Mike Ferrara's New York Yankees friend's fan blogs

A big thanks to everyone who participated in the "Inbound Link Contest".  We have a winner!  A big congratulations go out to Marija.  Thank you for all your hard work on this.  While we had a lot of people participate, Marija was able to win with only 4 links!  So it wouldn't have taken a lot to win this contest!  We'll be having another contest soon so stay tuned.

The whole purpose of this contest was to get our bloggers networking with other webmasters and to start to build up their inbound links which will help their traffic.  Even a few links can help you with the search engines as they will see you as more of an authority on your topic the more inbound links you have.

To learn more about marketing your blog check out this post: http://www.nbabasketballonline.com/sports_content-rev_share_faq.html#my_faq_2971

Continue reading "Inbound link contest winner announced!"

To try and motivate our bloggers to get inbound links we're going to have a contest to see which blogger can get the most inbound links to their blog. The contest begins now and ends July 31st, 2008. To be entered in to the contest all you have to do is go out and get as many websites to link to your blog as you can and at the end of the month send us an email listing all those links. All links must be active from August 1st through August 7th when we'll be judging the entries - a winner will be announced on August 7th. All entry emails must be received by Midnight on July 31st, 2008. You can email them to sportsfan@nbabasketballonline.com

We're going to impose some restrictions on the types of links you can get so please see below for the full list of links that do NOT count.

Continue reading "Inbound link contest - Win $100!"

Building a loyal following on your blog isn't going to be easy.  It's going to take some time.  And while our network of sports sites does get substantial traffic and you will benefit from that traffic, in order to turn your blog into something that makes $100, $200, $1,000 or even $5,000 per month it is going to take a lot of work on your part.  It's not going to be easy.  But hopefully it'll be fun.

As a blogger the most important thing you can do is write quality content.  This builds readership.  Quality content also gets linked to from other sites.  If a person reads your post and they run a blog, they are quite likely to post a link to your blog because they like your blog and think their readers will like it too.

But after writing you will need to be proactive in trying to market your blog.  The single biggest misconception about the internet is the old saying "if you build it they will come."  This is simply not the case.  As a rule you should be spending almost as much time marketing your blog as you do actually writing blog posts.  This comes as a surprise to people, but if you really want to earn money from your blog this is the truth.  Keep in mind that making money from your blog is not mandatory.  If you just want to write about sports and don't care about the money, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.  Writing can be fun, educational, and very therapeutic - which is reward enough.  But if you want to try and turn your ability to write into money, read through the rest of this post.

Continue reading "How can I increase traffic (and revenue) to my blog?"

In addition to Google Ads, there are quite a few other ways that you can earn revenue from your blog.

Keep in mind that all of the techniques mentioned below will work much better once you've established your blog and have a good sized following.  In the early stages of your blog you are much better off spending time trying to network / market / and write new blog posts then you are trying to optimize your earnings and squeeze every penny out of the traffic you have.

There are several other companies that offer similar banners to blog owners and website publishers.  Two good ones are:

http://www.widgetbucks.com/

http://chitika.com/

There are three banner slots that you control on your blog page all of different sizes: 728 pixels x 90 pixels, 160x600, and 300x250.  These are standard sizes that all ad networks have banner code for.  You can put in banner code from any ad network into our Revenue Share - Advanced Banner Upload tool (Note: You must be logged in to use this tool).  Just make sure it is the right size.  One easy thing to do would be to join the other two ad networks above and put in 1 ad from Google, 1 ad from WidgetBucks and 1 ad from Chitika.  This will add variety to your blog ads and may increase your overall earning.  Or you may find that one ad network simply works better for your blog.  The key here is to experiment a little bit so that you start to optimize the traffic you have.

Continue reading "How else can I make money from my blog?"

Make each blog post as interesting as possible. This may sound like common sense, but always keep it in mind. The more interesting your blog is the more people will read it. Quality is much more important than quantity. No one will read through a hundred blog posts (or even 10) to find one interesting one. But if each post is interesting people will be coming back week after week to read what you have to say.

You're more than welcome to blog on any sports subject you choose, however blogging on a subject that we have website for will give you much more exposure.  We have a site for nearly every sport / team: every MLB, NBA, NFL, and NHL team, as well as a golf, tennis, NASCAR, NHRA Drag Racing, MLS Soccer, horse racing, boxing, mixed martial arts, WNBA, college football, college basketball, and high school football.  So if you blog on a subject covered by one of our sites your blog entry will get maximum exposure because we'll be linking from the appropriate site's home page directly to your blog.

Continue reading "What tips can you give me on blogging?"

When you write a blog post on one of our sports sites your post will appear on your blog page. In addition, the title, your name, and a snippet of your post will appear on the home page of the appropriate team site, giving your post instant exposure. Our system looks for certain keywords like the city name and team name in the "Keywords / tags" section so make sure you use this to accurately define your blog post.  For instance, if you write a blog post about the Yankees, make sure in the "Keywords" box you put "New York Yankees" (without the quotes) so that our system knows what the post is about and can map the post to the home page at http://www.newyorkyankeesnews.com.  You do NOT have to be a member of the Yankees website to have your post show up there.

Continue reading "Where does my blog post appear?"

This is very important and you will need to know this when you are telling people about your blog (including Google AdSense when you sign up with them).

To find your blog URL log into this site using the form at the very top of this page. And then once logged in, click on the "Your Profile" button at the top of the page. Then cut and paste the web URL that is in your browser's address bar to tell people about your blog. It will be something like this: http://www.nbabasketballonline.com/yourname/

The actual domain name will probably be different since you'll be joining your favorite team's site and the "yourname" will be your username from when you created your account.

Continue reading "What is my blog's URL?"

If you follow the directions above you will be creating an account with Google's AdSense program and you will be posting three banners on all of your blog and profile pages. From those three banner placements you will earn 100% of the revenue. In addition, as you find other monetization opportunities, like text links (see below), you will be able to earn more money.

The amount you make blogging will be directly proportionate to how much effort you put into your blog. When you first start your blog you will be making very little because you don't have a lot of blog entries and you don't have a following of people reading your blog. If you continue to write an interesting blog people will continue to come back to read what you have to say. Interesting blogs have a way of taking off almost like a spreading virus as people talk about them and tell their friends about them.

Continue reading "How much can I expect to make blogging?"

It's free and easy to sign up for a Google AdSense account. Google will provide high quality text-links on your blog and profile pages and you will get paid every time someone clicks on one of the ads.

To sign up for an account click here: Sign up for Google AdSense.

Fill out all the information on this form. Your website URL will be your profile page on our sports site. NOTE: You must create an account on one of our sports sites as that account will be your URL.  It will be something like this: http://www.nbabasketballonline.com/youname (although you can join any number of our sites so the domain name may be different if you've joined another site).

Once you've submitted your application to Google AdSense it usually takes 24 hours for them to approve your new account.  So in the meantime go ahead and write a few blog entries and once you've been approved come back to this page and complete the final steps below.

Continue reading "How do I sign up with Google AdSense?"

First, you create an account on our network of sports sites. Click here and choose your favorite team.

Don't worry too much about which team is your favorite. Just pick a team and join that site. You only need to join one site - once you've joined one, you've actually joined all of the sites in our network, too. So create only one account. You can then join the other sites by adding those "communities" to your profile. Once you've logged in look for the "Join other sports communities sites" link in the welcome message (upper left hand corner once you've logged in).  But keep in mind, you don't have to join any communities at all even if you want to write about that team - our system will find your blog posting and put it in the right spot. Joining the other communities is just an option and will simply let you interact with other fans of that team and appear on that team's home page.

Continue reading "How do I sign up for the revenue share program?"