Do you get a kick out of watching your favorite football team score a touchdown that becomes the ultimate game-changer? Wouldn’t you love to watch your favorite sport and earn cash at the same time? I’ll show you how you can get paid to write about football.
Can I really make money writing about football?
Even if you aren’t a seasoned writer, it’s still possible to earn money writing about your favorite sport. You just have to know the score when it comes to everything football. Really, you have to passionate about it.
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Maybe you were the high school star quarterback or perhaps your coach made you sit on the sidelines far more than you wanted to. Now’s your chance to show the football world what you’re made of.
If you can effectively communicate your thoughts about your favorite team or the best play of the game, there are different avenues you can explore to making money while writing about football. You don’t have to be a sports writer with a college degree to do it either.
You can turn your rants into constructive writing pieces that convey your thoughts to others. You can give play-by-play details of an exciting game. If you venture out on your own as a blogger, you can even make money selling sports memorabilia on your site. There are plenty of opportunities to be had earning money in the football writer’s niche.
It might seem like a pipe dream to some, but I’m here to tell you that writing about your favorite teams is more than doable. Let’s get this ball rolling! Here are some of the best ways you can make it happen.
Fan Memorabilia
Every sports fan loves fan memorabilia and football enthusiasts are no exception. Memorabilia can be anything from sports programs to autographs to t-shirts to jerseys to signed photographs and footballs and everything in between.
You probably have some of these items in your own collection, though you may not be exactly enthusiastic about letting any of it go. But, you’d be surprised at how much is out there where people are clueless to their value and those items appeal to die-hard football fans.
You can find these items at garage and estate sales, flea markets, charity shops, and even eBay or other auction venues.
Some of the best items to collect and sell are very old items, those from famous football matches, or the more popular teams. If you have your own blog, you can also become an Amazon affiliate and sell new sports memorabilia. But, we’ll talk more in-depth about blogs in a few.
The point is that you can turn a popular hobby into a way to earn a few extra dollars. You can write about your ventures on your website and combine your love of the sport of football, collecting memorabilia, and have fun writing about it all.
There are various ways that you can go about selling your collections. The obvious way that we’ve talked about is to have your own website while blogging about your adventures in collecting memorabilia.
You could also sell your items at auctions and on online auctions sites, such as Ebay. Ebay is better for your lower-priced memorabilia, but if you have a lot of merchandise to sell, it can add up there. You can even do clever and informative write-ups in your descriptions to draw more attention to your items.
One advantage of eBay is that your potential buyers can span beyond the United States or your own country. International fans are known for being some of the best memorabilia collectors and will often pay a higher penny.
If you use the correct keywords in your title and description and price your items appropriately, buyers will discover you and add you to their favorites.
Your earning potential would depend highly upon your success, but you’ll never know the potential unless you get started.
Freelance Football or Sports Writer
As a freelance football writer, you would blog for other clients. To get in with most of them, you do have to be a decent writer and know football inside and out.
Your earnings as a freelance football writer are largely up to you. If your end goal is to use it as a way to replace your full-time income, you’ll have to work hard. Ask Kristian Sturt, who is now a successful blogger at FootieWriter.com. He quit his day job to pursue work as a freelance football writer in 2008.
Today, he has a successful following on Twitter of over 150,000 fans. Sturt also happens to accept work from other football writers. It’s unpaid work, but think about how many people would be seeing your work and how great it would look on your portfolio.
To find success as a football writer, you’ll have to put your portfolio out there and generate gigs. Don’t be shy about taking a few pro-bono gigs, because they’ll help you build up your resume. Sites like Soccerlens, for instance, don’t currently pay their contributing bloggers, but as one of the top football blog sites out there, it could really be a boost in getting your name out there.
There are plenty of ways to earn money as a freelance football writer. You can also look for work with magazines, newspapers, and websites such as Rantsports.com. Some gigs might prefer degreed journalists, but for the most part, if you are good at what you do and know your stuff, they’ll overlook the fact that you don’t have a degree. This is one niche where expertise and passion count over sitting in a university for four years.
It’s hard to pin down what you can expect salary-wise because it really depends on how hard you work to succeed. $25 an hour is not unreasonable to expect for well-written content. Four cents a word seems to be a common rate as well.
If you pursue your goals like a full-time job and don’t just sit on the sidelines, a $35,000 a year average seems to be a reasonable expectation. Of course, if you find your way to becoming one of the more successful football writers, that number can jump much higher.
Just do a search online for popular football websites as well as pour through some of your favorite sports magazines to find out what they pay their writers and how you should submit articles to them. Check the want ads or bring samples of your writing to your local newspaper to see if they think you’d be a good fit to have a contributing column.
If you really want to be a freelance football writer, if you’re on the ball and persistent, it can happen.
Start your own blog
Of course, I always say if you’re passionate about something and can convey a message through well-written content, the best way to earn money doing something you love is to create your own blog and website.
You don’t have to be a professional to do it. The truth is, the minute you do decide to write about football, you’re a professional in your own way once you make the commitment to set up a virtual presence on the web.
Sports blogging and especially football blogging isn’t as hard as you might think. You already know about your subject, you’re probably already full of ideas of the things you’d like to communicate about, and as long as you have decent grammar skills, you can write content that will appeal to your readers. BTW, fantasy sports also works as a blog topic.
When you first start blogging, it can be a little intimidating because, in essence, you’re the writer, the editor, the proofreader, the designer, and the main player in driving your blog to succeed. But, like anything worth doing, hard work can pay off.
To ramp up your chances of success, you can pick a niche that’s not out there yet. Of course, to figure this out, you’ll need to look around and study what is out there. But appealing to a certain niche always helps to drive your readership.
As I previously mentioned, you can also do some affiliate marketing on your football blog to help drive your income up. You can sell sports memorabilia particularly related to football. You would already have football fans at your site, so why not offer them the types of products that appeal to them.
To help get the word out about your blog, a social media presence can help, particularly in the area of football. Surely, there are potentially millions of football fans out there interacting on Facebook and Twitter. You can share and link your blog content to those sites to bring readers and fans to your blog.
If you get successful enough and people really like what you have to say, you may even get football publishers asking you to help contribute to their publications.
The potential income for bloggers is staggering. Many bloggers work for months without seeing much of an income, but with persistence and by studying how to set up your website and doing everything right, the earnings potential is great.
Keep in mind that most people don’t hit the jackpot by blogging. They just set up a blog and some just post a couple of times or for a couple of months and then give it up. But, for the faithful, there is essentially no limit to how much you can earn. The only limit is based on how you can figure out how to leverage outsourced writers or paid content. If you pay $100 for a piece of content that earns you $1o per month, that’s $120 per year profit.
$120 – $100 = $20 per year. Not much, right? But consider that over the span of several years you may publish thousands of piece of content. Some may earn $20 per day, while others earn $20 per year. Either way, in this situation you are not doing the work anymore, and are still turning a profit!
Of course, outsourcing and that type of tactic comes later. In the beginning, you’ll rely just on your own merits as a writer.
Hopefully, I’ve given you a few good ideas to kick around if you would like to get paid to write about football. With a good game plan, you’re sure to be successful and best of all, you’d be doing something you love to do.
As a writer, you have an in-demand talent that can be used to earn you TONS of money online. You can earn money freelance writing, for sure, but it's still just trading dollars for hours. Personally, I recommend starting your own website! Information is the currency of the internet, so why not leverage your talents to build yourself a serious online income! Learn how to create your own blog-style website and make money through advertising.
Nathaniell
What's up ladies and dudes! Great to finally meet you, and I hope you enjoyed this post. My name is Nathaniell and I'm the owner of One More Cup of Coffee. I started my first online business in 2010 promoting computer software and now I help newbies start their own businesses. Sign up for my #1 recommended training course and learn how to start your business for FREE!
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