Should You Start A Blog In The Sports Niche? A Quick Analysis.

With the start of the 2014 World Cup, I thought it would be a perfect time to write an article geared towards sports blogs. People absolutely love sports, and new bloggers are often urged to blog about something they are passionate about. But would it actually be a good idea to start a sports blog? If so, what would be the correct or most profitable way of going about it? Let’s take a look. 

First off, it’s important to understand that sports is a market, not a niche. Billions and billions of dollars are spent making sports happen, buying sports related gear, tickets, etc. This market is giant. This means that there is zero possibility of you covering every single aspect of sports, so you’ll be wasting your time trying. Sorry to throw the cold truth at you right away, but you will not have success starting a general sports blog without hiring tons of extra writers.

However, the sheer size of this market is great news for you, because it means that there are an infinite number of sub-niches that you can dive into. You can take a tiny little piece of this huge market, and still make a ton. Let’s look at a few examples.

Example One: Your Favorite Sports Team

1. Market: Sports
2. Sub-niche: Football (soccer)
3. Sub-niche of football: English Premier League
4. Sub-niche of English Premier League: Chelsea Football Club
5. Target Market: Fans of Chelsea Football Club

The sports market can be divided several times. Each time you do so, not only does it get significantly easier to rank and pull recursive, regular visitors, but the visitors you do pull to your website are much more likely to buy products you may be selling or promoting. In this example, you can sell team kits, products, and memorabilia quite easily, because chances are, the visitors to your site wanted to buy these things anyway.

I actually worked with a friend for a brief period of time doing exactly that. He started up a blog on his favorite sports team, but he didn’t have much experience in internet marketing. During games, he’d do a live commentary coverage on the website, while I live tweeted the game over his website’s Twitter page. Not only did he rack up followers extremely quickly, but he also got a ton of traffic that would continue to return to stay updated on his latest posts.

The problem with this area is you’re often limited to what you can write about. Unless you have major connections, there’s no way you’re going to be able to cover transfer rumors, or player interviews without paraphrasing it from a much more popular website, so that is out of the question for most people. You can however discuss subjects such as your tactical analysis of the game, your opinion on players, predictions, and so on. Not only does it add a bit of your own personality, which helps build relationships with your readers, it also makes you stand out from your competitors. Bleacher Report does an amazing job at this, and I highly recommend checking them out if you’re looking for ideas of unique content.

Example Two: Beginner Football Coach

1. Market: Sports
2. Sub-niche: Football (soccer)
3. Sub-niche: Amateur level
4. Sub-Niche: Coaching
5. Target Market: Amateur football coaches

A niche sports blog does not have to cover topics at the professional level. In fact, covering a topic like coaching can be significantly more profitable, because:

1. These people have a problem they want to solve (learning to coach).
2. They are willing to pay for a solution. Coaching is a job, and people will find purchases as an investment that will pay itself off.

Because of this, you are way more likely to make sales in this sub-niche. Let’s think about this for a moment – beginner coaches looking to start a team have a TON of different products they could buy. They could buy courses to teach themselves, or teach their players. They typically have to buy at least 10 balls for their players. Clothing kits. Practice goals. Whistles. Training cones. We’re talking hundreds of dollars in commissions here per person if you’re the one to sell these aspiring coaches the products they need to succeed.

As you can see, making a blog in the sports niche can be very profitable and rewarding. However, in order to rank in traffic and dollars, it’s important to find the best sub-niche that works for you.

If you’ve ever tried entering into the sports niche before or plan on doing so, I’d love to hear your ideas or experiences!