Are you passionate about sports-related activities? Are you interested in starting a sports blog and making good money? If yes, you have come to the right place.
Here in this post, we will guide you step by step on how to start a sports blog and make money easily.
8 Steps to Start a Money-Making Sports Blog
1. Decide on What type of Sports Blog would you like to Start?
This is the first question that needs to be answered. If you are starting a blog of your own, you need to decide to create a niche. We understand a lot of people might get excited with blogs of TEN SPORTS, ESPN, etc. But these type of websites caters to a lot many sports verticals which for an individual is extremely difficult to maintain. These sites cover football, cricket, basketball, hockey, and much more.
We personally won’t recommend this type of blog if you are planning to create a blog of your own. We recommend starting a sports blog keeping in mind one sport only or for a club you support. You can create a blog say related to football. You can find inspiration from blogs like just-football.com, thefootballneutral.com, etc.
2. Finding the Right Domain Name for your Sports Blog
Never create a domain name that is difficult to remember. Try to make it as catchy and simple as possible. The domain name must relate to the content of the blog. We recommend you take a .com domain unless your blog is region-specific.
Read: How to Name a Business
3. Where to get Traffic to your Sports Blog
Content is king. We recommend you write at least 50 posts without thinking too much. Let at least traffic come organically from search engines. Concentrate on writing good-quality posts. If your posts get attention from search engines, traffic will automatically start visiting your sports blog.
We also strongly recommend creating a page on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. Promote your blog from there.
Don’t forget to create an Email subscriber list. If you can create 1000 subscribers, it is observed 5-10% become your buyers. To start a mailing list make sure that use Aweber or MailChimp.
Another way of bringing traffic to your blog is by commenting on other sports blogs. People say Pete Cashmore, founder of the Mashable blog made his blog popular by commenting on various other websites.
4. Select The Right Platform to host your Sports Blog
Without wasting time, based on our experience, we recommend you go with WordPress.
All you need is quality hosting. We recommend a fast hosting company that offers the best customer service for your new sports blog.
We strongly recommend that you choose WPX Hosting. It will take just a few minutes to host your blog with WPX Hosting. It is worthwhile to mention that our hosting partner is WPX hosting.
5. Host your Sports Blog
It will take not more than 20 minutes to host and install WordPress. Check our detailed step-by-step guide to hosting and installing WordPress.
Now it is time to host some plugins. This is one of the main reasons We recommend WordPress to my readers. WordPress has over 35,000 plugins that you can install with just one click.
Explore plugins that you think your sports blog requires. You will find a lot of sports plugins that will let you add sports highlights, news, clips, and more to your site. One plugin we must recommend is Yoast SEO. It is free and it is a must for ranking your site higher.
If you are selling products, install Woocommerce. The basic version is free.
6. Choosing a Theme for your Sports Blog
There are plenty of free themes available in WordPress. You can easily start with those. However, if you are serious about your sports blog. It is always recommended to buy a theme that fits your content.
7. Start Writing Articles
It is now time to start writing articles related to your sports blog niche. It can be post-game analysis, pre-match predictions, player profiles and interviews, commentary of a sports event, and so on. Furthermore, research new content ideas taking help from keyword research tools like Google Trends and many other free and paid ones.
8. How to Make Money with Sports Blog
If you have a product of your own like t-shirts, mugs, etc you can promote it on your blog. Loyal readers of your blog normally won’t mind buying those items from you. If you don’t have one, do not worry. Explore the below-mentioned ways to make money from your sports blog.
a) Affiliate Marketing
Here you will sell products to other people. There are a lot of companies that will happily allow in selling their products. You can tie up with health and fitness affiliate programs that are available in plenty available on the internet.
Read: How to Start Affiliate Marketing Business
You can sell products available on Amazon. You can also tie up with ticket services online and refer your readers to book tickets for games. There is no dearth of affiliate products on the internet. You just need to research and find the proper products which fit with the content of your sports blog.
b) Google Adsense
After writing some posts, you can apply for Google Adsense. If approved, Google Adsense will start putting advertisements on your blog. A lot of bloggers make 5 figure money with Google Adsense only.
c) Sell Ad Space
You can try websites like BuySellAds. They will get a cut of every ad space that you sell through them. You can also contact ad space-selling companies directly.
There are plenty more ways to make money through sports blogging like writing an ebook, creating a membership option, selling merchandise, sponsored and review posts, etc. As your traffic grows a lot of companies will offer you deals that will grow your income.
“Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.” Michael Jordan
We hope this post will inspire you in starting a money-making sports blog. One day, we are sure you will be requested to write guest blogs for other blog owners or may be invited to be a speaker on your subject. Explore and see the endless possibilities ahead.
About the Author: 99businessideas.com led by Rupak Chakrabarty is committed to helping beginners, entrepreneurs, and small business owners in starting, managing, and growing their business. Our aim is to educate the entrepreneur on the various stages of entrepreneurship.
