The Football Blogging Sweatshop
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.
It’s no secret that my other website Soccerlens.com has a pay structure for its contributors ranging from dirt-cheap to premium (considering the budget, that is) based on the perceived value of the content. However, the decision to pay writers (and how much to pay them) depends on several factors:
- The immediate value of that content (how many people are interested in this, is this unique or easy to find, how much traffic will this bring in right now)
- The long-term value (in generating traffic, in strengthening the brand, in terms of being useful and relevant to readers a couple of years from now)
- Alignment with site objectives (does this match the site’s core offering, does it meet the necessary quality criteria, is this something that you would look back on an year of now and still recognise the value of)
All this is from the blog owner’s perspective. For the blogger, their concern is to be paid by time or post.
Since I’ve blogged for hire (and not exactly for peanuts either), I understand a bit about how bloggers feel when they don’t get what they think they deserve. On the other hand, as a blog owner working hard to run a stable business, paying $50 / article or $100 / feature as part of a ‘branding exercise’ is just not on if a) that doesn’t translate into long-term value and b) if the blog is not geared to leverage the value of that content.
On the other hand, paying $100 / hour is justifiable if it delivers equal value. Of course, that depends on the blog owner’s ability to leverage that value, and quite often that ability (or desire / vision) just isn’t there.
And that’s the problem with blogging – in general bloggers tend to overestimate the value they provide, and blog owners are usually unable to take advantage of any value bloggers do provide.
In football blogging, a subject fraught with emotions and personal opinions, it’s even harder to get bloggers to distinguish between what is ‘really important’ and what they ‘feel is important’. One man’s premium content is zilch for the masses, and when you couple this with the fact that most blogs struggle to make any money (the time spent v money earned ratio is horrifying), you get some idea of how hard it is to run a football blog as a business.
A football blog owner has to fulfill many roles – that of an editor, a creative director, a monetization expert, a writer himself and above all a persuasive negotiator.
If you want to write about football, consider blogging on your personal blog or someone else’s blog instead of setting up your own. Chances are that you’ll need the experience before branching out on your own (if you discover any type of consistency, that is).
And if you want to get into football blogging to make money, think twice, and think hard. It’s a painful industry, one where the mainstream news sites make the mucho bucks and the blogs are stuck with morsels.
You are far better off practicing your crafts at a handful of top blogs and then making a play for the post of journo with one of the MSMs online / print editions.
Don’t believe me? Here’s a damning piece of info – of the top football blogs, more than half are owned / backed by corporations who have the financial wherewithal to sustain losses and low profits. These blogs recruit bloggers for their passion and pay them little (compared to what they would earn elsewhere in other jobs).
And the other half? Niche-leading fan-owned blogs (Arseblog, AVFC Blog), carving out their own niche (101 Great Goals) or run by online marketers (EPL Talk, Soccerlens). And none of these sites make the sort of money to make you drool with anticipation (I’ve covered this in more detail here).
Above all, you’ll need to divest yourself from your emotions regarding football and focus on sound business principles that make blogs click.
Otherwise, blogger or blog owner, you’ll be stuck in the football blogging sweatshop until you wise up or bail out.
Ahmed:
As we have learned from some of our interviews, long-term value is also perceived from the interview subject. They have many options to voice their perspectives on the bigger-name sites, or even via the mainstream media, where the potential exposure far exceeds our own at Soccerlens. Even with a marketing guru such as yourself.
But we have convinced (for lack of a better term) a few prominent names in football to talk to us. Some of these have provided other opportunities in areas that didn’t exist before the interview. Adrian Clarke of Sports Media Solutions is a prime example. After his interview, he provided us with some prominent names that branded our site in ways that may have taken a few years via other channels.
The key, IMHO is to provide the audience with increasing value, which in turn raises the blogger bar for all of the contributors. This enables you to sell advertising space with specific metrics in mind. I view interviewees or article subject topics as clients who need to be promoted in ways that competitors either don’t understand or fail to do in significant detail.
Enzo Francescoli runs a large football media brand in North America; however, Sports Illustrated never interviewed him. We, as a small growing blog, did. That creates a good indicator for our current and future writers. A selling point, along with a reference that such things are possible despite all of the competition.