With apologies, this post will not talk about anything directly related to AEW or pro-wrestling. Instead, let’s talk a little about the -- ten zillion -- wrestling influencers out there and what would-be entrants to the game might do to find a following for themselves.
By way of bonafides, I’ll offer the obvious: I am not a wrestling influencer.
I am the Editor and Managing Partner of As For Football (AFF), the world’s greatest Army Football fansite. I hold both a BS in European History from the United States Military Academy and an MBA in International Finance from Fordham University. More importantly for the purposes of this discussion, I did my five-course engineering sequence in Computer Science and Database Design, so I personally know how to do all the coding associated with our website. I also did the vast majority of my MBA electives in Marketing with a focus on Entrepreneurship. That gave me a sense of how to carve out a niche in an otherwise crowded landscape.
Friends, successful entrepreneurs often start by trying to solve the problem that they themselves want to see solved. In AFF’s case, this happened largely by accident.I took my family to see our first Army Football game way back in 2013. We had a blast, and Army won big, but over the course of that game, I realized that I knew neither who the players were nor why things were happening on the field. Army runs a very distinct offense, and bottom line, I hadn’t come into that game prepared to fully appreciate what I was seeing. I set out to fix this problem in the way that I normally fix these kinds of problems.
I started writing about it.
I wrote here initially, slowly but surely building up a small following from friends and friends-of-friends within the West Point community. I eventually got to the point where lots of other folks wanted me to come write for them on their website and finally decided to join the AFF Team because 1) they agreed to make me a partner, and 2) they were much better at managing social media than I ever have been.
That happened back in October 2018.
We’ve done okay in the years since then. All other factors aside, we built the website that I myself wanted to read back when I found myself wondering why things happened on a college football field. Which is to say that there are plenty of college football news sites, including several that report specifically on Army. We have the only one that focuses specifically on statistical analysis and the fan experience. In fact, we don’t do news at all!
Marketing has a concept called Value Proposition. Basically, one’s value proposition *is* their market niche. Why would someone come to you instead of to an established brand? Or, as we say at AFF, “What’s the ‘So What?’”
Who cares? Why are we here?
In establishing your new wrestling side-hustle, you need to ask yourself these basic questions. Who cares? Why are we here? Hint: the answer definitely CANNOT be “because I really want to run a wrestling website.” This ain’t Field of Dreams. You can build it, but that don’t mean people will come.
Sean Ross Sapp does NEWS via Fightful. He has sources and a very strong following because he gets information via those sources. He’s good. That niche is covered. Friends, he’s got it on lock-down. Wrestling Observer Newsletter also does news, but I’d argue that their true value proposition exists in Dave Meltzer’s long-established, industry-accepted star rating system for matches. Wrestletalk’s value proposition is pretty close to the proposition we run at AFF, though I’ll readily admit that they go WAY over our budget in terms of both money and time investment. But that’s good. I really enjoy their stuff. Denise Salcedo exists in a similar space, though she makes much more of an effort to get interviews with stars, and she also makes her on-screen personality more of a selling feature of her brand.
My point here is that the wrestling space has long since become a crowded field. You’ll therefore want to spend some time thinking about both how you want to do this and more importantly WHY. There may be room for an AEW-focused, we-keep-it-relentlessly-positive take out there. Alas, I can’t think of many other open niches in this particular marketplace.
As someone who's just opened a "newz" website. I'm asking this very sincerely. Am I wrong for ignoring these grifter podcast quotes? Would we be a lesser site for not having access to these daily quotes?
— Dirt Sheet Radio (@DirtSheetRadio) April 29, 2024
I DO understand the way it works. The more clicks, the more ad sense… https://t.co/gg0gjWyFco
Quality writing matters a lot. Put simply, you want to make sure that you write using Active Voice, and as with the business generally, you want to ensure that everything you do passes the “So What?” Test.
As in, “Why am I wasting my time on this?”
This matters for every single piece you publish.
It helps to set up stakes in your analysis. I personally do this using principles of scene structure. Our heroes want something. Obstacles stand in their way. We go through those obstacles via analysis, establishing stakes if they succeed or fail. However, where you generally want to set up some kind of disaster to climax a scene when writing fiction, with analysis you’ll need to remember that people want to get excited about the things they love. In thinking about this, I try to remember the words of Sylvester Stallone when talking about the failure of Rocky V, “People want to be uplifted, and I threw them off a cliff!”
This is not the goal of your fansite.
Get your audience fired up. Don’t throw them off a cliff.
In building stakes, I find it useful to think in terms of scene structure, ie. what do they want, & what happens if they don’t get it.
— Danno E. Cabeza (@DannoECabeza) April 30, 2024
Book recommendation:https://t.co/biv0bS2CKd
In closing, I’ll note that if you keep it positive, you’ll build a fanbase that likes you and wants to see you succeed. This matters because Patreon is an astronomically better source of income than blue-check Twitter. However, you’ll need your audience’s goodwill if you want to turn that into something.
Good luck out there, friends. I wish you well.
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Want more in this series? Try these:
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