How To Start A Sports Blog And Make Money

Starting a sports blog sounds simple until you realize that writing about “football” puts you up against ESPN, Bleacher Report, and every major media outlet on the planet. The people winning at sports blogging are not writing about sports in general. They picked one corner of one sport, got hyper-focused, and built an audience that keeps coming back. In this post you will get the exact same step-by-step process I covered in the video above so you can build a sports blog that actually earns money.

Whether you want to write about the Dallas Cowboys, high school football defenses, or competitive badminton, the path is the same: pick a narrow topic, set up the right technical foundation, write consistently, and monetize with multiple income streams. Let’s walk through each step in order.

What You’ll Walk Out With

A clear method for choosing a sports niche that has real search volume but low competition
How to read keyword difficulty scores in Ahrefs so you target terms you can actually rank for
The three WordPress settings most new bloggers miss that hurt their search rankings from day one
A writing framework that turns any sports question into a complete, rankable blog post
Three monetization methods you can layer onto a sports blog at different traffic levels
Why social media promotion matters more than SEO in your first few months
The milestone that tells you whether your blog has real traction before you waste years on the wrong approach — and how finder.platformproof.com can help you identify the right starting point for your situation

Step 1: Choose Your Sport and Niche Down Hard

There are roughly 50 sports you could build a blog around: basketball, baseball, American football, soccer, hockey, badminton, and dozens more. Every one of them has an audience online. The problem is not a lack of interest. The problem is that if you write about “basketball” as a general topic, you are competing with Sports Illustrated for traffic before you have published your first ten posts.

The solution is to niche down twice. First, pick your sport. Second, pick a specific corner of that sport. If you choose football, you immediately face a fork in the road: American football or soccer? After that, you still need to pick a sub-niche. Are you writing about professional teams like the Dallas Cowboys? A specific formation like the 4-3 defense? High school football strategy? College recruiting? Each of those is a different blog with a different audience and a very different competitive landscape.

Bloggingtheboys.com is a real example of this done right. That site covers one team — the Dallas Cowboys — and nothing else. Every post is Cowboys-related. That focus is what allowed the site to build domain authority and a loyal readership. Visitors know exactly what they are getting every time they return. You want the same clarity for your blog from the very first post.

The reason hyper-focus matters early is simple: Google and other search engines use a site’s overall content signals to decide what topics the site is an authority on. If you write about basketball one week and hockey the next, the algorithm has a harder time categorizing your site. If every post on your blog is about the 4-3 defense, you become a recognized source on that topic much faster. Once you have built real domain authority and a sizable audience, you can expand into related topics. But at the start, pick one corner and own it.

Step 2: Do Keyword Research Before You Write Anything

The biggest mistake new sports bloggers make is writing whatever they feel like instead of writing what people are actually searching for. Keyword research fixes that. The tool used in the video is Ahrefs, which shows you the monthly search volume for any term and gives it a keyword difficulty score on a scale of 0 to 100. The closer to 100, the harder it is to rank. Green scores are low competition. Red scores mean you are fighting established giants.

Here is what those scores look like for a football blog in practice. The keyword “football” has a keyword difficulty of 93. That is about as high as it gets. Ranking for it as a new site is essentially impossible. “NFL” is even harder. But “Dallas Cowboys” is meaningfully easier, and it still draws 3.5 million monthly searches with more than 148,000 related keywords. If you filter that keyword list down to terms with a difficulty score of 10 or less, you find a long list of specific questions and topics you can actually rank for as a brand-new site.

The 4-3 defense example from the video shows this well. That sub-niche keyword pulls around 12,000 searches per month with more than 4,000 related keywords, and the difficulty scores across those terms are mostly green — meaning low competition. You could start a blog entirely around the 4-3 defense, rank for dozens of those low-competition terms, build domain authority, and then gradually expand into broader football topics. That is the strategic path. Start where you can win, then grow outward.

One bonus opportunity worth noting: some of those 4-3 defense keywords overlap with video game searches like “Madden 16 3-4 defense.” That means your sports strategy content could also attract NFL Madden players, giving you an easy angle for affiliate links to the game itself on Amazon. Keyword research reveals these unexpected overlaps that you would never find by just writing whatever comes to mind.

Step 3: Get Web Hosting and a Domain Name

Once you know your niche and have a list of low-competition keywords to target, you need a home for your content. That means web hosting and a domain name. Web hosting is rented server space where your website files live. Your domain name is the human-readable address people type into their browser to find you — something like bloggingtheboys.com.

Bluehost is the hosting provider mentioned in the video, and it is a common starting point because they bundle a free domain for the first year with their hosting plans. You will sign up, choose your domain name, pay for the hosting, and then install WordPress onto your account. The WordPress installation process takes under five minutes through Bluehost’s interface, and once it is done you have a functioning website ready to customize.

When picking your domain name, make it relevant to your niche. If your blog is about the Dallas Cowboys, something like cowboynationfansfriends.com communicates the topic immediately to both readers and search engines. Avoid generic names that could belong to any sports site. A focused domain name reinforces the niche signal you want to build from day one.

Step 4: Set Up WordPress the Right Way

WordPress has millions of users but most of them never touch the three settings that matter most for SEO and user experience. Making these changes takes less than ten minutes, but skipping them can silently hurt your rankings for months.

Site title and tagline. Go to Settings and update the site title to reflect your niche. For a Dallas Cowboys blog, you might use something like “Cowboy Nation Fans” with a tagline that describes what readers will get — for example, “Honest news and analysis for Dallas Cowboys fans.” This text appears in search engine results and tells Google exactly what your site covers.

Reading settings. Under Settings then Reading, set your home page to display your latest posts. This way, any returning visitor lands immediately on your most recent content. Also check that the “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” checkbox is unchecked. If this box is checked, Google cannot find your site at all. It is a default WordPress setting that trips up many beginners.

Permalinks. Under Settings then Permalinks, change the structure from “Plain” to “Post name.” Plain URLs look like yoursite.com/?p=123, which tells search engines nothing about what the post covers. Post name URLs look like yoursite.com/4-3-defense-explained, which tells Google and readers exactly what they are clicking on. This single change gives every post you publish a built-in SEO advantage. Wikipedia uses this exact structure, and it is one reason their pages dominate search results.

Step 5: Choose a Theme That Fits Your Brand

A WordPress theme controls how your site looks — the layout, fonts, color scheme, and overall feel. The free themes that come bundled with WordPress work, but a premium theme from a marketplace like ThemeForest gives you more design options, faster load times, and better support. Searching “sports” on ThemeForest pulls up hundreds of options built specifically for sports blogs and news sites. Prices range from about $10 to $100, which is a one-time cost.

After purchasing a theme on ThemeForest, you download it as a zip file. Inside that zip is a second zip file — that inner file is the one you upload to WordPress. Go to Appearance, then Themes, then Add New, then Upload Theme. Select the inner zip file, upload it, and click Activate. Your site immediately takes on the new design. From there you can adjust colors, upload a logo, and configure the layout to match your brand before writing a single post.

If a premium theme is not in your budget right now, the free default WordPress themes are functional. The theme matters less than publishing consistent content. Do not let the design phase become a reason to delay your first post by weeks.

Step 6: Write Blog Posts That Actually Rank

The writing process starts before you type a single word of the post itself. Take ten to fifteen minutes to brainstorm using the six journalist questions: who, what, when, where, why, and how. For a post about the 4-3 defense versus the 3-4 defense, your brainstorming session might produce questions like: What is the 4-3 defense? What is the 3-4 defense? How do the two compare? Who invented the 4-3 defense? When would a coach choose one over the other? What are the weaknesses of each?

Once you have those questions written down, use them as your H2 subheadings inside the post. This approach does two things at once. It organizes your writing so you never stare at a blank page wondering what to cover next. And it naturally surfaces the specific questions that searchers are typing into Google, which means your post is more likely to match what people are actually looking for.

How long should each post be? The answer from the video is straightforward: as long as it needs to be and no longer. If you can fully answer “4-3 defense vs 3-4 defense — what’s the difference?” in 1,000 words, write 1,000 words. If the topic requires 5,000 words to cover properly, write 5,000. The real benchmark is whether you answered the question more completely than the existing top results. Look at what competitors left out and fill those gaps. A post that genuinely answers a question better than everything else on the page will outrank posts that are longer but shallower.

To publish a post, go to Posts in your WordPress dashboard, click Add New, paste in your keyword-based title, write the content using subheadings for each section, and click Publish. That post is now live and indexed by search engines.

Step 7: Make Money From Your Sports Blog

There are three main income streams for a sports blog, and the right time to pursue each one depends on where your traffic is.

Display advertising. When you are just starting out with very few visitors, Google AdSense is the most accessible option. They approve sites with essentially any traffic level, and you earn money when readers see or click the ads. The payout per click is small — pennies on the dollar — but it is passive once the ads are placed. Once your site reaches 1,000 to 3,000 page views per month, you can apply for higher-paying networks like media.net, Ezoic, or AdThrive. Those networks pay significantly more per thousand views than AdSense does.

Affiliate marketing. This is where a sports blog can earn real money. Affiliate marketing means recommending products and including a tracking link. When someone buys through your link, you earn a commission. For a sports blog, the options are wide: the NFL Shop has an affiliate program managed through Impact Radius. Amazon Associates lets you link to any sports merchandise, equipment, or even video games. Dick’s Sporting Goods runs an affiliate program you can join if the sport-specific programs do not fit. If your blog covers travel to away games or coverage of visiting fans, travel affiliates like Expedia or Priceline are another revenue stream. The key is relevance — only promote products your specific audience would actually want. A Dallas Cowboys blog should link to Cowboys gear, not Chicago Bears merchandise.

Digital and physical products. If you build enough of an audience around a local team or location, you can sell your own products directly from the site. The video gives the example of offering tours of the Dallas area for people visiting to see Cowboys games. Your blog is already attracting the exact audience that would buy those tours. You could also sell ebooks, coaching sessions, strategy guides, or merchandise. This income stream takes more setup than ads or affiliate links, but the margins are typically much higher.

Not sure which of these income streams fits your current situation?

Answer a few quick questions at finder.platformproof.com and get a personalized recommendation based on your skills, schedule, and starting point.

Step 8: Promote on Social Media Before Google Notices You

Here is a reality about new blogs that most tutorials skip over: Google, Yahoo, Bing, and DuckDuckGo are not going to send you meaningful traffic until you have published a significant number of posts and built some domain authority. That process takes months. If you sit back and wait for organic search traffic to arrive while you publish your first ten posts, your blog will feel dead.

The fix is social media. Pick the platforms where your target audience already hangs out and start sharing your posts immediately. For a Dallas Cowboys blog, that might mean starting a Facebook group for Cowboys fans and sharing each new post there. Twitter and Instagram work well for sports content because fans are already discussing games in real time. LinkedIn is worth testing if you write about the business side of sports. TikTok and short-form video can drive significant traffic if you are willing to create video content alongside your written posts.

The goal of social promotion in your first few months is simple: get your content in front of real readers now, before search engines have recognized your site as an authority. Social traffic gives you immediate feedback on which topics resonate with your audience. If a post about the Dallas Cowboys’ offensive line gets shared a hundred times and a post about their draft history gets ten shares, that tells you something. You learn what your audience actually wants before you have spent months writing in the dark.

Step 9: Write 50 Posts Before You Judge Your Results

The recommendation in the video is clear: write at least 50 blog posts before you decide whether your sports blog is working. That number is not arbitrary. With 50 posts following the keyword research process, you have enough content for Google to form a real opinion about your site’s authority. You have enough data to see which topics are getting traffic and which are not. And you have proven to yourself — and to any potential audience — that you can stick with this.

For a news-driven blog like one covering the Dallas Cowboys, you may need to publish every day or even multiple times per day to stay relevant. For an evergreen sub-niche blog covering football strategy like the 4-3 defense, one post per day or every other day is enough to build your library steadily. The pace matters less than the consistency.

At 50 posts, if you targeted genuinely low-competition keywords and answered those questions thoroughly, you should be seeing some organic search traffic. If the traffic is not coming, the video points to three likely causes: the posts are too short to fully answer the question, the writing quality needs improvement, or there is another technical issue slowing indexation. Hitting 50 posts using the methods above gives you a real diagnostic baseline instead of guessing why a five-post blog is not ranking.

Honest Drawbacks of Starting a Sports Blog

It takes time before money appears. Display ad earnings on a new blog are measured in dollars per month, not hundreds. Affiliate commissions only come when people buy. If you need income in the next 30 days, a sports blog is not the right vehicle. It is a long-game strategy that pays off after consistent effort over months.

News-driven sports niches require constant attention. If you build a blog around a professional sports team, the news cycle is relentless. Game recaps, injury updates, roster moves, trade rumors — readers of a team-specific blog expect fresh content constantly. That is manageable if you are genuinely passionate about the team, but exhausting if you chose the niche purely for the traffic numbers.

Evergreen sub-niches have lower volume ceilings. A blog about the 4-3 defense will max out at 12,000 monthly searches no matter how well you rank. That ceiling is fine for a starter blog that you plan to expand from, but it limits your earning potential if you never grow beyond that narrow topic.

Keyword difficulty scores change. A term that scores as low competition today can become more competitive as other sites discover the same opportunity. Run your keyword research fresh every few months and look for new low-competition gaps that have opened up.

Your Step-by-Step Starting Plan

Choose a sport you already know and care about
Pick a specific sub-niche within that sport (a team, a position, a formation, a skill level)
Open Ahrefs or a free alternative like Ubersuggest, search your sub-niche, and filter results to keyword difficulty 10 or below
Save 20 to 30 low-competition keyword targets as your first content calendar
Sign up for web hosting, claim a niche-relevant domain, install WordPress
Make the three critical WordPress settings changes: site title, reading settings, and permalinks
Choose and install a theme from ThemeForest or use a free default theme
Apply the who/what/when/where/why/how brainstorm method to your first keyword and write your first post
Publish and share immediately on the social platforms your audience uses
Sign up for Google AdSense and one affiliate program relevant to your niche
Repeat daily or every other day until you hit 50 posts, then evaluate your traffic and income

Find Your X

Starting a sports blog is one specific path to income online. But the right starting point looks different depending on your skills, your schedule, and what you already know. If you want a faster way to find the income method that actually fits your situation, visit finder.platformproof.com and answer a few short questions. You will get a personalized recommendation instead of spending months testing options that were never a good fit for you.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does it take to make money from a sports blog?

Most new blogs start seeing their first small ad earnings within a few months of publishing regularly. Meaningful affiliate income typically takes longer — usually six months to a year of consistent publishing before organic search traffic is high enough to produce reliable commissions. The timeline shortens significantly if you actively promote on social media from day one instead of waiting for Google to find you.

Do I need to be a professional athlete or sports journalist to start a sports blog?

No. The blogs that rank are the ones that answer reader questions thoroughly and clearly, not the ones written by credentialed journalists. Genuine passion for the sport and the discipline to research your topic well matters far more than professional credentials. Readers trust someone who clearly knows and loves the subject, regardless of what is on their resume.

What if I pick a niche that turns out to have no traffic?

That is exactly what keyword research prevents. Before you write a single post, check the monthly search volume in Ahrefs or a free tool like Ubersuggest. If your sub-niche shows no search volume at all, that is your signal to pivot before investing weeks of writing. The research step is not optional — it is what separates blogs that get found from blogs that exist in silence.

Can I write about multiple sports on one blog?

You can, but it will slow your growth considerably in the early stages. Search engines use your site’s overall content to decide what topics you are an authority on. A site that writes about football, basketball, and hockey sends a mixed signal. If you want to cover multiple sports eventually, start with one, build domain authority in that niche, and then expand. The path to a broad sports site runs through a narrow one first.

Is Google AdSense the only way to monetize ads on a sports blog?

AdSense is the easiest to get into because they accept sites at any traffic level. But it pays the least per thousand views. Once you are consistently getting 1,000 or more page views per month, look into Ezoic, media.net, and AdThrive. These networks have minimum traffic requirements but pay meaningfully more than AdSense. Starting with AdSense and graduating to a premium network is the standard path for growing sports blogs.

What affiliate programs make sense for a sports blog?

It depends on your niche, but the most widely applicable options are Amazon Associates (covers sports equipment, merchandise, and video games), the NFL Shop affiliate program managed through Impact Radius, and Dick’s Sporting Goods for equipment-focused content. If your blog targets fans who travel to games, Expedia or Priceline offer travel affiliate programs. Always prioritize products your specific audience would actually buy.

How often should I publish new posts?

For a news-driven blog covering a professional team, daily or multiple times daily keeps your content relevant. For an evergreen strategy or technique blog, one post per day or every other day builds your library steadily without burning you out. The goal from the video is to reach 50 posts. Whether that takes 50 days or 100 days matters less than getting there with quality posts that actually answer the target keyword questions.

What is a realistic income target for a sports blog in its first year?

There is no universal number because it depends entirely on your niche’s traffic ceiling, how consistently you publish, and how well you convert readers into buyers with affiliate content. What the video makes clear is that the early income will be small — pennies per click on AdSense, occasional commissions from affiliate sales. The model compounds over time as your post library grows and your domain authority builds. Think of year one as building the foundation, not collecting the harvest.

Sources

Ahrefs keyword difficulty scale and search volume data referenced in video walkthrough
Bloggingtheboys.com — example of a focused, single-team sports blog
ThemeForest — WordPress theme marketplace (themeforest.net)
Google AdSense — display advertising for new publishers
NFL Shop affiliate program via Impact Radius
Amazon Associates affiliate program
Dick’s Sporting Goods affiliate program