Football might not seem an obvious area for moneymaking opportunities – unless you’re a Premiership player or chairman of course. But football has all the ingredients of a great moneymaking opportunity.
People follow their favourite teams with a passion, spend lots of money on it and there are a LOT of potential customers – an estimated 10 million football fans in the UK alone. And billions more worldwide – especially in emerging markets like the Far East, lots of whom support UK teams.
Here are some easy ways you can make money from football:
* Make and sell souvenirs. Things like scarves, mugs, calendars, keyrings, posters, framed photos, T-shirts and more. Come up with your own unique designs that are quite different from those in the club shop (just take care not to infringe any trademarks).
It’s a lot easier than you might think. A make-on-demand service like CafePress can print and ship items for you as you sell them – you won’t need £££s for stock.
* Publish a fanzine. If you’re passionate about a particular team how about publishing your own fanzine – with your own news, reports and gossip. Your fanzine could either be a print publication sold near the ground on match days or by mail order – or an online fanzine.
There are two different options here. If your publication is a paper one you could sell advertising in it. If it’s an online one you could earn affiliate commissions from ticket, travel and souvenir sales.
* Publish a Kindle book. How about putting together books about your favourite team and/or favourite players? Look for public domain material you can cut and paste for free, and then add your own photos and articles.
For this I’d suggest you a team that’s widely supported worldwide – you could make massive worldwide sales online.
Here’s an article you might find useful: Make Money from eBook Publishing: 7 Secrets Of Successful eBook Publishing
* Buying and selling collectables. Things like signed shirts and goalkeeper gloves, old match day programmes, used tickets, postcards and photos. Check local ads and local auction sales for teams in your area. See if you could buy an unwanted collection as a ‘job lot’ and then split it up. Then post them up on eBay and other specialist football collectables sites. You could make quick buy-sell profits here.
Here’s some more information about making money from the wider collectables market: Cash From Collectables
Tip: Look for things that are easily available in your area, but which keen fans abroad might pay a lot of money for.
* Player autographs. Autographs of well-known players can sell for anything from a fiver – up to several thousands of pounds if they’re famous, or rare.
There are two ways of sourcing autographs. Firstly, look for old autograph books that come up for sale online. They could be worth much more when sold separately. Secondly, write to well known players’ agents and ask for a signed photo of your ‘favourite’ player. Ask nicely – lots of well known players send out signed photos for free to fans. It’s an easy way to make some sideline money for nothing!