I’m sure you’ve heard the news by now - that Arseblog.com has joined OleOle.com.

Ok, so it’s not exactly headline news, what with the credit crunch, the gasoline prices, the fluctuating currency markets, the China earthquake and the fact that your girlfriend left you, but on a football blogging level (and trust me on this one), this is significant.

Not because Arseblog was one of the biggest (if not the biggest) independent football blog around. Not because the man sold out, or because he’s one of the lucky few who can now earn a full-time living writing (and doing other blogging-related stuff) about what he loves.

It’s significant because it’s the first step in organised blog aggregation. Welcome to the world of football blog networks.

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Earlier this month, an article in the NY Times called blogging for hire the ‘digital-era sweatshop’, and I couldn’t agree more (thanks for the link mate).

In fact, I think they’ve underestimated the problems linked with blogging for money (for starters, $10 / post is a lot better than what many people earn from blogging when English is their second language).

However, personal opinions aside, I want to tackle this in the context of football blogging and football business.

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As we’ve discussed earlier, the football blogging community is too dispersed and too divisive. Perhaps its because the key players are not experienced enough or because the niche itself hasn’t evolved from the traditional turf-grabbing mentality. In any case, I was a bit surprised to see last year that there was no recognition for quality blogs and bloggers in the football blogging niche.

Well, we’ve rectified that (and then some) with the Soccerlens 2007 Awards.

I deliberately launched this on a smaller scale to make it manageable the first around, but with the positive response this has received, I’m certain that the next time around will be much bigger (and hopefully, gain proper recognition). There are a lot of quality football bloggers around, and hopefully the awards can help shine the spotlight on some of them.

Chris from Footy 24/7 and I were just talking on MSN right now, and the topic of revenue came up again - we’ve seen in the last year and a half that football news delivers no where near the sort of ad revenue (from AdSense, CPM, affiliate products or direct ads) the way the same traffic and user-base would in another niche.

The lack of money makes it hard for bloggers to turn their passion into a full-time gig, which is why you see so many failed football blogs (yes, there’s several of them around, good ones too). There are few ‘top’ football blogs, and even fewer independent blogs (Andrew’s Arseblog, Damien’s AVFC Blog, Chris with his EPLTalk and related websites, V at Kickette and, if I may say so, Soccerlens).

Others? CaughtOffside - owned by Sportingo. Pies - owned by Shiny Media. TheOffside - owned by BootsNAll. It’s a tough business to get big and successful in if you don’t have investment, and even then for most people the effort isn’t worth it unless you’re making enough money through other means and are willing to take the hit in revenues to work on something you love.

I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought of selling Soccerlens - but in the long run if you can keep working hard (and smart - nothing worse than working hard in the wrong direction), there’s money to be made and if you can make money talking about something you love (even if it’s not as much money as in web tech or gadgets or real estate), it’s worth something.

In my opinion there are 3 goals a football blog should have:

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