we doing?
This site, after being up for almost a full 3 months now, is starting to see substantial increases in advertising income, subscribers, and traffic. My guess is that once Google does their next PageRank update, we will have fully established ourselves and this thing could really start to boom. (Note: Many advertisers and affiliates won't deal with your butt unless you have a PageRank.)
We've posted a position for a second writer at our Job Board that is close to being filled with the post being up for less than 10 days. (Not bad eh?) We're receiving more and more guest posts from some incredible people that we can't thank enough. And lastly, we're finding a ton of motivation these days to bring you every little bit of knowledge we can rip out from our sports obsessed brains!
Now to you!
With that said, I'd love to hear any stories that any of you have had after dealing with our site. Have we helped? Brought you major success or traffic? Are we full of shit? Do you want more/less affiliate info? Do you want more/less guest posts? What are we missing that you are dying to know?
Let us know!
Thank you again for joining us on this journey.
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Posted 6/5/08 - Kellex
Noticed our new banner up at the top? Yep, that's an eBay.com ad!
Our major affiliate marketer, PepperJam Network, has just joined with eBay.com offering its users access to one of the best affiliate programs on the planet.
You may want to check this one out if you are not already a part of PepperJam. As an affiliate, eBay.com easily offers one of the largest percentage payouts I've ever seen.
I think we all know how big eBay.com is and where this could fit into your sports blogging scheme. If you have any questions about eBay.com or PepperJam, please shoot me an email!
Posted 6/4/08 - Kellex
Consistent. Knowledgeable. Reliable. Interesting. Aggressive.
Wondering what the hell those are for? For me, those describe Mitchell Blatt to a "T". I've known Mitchell for just a short time now and have been lucky enough to have him write weekly columns here at the Sports Dollar.
The guy always brings it with every post. Sure he may have a severe case of hatred for certain pro bloggers but don't we all? With his guest writing and wealth of sports blogging knowledge he has helped this blog grow tremendously.
Please check out his personal page for more information and to request his services. (Oh, that sounded a little dirty.)
Did you know you can sell links on your site with Text-Link-Ads?
Posted 6/3/08 - Kellex
The Entrecard team has finally figured out a way (or decided) to sell credits to their users. Excited? I can't say that I am seeing as I can earn credits for free by clicking the "Drop" button on people's sites. You may respond with "Time is money", but when I was actively dropping, I could easily drop 300 cards in less than 30 minutes.
One thing I noticed the other day while approving some ads was that Entrecard had attempted to eliminate the "fast" dropping tactic from their Campaign section which was most likely a lead up to this new purchasing system. (I was still able to "fast" drop through my Drops Inbox though.)
So how does this new system work?
Buy Credits
On your Entrecard dashboard you will now see a link to buy credits. From this link, you are directed to a screen with 3 purchasing options: 1000 credits for $9.50, 5000 credits for $47.50, and 10000 credits for $95.00. The catch? They are only selling a limited number of credits per day to keep their "economy" stable.
And to think, I gave away 12,000 credits for free? I could have bought a new pair of shoes!
Earn Credits
Entrecard is also now, allowing you to earn credits just by posting to your blog. They pull your feed automatically and will deposit 25 credits into your account every time their feed picks up a new post from you. The catch? This will only happen once every 3 days, so don't think you can spam out posts to earn thousands of credits you cheap asses!
Write for the Entrecard Blog
They are also willing to pay you (in credits) if you write up posts for the Entrecard blog. You can make up to 2000 credits if your post is accepted and the amount you get is completely subjective to how good they think your post is.
It sounds like this Entrecard thing is still going strong, but I'm still not going to be a big participant. They have to really do something in the near future to wow me or that widget may be coming off as well.
Time to join ClickBooth to help monetize your site, don't you think?
Posted 6/3/08 - Kellex
The biggest piece of advice I can give to new and long term bloggers is, "Stop trying to reinvent the wheel."
That may sound completely negative and I apologize for the tone, but the truth is that you should be doing what you do and know best, and not worrying about defeating or outdoing the rest of your competitors. I'm sure at some point we've all been pissed about a post or list that someone put out before us and that is only human. Just keep it at a snicker to yourself and then move on. Your competitors should never slow down your progress!
What I'm trying to say here is that instead of giving yourself that migraine while concentrating on becoming or writing the next "big thing," use that energy to focus on the great things you have right in front of you.
- Focus that time on your current readers: Your readers tell you every day what they want to hear. Every time a reader expresses a point of view in a comment you should have an immediate post idea. Not getting enough comments? Start asking questions!
- Focus that time on the ideas right in front of your face: Looked at your Google Analytics lately? If your blog is lacking some reader activity, then head to the stats for motivation. Even if someone used some random term like "Blogsexual" through Google to find you, it could be post-worthy.
- Focus on your past successes: What was your most promising or popular post 3 months ago? I'm sure we can all rattle off 2-3 of those! Take a comment, quote or paragraph from one of those and spin it into a current event or a "part 2"; instant success.
- Focus on your peers successes: Don't you read the same blogs over and over? My Google Reader has my 5 favorite basketball blogs fed to it to help spark an idea when I'm writing for Le Basketbawl. They must be doing something I like which means they also have similar interests and ideas.
- Focus on your friends: Where would this blog be without Cuzzy of Cuzoogle, Mitchell of Juiced Sports Blog, James of NE Patriots Draft, Carolyn of And One, Stan of Razzball and Eddie of the Red Zone Report? Without incredible guest posts and collaboration I'd have quit already! Maybe.
- Focus on you: People read this blog because they like my tone, humor, point of view, or information. If I for whatever reason, changed my approach can you imagine what could happen? The success of this blog and yours is you. Keep being you and great things will continue to happen.
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Posted 6/2/08
Guest post by Mitchell Blatt, AirRaid81 on Stumble Upon. (Add me and I'll add you) And the owner of the Sports Blogging Forums.
(Insert Subheadline Here)
You know those long rambling posts that you never read in their entirety? I admit I am guilty of them on my own site Juiced Sports Blog sometimes, because I like to write long. In a world of sound bytes and one-paragraph blog posts, that shouldn't be a problem, though, if you write them right.Subheadlines
Subheadlines are good for conveying a detailed summary of the post. They also help for SEO. For SEO purposes, you will have a lot of keywords right at the front of the article in nice important tags. SE's give words in italics, bold, and h1-6 higher value that other words. More to the point, they get to the point of the post without a rambling title.
Titles should be short and catchy, like on one of my posts where I used the title, "Leave BlogRush Alone!" and featured a pic of the Leave Britney Alone Girl/Boy. Readers won't necessarily know what that means, though. It could be defending BlogRush, it could be parodying BlogRush, or it could be BlogRush tips, or anything else. As it turned out, it was BlogRush tips, so I added the subheadline "BlogRush Can Still Bring Decent Traffic if Used Properly."
Italics and Blockquote the Quotes
Quotes are usually more important or interesting than text, so make them stickout.
The best way is to blockquote them.
You can also make some returns and italics them. Blockquoting is similar to italicsing, so either way works. On a related note, you should also put in bold anything you want to draw attention to. People are going to be skimming your long articles, but there's some great lines or key points you want to make sure they don't miss.
Skip This Paragraph
Another important thing is to pay attention in school and work hard, because then you will do well. If not, you get stuck in Iraq. Hillary doesn't know what it's like to be in a country and a culture run by rich white people. God damn America. DON'T TAZE ME BRO! Can you get me some of them footsies? Hey, Charles, can I be in your Five? Welcome to the Jungle, We've got fun n games, We've got anything you want. And that's why I don't eat shrimp.
I told you to skip that shit
If you stopped reading there, you can start reading again now. That's an example of how to use more subheadlines. Put them throughout the post so that people know when to pay attention. When they see a stupid topic, they can just skip that paragraph and look for the good paragraphs. Like if John Chow wrote a subhead titled, "Sally," you would know to skip it.
Conclusion
You can still write long entries, just mark them up well.
Stay tuned, in a day or two, I will be writing a post bashing John Chow for being an idiot again, this time on the topic of "in post" videos. Chow thinks they're really cool. He's a fool.
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Posted 6/1/08 - Kellex 
This is such a cry for votes but I don't care! We're on page 3 of this thing with 9 votes which I feel pretty good about seeing as we didn't even realize this thing existed. The time has come people, to vote for the Sports Dollar!
You can vote for us as the Best Sports Blog!
Time to join ClickBooth to help monetize your site, don't you think?
Posted 6/1/08 - Kellex
I'd like to dedicate this post to our 50+ RSS subscribers!
The Sports Dollar has surpassed the 2 month mark and we actually feel pretty good about the way things are going. There have been numerous guest posts, contests, partnerships and even some new ventures that we are really excited about. (*Cough* Sports Dollar Job Board!)
I'm not sure any of these new things would be possible without the steady flow of readers and feedback from all of you. You have commented, suggested ideas for posts, yelled at us and even gave us a shoulder to cry on after the beat-down Daily Blog Tips threw at us.
A big thanks to you all for continuing to let us grow in this fabulous new niche! (That's right Daily Blog Tips, we aren't going anywhere!)
For those of you not yet subscribed, what the hell are you waiting for?
Get to it and see if we can get that number to 100+! I'm thinking that when that number hits 100 subscribers that we need to give away a nice little prize. The new Flip? Itunes gift card? A pair of Spizikes?
SUBSCRIBE NOW!
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