Here are the top 10 steps to starting a money making blog with zero dollars out of pocket, summarized for your convenience. Good luck!

Step 1. Chose your content wisely
Step 2. Get started with Blogger
Step 3. Pick the right layout for your blog's purpose
Step 4. Write, write, and write
Step 5. List your blog on search engines
Step 6. Put google adsense on your blog
Step 7. Get other ads on your blog
Step 8. Use amazon.com's affiliate program
Step 9. Drive traffic to your blog
Step 10. Link back to others

That's right folks, I've decided to take a look at the lighter side of the beautiful game, the beautiful fans and players who enjoy it!

So with that, Gruffgoat Media has created a new blog:

Soccer Babes and Hotties

This is bascially an aggregation of some of the finer fans and players out there...nothing too over the type mind you - it's not an adult website or anything - but some of the pics could be Not Safe for Work.

I'm hoping that this site will serve as yet another source of entertainment for those tuning in to some football news.

One hundred unique visitors in one day!

OK, when you say it like that, it doesn't seem like a lot - but I've been writing my ass off for the last three weeks, trying to get some good content in front of soccer readers in the States.

Some things have worked, and some haven't. But yesterday I finally topped 100 unique visitors in a single day - that's not page views, but unique IP's according to my google analytics report.

I'm a bit worried that I won't be able to keep up this pace of writing however, so I've asked a couple of guys whose style I like to contribute when they get a chance. Between the four of us, I'm hoping that we'll still produce content that's timely and interesting to our readers.

Well fellow bloggers - Gruffgoat's Football Blog seems to be leveling out with steady readers at about 50 per day based on my content alone. I think this is respectable considering it's so new but I'm also impatient!

I've asked a couple of fellow bloggers that I like to link back to me and my soccerlinks ranking has increased from over 200 to 151 - which is pretty cool.

I'm also going to try my hand as a guest blogger on yankssoccer.com to see how that works out.

Lastly, I submitted a couple of my more cogent posts to EzineArticles.com - one got approved but I realized that I submitted under the "football" category which meant it was next to a bunch of NFL drills and such - so I found the "soccer" category and had to resubmit. I'll let you know when those articles get published.

My Gruffgoat's Football Blog hits are steadily increasing (so is the How to Write for Dollars Blog incidentally) and I believe I can contribute the steady rise to a couple of factors I'll call "Guerrilla Marketing."

1. I have Gruffgoat's Football Blog listed on several soccer specific feed aggregators and blog lists such as Soccerblogs.net, SoccerLinks.net, and top100soccer.com. These guys pick up every new post I write and as a result I seem to be growing a few loyal readers via their referrals!

2. I have created my own page of Gruffgoat's Friends where I can link to my favorite soccer blogs or sites in exchange for these folks linking back to me. I also created a cool "link back" button that people can put on their site. I want to be somewhat discerning here though and not just link to anybody under the sun - so I've asked for site owners to send me a request first. I've even linked to sites without reciprocation if I've found that they have good unique content, are useful, or that have showcased my writing.

3. In addition to posting current content of my own, I've been hitting a few regular sites and adding my own comments. I'm not talking about innocuous "nice site" or "good article" comments either, I want to leave something thoughtful behind. I think this is also adding credibility to Gruffgoat's Football Blog.

My next step is to actually start some targeted marketing. I have over 70 posts on Gruffgoat and now it's time to start pointing friends, family, colleagues with an interest in soccer, etc. to the site. This is only risky if you're filling your posts with crap, after all you're going to actually see these people! But if your stuff is good - there is a good chance they'll not only start reading, but they will share with others outside of your network.

Well folks, the op-ed piece I wrote about the MLS potentially coming to Atlanta seemed to resonate and I hope to have picked up a few loyal readers. But that piece reminded me of Step 1! In the growing universe of soccer blogs out there, content is indeed king. But what is content?

I'm trying to figure that out myself. The way I see it, much like a newspaper, there are a couple of different types of content.

1. News (recounting events that have happened either to you or someone else)
2. Opinion (picking a subject and talking about it)

In order to gain readers, you have to add value to either of those categories. How? In writing, there are only a couple of ways to add value to the reader: Unique subject matter or good writing style. That's really it.

Gruffgoat's Football Blog is a sports blog, focusing on one sport. Sure there are nuances in that the sport is soccer and there is always drama when you talk about soccer in America, but are people in London tuning in to my blog to re-read the same news they can read from the BBC or Guardian? I doubt it. So how does one differentiate the news to make it more valuable or interesting? First, let's look at the types of news:

News on Me! - probably the most common blog type is the news update on...you. This is the personal journal blog. For the first time in history, this medium call the "blog" has opened News on Me up to the entire world. What you're reading now has an element of that.

News on Niche Stuff - unreported on mainstream news channels (i.e., US Open Cup news, a lot of the Atlanta area soccer news, etc.)

The rest of the News - reported on mainstream news channels, but I try to add some editorial content that adds to the reading experience

As far as news reporting goes, I don't have the resources to travel the world and provide proper journalistic first hand updates, so I pull selective stories from sources and retell them in my own words.

The other type of writing is the Opinion stuff. For Gruffgoat's Football Blog, this is an important area of writing. Floating opinions on subjects as wide ranging as the Offside rule, MLS expansion, or the Future of Spectator Soccer in America, is one of my whole purposes for starting the blog.

Who knows who is reading this material. But, if Don Garber gets word that there are people in Atlanta who think the only way Atlanta sports fans will get on board with MLS is if there are two teams, then he may just dismiss that as poppycock, or he may, somewhere in the back of his mind, start thinking about the challenges of geographic dispersion on a sport that requires roots in fan intimacy, and consider what it means to have a cross town rivalry.

At any rate, until I can bring a cadre of crack reporters on board, the near term future of Gruffgoat's Football Blog is less focus on mainstream news, and more and more focus on the unique news stuff and the opinion stuff. Happy Reading!

I started to get antsy about the title of my post and changed it from the somewhat generic "Can Atlanta Support an MLS Franchise" to "MLS in Atlanta? Why Not Make it a Double?"

We'll see if that resonates better.