With enough dedication and passion for something, you could make a living doing virtually anything.
If you’re a hundred percent serious about making money from something you love, you can eventually make it work as long as you don’t give up. Just think of some of the huge developments we’ve seen in the world over the past few years.
There are people that can play video games and earn six-figure salaries. That’s an incredible amount of money and it makes you wonder where they get all of that money.
Do people really pay others to play video games? Or is it a clever trick that revolves around playing video games?
If someone can turn playing video games into six figures a month, then you can certainly turn a passion for sports into a full career. We’ll be covering some all-important tips to help you build a career out of a love for sports.
Decide on the type of sports that you want to make a living from.
What kind of sports are you interested in? Do you like traditional sports such as the NBA and soccer, or are you more of an eSports fan?
Regardless of the type of sports you enjoy, you could make a career off it if you have enough drive and passion to make it happen.
You usually have two options; to work in a sport that is new and emerging or a sport that is already well-established. Regardless of your choice, you’ll need to work hard and do plenty of research if you want to identify opportunities.
However, we don’t suggest that you branch out to too many sports. You’ll need to stay up-to-date with things such as power rankings, player conditions and team transfers if you want to keep your knowledge up to date.
If you try to manage too many sports at once, you’ll find yourself drowning in information and being overwhelmed at every corner. You can avoid this by dedication early on what your expertise will be in.
You can make an exception for certain types of sports that don’t have a huge following. For example, eSports tend to have fewer players than traditional sports, meaning you can actually keep up with multiple games.
Similarly, lesser-known sports tend to have smaller competitive communities, meaning you could cover several of them if you’re an insider with the latest news.
Emerging jobs can be easier to work with.
If you’re trying to secure yourself an employment position or make a name for yourself in an industry, you’re often going to have a better chance if you consider emerging sports and jobs.
For example, the eSports industry has countless opportunities because it’s still relatively new and unexplored.
You could potentially create a career out of being an eSports writer, influencer, blogger or even a player if there’s an eSports-worthy video game that you’re really good at.
Emerging industries and sports are usually rife with opportunities but you need to be able to identify them first.
This is why it’s important to do plenty of research when seeking a career opportunity in an industry you love. You need to identify these opportunities as soon as they appear so you can pounce on them early.
By establishing yourself as one of the first to do something, you can learn and adapt faster than the people before you.
Read also: How Do Bloggers Get Paid: 6 Great Ways Blogs Make Money
Choosing your main source of income.
Making a career out of sports can be extremely difficult. One way to improve your chances is to decide on how you want to make your income so you can steer yourself towards it.
Here are a couple of examples of how you can make an income:
- Being paid to write blogs and articles for news websites.
- Getting ad revenue on your website or blog.
- Paid sponsorships with sporting brands (such as clothing and sports equipment).
- Revenue from videos such as YouTube.
- Selling eBooks such as guides on sports.
- Applying for a job as a writer for certain sports news outlets.
- Becoming a personal trainer or mentor.
- Starting your own team in a sport.
There’s a lot of money in sport and it’s important to understand where it comes from so that you can cut yourself a slice of the pie.
In most cases, fan-based revenue is the highest source of income. This comes from merchandise and ticket sales for sports games.
However, unless you’re a part of the team in some way, you probably won’t be seeing any of this revenue.
As such, you need to be focusing on ways to make money from sporting fans in your own way. For example, you could create a considerable amount of revenue if you have a popular sports website with ads on it.
Similarly, if you create content on YouTube and other video platforms, you can get ad revenue through it.
If you’re an experienced coach, you could actually mentor people with private lessons or even start online lessons to educate others in a particular sport. This requires you to have some kind of credentials or a portfolio and is generally something done in person.
You could also make a living from working with other news outlets and media websites that cover the sport. Whether it’s submitting long editorials or writing the latest news articles, there are many different ways for you to make a living from writing about sports.
This is arguably the most popular option for someone that loves sports but still has a main day job that takes up most of their time. It’s very slow to start something like a sports blog, but it can be lucrative if you’re willing to put in the effort.
Lastly, you could also start a team or take control of an existing one. This requires a serious amount of money as an investment but can be one of the most lucrative investments you’ll make in the sporting world.
It demands that you pay a lot of attention to the sport and you need to be wholly invested in it if you want to grow your brand, your team and ultimately your profits.
Staying motivated in a competitive industry
The world of sports is an incredibly competitive one with lots of opportunities. But you need to be wary of all of the challenges that you’ll eventually face.
Working as a freelancer is perhaps the most common way to make a living in the world of sports, but this means that you’ll have periods of high and low income.
Being able to budget your finances and correctly manage your income is incredibly important if you want to work as a freelancer, so you might find yourself struggling during the first year or so as you build up a pool of finances to work with.
Read also: How Kristin Larsen Earned $100K in Her First Full Year of Blogging
It’s much easier to work as an employee for a company, but there aren’t as many opportunities in this line of work.
The most common route is to work for a club or a sports-related company, but you typically won’t be able to express your love for the sport like you would as a freelancer.
Regardless of what option you pick, there are plenty of unique ways to turn your passion for sports into a full career if you’re willing to put in the time and work to do so.
As such, we highly recommend that you do plenty of research into opportunities in the industry so that you know where to begin.
Stock Photo from Tatomirov @ Shutterstock
