The best way to see and analyze stats from your blog is to use Google Analytics.

Through this step-by-step tutorial, I will go over exactly what you need to do to get Google Analytics working on your Sports Blog Net blog.

This tutorial assumes that you have signed up for a Sports Blog Net blog already, if you haven’t, sign up here, and then come back and follow the rest of the tutorial. This tutorial also assumes that you do not have a Google Analytics account already.

Let’s Get Started…

1. go to http://www.google.com/analytics
2. on the right hand side, click “Sign Up Now”
3. If you already have a Google Account (or gmail account) sign in with your username and password, if not click “Sign Up Now” and create one
4. Click “Sign Up” on the bottom left
5. • In “Website’s URL” enter your blog URL address (myblog.sportsblognet.com)
   • Enter an Account Name (or you can leave the default one as the blog address)
   • Select your country and timezone
   • Click “Continue”

   

6. Enter your Last Name, First Name, Phone Number, and country in the space provided and click “Continue”
7. Click the checkbox near the bottom that says “Yes” and click “Create New Account” below that.
8. Now you are at the final screen, look for a number that starts with “UA-” and write it down, you will need that number in a few minutes. Don’t worry about placing any code anywhere, I will show you how to do that next. Once you have the number written down, click “Finish”
9. Log into the backend of your Sports Blog Net blog (it should be http://(youblogname).sportsblognet.com/wp-admin
10. Once you’ve entered your username and password and you are in the backend, scroll down until you see “Settings” on the left hand side
11. Hover your mouse over “Settings” and click the down arrow that appears, the menu should expand down
12. Click on “Google Analytics” under the “Settings” menu
13. Under “Configuration Google Analytics” enter the number that started with “UA-” that you wrote down earlier and click “Update Options”
14. That’s It! You’re done! The code has been placed on every page of your blog, and will be placed on any future pages as well. Now you can see your stats in Google Analytics
15. Now go to http://www.google.com/analytics and click “Access Analytics”, enter your username and password and under “Reports” click “View Report”
16. It can take 2-24 hours before any stats begin to show up in Google Analytics, but if you’re eager and you want your stats as soon as possible, you can change the date range to include today, and it will show all stats collected up until a few hours ago.
17. Google Analytics is a very powerful program with tons of features, the best way to get yourself familiar with the many features is to play around with it and find out what kind of stats can help you.

This article was originally posted over at Union Sports Blog:  A Collaborative Sports Blog a part of Sports Blog Net

With all the new blogs that have come aboard on SportsBlogNet over the last couple of months I thought it would be a good idea to write a post on how to get more readers to your site. Just writing posts isn’t going to do it. Yes, you have a community of readers on SportsBlognet but at this point in time we are small but growing. To get the full benefit out of blogging you will need to promote your site outside of SportsBlogNet.

There are a couple ways of doing this.

1. Submitting your Articles: Here is a good post on Submitting your articles to Sports Sites

2. Linking to other sites: This is very easy. Many of the best Sports Blogs link out to other sites and if you link out to small blogs I can gurantee they will come to your site because everyone loves getting a link to their site. Example: The Big Lead does a roundup every morning and they post a bunch of links with a hot chick. IMPORTANT: Make sure you find smaller blogs to link to. The bigger ones won’t care and don’t have time to come read your site. Also, don’t bother linking to Espn or any other big site unless you have to. There won’t be any benefit to your blog if you do this.

3. Social Networking: Make sure you are promoting your posts on Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. If you don’t have a Twitter account get one. If say for example you are writing a Brewers Blog you can use the twitter search and search “Brewers Fan” . Then you can follow all people that come up in that search since you are targeting Brewers Fans. TheRopolitans have done a great job of utilizing Twitter and use their twitter polls to drive people to their site.

4. Forums: Are you a part of any Sports Forums? Promote your stories there. Don’t just join forums to post articles as they will ban you for sure. Make sure you become a quality member of the forum before you start posting links.

5. Link Bait: This is a tough one. You need to be very creative. You need to think of the future, target a top blogger, be creative, or do some research. You want to write something that will give all the top blogs no choice but to link to you. Obviously a player review or a game recap is not going to cut it. This needs to be very original. Today Deadspin linked up No Guts No Glory because they found out Notre Dame ommitted proof of Charlie Weis’ losing season in their 2009 spring prospectus.

6. Interact: Make sure you join the conversation especially here at sportsblognet and other blogs that you like. They won’t mind if you leave a link to your site as long as you are making good comments. Smaller sports blogs love to see comments on their sites.

Here are some of the new blogs that have joined SportsBlogNet:

Heights Sports Corner

Alex Gasick

3 Young Fans: A Milwaukee Sports Blog

Greenyt24

Congratulations on starting your Sports Blog Net blog, here are a few things to do to set-up the blog the way you want it.

First, let’s get your profile up and running…

After you login, either, from the red menu bar on http://sportsblognet.com , or from http://(yourblogname).sportsblognet.com/wp-login.php, you should be taken to your profile page.

The first thing you should do is change your password to something that you like and remember.

Under “ME” -> click “Settings” and you should be in “General Settings”. Type in your desired password in both boxes and press “Save Changes”.

Now, if you have not entered some details about yourself and uploaded an avatar, would be a good time to complete those things let our community know who you are.

Go to “My Profile”-> click “Edit Profile” in order to enter details about yourself.

Go to “My Profile”->click “Change Avatar” in order to upload or change your avatar (make it a picture of yourself or a logo representing your blog. This will be the image that’s used on our main site, which is what people will associate with you and your blog). There are two avatars that you are cropping your image for, a thumbnail version and a full version.

Now onto setting up your blog…

You can either type in http://(yourblogname).sportsblognet.com/wp-admin
or you can go to the top of the page and hover your mouse over “My Blogs”->then hover your mouse over your blog name ->then click “Dashboard”

This takes you to the backend, where you can edit everything from writing posts to what theme your blog is in.

Scroll down the left side and find “Settings”, click on the down arrow to expand the options, and then click “General”.

The first thing you should do is make sure that your “Blog Title” is correct (this will be the title that people associate with your blog).

Next, you should edit the “Tagline”, something that describes your blog, or a quote about the site.

Click “Save Changes”

Next, scroll down the left side under “Settings”, click on “Plugins”.

You should now be in “Manage Plugins” – Plugins are extra features that you can use on your blog, -

Click on “Activate” next to the plugin that you want to add to your blog, if you don’t know what a plugin does, you can usually google the name of the plugin and a better description should come up. If you want a plugin, but SportsBlogNet does not offer it, write to support@sportsblognet.com and we will try to get the plugin that you want.

Now onto getting the blog to look the way that you want it to…

Scroll down the left side and find “Appearance”, click on the down arrow to expand the options.

Here we should have three options, “Themes”, “Widgets”, and “Custom Header Image”.

“Themes” controls the overall look of your blog, there are wide variety of themes in a wide variety of styles. If you wish to change the look of your blog, click “Themes” and scroll through the many themes and pick out the one that you like the best.

“Widgets” are customizable boxes which allow you to put anything from “categories” and “archives” to “recent posts” and plain text. The default theme has widgets on the sidebar, in four areas “Sidebar Top”, “Sidebar Left”, “Sidebar Right”, and “Sidebar Bottom”. The default widgets are “Recent Posts” and “Recent Comments” in the Top section, “Categories” in the Left section, “Archives” in the Right section, and “Blogroll” and “Meta” in the Bottom section. If you click on “Widgets”, you will see “Available Widgets” on the left and “Current Widgets” on the right. Once you place a widget into a section by clicking “Add” next to the widget, then the default widget in that section will disappear, and only your widgets that you choose will be on your blog. Always remember to click “Save Changes” before switching between sections and before you leave “Widgets”.

The “Custom Header Image” lets you change the image on the top of your theme to something of your choosing (not all themes have this feature). If you click “Custom Header Image”, you are brought to a screen where you can upload an image of your choosing. If you want to design something, the image dimensions on the default theme are 960 x 90 pixels, otherwise you can crop larger images to fit into that area. Other themes will have different dimensions.

Now onto posting your articles…

I am not going to go into too much detail here, but I wanted to let you know about a few things.
Scroll down the left side and find “Posts”, click on the down arrow to expand the options, and then click “Add New”. Now you are ready to edit a post.

Adding media (images, videos) is pretty easy to do, you can either click “Add media” right below the title box if you have an image that you specifically want to use, or you can use “Insights”.

If you look right below the body section of the post, there is “Insights”. “Insights” is a plugin which allows you to search for images and videos right from the post page, and helps you insert the image or video into your post.

Another thing I want to show you is how to break up your post, so that you have a portion of it on the front page and a link bringing the reader to read the rest of it. This way you can free up real estate on your front page, where most people will see your articles, but won’t have to scroll forever to see your second or third article.

In the “Edit Post” page, if you are in “Visual” editing (noted by the tab on the upper right corner of the body section) there is a button that looks like a page being split in two on the body section toolbar, this is the “more” link. Place your cursor where you want the post to contain the “more” link and then click the “more” link button on the toolbar.

Now press “Publish” on the right hand side and check out the link in action on the front page.

These are just a few tips to help get you started with your new blog, if you need help or have questions, please check out http://sportsbloghelp.com or google “wordpress how to (what you want to do)” and you should find your answers there. If you still can’t find your answer, write to support@sportsblognet.com and we will try to help you out.

2. Ballhype

3. Digg

4. Mixx

5. Yahoo Buzz

6. Faniq

7. Ultimate football Network

8. Stumbleupon

9. Propeller

All these sites allow you to submit articles.  Keep in mind that most of these sites are social networks so you want to make friends with other people on these sites as they are the ones that end up reading your articles.  Make sure you promote other peoples stories as they will be more likely to promote your stories in return.  Even if you don’t end up getting traffic from these sites you will still receive quality back links that will help you rank higher in Google.

2.  Go to the Bottom Left and Click “Settings”

3. At the top you will see Blog Title.

4.  Just type a new Name in and click “Save Changes”

(Remember this only changes the name of your blog and not the domain.  If you want to change the Name and the Domain, you will need to setup a new blog)