Roy Haggerty wrote:
Of course, finding a way to monetise any better RL writing is the main stumbling block between me and this potential career-change....
You are looking at this from entirely the wrong perspective. As the line goes in Field of Dreams,
"Build it and they will come". How much is a domain name, web space and a MYSQL database on which to run some kind of open source blogging software - £70 per year?
If you are really interested go for it. There's such a paucity of writing talent in RL anything decent will be wolfed down like free doughnuts. Good content sells itself. Once you become established then you look at income streams. Although don't expect to become a millionaire. When me and Fish started RLFANS we never thought we'd make a penny out of it. Nowadays we make a bit through sponsorship. But we've never been particularly great at selling RLFANS.
Phil Clarke thought he'd become a multi-millionaire with his Rugbee.com but he made the mistake of investing a lot of capital up front in snazzy graphics and custom-written content management without having a shred of content to sell. Unsurprisingly it folded in a very short space of time.
My advice to anyone thinking along such lines is to stay away from match reports. Let the league rags handle that stuff. Look instead at writing, say, 1000-3000 word in-depth articles on particular aspects of the game. There's too much superficial stuff written these days. You could even do player interviews - but something substantial in which you really get an idea of who the player is, his thoughts on the game, stories he has to tell.
Take someone such as Alex Murphy, for example. A guy like that is CRYING OUT for someone bear witness to all the things he saw and did in the game. I'd love to sit him down infront of a camera for a week or two and simply record all the interesting things he has to say.
There's so much CONTENT out there which is fading from memory and will ultimately be lost unless people get off their asses and record it.
If you or anyone else is really interested I'll give you all the publicity you can handle through this site. I'd love to do it.
