What Bleacher Report Can Do For You

Bleacher Report member Brandon Heikoop discusses how writing for the network gave him a helping hand in developing his skills as a writer and landing a job at Baseball Digest Daily.

Each and every one of us would love to have it be our careers to follow professional sports, give our opinion and report the facts. If you think back, how many times when you were playing whatever sport it is you grew up playing did you give a self commentary? After you played, even in a rec. league, you would evaluate your performance, talking in the third person to an imaginary interviewer. Eventually, the reality would set in that making a living through playing would not occur, however you still wonder why athletes need an extra 3-4 million dollars a year to “feed their family.” I believe it is that curiosity which leads many of us to consider writing, to express our opinions.

With the explosion of the internet and ease of getting ones ideas out to masses that hadn’t been possible in years gone by, it has become possible for “bleacher experts” or “armchair GMs” to get their name into the public and become ‘experts’ in their fields. The most popular “blogger” that comes to mind is Aaron Gleeman. Here is a writer who followed his beloved Twins from his sofa with nothing more then a laptop and a high speed internet connection.

In the middle of December, I decided that the studying, following and consuming of as much baseball as possible was not going to proper use. Thus, it was time for me to begin what had been a long time goal of becoming a freelance journalist. I will admit it started slowly, having fewer then 10 visits a day to my blog.

Around this time I searched out ways in which I could help my blog and more specifically, me as a writer, to gain popularity. A website I landed on suggested simply getting your name out there. Visit other blogs and reply or be apart of discussions, trying not to be controversial while adding to the conversations. This advice—in hindsight this is admittedly quite obvious—is what landed me on Bleacher Report.

At Bleacher Report, one is provided with not only excellent readership—some 8000 hits a day—but also with some of the best editors. The BR editors not only go through each of your posted articles, but they also give words of encouragement and advice for improving the articles. For a new blogger, this help is invaluable.

Bleacher Report also offers feedback from readers in the comments section. While some of the comments must be taken as a grain of salt and direct homer-isms, there certainly are more knowledgeable readers willing to give feedback and have an interesting conversation. Thus, the continual challenge to not only report facts while giving a new and hopefully entertaining opinion but also in meeting the needs of those who can see no wrong within their favorite organization is one of the biggest joys when posting an article at Bleacher Report.

However, even with experience and encouragement, Bleacher Report’s most important asset was the publicity. Recently I was asked to begin writing for Baseball Digest Daily—and while I will not suggest that BR was directly responsible for said honor, it was undeniably of significant assistance.

Thus, the advice I would give to anyone hoping to go from having only friends and family from reading your articles is to get your name out there. However, make sure that you are doing quality research and bringing something new to the table. Consider the quantity of baseball blogs around and why someone would want to read your articles over an expert or someone with a much longer track record.