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Can you make money with a sports blog?

by BKenn01
12 replies
Newbie with a question here.

I have a pretty good domain name for my favorite NFL team. I have considered starting a news/blog site devoted to the team. I am not looking to get rich as it is a passion, but justify my time and effort with a little extra $.

I have did some minimal research and it seems many of them get a lot of traffic, but dont show a lot of adsense earnings. Most who run similar sites seem to run adsense some Amazon and a TeamFanShop affiliate store for monitizing.

I have a lot to learn about internet marketing so I may just not understand how to read the site info. There is a baseball site marketed to Detroit Tiger fans for sell on sitepoint and it claims 1000 visitors per month with $45 monthly revenue. That seems low.

Does anyone have any insite into this? I suspect if I start this project it will require constant content updating, etc.

BTW, the team is the Steelers so popularity wont be a problem, competition might.
#blog #make #money #sports
  • Profile picture of the author Wintermute
    I have thought about doing the same thing... Huge Seahawk fan here myself... Does that make us enemies?

    *shakes fist in the air*
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    • Profile picture of the author BKenn01
      Na, we came out ahead. So we are cool.
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  • Profile picture of the author ex9to5guy
    i have thought about this...when doing this are you able to use team logos and whatnot
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  • Profile picture of the author Gavenecko
    You can earn money from ANY blog, just the frequency and amount you earn will vary depending on advertisers.
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  • Profile picture of the author MarkWrites
    In my experience running a sports blog (like you, mainly for my interest... but might as well earn some money too), the Adsense money has been moderate at best. There are a number of opportunities to sell ad space though to other people running forums and other blogs that focus on the same team though. Nothing to get rich off, but it can make it a little more worthwhile... and hey, it all adds up.
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  • Profile picture of the author kenjitay
    If you can get lots of traffic coming to your blog, you will make money. and yes, you need constant flow new content to keep your readers coming.

    Here are some of the ways you can make money from your blog:

    1 - Google Adsense
    2 - Selling Your Own Product
    3 - Affiliate Sales
    4 - Selling Available Web Space
    5 - Pay Per Impression Avertising
    6 - Test Link Ads
    7 - Donation
    8 - Selling Your Blog

    Again, how much you earn really depends on how much traffic you can attract to your blog. I am not much of a football fan, but here are some tips:

    If your blog is attracting a huge load of traffic, you can actually contact merchants to place banners and selling them web space. This is both a win win situation.

    or

    you can sell T-shirts, Mugs, season tickets and whatever stuff through your affiliate links

    or

    come out with a product, ebook or whatsoever on improving football skills or any "passion" problems football fans have

    etc etc

    As you can see, there are many many ways to monetize your blog. Once your "monetizing links" are in place, all you need is your marketing, that is.. driving traffic and updating your contents...

    Regards
    Kenji
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  • Profile picture of the author ruch1v
    i agree, there is money to be made!
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  • Profile picture of the author ShiroTora
    It depends if your Blog also sells products, or links to a site of yours that sells products. People who follow your blog for it's content will be of a certain demographic. It's entirely possible.


    ST
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    • Profile picture of the author Wilde
      One thing that a lot of people seem to forget about when monetizing there sites/blogs is that there are people at the other side of those computers.

      People don't just live and breath the sport/team/hobby that the site is about. They probably have cars, homes, illness's, relationship problems etc..you get the drift.

      Show them ways to save money/time so they can spend more on doing things they like the sport/hobby that you are on about rather than selling them merchandise or equipment to do with the sport.

      Think wider when marketing it will pay off, too many people just target weight loss when in fact people who need to lose weight are more likely to take advice from someone who they can relate to, share a hobby with etc.. and that's where the money is, that is where a lot of people get it wrong.
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  • Profile picture of the author scattermouse
    There obviously is money to be made - check out some of the answers above for monetizing options.

    The problem in my experience is that there is a hell of a lot of competition for sports based blogs, and most of the bloggers are doing it for love rather than money, which means they go above and beyond what's profitable.

    I don't know much about the NFL (we don't pay much attention to that here in the UK) but I'd imagine if you can get near the top of the SERPs and build up a fanbase, you'd make a decent amount.

    You need to think about how you're going to get your traffic - keyword research and SEO should be the first stages. Based on keyword and competition research, you should already have some idea how well you can rank for certain terms.
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    Kill Your Procrastination Stone Dead!
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  • Profile picture of the author Marhelper
    You can make money but it would not be with Adsense as I would imagine the clicks would not be worth much. I would develop your own product and build a list.
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  • Profile picture of the author Sheryl Polomka
    Just be careful with a sports blog of using their name or logos - could be trademarked.

    For monetizing another option I don't think has been mentioned is Ebay Partners affiliate program. There are thousands of sports team products sold on Ebay so you could probably do quite well as an Ebay affiliate.
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