Monday, November 15, 2010

Monday Morning Mojo: Top Sports Posts, Blogs and Sites from Last Week


Being an active twitterer and facebooker, all around social media follower, I run into some great sites, sports blogs, single posts and stories, that bear passing along.

These aren't only amusing, meaningful, and/or insightful, they're outstanding examples of the type of writing you can do. I've tried to give you a good cross section of posts, from different types of sites (blogs, static sites, affiliate sites, products created for sale, etc). None of these are affiliate links, they're just informational.

Great stuff, have a look.

How Pete Dye's Dog Killed Herb Kohler's Sheep - Here's a great post from Armchair Golf Blog. Take a look at the post and read through the blog. Neil Sagebiel loves golf and is an excellent writer. Both qualities show through in his writing. He has taken his passions and turned them into a respected and widely read online publication.

The Rotater - Here's an actual, physical product, and one that will save and prolong the careers of a lot of athletes. The founders of The Rotater, a shoulder rehabilitation device, took their know-how, and turned it into a simple to use, affordable product.

Big Blue Booyah - Here's a pure fan play. If you love a team, sport, individual player, etc., take it and run. Conventional wisdom says to have a successful blog, you need to buy a domain, pay for hosting, use WordPress as your platform, and so on. That's great advice, but you don't HAVE to do it that way to enjoy success. BBBooyah has taken something they love, University of Kentucky athletics, applied it to a huge audience that loves the same thing, and made a great blog in a relatively short time. Further, they're using the same platform as this blog, Blogger. It's free.

TennisMD.com - One of the best new websites for golf health and fitness information. Ok, I'll say it, it is THE best site. They've assembled many of the top tennis instructors, health professionals, fitness professionals, and sports psychologists as staff writers. They also have top sports writers on their team (proud to say I used to write for them). The reason I include it here, aside from how well-done the site is, is because it's a great example of one outlet for your writing.

There are lots of sites, in every sport, that need quality writing and writers/editors. You simply need to reach out.

BananaPutting.com - Here's an excellent example of how to take your expertise and turn it into a commodity. PGA professional, Paul Hobart, is a putting expert. He took that expertise and turned it into a unique instructional book and program, built a website to showcase it, and tons of people are better putters for it. Banana Putting is a fresh look at putting, and an example of sports entreprenuership.

Each of these sites use a variety of media (text, photos, video, polls) to engage readers. You can learn a lot from them and have fun doing it.

What method of earning a living from your sports writing do you like best from these examples? Not every method here is suitable for every person.