Blogging about soccer isn’t likely to get you on the road to riches. We write about the beautiful game because we love it. However, it doesn’t hurt to get even a meager reward for your efforts to help pay the broadband bill, etc. Many of us run Google’s Adsense ads on our pages, but we’re lucky to see a few dollars a month given the traffic levels of most soccer blogs (or maybe that’s just me 🙂 ). The good news is there are other alternatives.

The premiere blog advertising network, BlogAds, is a great system and has been around for a long time. The problem with BlogAds is it is by invitation only and it is very hard for smaller blogs to ‘get in’. I’ve emailed the folks at BlogAds a few times suggesting that soccer blogs were taking off during the World Cup (they did) and perhaps a ‘Soccer Blog Advertising Network’ would make sense for both them (spending time trying to sell ads on it) and for us (easier to convince advertisers to advertise on smaller blogs because the network widens the ad distribution). They never responded. I tried to beg my way in via some other sports related blogs who already had BlogAds figuring I might get a few invites to share with other soccer bloggers and build from the ground up, but no luck.

The good news is an alternative ad network has sprung up that may allow soccer bloggers to generate some ad revenue beyond Adsense. The folks at Performancing, who created the Firefox Performancing Plugin (post to your blog from Firefox), have just announced a new blog advertising network called ‘Partners’. It operates on the same concept as BlogAds. Advertisers can buy 125×125 ads that fit nicely into the sidebars of most blogs. It is very simple to use and as a publisher, costs nothing. You also get a higher percentage of the ad revenue (70%) than other networks. So if you’ve wanted to generate some revenue with your blog, try adding Partners to it. If enough soccer blogs sign up, we probably can lobby for our own category and/or network which will allow advertisers to purchase ads across the SoccerSphere with a few clicks. Networks are more attractive to advertisers since they can hit a wide audience with a single ad. The folks at Performancing are also working hard to add new features so the system gets better each week. Since the network is brand new, it many take some time for advertisers to signup with the smaller blogs, but that time will come I expect.

So if you’ve been wishing you could add a different type of ad to your blog (I know some folks absolutely won’t do ads which is cool), check this out. If you have trouble, the designers are very responsive and there is a forum dedicated to ad publishers. I know some folks had to do strange things with Blogger Beta, but that may have been fixed.

[disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Performancing in anyway. However, if you click the Partners links above and sign up, I do receive a small referral reward which comes out of Performancing’s cut of your ad revenues NOT yours]