Football Media

Over the last week, three different football brands blogs launched their football tshirts:

• Dirty Tackle
• Soccerlens (This shirt was sent out to Soccerlens readers as a Christmas present last year).
• Studs Up

Both Dirty Tackle and Studs Up have set up shop with WhoAreYaDesigns.com, while Soccerlens went with Subside Sports.

I talked at length about making money blogging about football but the harsh reality is that the way most football bloggers blog is a) for fun, not for money and b) not at all conducive to selling betting, tickets or live online football subscriptions.

While Studs Up potentially stands to make a lot of money if it gets syndicated by a magazine or a newspaper (here’s hoping…) and Dirty Tackle is an entertaining / offbeat blog, there’s little on both sites that will drive incoming readers to buying anything.

In other words, putting up a big-ass bet365 banner on your site does NOT work (unless you’re being paid in CPM, but that’s a different story). And while I like the work DT are doing, it’s hard to believe that, in their current incarnation and given the current economy, they’ll sell much advertising.

So if you can’t sell tickets or betting or ads, what do you do?

CPM or banner ads – through our Football Media network we use a combination of Adjug, TribalFusion, YardBarker and private ad deals. Soccerlens also has an ad deal with Perform, and we’ve tried every network out there from AdsDaq to Gunggo and Burst Media.

For football, CPM deals were always low, but they really took a hit with the recession. Popup / Popunder ads still do well, but can be annoying to the reader, so be careful with them (we don’t use them on our sites).

Products – Shirts are obvious, whether they are kits or tshirts, but you also have a whole range of shoes and other football accessories. You can try your hand at weird footballing merchandise and football gifts if you’re interested.

Products Part 2 – Football tickets, subscriptions for watching football (on TV, through ‘paid’ broadband sites or streams) and free betting offers are the most popular and most lucrative segments for a reason – they convert (when they convert) really well for site owners.

Product / Site Reviews – At Soccerlens we used to earn a fair side-income for doing paid site / product reviews when we started out. It’s a roundabout way of ‘selling links’, but when done right you get paid, your site doesn’t get penalised and the reviewee gets link juice. Everybody benefits. Here are some sample reviews.

Selling Links – If you’re going to give a link out to SoccerPro in exchange for a free shirt that’s fine. But if you give out a site-wide link to a casino site, that’s just asking for trouble.

There’s a way to sell (and buy) links without getting caught – but usually I’d recommend against it.

Video Ads – something I’ll be talking in more detail in the near future – but for now, get started with UnrulyMedia and Network N3 – you’ll thank me if you haven’t.

Other options – affiliate programs through Amazon, Ebay and CJ (Commission Junction) have worked well for people in certain niches, and so has selling leads (through services like Toluna).

Dynamic Text Links – Programs like Vibrant Media. A decent side income but slightly annoying.

You’ll notice that I haven’t mentioned AdSense. I have a love-hate relationship with AdSense. I love it because in the right niche, it’s a simple, steady source of income. I hate it because it pays very, very poorly in football. It’s fine if you use it as a ‘last resource’ option when nothing else works, but it’s not going to make you money the way the above options will, at least in football, unless you’re a) writing about something very specific, like football equipment and b) are catering exclusively to a US / UK audience.

And speaking of audiences, attract and nurture UK-based traffic because your site’s revenues depend on it. US traffic will do well too, but nothing converts as well as UK traffic (for shirts, betting, tickets, CPM ads, etc etc). It’s the curse of football – the same way that tech and celebrity gossip advertisers pay millions for US traffic, football advertisers are the same with UK traffic (without the millions, unfortunately).

I’ll talk in detail about one or more of these advertising options in the near future. If you’ve got any feedback / stories to share, let us know.

Posted by: Ahmed Bilal Posted under: Football Business