Local sports site, Aggiesports, generates $40,000

Site: Aggiesports.com
Market: Brazos Valley, Texas
Traffic: 100,000 to 300,000 page views depending on the season
Company: Evening Post Publishing
Key executives: Mike Albin, President of Evening Post Interactive, Zach
Payer, Director of Interactive Business Development

Overview: Aggiesports.com is a standalone site that covers all Texas A&M University sports teams, referred to locally as Aggies, and has been part of the newspaper company for years. Today the site is flourishing and commands substantial revenues in the $40,000 per year range with more potential.  The Evening Post has been proactive in developing standalone niche sites and this is a good example of one that has acquired a strong local following and has more financial potential.

Strategy: While the editorial content is continually tweaked and improved, there are some standard components, including site channels for a variety of college teams besides football, such as men and women's basketball, soccer, track and field, tennis and volleyball. Other components include:

•About 5 to 8 original sports posts daily

• Sports headlines acquired from other publications

• Top position for Robert Cessna's popular sports column

• Multimedia highlights

• Fan polls

• Photo galleries

The advertising team at The Eagle originally had one sponsor for Aggiesports, its popular sports site. After that advertiser left, the team decided to focus on exlusive sponsorships by key categories, starting with Auto and Home improvement. Team Ford in Navsota, Texas, whose marketing already played off of a "team concept" was been a natural fit for this site. They have also signed up Lowe’s to a category exclusive sponsor and have plans to extend their effort to drive more revenues in 2010. There is more potential here!

Results: $40,000 annually

Our take: If anything this sports site is under-developed. Partnerships with video suppliers like Cinesports could add a whole new category of revenues. Cities with passionate sports fans should look at the model introduced by the postgazette.com for a variety of business models to monetize this lucrative audience. 

The author, Alisa Cromer is publisher of a variety of online media, including LocalMediaInsider and  MediaExecsTech,  developed while on a fellowship with the Reynolds Journalism Institute and which has evolved into a leading marketing company for media technology start-ups. In 2017 she founded Worldstir.com, an online magazine,  to showcases perspectives from around the  world on new topic each month, translated from and to the top five languages in the world.

Keywords