Sports Blog

If you're going the blogging route (which will be tough going and income-free), find a niche.

Figure out what your local newspaper doesn't cover well.

Maybe it's club lacrosse. Maybe it's high school field hockey. Maybe it's running and biking news.

Fill a void in your community's local sports coverage, and you will eventually draw loyal readers and make a name for yourself. Maybe even get some advertisers. But you have to work hard and be persistent.

 

B-I-N-G-O!

 

Agree about the niche thing -- there's lots of stuff that doesn't get covered well. Cover that, and Google will steer all the traffic to your blog via searches. The audience may be small, but you'll become important. If you have a small niche though, maybe you need 2 or 3 separate blogs to get the traffic you want.

 

Don't start believing Google will do your work for you. If you want people to find your site and then visit it frequently, your content has to be good and you have to be linking to and from other credible sites.

I've been running tests on Google with four small sites (20-30 pages of content apiece) that I have in development in preparation for a serious launch later this year. Some of their core content overlaps, and each has varying degrees of linking and HTML/search engine optimization.

My site with the best content is also the most primitive with respect to links and coding, and Google has scarcely stumbled across it this year. The only traffic on it has been coming from me and a small cell of users geographically relevant to the content.

You have to do your own hard work to make sure your blog gets seen.

 

I don't know if this is still the case, but Google's unique in that nature in that it doesn't return results strictly based on relevance. Rather, the results it returns are based on a simple study it does as to which sites are most linked-to and most respected amongst their peers.

You can rely on Google all you want, but it's the people before Google that will make your site more attractive.

 

No one said Google was going to do your work for you. The fact that you need good content is a given. I thought that part was obvious.

The point about linking outwards is a good one though. Links out will bring links in, and boost your Google rating.

 

Email local Scout.com or Rivals guys. They are more credible than blogs, I guess, and they have a lot of content. You won't get rich but you might be able to pocket 20 or 30 bucks doing a small recruiting story or something. It's some good entry level writing.

Also try contacting local newspapers and see if they will let you blog live sporting events like a Boston writer might do for the Celtics tonight. Ask them to pay you the normal hourly stringer rate. You won't break the bank, but you will get money, and a lot more play than a regular blog.

 

And again ... don't offer to write for free. Cannot emphasize this enough. You are sending a bad message by doing that.