How I turned My Sports Blog into a Full- time Media Business | Learn to Become a New Media Entrepreneur

 If you still blog for fun, it means you are toying around with a million Dollar business in your hands. Well, if you do, LindaIkeji isn’t kidding at all. She has turned her blog into a full time media house.

I read about Miss Malini on Forbes. How Malini Agarwal made over $50 million Dollar a year blogging about Bollywood, India’s film industry. It opened my eyes to the business. Then I knew I have been wasting my time and resources in what would have been a very profitable venture for the past five years.

I started ‘Cheer on Nigeria’ blog to support my Sport Marketing business. My aim was to use the blog to pursue a cause of promoting Nigeria’s football; to show case my expertise as well as attract leads for potential partners and customers. But I soon realized that the blog can stand on its own as a new media business.

It done on me as advertisers began to contact me for space. They wanted to place their advert on my blog; they wanted to promote their sports events and products through ‘Sponsor- A – Post. Some were asking for affiliate marketing relationship…

One of the major challenges I faced was time! Time to do all I needed to do. I couldn’t write all the articles I wanted to write for post; I couldn’t reply so many business correspondences coming in each day; I couldn’t do marketing as well as accounting functions. So I was lagging behind with my blog, spending much money on Internet connections and research to get the best topics as well as in-depth information for my readers. But I wasn’t breaking even, until I read the forbes’ account of Miss Malini’s blog.

1. Build A Team: You can’t do everything, it’s not just possible. You need a team!

At first, it was difficult to get the right team for the two blogs I administer ‘Cheer onNigeria’ and ‘Inspire Football. I needed skilled personnel who could easily buy into the vision and purpose of the media business. 

At the end however, I manage to recruit 5 partners – I, as the head of the company made up of a web master, a writer editor, two marketers and an accountant.

2. Upgrade your Business Plan: After two months of familiarization with members of the team, we then sat down for business. We brainstormed and put in place policies with partners, suppliers, customers as well as future employees.

We got our documents together with the appointed company secretary, Holyfield Chambers and began to legalizes company’s entities – as part of GreenHunters Sports International Holdings.

 3. Promote Your Blog: Now as a media business, we had to promote and promote the two blogs to our target markets. We needed a least, 10, 000 page views on each blog per day, if we have to attract business customers of any worth.

So we decided to promote on facebook, Adword… We did a short video on Youtube and the response has been tremendous.

We sent out our introduction letters to Advertising Agencies and major sports sponsors across the country.

4. Start Building Business Relationships: This is the most important part. Start building relationship with people that will roll in the money. We decided to adopt direct advert placement on our blog.

You can well broker deals with Ad carriers such as Adsense, Ad choice, Gillboard…

We looked at affiliate marketing options that are attractive to our blog and reach some unique deal with them