Player Ratings 2016/17

[Deleted Cyber]

How much would it cost and could I subscribe to it? If it cost me 20 quid a season paid in advance I would happily give it a go. How many of us doing that would it take?

 

[Premier Quality]

Good as it is, I'm not sure i would - I assume you'd have to monetise through adverts deutsch?

Or by Tim paying to nick bits of it maybe...

 

[Derby Wolf]

Really enjoying it Deutsch, thanks. I howled at the J-Los music and Monster In Law line. Excellent.

Having just handed my dissertation in I'm so grateful you've broken it up :icon_lol:

 

[nimrod]

cheers, great reads. though sort of depressing at the same time.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Third and final part:

https://danwolves.wordpress.com/2017/05/11/201617-player-by-player-ratings-part-three/

I'll come back to the other questions later. Hope you've enjoyed reading this!

 

[NoodleWolf]

Great stuff, plenty of chuckles and insight. Enjoyed reading all of 'em!

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

Slower than spending a weekend in Rutland in the exclusive company of Nick Faldo is one of the great GREAT lines. Chapeau.

 

[Langers]

A superb series mate. Really enjoyable.

 

[darlowolf64]

Really fantastic work Dan, a pleasure to read

 

[Law's Bus]

As usual, top quality stuff. Thanks for doing them!

 

[Parkins left foot]

You said that this would be out on the 11th & I've had to wait until I came in to read it.

As always worth waiting for!

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Thanks for all the comments guys and to those of you who took the time to share it on social media. It really means a lot to me.

To return to the other questions:

What does it take to 'monetise' such a thing and what are the potential returns? This isn't something I'm familiar with, but the process (as you have stats to back it up) is interesting.

Basically initially I have to move it off the freebie Wordpress platform. I can't add anything to it in terms of ads/donation links until I do that. I don't think I'm ever going to make millions off it whatever happens.

How much would it cost and could I subscribe to it? If it cost me 20 quid a season paid in advance I would happily give it a go. How many of us doing that would it take?

There's a bundled deal with Wordpress where they more or less do it for you - it's about £85 a year just to get it so I can monetise it and get a custom domain, if I want to get rid of all the Wordpress branding into the bargain, it's nearly £250 a year (and both are ongoing, so you have to pay it year on year as an upfront payment). You get analytics, plugins, themes etc with the more expensive one so in the long run that might be better. Or I could buy my own domain I suppose, but then I don't have all the inbuilt stuff that Wordpress offers like image embedding etc, and I'm too technically inept to sort all that on my own...Basically it isn't money I have at the moment, actual business is slow to the point of being moribund and I've found myself with a lot of extra outgoings since the turn of the year.

While I appreciate your offer and I'd welcome the dollar I'm reticent about paywalls in general. Sure, some people will sign up and it's money up front, but a) you're then kind of obliged to produce content continually, sometimes that isn't going to be possible (unless I ever did this full time, or at least on a more professional basis as part of a series of projects, which is possible depending how a few talks go in the coming weeks - even then I've got my own issues which mean there are times where I just can't write), and/or maybe I don't think there's anything to write at a certain point in time, and b) you'll just automatically drive tons of people away, especially newcomers. So far I've been very much of the mindset to only write when it's worth writing, no content for content's sake, no clickbait shit. That way I can put everything I've got into what I'm doing, give it absolutely full 100% effort because I *want* to do it as much as anything else. Hopefully comes through! Or maybe not

Good as it is, I'm not sure i would - I assume you'd have to monetise through adverts deutsch?

Or by Tim paying to nick bits of it maybe...

Britney would never get away with passing it off as his own work Besides which I don't think my agenda fits that of the E&S.

Yeah, I think initially it would be some kind of AdSense thing, DDW has very kindly offered to show me the ropes if I go down that road at some point. I suppose I could chuck a donate button on there but I don't think many people would go for it. What I do isn't that special tbh. You lot get to read my ramblings on here for free anyway...

Once again, thanks all for the ongoing support. There will be another series coming up this summer, I'll release the details when the first one is done...it'll be done when it's done.

 

[Parkins left foot]

Deutsch - the problem for you is whether this is a 'hobby' thing (which we all enjoy) or whether it's a commercial venture, which will involve you making sure that you put up content on a much more regimented programme.

Think that you have to do what suits you really.

 

[Jinky]

Amazing how different platforms gain different responses.

On here it seems most enjoy reading your stuff (myself included), yet I've seen a few people on Facebook turning their noses up at your blog because it's critical of the players. One bloke even said "back to the E&S". What do these people want?! You to lie and pretend we've been fantastic?

Suppose you can't please everyone.

 

[Alan]

Amazing how different platforms gain different responses.

On here it seems most enjoy reading your stuff (myself included), yet I've seen a few people on Facebook turning their noses up at your blog because it's critical of the players. One bloke even said "back to the E&S". What do these people want?! You to lie and pretend we've been fantastic?

Suppose you can't please everyone.

Spiers-esque tribalism, innit. Don't like that Dan's more partial to our Mendes imports than our "local" lads.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Amazing how different platforms gain different responses.

I've seen a few people on Facebook turning their noses up at your blog because it's critical of the players. One bloke even said "back to the E&S". What do these people want?! You to lie and pretend we've been fantastic?

Suppose you can't please everyone.

That doesn't bother me, the day I get some reasoned criticism of what I write then I'll respond and have a proper discussion. The odd few negative comments that I do get (and there aren't very many, thankfully) are from obvious emptyheads. They don't ever actually address the content itself, just being wankers for no real reason (the comment you referred to from today came literally 30 seconds after I shared it - so obviously not even read it). No desire to talk to people like that, I'm certainly not in the business of getting in a pointless slanging match and without being funny, I'm not sure an 11,000 word critique is really aimed at them. I share it on two FB groups just to get word about more than anything because it's not like I have thousands of people linked to my own personal account.

[quote="Parkins Left Foot]Deutsch - the problem for you is whether this is a 'hobby' thing (which we all enjoy) or whether it's a commercial venture, which will involve you making sure that you put up content on a much more regimented programme.

Think that you have to do what suits you really.[/quote]

Depends what I end up doing with my career to be honest. I'd rather write for a living than do what I normally do (I mean I'm not even earning anything doing my "day job" at the moment. Anyone need anything translating? Or proofreading? Nope, thought not :icon_lol and while I can't really go into any details at this stage, there might be something in the pipeline that would allow me to go down that road. But then it might not come to anything. So who knows.

We'll see, I'm told by those who know about such things that the figures I've got so far are pretty good given I've not even spent 1p on advertising since I started and it's not like I have an army of people with thousands of followers/friends bombing social media with it. For now it just gives me satisfaction that enough people like reading it. I hope it's worthwhile stuff and it definitely helps me out with my confidence.

I'm always open to ideas though.

 

[Parkins left foot]

It's certainly worthwhile stuff from my point of view - a reasoned view without any agenda (apart from MD, though that's understandable)

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

I know a lot of it is negative but like Jinks says...what do people want me to do, lie? I can't pretend Dave Edwards is a good footballer or let Richard Stearman off his defending because he seems a nice enough bloke. I'd love to write positive stuff all the time. Would have been a pleasure to write our 2008/9 ratings if I'd been doing this back then. In fact this is basically all positive because guess what, we played well.

If people want sanitised verdicts and analysis that bears no resemblance to what's actually happened and doesn't ever criticise anyone (unless they happen to be one of that lazy forruns who aren't "team players", even though the team plays better when they're included) then they can read Britney's work for all I care.

You'll have a job reading his season ratings though as he hasn't done any.

 

[Stan Hullis]

I would approach well established football/cricket blogs and ask if you could guest write for them, and you can then drive more traffic to your own blog.

People would enjoy it and I'm sure you wouldn't mind writing more generic football based content that people would enjoy reading.

 

[Norman Deeley]

Dan - you could put an ad squares widget on your site - that works well for a lot of bloggers. Your numbers are good enough for someone to take a banner ad and/or sponsor the site and I wouldn't be at all reluctant to put a donate button on there. Plenty of travel bloggers do it. I'd also get yourself signed up as an Amazon affiliate.