Want to start a wrestling blog?
We’ve got you covered.
At Commission Academy, we’ve been helping aspiring bloggers launch successful blogs for years.
And in this step-by-step guide, I’ll walk you through how to start your own income-generating wrestling blog.
Starting a wrestling blog is easier than you think – follow the steps I outline here and you’ll have yours up and running in the next 30 minutes.
You can also check out our checklist for launching a blog, so you can check everything off as you go.
Neutral positions! Let’s begin! 🤼
Start A Wrestling Blog & Make Money In 6 Steps
1. Pick A Niche
2. Decide On A Name
3. Set Up A WordPress Blog
4. Design & Customise Your Blog
5. Start Blogging
6. Make Money With Your Wrestling Blog
Step 1: Pick A Niche
The first step to starting a wrestling blog is choosing your niche.
Wrestling is too broad a topic and by choosing a narrower niche to write about on your blog you’ll help yourself stand out from the plethora of wrestling blogs already out there.
You can choose to start your wrestling blog about a specific type of wrestling.
Here’s a quick list of wrestling blog niches for inspiration:
- Folkstyle or Collegiate wrestling
- Freestyle wrestling
- Greco-Roman or Olympic-style wrestling
- Sumo wrestling
- Cumberland wrestling
- Glima
- Bökh
- Pehlwani
- Shuai Jiao
- Sambo
The easiest way to pick a niche is to just think about what type of wrestling you like the most.
Step 2: Decide On A Name
Next, you need to pick a good name for your blog.
The name of your wrestling blog should be the same as your domain name (i.e. wrestlingblog.com) so it should be short, easy to spell and memorable. It should also match the niche you just picked.
For example, if your blogging niche is sumo wrestling, a name like Sumo Slam fits better than a generic name like WrestlersRUs.
With a name like Sumo Slam, everyone will instantly get exactly what your blog is about.
If you need help coming up with a great blog name, you can use a blog name generator.
And one thing you don’t need to worry about is having an exact match domain or target keywords in the name of your blog. Despite bad advice flying around cyberspace, exact match domains haven’t helped your bank in Google since dinosaurs roamed the earth.
Once you’ve decided on your niche and a name, it’s time to set up your blog.
Step 3: Set Up A WordPress Blog
You need 3 things to start a wrestling blog:
- WordPress
- Web hosting
- A domain name
This part might sound intimidating, technical and expensive but I’m gonna walk you through each one and show you just how easy and straightforward it really is when you do it right.
WordPress
Some aspiring bloggers think using a free blogging platform like Wix or Squarespace is a good route to go down but there are a few serious limitations…
If you start a wrestling blog for free your domain name will look like this:
mywrestlingblog.wix.com
Instead of:
mywrestlingblog.com
Obviously, this isn’t ideal. People won’t take your blog seriously and neither will Google and you’ll have a hard time getting ranked. You also won’t technically own your blog or have complete creative control over the look and feel of your blog.
This is why I always recommend you use WordPress to start your blog.
WordPress is the most popular blogging platform that powers 63.4% of all websites and for good reason.
With a WordPress blog, you have complete control over how it looks (via WordPress plugins and themes) and you can monetise your wrestling blog however you want.
WordPress is also 100% free to use which means all you need to pay for is web hosting because next up, I’m going to show you how to get your free .com domain.
Web Hosting
Web hosting is a service that saves your blog on its servers so it’s always online and shows up when readers type in your domain name.
There are dozens of web hosting companies out there, but the one we recommend is Wealthy Affiliate.
Wealthy Affiliate is the best and most reliable web hosting service for new bloggers because it’s super easy to use, comes with WordPress already installed, 24/7 technical support, free SSL and step-by-step training on how to make money with your blog.
Plus, Wealthy Affiliate is affordable (see pricing info here) and Commission Academy readers get a free domain name which normally costs around $14.99 per year.
How To Set Up Your Blog With Wealthy Affiliate
To get started, go to WealthyAffiliate.com and click the Create Your Free Account button:
On the next page, enter your name, email, password and username:
Once you’re inside the member’s area, hit Websites then Build a Website.
You can either create your wrestling blog on a new domain name or use a domain you already own.
If you’ve already got a domain hit Domain I Own, or if you’re registering a new domain, select the green Register a Domain option:
Now enter the domain name idea you came up with in step 2 and click Add to Cart once it’s available.
You’ll be asked to choose a hosting plan. The Premium plan gives you everything you need to start a successful wrestling blog and the yearly option offers the best value.
Once you’ve done that, enter the name of your website and hit Build My Website and let the site builder take care of the rest.
Now that you’ve launched your wrestling blog, it’s time to make it look amazing…
Step 4: Design & Customise Your Blog
As I said before, you can use WordPress themes and plugins to change the look and layout of your wrestling blog.
We’ll go over both in this section and share some recommendations.
Choose a WordPress Theme
WordPress themes will handle the design of your blog and give it a professional look in an instant. This is important because if your blog doesn’t look nice, a lot of people won’t even bother reading it.
There are 10,000s of free and premium WordPress themes to choose from but if you ask me, GeneratePress is the best one out there for bloggers right now.
GeneratePress is fast, lightweight and comes with a ton of customisation options so you can get your blog looking exactly how you want.
They have a free version or a premium version at just $49 a year and the support team are an absolute Godsend.
Install Essential WordPress Plugins
Like WordPress themes, there are 100,000s of WordPress plugins that add extra features and functionality to your blog. Some are free and some are paid.
Just be careful not to overdo it as too many plugins will slow your site down.
If you’ve followed this guide so far and hosted your blog with Wealthy Affiliate then you already have a couple of essential plugins automatically installed:
1) The SEO Framework (Free & Pro)
This is an SEO plugin that helps you create a sitemap and write your own meta titles and descriptions so your wrestling blog can get found, indexed and ranked by search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo.
2) Kraken Image Optimization (Free & Pro)
Kraken compresses and optimises all your blog post images to speed up your website and give your readers a better experience and give you better Google rankings.
If you’re using the GeneratePress theme then I also recommend you install and activate the free GenerateBlocks plugin as this is gonna give you a lot more options when it comes to formatting blog posts and creating landing pages.
Watch this handy click-by-click walkthrough on how to add plugins to your blog:
Step 5: Start Blogging
Alright, this is where the real work fun begins!
Now it’s time to come up with some blog post ideas and set yourself a blogging schedule!
Think back to the wrestling niche you chose earlier to come up with blog post ideas. There are so many different types of posts you could publish, like:
- Helpful how-tos
- Product reviews
- Top 10 lists
- Opinion pieces
- Answers to commonly asked questions
- Wrestling news, events and latest updates
You can also look at other wrestling blogs for ideas and inspiration.
For example, Pro Wrestling Stories has blog posts about the weird and wonderful moments in wrestling history:
Or take a look at ProWrestlingPost who cover all the latest wrestling news, give their say on the top wrestlers of the season, review matches and more.
You can also use a keyword tool like Mangools to help you find blog post topics people are searching for in Google and create a list of blog post ideas and start publishing!
And if you’re looking for more in-depth info on blogging then check out these articles:
- How often should you post on your blog?
- How many blog posts before you start getting traffic?
- Best sites to find royalty-free images for blog posts
- How many keywords should a blog post have?
Step 6: Make Money With Your Wrestling Blog
You’ve started your wrestling blog and officially become a blogger.
It’s at this point you might be asking how wrestling bloggers make money and are wrestling blogs even profitable?
The answer is yes, you can make money with your wrestling blog in a few ways and yes, your blog can generate a sizable income if you get it right.
Let’s go through the 2 most lucrative ways to make monetise your wrestling blog.
1. Display Ads
Displaying ads with ad networks like Ezoic is an easy way to make money blogging. All you need to do is sign up for a free Ezoic account and give them permission to display ads on your blog.
The more readers you have, the more money you’ll make and they typically pay $10 per 1,000 views.
2. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a popular money-making strategy for bloggers.
It’s where you promote other people’s products online in return for a percentage of every sale you send their way.
Every time someone clicks your unique affiliate link and buys, you earn a commission.
The key to making a lot of money with affiliate marketing is recommending products and services that are most relevant to your audience,
So as a wrestling blogger, you’ll want to promote products like WWE merchandise, online wrestling coaching, wrestling belts, training gear and supplements.
To become an affiliate marketer, you can join affiliate programs to connect with a wide range of merchants in one place. Or, you can go to one of your favourite brands and sign up to become an affiliate directly on their site.
There’s usually a “Become an Affiliate” link in the website footer, like this one from Amazon:
But don’t worry because we’ve already done the hard work of finding affiliate programs for you.
Here are our affiliate program top picks:
- Best wrestling affiliate programs
- Best mixed martial arts (MMA) affiliate programs
- Best action figure affiliate programs
- Best boxing affiliate programs
- Best sports affiliate programs
I’d say you want to get to 20-30 blog posts before applying to affiliate programs to maximise your chance of getting approved.
Once approved, you can add affiliate links to your content right away to start making commissions!
Let’s Make Your Wrestling Blog A Huge Success
And that’s it!
Hopefully, this practical step-by-step guide has shown you not just how to start a wrestling blog but how to make money from it too.
It can take time for your blog to gain traction in Google and start attracting traffic and it does take time to earn from your blog but follow these steps, create content consistency and you WILL soon start to see the money coming in.
If you liked this post, be sure to check out our free Commission Academy training.
You’ll discover cutting-edge strategies to get more traffic to your blog and maximise your earnings.
And don’t forget to join one of our weekly live hangouts for expert feedback and advice as you grow and scale your wrestling blog!
