Posted 7/2/08 - Kellex

Anyone can spit out some junk on the NFL or NBA and call it a sports blog right? But not just anyone can take a blog from the bottom and raise it to the top of their niche and make a difference or make people say, “Damn dude, that’s legit!” I see sports blogs come and go almost daily and it’s usually because of the same things.

Most bloggers start out with a vision to make it big, have an online presence that is felt, and pull in some huge cash. Unfortunately, all three of these dreams are unlikely to happen to about 95% of us because of the competitive nature of the business. You have to be something pretty special AND focused to reach the top and to help you get there I’ve put together 5 areas you should look at to help not only grow, but maintain a worthwhile blog.

1. Who is the best in your niche?

Everyone should know who the big dogs are in their niche. If you are unaware of whom the top blogs are, then you are completely out of touch and should possibly stop what you are doing and do some quick research. Big time blogs are there because they’ve broken through and are providing something to thousands of readers that no one else is. You can pull from these blogs and while you are just starting out, you should probably be mimicking a lot of what they are doing. As a blogger without experience, you probably shouldn’t be trying to reinvent the wheel, right?

2. Do you know your sports social media sites?

If you haven’t heard of BallHype, YardBarker, Stumble Upon and Digg, then once again you need to shut down those dreams and find yourself a Google Toolbar to do some searching. These social media sites will be your greatest tools as a new blogger to help you reach an audience you couldn’t dream up. If you play your cards just right and put out some entertaining pieces from time to time, you will find these sites extremely useful. Trust me.

3. Have you found the top sports forums?

One thing almost every “tips & tricks” site will tell you is that you need to find a forum related to your niche. In this forum you will need to become an active member and provide worthwhile analysis and insight on your topics that will encourage readers to follow you from this forum to your blog. As a sports blogger, RealGM is probably your best bet to start with.

4. Are you getting to know any of your readers?

Your readers are the lifeline to your blog and without them, you’d have nothing. Always encourage participation through your posts and make sure to give your own thoughts and opinions. Readers can get unbiased opinions or recaps from ESPN; they come to your blog for your own personal, interesting perspective. Think about allowing guest posts, interviews, and polls to help keep them around and active.

5. Is your content worth anything?

When was the last time you wrote something and felt really great about it? If you are finding your blog lacking participation, growth and energy then maybe it’s time to switch gears. Your number of posts per day may need to be pulled back while you focus on writing some deep and meaningful pieces. Readers appreciate your knowledge, which is why they keep coming back. Don’t ruin their perception of you by not taking the time to give them everything you’ve got.


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 6/23/08 - 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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Posted 6/17/08 - Kellex

I know I’ve slumped in the last month on the networking front and my stats will be feeling it at the end of this month. In my first 2.5 months I had a Technorati authority of 50+ and since then I’ve added just 12 more and have been stuck at 62 for quite some time. (Slacker!) It’s time to jump back on the networking wagon with a quick refresher on our top 5 tips…

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!

Time to join ClickBooth to help monetize your site, don't you think?

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 6/13/08 - 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.



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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!


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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

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.

I'm guessing that BlogBurst has various outlets to post your work on other than game threads, but I have yet to hit their other criteria. As I become aware of more examples I will surely let you know.

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 6/9/08 - 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



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 - 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 Detroit, I am married with a 2 year old son. Much of my work day is spent typing stories, I submit a column to FIO 4 times a week, I write at least two blog entries a day, and coming soon I will be doing a 5 minute spot on a sports pod cast, and then in the fall I will launch my own NASCAR themed pod cast.

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?

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.


Have you signed up for the PepperJAM Network and Review ME yet?

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 ide