Options for soccer athletes building an online presence

TL;DR It costs time, energy and money to build your online presence but I'm building a platform called Fubolista that makes it less painful.

I did not get to play professional soccer, but that doesn't mean you can't. I had my own reasons but you can learn from my experience to give yourself the best chances to succeed.

Something that happens when you start taking soccer seriously is that those who see you play regularly start praising you. But what about those who don't get to see you play?

One obstacle I faced early on was that my parents did not fully support the idea of me playing soccer professionally.

I understand it better now because it was a big risk and they were making a lot of sacrifices to secure their children's future. And me being their first born did not favour my chances to get them on board.

I found myself in a frustrating situation: on one side, I had admirers, and on the other, I lacked credibility. I always wished there was a way to quickly show my parents a snippet of what I could do and why I thought I could go to the next level.

Nowadays, videos and social media are widespread, but that was not the case back then.

Social media

The issue with social media is that it's distracting, especially if you want to showcase your skills to someone who could change your career.

You can share your TikTok videos with a recruiter but what are the chances they will get distracted by other videos? Maybe the TikTok algorithm will suggest a video of another great player and make them lose focus from your videos. Or even worse, they could be distracted by the video of a teenager doing a TikTok challenge.

They go through many players per day, so all those distractions could make them forget about you pretty quickly.

You could start an Instagram page separate from your personal page to eliminate distractions. You can maybe create Reels to highlight your skills and share them on your page. Maybe some videos of your personal trainings too.

But what about your player info? The Instagram bio is not built for displaying your position, height, weight, preferred foot, nationality, and club experience in a clean and professional manner.

You could maybe add a link in bio for that? But what are your options? LinkTree? Building your own site? Paying someone to build one for you?

Fair. But let's go through each option to see how that pans out for you:

LinkTree

Here are some LinkTree athlete templates for you.

Sure, you have a profile picture and space for a sentence or two. But this tool was built to share external links.

What are you going to do? Send recruiters to a separate website for your player profile? Yet another way to distract them.

If you're an influencer, sure by all means. Sending them to one of your sponsored brands could make you some extra cash. Your main focus should be to convince them to recruit you though.

Building your own website

This is actually a great option. Teach yourself how to code on your spare time, then build a personal website with full control over what you want to show on it.

I highly recommend this if you have the time and patience.

Once you are ready to publish your website though, you will learn about something called Web Hosting fees.

Web hosting is when you rent a computer that's always turned on. The reason why you would do that is to put your website on it so that people can always access it.

Hosting fees vary, but you can find decently cheap hosting (as low as $5 per month) if you look hard enough and know what you're doing.

You will need to pay a little extra to make your website URL look nice though. That's called a domain name. See how my website is just <my_last_name>.com? I have to pay $30 every year for this.

My point is, even if you do everything yourself, you will still have to pay. AND you will spend your time and energy figuring everything out yourself.

On the plus side, once you learn it you're set for life!

Paying someone to do it for you

If you can afford it, you can save up your time and energy. Hiring a web developer would be one way of doing that.

Keep in mind you will have less control though. You may have a specific vision in mind. On their side, they will interpret your vision as they see fit.

They will bring you back version 1 of your website. It may not be what you had in mind. You will ask them to correct a few things. They will go and fix it.

My point is: you will go back and forth with them until you finally compromise on a version that does not perfectly match your vision because you're tired of doing this (or maybe because they charge you per revision and you went over your budget).

Now you just spent money, time, but also energy. A different kind of energy. Energy that is more frustrating because you have no control over your website.

Don't get me started on the part where they charge you for updating your website when you join a new club or make a new highlight video.

What else can you do?

Maybe you could find a friend who knows how to develop a website for you for free. But will they execute what you had in mind?

You will be spending time and energy, but this time, you will convince yourself that you're getting it for free (minus the cost of your domain name).

I'm sure you've heard this saying before: "time is money". I like the one that says: "anything that costs your peace is too expensive."

No-code website builders

This is a fancy way of saying: push these buttons on my platform and it will create a website for you.

It is a way for those who don't code to build their own website.

What's nice is that you can find a theme you like, then customize it with your own info with a few clicks.

You may have used some of them without even knowing it. LinkTree is one example.

I had the chance to work as a senior iOS engineer for one of the world's best no-code site builders: it's called Shopify.

It lets merchants create an online store without knowing how to code.

Influencers love Shopify because for a fixed monthly fee, they don't have to think about the technical stuff behind building your own website.

They can simply focus on marketing and selling their products across the internet.

Some go as far as branding and selling products they don't have: it's called Dropshipping, but I won't get into that too much right now.

I believe there is room for a no-code website builder made for soccer players to help them showcase themselves in a professional manner.

It would allow them to regain control of their own online presence, rather than being listed on their club or agency's website alongside other players.

With the appropriate tools at their disposal, they could easily manage their personal websites and enhance their chances of securing new opportunities.

Fubolista

Fubolista is an iOS app that will empower soccer players to take control of their online presence and build their personal brand.

The app allows them to easily create and manage their own branded websites without needing to know how to code.

With Fubolista, you will be able to choose the design and functionality of your website, and you will be able to showcase your skills and player info in a clean and professional manner.

I'm continuously looking into what players are interested in showing on their websites.