As a continuation of the previous post, I asked Will Leitch over at Deadspin similar questions and he was kind enough to respond. This is good info for you Gaslamp Ballers with your own blogs as well as some nice insight from one of the top sports bloggers out there.
Dex: What do you focus on in order to build your audience?
Will: I really don't necessarily feel Deadspin is a personality-driven site. That is to say, I don't think people are coming by the site to see what Will Leitch thinks about sports. I see the site more as a conduit to showcase all the other great stuff on the Web. Many people didn't realize how much great sports stuff was on the Web; I wanted to point people toward that. That, of course, has a pleasant byproduct; people like to be linked to and told they're good. People found out about the site through my linking to them. It helps us grow quickly, because it consolidated a lot of disparate parts.
Dex: What blogs do you measure yourself against?
Will: Honestly? I dont' really think about my traffic or what other blogs are doing. I was never a BIG blog reader before I started the site, and these days, I almost only like sports blogs, because they (rarely) get political or preachy or full of themselves or any of the other things most of the large political bloggers do. If anything, I measure myself against some smaller, very well written blogs, like Jennie Smash or Whatever Whenever (currently NSFW -dex). If I can get my level of writing at least close to theirs, I'll be fine.
Dex: What do you consider to be the best sports blogs ut there?
Will: Mr. Irrelevant's really good, and so's The Mighty MJD. But the best sites aren't general sites like mine or theirs. They're specific to a topic, like Free Darko, or Football Outsiders, or Baseball Musings, or True Hoop. There are so many good ones. I really do believe I learn so much more about sports from blogs than I do the "mainstream" press. It's much more relatable, as a sports fan.
Thanks again to Will for his insights!
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