The results of the review are up, and while they are specific to MLBTR, there is considerable information that all sports bloggers might want to use. These include:

• Adding an Advertise Here page
• Making RSS subscription prominent on the page, as well as including an email option
• Cleaning up the sidebar
• Tips for trying to find more relevant advertising (which should convert better)
• Adding more art (some blogs such as Roar of the Tigers already excel at this)
• Suggestions for attracting more social media love

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If you’re not familiar with AuctionAds, bascially it displays ads for current eBay auctions related to keywords you determine:

When your site’s visitors click on an Auction Ad listing and take an action on eBay you earn cash. Actions are defined as a Winning Bid, a Buy-it-Now or a confirmed user registration. AuctionAds is committed to paying out a minimum of 100% of eBay commission revenue. See eBay’s affiliate program for details on the payout.

I haven’t used AuctionAds in the past, so I can’t really say if it works for sports blogs or not, but given the number of sports items available on eBay, it certainly seems like it could. I used the $25 as extra motivation to finally getting around to installing it on the Tigers site, and I’ll report back if I have any success or not.

If you’re interested in trying it, you can sign up here (aff link)

Hat Tip Problogger.

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The book is 193 pages and, well it’s about the Padres. Being that it is an annual the biggest section (about a third of the book) is a detailed look back at the season that was in 2006. Readers will learn exactly how the 2006 edition of the Padres were constructed, how Petco Park impacted the team, and what went wrong in the playoffs. It also has a detailed look back at the Padres game of the year.

In addition to narrating the 2006 season Young looks back farther with a retrospective on the 1998 World Series appearance and a detailed examination of Kevin Towers defining deals. Broader baseball topics explore the Twins and A’s continued small market success and candidates for building a bullpen with a tight budget.

Now I’m not particularly a Padres fan, but you don’t really need to be. Young paints a picture compelling enough that any fan of baseball will enjoy it. He also writes in an easily digestable style where it’s easy to quickly rip through a section.

There are stats in the book, but it isn’t a book of statistics. Geoff uses the graphs and tables to enhance and clarify, but not to tell the story. Because of this it the book is accessible to a wide audience.

I was going to say this is a great first effort, but it’s a great effort regardless.

Now because this is a blog for other bloggers, I thought that it might be valuable to learn about the process that Geoff went through. The idea of a Tiger book is something that crossed my mind, but the project always seemed so daunting. Geoff was kind enough to answer some questions about how the book came together:

BB Why did you decide to write the book?

GY I’ve been reading baseball annuals since I was a kid — Bill James, Bill Mazeroski, Street & Smith — and I’ve always enjoyed the format. When I see those types of publications in bookstores, it sends a signal to my brain that baseball season is just around the corner.

The one gripe I have with annuals — and it’s the nature of the medium — is that they don’t drill down into any one topic as much as I’d like. When I get to the part about the Padres, for example, I find myself craving more. I want an entire book that goes into obsessive detail about the team I follow. Nothing like that existed, so I figured I could either whine about it and be frustrated or do something and be happy. I chose the latter.
The other thing is that Ducksnorts turns 10 this September. I’m not huge on anniversaries, but I guess that’s a long time in Internet years, so this is a way to celebrate with my readers. Plus, I didn’t know if I could actually write a book; what better way to find out?

BB How long did it take you to write it? You gave up your day job to
work on it, is there any way someone could tackle this in their “spare time”

GY I first proposed the idea in August 2006. After a couple months of hashing out ideas with my readers on what should go in the book, I started doing the research. I managed to complete two chapters before I quit my job, but with work, the book, and my normal blogging activities, I was putting in 15-17 hours a day and it was killing me. At that point, I decided that one of two things had to go, and I wasn’t willing to give up on the book. My wife and I had a talk, and unbelievably, she agreed with me. I left a good job with great people at the end of November and got serious with my writing. From then until mid-March, working on the book was pretty much a full-time job. Between researching, writing, self-publishing, and figuring out how to promote the book, you’re probably looking at 600 or so hours.

As for whether someone could tackle this in their spare time, I’ll answer by saying that I couldn’t do it. Then again, there are a lot of talented people in the world, so I won’t say it’s impossible. Such an undertaking would take a tremendous amount of discipline and energy. Also, if you’re aiming for a March release, don’t wait until the previous November to get started. There is so much involved in publishing a book that you might not think about, and things go wrong. Give yourself as much time as possible. To give you an idea, I’m already drawing up plans for the 2008 book.

BB Do you have any sales targets in mind for this to be deemed a success?

GY I do have sales targets in mind, but I have no idea whether they’re realistic. This is the first time I’ve ever published a book and I don’t know what benchmarks to use. That’s something I need to learn more about for next year’s book. I’m working in an extreme niche market, so I consider that when making projections and setting expectations. But I have rough figures in mind for what would give me satisfaction, make me ecstatic, or cause me to question my own existence. I’m reluctant to say out loud what those figures are because, again, I don’t know that they’re realistic.

In another sense, though, the project is already a success in my mind. I completed a book. Not everyone can say that, and now I can. Part of the
impetus for writing the book was to see if I could do it. The next step is trying to do it better. So the book itself is a success. If enough people buy it, maybe I can get someone else to take care of the publishing aspects (typesetting, cover design, promotion, etc.) in the future and leave me to focus on writing. That would be nice. But even if it doesn’t work out that way, I can’t complain.

This is one of the most personally rewarding things I’ve done in life — I gave an honest effort and achieved results that please me. It’s hard not to be happy with that.

BB Going the self-publishing route you’re also in charge of your own publicity. Is there a Geoff Young book tour in the works and are you promoting the book other places besides the blog circuit?

GY The whole PR and marketing game is a complete mystery to me, but I’m learning. There isn’t a tour per se, although I’m open to ideas. One thing I’ll be doing is driving from San Diego to Cooperstown in July to see Tony Gwynn inducted into the Hall of Fame. I’m planning on watching games in about 10 different minor-league towns along the way. Depending on what kind of sponsorship I’m able to get for this event, it’ll either be just one guy trekking across the country or a bunch of us piled into a limousine. I’m sure I’ll try to work a book tie-in, given that Gwynn is featured prominently in several chapters.

As for promoting outside the blog circuit, the honest answer is, I hope so. I’m knocking on doors, but if you don’t have someone on the payroll doing this stuff (and doing it well), I suspect it’s not the sort of thing that happens overnight. I’ll just keep knocking; eventually someone will listen.

BB Now with it being called an Annual, it implies there’ll be another one next year. I’m sure you’re taking a break, but when does work begin on the 2008 edition?

GY This is a little trick I played on myself. I called it an “annual” so I wouldn’t have an easy way out if I decided to flake. Sticking that word in the title commits me to at least one more of these. And even though there was a lot involved in putting this book together, I feel like I’ve learned a great deal during the process that I can apply to next year’s edition.

Break? Not really. I left a good job to do this; my wife has placed a tremendous amount of faith in me to make something happen and I need to honor that. I’ll take a break when I’m dead. Right now, I’m gathering ideas for the 2008 edition — getting feedback on the current book, scribbling notes to myself, etc. I don’t have anything concrete in mind yet, but one of the biggest lessons learned is that 4-5 months isn’t nearly enough time for a project of this magnitude. The sooner I start planning, the more it’s just a matter of putting things in their proper place come crunch time.

The great thing about self-publishing is that it doesn’t matter whether anyone else wants a second book. If I want one, then it’s going to happen. Well, I want one.

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Therefore, starting next Thursday, MetsBlog.com will become my only job. Like Dave Pinto at Baseball Musings, I will cut ties with my current employer and dedicate myself 100 percent to MetsBlog.com, which will be financially supported mostly by advertising revenue and donations from readers…

Best of luck Matthew – we’re all pull for you.
Metsblog.com :: Note: Matthew Cerrone, Full-Time Blogger

BlogMedia will pay you 50 percent of the first $150 in monthly ad revenue from the site, plus money from a bonus structure based on additional ad revenue…

Application instructions can be found here.

David has been a friend to many in the baseball blog-o-sphere with his willingness to link out. Many of us have received a boost in traffic from a Baseball Musings link. Not to mention all the new posts that we’re able to generate thanks to Musings inspired content. He’s asking for one dollar from every visitor. However, if you’re a baseball blogger I’d hope you consider digging a little deeper for one your own.

Please help David out, and keep Baseball Musings going.

I missed my chance. But if I were living in an upcoming Super Bowl host city, here’s what I’d do:

Start Early

If you’re from Miami(next year’s host) or even Phoenix (hosting XXXXII), start your Super Bowl blog now. Snap up the good domain names now and get your blog rolling. Don’t worry too much about templates or appearances. Chances are you won’t have very many visitors at this point anyways. The key is to build a nice library of content. Possible post ideas are:

• Super Bowl preparations
• Retrospectives on previous times the Super Bowl was in town
• Local attractions
• Restaurant Reviews

The Super Bowl is a rich enough subject that there should be enough historical perspectives, and current news, to sustain a blog with a couple posts a week for a full year. The point is that getting in early will help get you established with search engines and with other bloggers.

Get Involved

While it may be sufficient to just stay on the outside, why not try and get involved. Participation as a volunteer might get you access to more information early on, and provide plenty of story-fodder later in the process.

Spread the Word

So you’ve got the blog set up, and you’ve got a couple of dozen pages of content. You’ve even spent a little bit of time making it look nice and making it easy to navigate. Now get yourself some links. This is easiest if you already have an established blog (and most readers of this site already do). That’s your first inbound link. Also network with other bloggers that cover the city. Also, introduce yourself to the host committee and at the very least get included on their press release distribution list. While you’re at it try to get an interview or two with members of the host committee. If you act like a journalist, others may think of you as one. If you manage to get an interview or two, it can just led to your credibility. Not to mention it could provide good link bait.

If you do manage to get a pretty big following early on, start trying to get credentials to anything. The chances of getting NFL credentials are probably minute, but you could get lucky and get access to various parties and other events for Super Bowl week.

Monetize

Know that early on you probably won’t make much from the blog. All the work ahead of time will be for a big payoff as the game approaches. Contextual advertising should probably be part of your strategy. Traffic and high-paying, relevant ads though probably won’t peak until the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl itself.

Another option would be to find and negotiate direct links. Ticket brokers are always a good option. They usually pay well and they come to you. If you’re ambitious you could try working with the restaurants or other areas of interest in the city. As a blog focusing on a very specific topic you can give them the audience they crave, and probably a vast discount than what they’d need to pay for traditional media. Other potential targets are memorobilia and apparel.

Is it worth it?

That’s the catch. Is it worth months or work for a potentially big payout at the end? That’s hard to say. I do know that on my very low traffic personal blog, on which I have written a couple of Super Bowl related posts, the results have been encouraging. And that is just with using Adsense for the last week or so on a half dozen SBXL themed posts.

Adsense’s tips for bloggers

The Adsense team has put together some tips for optimizing Adsense revenue on a blog. None of the tips were earth shattering if this is the kind of tihng you’ve been paying attention to. Blending ads, removing borders, and getting the ads close to the content are the main themes.

Google has made their heatmap available for awhile. This post isn’t necessarily a heatmap, but general suggestions. I’d be curious to see if they’ve developed a heatmap specifically for blogs.

Chitika Category Hints

Via Problogger, Chitika has implemented a feature to try and improve ad relevancy called Category Hints. Essentially, if Chitika doesn’t have a product for your keyword, you can specify a category for Chitika to pull from. I could see this being a great tool because many of my keywords tend to be hit & miss in returning results. However, for sports bloggers there is a Sports and Outdoors category, but the sample ad is for a tire. I’m not sure it will improve relevancy for us until they ad more categories.

I haven’t seen Chitika on too many sports blogs, and I’m largely giving up on them. I still have them in a few spots (including here), but I get better clickthough rates and cost per click with Adsense. Have any sports bloggers had success with Chitika?

This is a pretty big step for Pinto, who is a professional blogger.  This isn’t someone looking to make a couple bucks on the side, it is a part of his living income.

adsense, google, censorship

1. What kind of rate should I ask for?
2. What else should I keep in mind?

Now I hesitate to answer the first question. Partly because it is something I don’t have a ton of knowledge about because I haven’t really discussed it with other bloggers. I don’t know if I’m getting a good rate or not. Mostly though, I won’t discuss it because I don’t think that is the way to maintain a good working relationship with your advertisers.

What I will do though is give you some factors to consider when setting your price, and just in negotiating in general. I’m working under the assumption that the advertiser is a ticket broker, because that is by far the most common sponsored link I’ve seen on sports blogs. However, the bulk of the points would be applicable to any sponsor.

• How much do you want to make from advertising? Maybe making money from your site isn’t that important to you. You may want to avoid advertising altogether, but would decide to compromise your standards if the price was right. If this is the case then you hold all the cards, and ask for the price that you want. If they say no, they say no. And if you’re not intent on making money from your blog, then you won’t have really given up anything. And who knows, maybe they’ll say yes. If they do, you know you can ask for at least that much the next time.
• I’m guessing on this, but my supposition is that ticket brokers are more interested in buying link popularity than in generating direct sales. So your pagerank may be more important than your traffic. Let me stress again, this is just my guess. You can check your pagerank here.
• Be clear about where the ad will appear. While sidebar is the typical location, you may want to mix them in amongst the posts. Also, how far down the sidebar will the ad go? What other information are you willing to bump to place the ad(s). This is something you’ll need to decide, and something the advertiser will want to know.
• Think about offering exclusivity or for the top position among your sponsored links for a premium. On my Tiger site I’ve made the decision to limit the number of a given type of sponsor to 5. Ultimately I’m not maximizing my revenue potential but I also cap the amount of space that my ads will use. In the process I can ask for a little more in terms of rates because space is at a premium and the ad receives less competition.
• Make sure you delineate the size of the ad. This could be specified in terms of lines, links, or characters.
• Keep records. I have an Excel spreadsheet that includes the start and end date for each of my agreements, as well as the rate. First, you want to know when the ad is up and you should be talking renewal. Second, this is income which needs to be tracked and reported (at least in the US).