In my never-ending quest to figure out a model for making what is currently my hobby & passion into something bringing in at least a side income, I've decided to set a couple goals for myself to complete during the rest of 2011.
Simply put, I plan to publish two products over the next few months, which I hope will provide real value to hockey fans, and that they'll be willing to pay for.
Will it succeed? Will it fail?
The only way to know is to put my nose to the grindstone and get these two things done (I'll keep the details under my hat for now).
The important thing to note is that these efforts are in addition to anything I'm doing over at OTF. Taking away what we're doing over there and asking people to pay for it is a surefire lose-lose all the way around, because if there's anything we've learned over the last few years, it's that people love to read about sports, but only for free.
I'm also optimistic about Hockey Gear HQ, as I've had some early success there and see the potential to talk specifically about hockey equipment and apparel over there, in a more straightforward blogging/marketing environment.
In short, if I've going to turn this thing into a secondary career, I doubt there's one magic bullet that will get it done.
On a related note, Ben Koo of Bloguin had an insightful post on the latest developments in the world of online sports journalism, which features a panel discussion at Google that's also worth your time...