How to Start a Sports Blog in 5 Easy Steps
Starting a sports blog can be one of the most exciting things to do for an avid sports fan. It doesn’t matter if you want to create a sports blog for fun or for profit, we are going to walk you through everything you need to know to get your blog live within the next 20 minutes.
In this simple 5-step process we are going to show you how to go from just the idea of creating a sports blog, to having your own fan blog within just a few minutes time. A great example of a sports blog that took on a life of it’s own is LakersNation.com, which has over 2.4 million Facebook Fans, 70,000 YouTube subscribers and a whole press team that actively interviews Lakers staff, fans and players — all because someone wanted to start a sports blog around their favorite team!
Everyone loves sports… now it’s time to create a sports blog of your own and share it with the world!
How to Start a Sports Blog – (Approx. 20 mins)
Before getting started with your sports blog, you are going to want to make sure the foundation for your site is put in place. Take a few minutes to follow along this simple 5-step process and you will have your sports blog up and running in no time.
Step 1 – Choose a Reliable Blogging Platform
The majority of blogs on the internet today are powered through free software which is called WordPress. It’s very easy to use and the majority of web hosting services offer one-click installation to set this up — which means you don’t need to mess around with any coding or complicating software.
There are two ways to setup your blog.
- WordPress.com – A free blogging platform with a lot of limitations, and they pretty much own your site content.
- WordPress.org – The free software you can setup on your site and have complete ownership over your content.
To see a detailed comparison between the two different WordPress platforms, you can click here.
We’ve helped thousands of people get setup with blogs of their own and we highly recommend you getting setup with your own domain name and premium web hosting. This way you can do whatever you like with your blog, while also not being limited to another service. Best of all, we have an amazing 60% off web hosting promotion with Bluehost (the service we use to host this site), and you will also get WordPress automatically installed for free on your server! Oh yea… they are also throwing a free domain name at the time of registration as well.
When you are ready to setup your domain name and web hosting, click here.
In the meantime, let’s walk through the rest of the process to setup your own sports blog.
Step 2 – Pick a Sport, Team or Player
Before starting your blog, you are going to need to choose what your site is going to be about. I personally think a sports team or player blog is the best route to go, versus trying to cover all sports.
When choosing a topic for your blog, you want to go as topic specific as possible — this way you can always create content and blog posts that you know your audience is interested in.
A great way to break this down would be…
SPORTS > BASKETBALL > CLEVELAND CAVALIERS > LEBRON JAMES
You could then make your blog all about Lebron James; covering everything from his highlights, scores, career achievements, game summaries and much more. NBA.com or any professional sports team web site is a great place to look through team and player profiles to get more information on whomever you might be blogging about.
The topic of your blog should also be used in the domain name you choose for your site as well. When picking a domain name for your blog, stay away from trademark or copyright names (such as nba / nfl team names), as they might come after you for creating a site with their owned legal names. Something that would be acceptable is “LebronStatsBlog.com” or “LebronHighlights365.com”
Also try to stick with a .com, .net or .org domain name, as those are most trusted. If you domain name isn’t available, just keep checking names until you find something that is available.
Remember, when setting up your web hosting with SiteGround, you will get your free domain name for life. An instant savings of $14.95 per year!
Step 3 – Create and Customize Your Sports Blog
After choosing the niche topic for your blog and setting up your domain and hosting, it’s time to install WordPress on your server and going live with your blog. As mentioned earlier, this is a super simple process and only takes a few minutes of your time.
Once your blog is live, it’s then time to customize it to your liking. With WordPress powering your blog, it’s easy to change the WordPress theme and even add plugins to your blog to customize it to your like.
To get an idea of what type of site design options are available, you can take a look at the official LebronJames.com fan site and see how they have different pages, video galleries and more to the site.
The ‘official’ player sites are a good source of information and visual examples of what can be created, but you will likely find the independent and ‘unofficial’ fan sites even more valuable. For example, King James Gospel is a great looking site, and a good example of what can be accomplished with WordPress should you continually customize a premium WordPress theme or hire a designer.
Another option is to simply search for “WordPress Sports Themes” in Google and you will come across a wide range of sites that feature premium WordPress themes that won’t cost you a lot of money, while also giving you a high quality looking site with a lot of customization options.
You can see one such WordPress sports theme below. This one is from Magazine3.com.
There are many different ways you can customize the look and feel of your site, such as adding pictures, creating a unique logo for your site and of course going with a fancy looking WordPress theme. While all of these are nice, the most important thing you can do for your site is create great content.
Step 4 – Create Your Sports Blog Content
With your domain name, hosting and WordPress site all up and running, it’s time for you to focus on creating some great content for your site. To do this, all you need to do is log in to your WordPress dashboard and follow the simple steps below.
After logging in, you can click (or hover over) the POSTS tabs on the left side menu. You will then see the option to ADD NEW (click it).
After clicking the “ADD NEW” button, you will be sent to a form/page like the one below. This is pretty self-explanatory and if you know how to use Microsoft Word or any other text editor, you should be fine with WordPress.
Simply enter the “TITLE” of your blog post in the area on top, then start writing your blog content in the big white area below it. When you are ready to publish the content to your blog, you can click on the PUBLISH button.
It’s really that simple to create and publish content to your blog. There are plenty of WordPress tutorials out there as well for learning how to add images, video and completely customize the look and feel of your site.
Step 5 – Get Social and Promote Your Blog
The last part of the process for creating a sports blog of your own is to get people to your site. One of the best ways to do this is through the use of social profile pages. You probably already have social accounts for yourself, but it would also be a huge benefit to your blog if you would set them up for your blog as well.
You can create a new Twitter account to grow your following and to send out your latest blog posts to, while also creating a Facebook Fan Page to build a following around your blog.
There are plenty of Lebron James fan pages already on Facebook, and they are very easy to setup. The official Lebron James fan page shown below has over 22 million fans — how many of these users would love to see the content on your sports blog?
The secret to creating a successful sports blog is to continually produce content that people want to see, while also knowing how to share it with people around the world as well. Promoting and sharing your blog posts through social media is one of the best ways to get free traffic to your sports blog.
It’s Time to Start Your Sports Blog Right Now!
We covered a lot of material and while it may seem complicated at first, it’s actually quite simple to setup.
What you need to do next is think about the type of sports blog you want to create, then head over to Bluehost so you can register your free domain name and get 60% off your blog hosting. Don’t forget, this is a special offer only available to Blogging.org site visitors, so don’t let it pass you by!
If you have any questions, feel free to contact me with any questions you might have and I’ll be sure to do whatever I can to make the process as seamless as possible!