Strategies For Monetizing a Sports Blog?

Hi,

Couldn't be so difficult. When running a basketball site, I would try to sell e-books like that Jump Higher course on Clickbank.

The same goes for hockey: you could try to find skating or directly hockey related electronic products on Clickbank or Paydotcom. Or simply google some hockey terms and see what comes up in the ads section, and then go over to the companies that sell stuff like that to see whether they've got a partner or affiliate program.

Every hockey player needs to buy stuff to play his sport, so they'll want to see ads to buy it. Every hockey fan wants to buy stuff about his favorite players and teams, so get links from the Amazon fan shirt section or Commision Junction where they can get their kicks. Always look in to a problem like this from the side of the consumer.

Yours, warriorly,

Ed

Thanks for the feedback Ed. I've definitely tried to look at things from the consumer's side of things. That's why I set up the EPN store on my site. I have many different categories of sports merchandise available there - jerseys, sticks, skates, hockey tickets etc. I get clicks daily, but no conversions. I found the same thing with Amazon hockey products. I signed up and became an affiliate of IceJerseys.com and promoted their stuff for a while. Plenty of clicks. Zero conversions. I checked Clickbank for hockey products, but there really aren't any worth promoting.

The difficulty I'm having is that every visitor to my blog is coming for information. They are not looking to buy anything. That's why I tried Adsense. I thought I would at least get some revenue from people clicking on relevant ads, but I've tried all different types of placements, ad block sizes and color schemes, but I'm lucky if I get one Adsense click a day.

It has been frustrating. I keep testing and tweaking with little in the way of positive results. The only other thing I can think of is private ad sales, but I have no experience with that, and imagine that I would have to have significantly more traffic before I could charge enough to be making any serious money.

Have you considered approaching relevant advertisers or doing sponsored posts or review posts (equipment, games, websites, skills programs, etc -- all could use exposure)? Any affiliate programs in that niche that could give you a boost?

Do you have a particular angle on the market that no one else is touching on that an advertiser or company or affiliate program would love? The review of a hockey site that we did back at the beginning of 2008 with Secrets to Their Success revealed a ton of unused keywords and companies that just needed approaching to want to give over advertising dollars.

And we love hockey, too -- good luck!

I tried picking out specific products and promoting them in a number of ways:

1. Putting a link with a great title directly in the blog posts, in between paragraphs or even directly linking the related text.

2. Using the adsense videos ads with related video ads in the blog posts.

They did nothing for me, but my traffic dried up so I'm thinking these approaches would work if given enough time.

Good luck

InternetMarketingCenter - I am trying to work on new angles to differentiate my blog from the hundreds of generic hockey news sites out there. I will put my thinking cap on and see what I can come up with that has a marketing spin to it.

DavidTheMavin - I like the idea of promoting products in the middle of blog posts. I did try to inject PHPBay Pro Ebay auction items in the middle of posts without much success, but perhaps a well-written text link partway through would be more effective.

Product Creator - Thanks for the blog roll suggestion. I'll look into it. Any idea what price these sorts of link sales generally go for? Wouldn't there be a possibility of a Google smackdown?

I would second the selling of links. I know that some people say that the PR of a site doesn't mean much, but the higher your PR the more you can get for the links you sell.

There is a section on this forum and Digital Point for selling links, but they seem to be sold for cheap in these sections. I used Text-Link-Ads for one of my sports blogs and it did pretty well. Using TLA's service makes it easier to sell and receive payment each month without you having to go out and find buyers yourself.

Hi Bannor32:

Hope all is well tonight. I'm a hockey fan as well (pro hockey NHL).

There are ways you could make additional monies and increase the readership.

Identify is the blog on hockey (all facets) or a specific segment?
Are you writing about the National Hockey League?
International Hockey?
Collegiate Hockey?
Minor League Hockey such as American Hockey League?
Defunct leagues such as the World Hockey Association
Specific players?
Specific teams?

Once you decide what direction you want don't be afraid to contact specific league offices and teams to see about cross promotion. If you are writing about the Hartford Wolfpack in the American Hockey League call the team and the league office for ways of supporting each other. Set up interviews with the players that could used as contents on the blog or part of a product you are selling. Take photos or make a deal with a photographer about having pictures on the site and available for purchase.

Put information on the blog about upcoming games and the times and channel. Versus and NBC have rights to the National Hockey League games in the USA for instance.

That is a start!

Make a million!

Be well.