Website: The Blue Workhorse

Interview With: Shotgun Spratling

When did you start your blog?

We started at the end of January of this year.

What made you start it?

I came up with the idea to start a blog in oder to have a way to communicate my sports opinions and to have a forum to present those opinions to others, including all of my buddies from college (that are now helping write for the site) that I now no longer talk to on a daily basis.

What is your background?

We have six writers/sports enthusiasts, who first met while attending Maryville College together. Combined we have:
- 100 years in sports (average of over 16 years)
- 23 high school varsity letters (baseball, basketball, football, tennis)
- 15 collegiate varsity letters in baseball
- 7 rings (4 for collegiate conference championship & 3 high school state championships)
- 6 collegiate varsity letters in football
- 4 current athletic coaches (2 collegiate baseball; 2 high school football)
- 2 journalists

Do you blog for fun or are you trying to make it a career? What is your goal with this blog?

We blog more for fun than money seeing as how we don’t make much. Our original goal was to just have a way to communicate back and forth since we were no longer in the tight knit college community. My personal goal, as owner, editor, and chief writer, is to build my name as an authoritative sports writer.

What was your tipping point? What put you on the map? (if you bring in more the 5,000 uniques a month)

We bring in around 5000 pageviews per month, but we received a large boost last month because one of our stories was discussed on a local sports talk radio show and subsequently picked up by some forums.

What type of blogging software do you use?

We use lovely WordPress.

What ad network(s) do you use?

We use Adsense like 142% of all bloggers. We also use Adify as a part of our affiliation with the YardBarker Blogging Network.

How much money do you make off your site monthly?

Around $20 currently.

If you could get something for free to help you out with your blog, what would it be? (Ex: design, marketing, ad optimization, etc)

We could probably use ad optimization the most, but I’d also like a custom design that could highlight our logo, which isn’t even visible on our current design.

What are some of your favorite blogs?

YardBarker is the single greatest sports site I’ve been a part of thus far. I also enjoy RaysIndex, The Sports Dollar, Cuzoogle, The Red Zone Report, and MLB Trade Rumors.

Any bold predictions for the future of sports on the internet?

I have no bold predictions, but I do believe the sports make money online niche is just waiting to explode like the general make money online blogs have. I also wish there would be more coverage of college baseball, but I guess that is just a personal opinion.