Financial viability of the fan sites

I recall some of youhave become involved with Rivals.com and Scout.com.

Let's say you're asked to basically take over one of these sites, which means provide constant content for premium subscribers in terms of football and hoops recruiting and in-season coverage. You'll be paid based on how many subscribers there are -- if you do good enough work to reel in lots of subscribers, you could conceivably make much better money than the average newspaper job.

The school is in a major market with tons of alumni and fans, but at the same time, people are generally cheap and will do whatever they can to avoid paying for such memberships.

I honestly always sort of considered these jobs below me -- in terms of bugging kids about their recruitments and just generally not doing the classic newspaper type of work. But as times change and the newspaper job market deteriorates more every day, you'd be crazy not to at least consider such alternate avenues.

Anyways, that's enough rambling, just curious if anyone has any good insight about this.

 

Easy, easy, I can't hear anyone when you're all chiming in at the same time!!

 

I assume this is how my beat's fan site operates (the Scout one). The guy is constantly on the independent fan site kissing ass and pimping his site. It's almost shameful. Actually, it kind of is. I figured he had to be on some kind of commission. There are posts on there that absolutely have to be plants on his part, etc., etc. It may be decent money if you hustle enough, but you have to associate with some pretty icky elements of this game to make the money.

 

There are a lot of shills like your guy, but I think it can be done, um, tastefully, for lack of a better word.

 

Last try, anyone else have any experience with this?

 

PM me for info

 

I'm close to a guy who has done this for a few years now, and all I know is this stuff can be moderately lucrative. These guys are doing pretty well. But like any entrepreneur, you will work your ass off to get the job done. It will become a bigger part of your life than any working-for-the-man job ever was. My best advice is to make sure you trust the people with whom you get involved.