Website: www.sportaphile.com
Interview with: Chuck
When did you start Sportaphile?
I started Sportaphile about one week into September ‘07, so it’s been up and running for almost 4 months.
What made you start it?
I started the site because there were no sports blogs that offered exactly what I was looking for as a fan/internet user. I wanted sports news/rumors/analysis/humor delivered to me from an urban perspective, but not so urban that it gave the impression that everyone wasn’t welcome. I also want to provide clean effective design and not beat my readers over the head with advertisements.
The second thing I really wanted was unique perspectives that spark debate and discussions, I’m not here to copy and paste articles from ESPN.com and Deadspin everyday, there are enough blogs that do that. The ultimate goal is to have other opinionated writers join me and have fun sharing our thoughts on sports. The only thing we can do to be completely unique is to inject our personality into what we write.
As of now, the site isn’t even half way to where I want it to be.
What is your background?
My writing/website background? Or my personal background? I’m a 24 year old from the Bay Area, born and bred. My sports fandom can pretty much be divided into three stages, hardcore baseball fan in childhood, hardcore basketball fan through my teens, and football fanatic from high school to now.
As far as writing and the internet goes, Sportaphile is my first website, most of this is all very new to me. I’ve been working as a writer on another website for the last year so. That provided me with experience as far as pumping out material on a regular basis but thats about it.
Do you blog for fun or are you trying to make it a career? What is your goal with this blog?
Right now Sportaphile is fueled by fun and success. I want to have a lot of fun, but ultimately I also want my site to be the best. I’d be lying if I told you “I’d be happy if just 10 people came to my site and loved what they saw everyday”. I’d love to have millions of visitors without compromising the original goal of the website. I’m just going to do what I do, everything else will fall into place.
What type of blogging software do you use?
We’re running on wordpress.
What ad network(s) do you use?
Right now all we use is Google Adsense, but we have been in talks with another network to run other ads. I REALLY don’t want to annoy my visitors with advertisements everywhere, but they will be present.
If there is one thing you could get for free to help you out with your blog, what would it be and why? (Examples would be design, marketing, ad optimization, editing,etc…)
The one thing my site needs is another passionate writer. As of now, 99% of the posts on Sportaphile have been written by me, so if I could get someone else to contribute quality articles that would be perfect.
What are some of your favorite and least favorite sports blogs?
http://thestartingfive.wordpress.com – It’s not very flashy, but they have great writers.
http://www.leavethemanalone.com – How many sports blogs do you know written by a black woman? The stuff I read here is pretty unique compared to the rest of the blogosphere.
http://www.tiricosuave.com/ – This site is pretty new, but they’re funny guys.
Any bold predictions for the future of sports on the internet?
Bold predictions? Sportaphile will be one of the biggest blogs on the internet. Might as well dream big right?
STN’s Take
For his first blog Chuck has done a very nice job. Writing on the other website probably allowed him to think of what type of look and feel he wanted. His header image looks fantastic and he does a great job of maximizing his ads without having too many.
Blogging about sports in general and giving your opinion is a tough space to crack. Chuck is definitely going to need to break some big stories to get himself on the map but if he does, he should be able to keep some loyal readers.
