How to start your own Arsenal blog

by Tony Attwood (aka Jacko Jones), publisher of Untold Arsenal and the Arsenal History Society blog.

In my previous article I wrote about the way in which blogs had evolved, and how we’ve got to the position in which Arsenal appears to have more blogs than any other club.

So does that mean that there is no room for any more blogs based around Arsenal?

The answer is most certainly no. Anyone can start a blog at any time, and it doesn’t have to cost a penny. But, the actual starting of a blog is only a small part of it. The key element is keeping it going.

In this article I’ll explain how you can start a blog about Arsenal, and what you have to do to get a big audience – an audience big enough to get a listing on Goonernews in fact.

First, getting the site. The easiest way to start is to visit www.wordpress.com where you can set up your blog free of charge. But before you do that, do try and think of a catchy name. I chose “Untold Arsenal” because I wanted my blog to cover topics related to Arsenal that other blogs were not covering. You need a name that makes sense, a name that people can remember, and a name not too similar to anything that already exists.

So choose your name, and then type it into Google, just to see if anyone else is using it.

Now you might think it is time to get the blog looking right. But… before you spend a long time thinking about the design, colours and layout of your blog, there is something else that you really ought to do, and this takes us back to the issues raised in the previous article.

There are already thousands upon thousands of Arsenal blogs, as we’ve seen in the last article. People who want to read an Arsenal blog are already spoilt for choice. If they want to read a blog, they almost certainly read as much as they want to. Why should they turn away from sites they know and read your site?

Or put another way, what makes your site different?

Now I have asked this question of many people who have talked to me about starting a web site, and quite often they tell me that their site is going to be the best, the brightest, the biggest, with the best articles, all the transfer stories etc etc. And I have to tell them, I’ve heard it all before. Many, many times.

The fact of the matter is that for your new Arsenal blog to succeed it needs to have something different, something new, something genuinely better or more interesting, than is available on blogs that already exist.

And remember, in this regard better isn’t better just because you say it is. In fact “better” is the tough option. “Different” is easier.

To give an example of how this works, when I started Untold Arsenal in 2007 I did so with a very clear vision. I wanted the articles to be positive about the club, the manager and the players. I also wanted the articles to be more in-depth and more analytical than those which I saw in most other publications. And equally important, I wanted to explore certain issues which I felt were not tackled elsewhere.

At the start I had two new issues in mind that I felt other blogs and the newspapers didn’t cover very well. One was the economics of football, and other was the way in which the media doesn’t so much reflect what happens in football, but rather influences it.

And so I started writing my articles – which brings us on to a separate point. For a blog to work you either have to write stunningly brilliant articles occasionally or else good articles quite often. If you stop and start, you lose your readership.

Before you start, writing regularly might seem a fairly easy thing to do – but coming up with a topic to write about each and every day, and then writing something that no one else is saying, is difficult.

So what I would suggest is that before you start telling anyone about your blog, you actually run it for a couple of weeks and make sure that after 15 or 20 articles your drive and enthusiasm is as great as it was at the start. There is nothing more embarrassing than starting a project like this and then stopping.

I would also urge you not to start by writing about how wonderful your blog is going to be. Better, just start writing as you mean to write each day. No one is particularly interested in a new blog writing about itself. Write the first article as if it is the 100th to appear on your blog.

Meanwhile do keep checking Goonernews.com every day, and ask yourself – “how is my article today different from everyone else’s?” And, “Why should people come to my site?” In short, create your own territory.

Over time new ideas will come to you – and they will come as you prepare your articles. For me, the new areas that arose over time were the integrity of the FA, and corruption in football – and later the corruption of referees.

So my advice at the start is simple. Aim to put up an article every day, and have a clear view as to what areas you cover and what makes your blog different from everyone else’s.

But this planning does not mean that you can’t change and develop the flavour of your site over time. However it is always good to give your readers a feeling of the sort of thing that they are going to get from you and to have a clear vision of your own.

I also feel it is always better to recognise what you are and who you are, and let your readers know that from the start. There are many, many sites that are clearly run by just one person, but which try to suggest through the writing style that they are some sort of big time publisher, that is the arbiter of how Arsenal fans think. You are more likely to get a solid regular readership if you admit that it is you, on your own, putting forward your points of view.

After a month or so of regular publishing, you can approach Goonernews with a request to be listed on the site. To stand any chance of having your articles accepted you’ll have to have a number of articles on line which the editorial panel at Goonernews can review. If they think that your work is likely to be of interest to Goonernews readers, then you’ll start being listed, and then of course your audience will take off.

Now if you are really ambitious, then at this stage you might well feel that you ought to be getting advertising on your site. You can of course sell advertising yourself, or you can go to an agency and have them sell on the advertising for you. But unless you have really hit on a unique approach, it is unlikely that you will have a large enough audience on your site until you have been going for a year or two. So my advice is, hold back on the thoughts of advertising. Build the audience first.

Now, to conclude, let’s go back to the start.

Before you set up your site, study all the sites that appear daily on GoonerNews.com, and work out exactly how your site is going to be unique within this already very crowded market.

Then set up a very basic blog on a solid platorm (WordPress is hard to beat) and don’t spend too long on the design at this stage, then start getting good quality, original articles on-line asap and make sure the articles are naturally written but contain mainy high-ranking key-words presented in a natural way. Always give credit where it is due usig footnotes etc, giving credit where it is due as this only enhamces your online reputation and it means other bloggers and publishers will respect your work and are likely to tweet about it/link to it or at the very least read it.

Those are the two simple key points. Do that, and keep doing that, and you’ll soon have a blog that starts to attract a real, genuine and relevant audience.

But if all that seems too much, don’t worry, for there is an alternative. Find a blog you like, and offer to write articles for that blog. Not all blogs take contributions from outside writers, but some do. Study the blog first however – and make sure you are writing in accordance with their own style and outlook.

Untold-Arsenal is regularly rated as one of the top three independent football sites in Europe, and publishes two or three articles a day, every day. You can find it here.

Thanks Tony for taking the time to provide such a useful article which I am sure up and coming bloggers as well as existing bloggers will find it has some irreplaceable information and details for them.

You truly are a gentleman Tony, to be giving away some of your insights and prized secrets… means you are clearly a beleiver in the saying that to keep what you got you should be giving it all away.