How to Monetize Your Sports Blog
Monetizing your sports blog may seem daunting but it’s absolutely necessary if you want to make extra money. Whether you blog as a sports fan or as a sports team owner, making money from your blog allows you to do what you love and get paid for it.
On top of that, monetizing your blog also makes it easy to earn money for your team and secure the necessary funds to cover all the expenses associated with running a sports team.
In this post, we’ll share eight different ways to monetize your sports blog.
1. Selling Merch
If you have a sports blog and a sports team, the easiest way to monetize your blog is to start selling your team’s merch as well as other sports related goodies. Items like your team’s jersey, scarves, coffee mugs, fridge magnets, car or wall decals are popular among sports fans and easy to create.
You can use a print on demand company and only create the product once an order has been placed. This means you don’t have to carry any physical inventory and there are no upfront costs.
2. Ad Space
Selling ad space is an effective way to monetize your sports blog. You could approach local sports businesses and offer them an ad space on your website. Or you could approach other sports blogs and get them to advertise their blog on your site.
Keep in mind that for this to be effective, you will need to have an established reader base so that the blogs and businesses that advertise on your site have a chance of receiving traffic or walk-in visits.
You also need to make sure that the ads you place on your site are related to your sports topic and industry, otherwise you’ll miss the mark and disappoint your advertisers.
3. Selling Sponsorship Packages
Another way to monetize a sports blog is to sell sponsorship packages. This works well as a way to secure extra income for your sports team. However, before you set off to create a page for your sponsors and announce that you’re looking for sponsors, you need to do a bit of prep work.
For starters, make sure you are absolutely clear on what you bring to the table and how a potential sponsor will benefit from sponsoring you. Secondly, brainstorm different levels of sponsorship packages to make yourself more attractive to sponsors. Finally, don’t forget to draft a sponsorship agreement to ensure both you and your sponsor are protected legally.
4. Advertising Programs
Similarly to selling ad space on your website, you can join an advertising program like Google AdSense. With this method, you will get a code that will display random ads to your visitors, based on the content on your site. You will get paid by the number of impressions or clicks an ad receives.
This method works best when you already have an established audience to your site. However, keep in mind that sometimes ads may be completely unrelated to your blog topics so keep an eye on them and adjust your preferences accordingly.
5. Affiliate Programs
Consider joining affiliate programs. Affiliate marketing is often considered one of the easiest ways to monetize any type of website as you don’t need to create any products. All you have to do is find a product you love using and promote it to your audience.
You could focus on joining affiliate programs specifically in the sports industry but you can also consider promoting products that are closely related, like health supplements.
Oxford Saints promoting a sports-related product
You can also promote products that aren’t necessarily related to the sports industry but that you absolutely love and use on a daily basis. This can include your web hosting company, an app that you use daily or a book selling on Amazon.
6. Membership Program
Start a membership program and save some of your content for your subscribers. This can be match replays or exclusive access to statistics or player interviews. A simple way to set this up is by using a membership plugin on your WordPress website.
You can create different membership levels, each of which brings different benefits to paying members. For example, the lowest membership tier gives access to match replays. Another level allows members to access player interviews or a meet and greet with a team. You can even offer exclusive swag to members as part of their membership level.
7. Accepting Donations
If selling sponsorship packages or membership packages doesn’t sound appealing to you, consider accepting donations on your website. You can easily install a donation plugin and include the link to your donation page in the main navigation as well as in your blog’s sidebar. You can also add it to the bottom of every blog post and ask your readers to consider donating if they like your content.
Take it a step further and consider setting up suggested donation amounts. You can then offer different incentives for different donation amounts, such as a mention on social media or an article about a topic of their choosing.
8. Sponsored Posts or Product Reviews
Lastly, you can monetize your sports blog with sponsored posts or product reviews. The way it works is simple: another blog or business approaches you to write about their product or website. They pay you a certain amount and you provide an honest review or article on your blog in exchange.
Again, you’ll want to make sure to accept sponsored posts or product reviews from blogs and websites that are related to your blog’s topic, otherwise you will alienate your readers. On top of that, the companies that you wrote about won’t get any benefits from it and this can damage your reputation.
Final Thoughts
Monetizing your sports blog can be done in several ways. From selling sports-related merchandise and sponsorship packages to selling ad space and joining affiliate programs, you can make money from your blog and secure the necessary funds for your team. What’s even better, you’re not limited to only one monetization method. Don’t forget to download our guide to monetizing your sports blog and start making money.
