Website: www.sportsmatchmaker.com

Interview With: Ken Zrike

How many founders does Sports MatchMaker have and what are their names?

The Sports MatchMaker® (SMM) concept and design was founded by two brothers, Christopher and Kenneth Zrike, as an outcome of a non-profit youth athletic academy they also co-founded. The Zrikes are among a group of partners in their company, Phoenician Industries, which has controlling interest of the Sports MatchMaker project.

What are the founders’ backgrounds and qualifications?

The Phoenician partners combine diverse backgrounds and expertise in various fields, which have included profit and not-for-profit endeavors.  In the early 1990s we founded a non-profit school in Japan and a sister boarding school in New York, for instruction in language, computer science, Web development, and Internet marketing.  These educational and athletic activities specifically speak to our qualifications to conceive, design, develop and run SportsMatchmaker.com.

What does your website do?

In addition to the standard virtual online social networking features, it has proprietary features to allow members to find people who have specifically requested to play any sport, any activity, any game, any hobby on any date, any time, anywhere, and join matches with one-click.

• You want to play a sport, activity, game, hobby, or even just go to a party or other social event with compatible player(s) tomorrow after work.
• You search SMM for people who have requested to do this activity on that day and time via our Match Request™ system
• You view their personal page/pics and, with our one-click match join™, you can join such a Match, which puts your face and profile link on the Match Requestor’s Matches page and sends out a notice of your “join” via email and/or text message to the Match Requestor.
• Then with our one-click accept/deny™, or “keyword” text message response, the match requestor accepts/denies your join request, which returns to you via email and/or text message, and all is recorded on all user’s Matches page.

If former, you have a confirmed match and the same goes for couples and teams (if traveling, set up matches in destination before you leave).

But let’s say you don’t have time to search for Match Requests, but don’t want to miss out on any healthy competition or fun?

• You simply invite all your friends into your Player’s Network™ (like friend’s network), and select each person for whom you want to receive automatic notices via email and/or text message, whenever he/she submits a Match Request™ to play.
• So, it’s Friday afternoon and work is almost over: Briiiiing, you get a text message that informs that someone in your Player’s Network™ wants to play racquetball after work at a particular club. You respond immediately with “join” on your cell phone. This action is integrated with our SMM web site, so that response is just like you clicked “join” on the site. You soon get a message back that you have a confirmed match (SMS will be plugged in as member numbers increase).
• Depending with whom you’re playing, maybe an after game drink in the clubhouse will be in order! The rest is in your hands.

But let’s say you want to know EVERYONE that makes a Match Request in your chosen sports/activities whether or not they are in your Player’s Network yet?

• So you use our Match Request Notification form to key in all your criteria of the types of people you want to play with: age, gender, location, sports, level of ability, marital, days of week you can play, times, etc.
• Then whenever ANYONE makes a Match Request™ that matches your criteria, you will receive an automatic email notification and/or text message with details.

Guess we better leave it there for now…visit site to learn more.

When did you launch?

January 1, 2008 (with one press release The site is up and open to all, but we’re really just beginning to market openly.

How do you plan on building community?

SMM is an event-based social network, so it builds community offline as well as online by letting users easily set up single or group matches offline. e.g., You get on and search for a beach volleyball game in Hawaii next weekend. You find a group match for 20 players. You get to see each who has joined the match already, look at their pics, view some personal pages, and then decide you’d like to get in on this community, so you join. Show up at the beach, and you’re expanding your community in healthy, exciting ways! Of course, everyone you play with can be invited into your Player’s Network™, too, so now your expanding your online community.

Most sites have a problem that until a critical mass is reached, the site benefits are non-existent. SMM is different in that even if there are only 100 members on the entire site in your geographic area (in deed, you may have invited them on), and you get them into your Player’s Network™, then you can be notified whenever any of them makes a Match Request™. You can start joining in and soon you’ll be playing more tennis, golf, hiking, cycling, going to poker parties, tailgate parties…the list is endless because, users suggest activities to be added.

Each member, therefore, has an incentive to build his/her Player’s Network™ since the quality of his/her lifestyle is directly proportional to the quality and quantity of his/her Player’s Network™. In addition, as the site membership grows we will turn on our already developed video upload and player for personal use on personal pages, but also in our contest area. Best sports bloopers, rad tricks, etc. will be fun to watch, and user will compete for prizes. The same goes for blogging, collated by every sport/activity/game/hobby in our list. The SMM desktop Instant Messenger (already developed) will be plugged in shortly allowing members to dump their Player’s Network™ into their IM, as buddies. This way we can keep track of everyone in our network when they are online and chat.

What types of marketing will you do?

Just about all types are planned.

Do you have any revenue streams besides advertisement?

By way of our e-commerce educational activities, we’ve reviewed many case studies of young talented students developing exciting, cutting edge site features and services, while consistently neglecting the more mundane business requirements of analysis/planning/developing/integrating of the crucial monetizing features (and patenting of all aspects of the technology/methodology, if possible).

In the early years of a commercial Internet, some may remember that a large segment of the Internet community hated the commercialization. The Internet soon became known as the great equalizer. In fact, for years the “little guy,” that knew what they were doing online, were kicking corporate butt, since they routinely tried to apply brick and mortar business practices to cyberspace. If you understood the prevailing Internet culture, you could attract more visitors than large business, in those days.

Since those early years cyberspace has changed drastically, of course. Seems the little guy still comes up with all the great ideas, but get any traffic and the giants are now waiting to gobble you up or outplay you with their massive advertising reach. So why then, if the very root of the Internet culture was to enable the little guy, do we hear some railing against software patenting? No form of protection is perfect, but Sports MatchMaker® was conceived for youth philanthropic purposes, and in reality we’d be negligent not to protect it’s potential with patent filings. Conceiving and developing an idea, only to get squashed by giants, precludes ingenuity and creativity.

Our planned and developed revenue streams include:

• Advertising in our Player’s Guide™, which is a fully automated “pay and post” directory (similar to online Yellow Pages). Members can search the guide to find facilities at which they can play, eat, shop, etc. All advertisers in the Guide will be eligible to also have targeted advertisement show up on the SMM pages. If a male user searches for a match with a single, intermediate, female, skier, 25 yrs, in Aspen who is a real estate agent, etc., then the user can expect to see ads for ski equipment, ski shops around Aspen, ski resorts, local restaurants, flower shops, real estate agents, etc.
• Sporting Goods/Nutritional Shop Onsite: A packed SMM database collated by all the usual demographics and the sports/games/activities/hobbies each member plays, their level of ability in each, their frequency of play and even how many confirmed wins they have in each competitive sport, is a powerful resource for sales. e.g., For golfing members who opted in to receive discounted goods of interest, would receive notice of a golf ball clearance sale, etc., etc.
• Web site Optional Services: Although we hope to keep SMM a free site while under our control, we will offer some extra services, such as the Match Request™ SMS Notification Service (for those not in your Player’s Network™), for a fee.
• Ancillary Services:
  • a packed SMM database is the foundation for our planned tournament service, since we can advertise tournaments directly to all tennis players, golfers, etc. throughout the world. Golf courses, tennis clubs, etc. can bid and host the tournaments, as that is their business, and SMM advertises the event, handles registration and fee collection on site, and provides awards.
  • the database also allows for our planned travel and adventure tours…e.g., we can advertise, “run the rapids of South America” to all serious rafters, or “play the best courses of Scotland” to all golfers, and these can be for “singles” or “couples.”
  • the nature of some of the SMM ancillary services make footage collection simple and cost effective for spin off reality TV shows

Who is your ad provider?

Not quite there yet.

Funding: Self-funded, Angel Investment, or Venture Capital?

First round funding has been via self-funding and Family & Friends investors.

Are you looking for more funding?

Yes.

What is your favorite feature on your site?

Our core feature – automated date/time/facility specific Match Request™, Match Search™, one-click Match Join™, one-click Match Deny/Accept™ system with SMS integration enabled.

Any bold predictions for sports and technology in the future?

In Bill Gates’ keynote speech at CES 2008, he made his own prediction, “The second digital decade will be more focused on connecting people. It will be more user-centric.” A tougher prediction is how will social networking evolve?

Since Friendster appeared in 2002, we have seen the rise of the giants MySapce, Facebook, Orkut, Bebo, etc. As their core design is to facilitate virtual social networking, they have naturally been categorized as “virtual social networks.” For many busy folks past adolescence, we now understand it’s cool, but are left feeling there is more to life than “virtuality,” we crave reality. So now we see the trend toward “reality social networking” (event-based) with the appearance of sites like Dodge Ball, HeyLetsGo (going.com), Eventsbot, etc. Most of those sites are designed to facilitate the announcing/creating/advertising of public events such as concerts, festivals, sporting events, workshops, conferences, etc., while helping individuals attend those events together.

That’s a real trend toward the use of virtual tools to enhance real-life social networking, but doesn’t yet truly speak to the individual need. Online dating services ushered in the social networking boom, and they speak to the individual need, since they are designed to use virtual tools to help individuals get together to fill a passionate need. But, singles dating is just for one segment of society and one aspect of life, thus the need for a more comprehensive social networking. The big question is how will comprehensive social networking technology help individuals get together physically to fill everyone’s individual, passionate needs, including dating?

In other words, what can compare to the online draw of sexual passion, and successfully launch the new era of “reality social networking” for everyone? Our market research years ago revealed the #1 answer was SPORTS. After analysis of the most popular sex sites at the time vs. an equal number of the most popular sports sites, we found that online sports sites had almost a 3 times better traffic rank and 2 times better reach, cumulatively. We also discovered that there are easily over 100 million “frequent participants” (plays specific activity 25 – 52 days per year) of sports, activities, games, and hobbies in the USA alone. For just sports, males average a 54.4% participant rate and females a 46.2% participant rate, revealing that females participate more than they care to watch or read about sports. The average age of all “frequent participants” of sports is about 32 years old, which is quite high, showing the breadth of the full market.

With clarity on what people are passionately doing offline together, the issue is how to design and develop virtual social networking tools that would facilitate and enhance their abilities to do it, and even encourage others to get off the couch and into the game. Sporting, active, health conscious people are passionate about what they do, and that passion, we believe, will be the starter fluid needed to usher in the global use of a new technology to “revolutionize the way we all stay fit, play and meet people” in reality.

Our prediction: look for “reality social networking,” which includes virtual social networking tools to overtake “virtual social networking,” which tries to add “reality social networking tools” – and the largest of all will ultimately be controlled by a major sports entity.

STN’s Take:

You can tell Ken has some great experience and real passion for this vertical. He and his brother have built all the proper tools to have a successful social network. We definitely think there is a need for an online system for people to find people to play sports with. It is really just a matter of people finding and using the system instead of using an evite or email.

Now that Sports MatchMaker is built, how do you get people to use it? Our first suggestion would be to build a Facebook Application. Then find friends, family, and people on Facebook and get them to use it. Another idea would be to track down organizations or companies that plan small sports events that could use the system. Our last suggestion would be to eliminate the long winded front page. If people want to read about all the extra options they should have a link for that. A social network front page should be simple and convey what the Social Network is all about in a few lines.

(Update: 1/21/08: Sports MatchMaker has a new Facebook App that can be utilized here: http://apps.facebook.com/sportsmatchmaker/)

Website: www.epiccarnival.com

Interview With: Doug Sheckler

When did you start Epic Carnival?

It all began on July 15, 2007.

What made you start it?

I saw so much talent out there in the sports blogosphere and thought it would be cool to bring a bunch of them together under one umbrella to make a “super” blog of sorts.

What is your background?

Marketing and public relations.

Do you blog for fun or are you trying to make it a career?

I blog for fun, but if it turned into a career I wouldn’t complain.

What is your goal with this blog?

To be a daily destination of choice for sports fans everywhere.

What was your tipping point? What put you on the map?

We’re on the map? Cool. All the credit has to go to the great writers and their willingness to promote this venture on their own sites with a little help from our friends in Blogfrica like SI: Extra Mustard, SPORTSbyBROOKS, AOL FanHouse, and Mondesi’s House.

What type of blogging software do you use?

For Epic Carnival right now its Blogger. For now.

What ad network(s) do you use?

If I told you I’d have to kill you. Kidding. The main network right now is Yarbarker, but we also are with a few more.

How much money do you make off your site monthly?

Classified. But it’s enough to feed the Swiss Army.

If you could get something for free to help you out with your blog, what would it be? (Ex: design, marketing, ad optimization, etc).

A person who really knows their shit when it comes to CSS and PHP to help really make the site jump.

What are some of your favorite blogs and what are some of your least favorite blogs?

Faves other than those who write for EC because I obviously like them a lot: SPORTSbyBROOKS, SI: Extra Mustard, Awful Announcing, EDSBS, flatusyahu, Hollywood Tuna, Jack’s Sports Humor, Brahsome, Tasty Booze, Tirico Suave, TunaFlix, We are the Postmen, and on205th.com. Non-Faves: I don’t want to burn any bridges here…

Any bold predictions for the future of sports on the internet?

There will be sports on the Internet in the future!

STN’s Take:

Doug has a very good thing going over Epic Carnival. He has done a great job of bringing a bunch of sports comedy writers to one place. If you are looking for some skin and a laugh, head over to Epic Carnival. And if you aren’t looking for some skin and a laugh, you mine as well just go to sleep.

We would like to see Doug move from Blogger to Wordpress because there are just way too many benefits there to be missing out on. Though as he says we are using Blogger for now, he is probably looking to chnage. One thing we really noticed about his blog that we like is when you click “Read More”, it just expands the post instead of going to a new page. That is a great option but it will hurt him in the page view area when it comes to ads. One thing we don’t like about the site is all the link tags at the top. Put those on the sidebar. Tagging is very important for search engines and you want to tag as much about your story as possible. As his site gathers more tags, it will look even worse.

Website: www.efans.com

Interview with: Stephan Maric

How many founders does Efans have and what are their names?

eFans has one founder and my name is Stephan Maric.

What are the founders’ backgrounds and qualifications?

I’m 25 years old and from Croatia. I’m a huge sports and music fan. I have an BA in Business Administration from Barcelona Business School and I also did a professional designation in marketing at University of California, Los Angeles.

What does your website do?

eFans.com is a revolutionary social network for sports fans. It is based on networks made up by teams and athletes from all over the world. Following such an idea every team and athlete can create an online community and connect with fans. There is already more then 1,000 networks including Tiger Woods, Manchester United and Maria Sharapova. You can also create personal pages, team and athlete pages, share photos, upload videos from YouTube, get latest news, live scores, post blogs and obviously meet fans from around the world.

When did you launch?

We launched on September 13, 2007.

How do you plan on building your community?

We plan to build our community using different types of marketing and public relations.

What types of marketing do you utilize?

eFans will mostly use Guerrilla marketing, have a team of people that is going to be present at some of the most famous sports events worldwide. With that we’ll also focus a lot on online marketing.

Do you have any revenue streams besides advertisement? Who is your ad provider?

We just had first ads on our website which is very significant. Our providers are Google AdSense and AdBrite.

Funding: Self funded, Angel Investment, or Venture Capital?

It was self funded, I mean I had to borrow some money from my family and friends to make eFans happen. I hope I’ll pay them back soon:)

Are you looking for more funding?

Yes, we are looking for investors. We are pretty close to finalize a great deal with one of the best VC’s in the world.

What is your favorite feature on your site?

My favorite feature by far is that users can enter networks of their idols and favorite teams. It’ something new and I love it. To be connected with all Ronaldinho fans was always my dream.

Any bold predictions for sports and technology in the future?

Great question:) I think it will just get better for us, sports fans. With websites such is YouTube, eFans, ESPN and Sportstechnow for sure the future looks great.

STN’s Take:

eFans is a well designed social network. We like how it is centered around teams and athletes. All sports social networks should pretty much be designed that way. Any options you could ever want for a social network are there. You can blog, add videos, discuss sports in the forum, and so on. It looks like when Stephan did his initial push of the site, people joined and it made some traction but the site seems to be a bit stale now. Like we have said in the past, when you build a social network these days, unless it is completely unique and different, you need to have an underlying network of people to help make it viral. A sports social network is definitely not unique and different.

A few suggestions for Stephan. The first is to eliminate the full page pop up Adbrite ad. Once we created our account, it was the first thing we saw. We can not stress this enough. Full page pop up ads are terrible when you are trying to build a user base. The second suggestion would be to have a spot for people to import contacts and invite people when they are signing up. People are more likely to invite there friends when they sign up then after.

Website: www.bustedcoverage.com

Interview with: J Koot
When did you start Busted Coverage?

The site was originally started in July 2007 under the name Big Ten Tailgate but was changed to Busted Coverage in late November/ early December after Big Ten Conference lawyers advised me it was in my best interest. That situation taught me a valuable lesson: the Big Ten hates when your site ranks higher than it on Google.

Did the Big Ten shut you down because you talked about booze and women or just because you their name was in your domain?

A little of each. I don’t think they liked the entire premise. These conferences want to come across as holy but the schools do very little to stop the boozing and canoodling. They pretend to care, i.e. Wisconsin started giving Breathalyzer’s to underage students who had previous alcohol violations before entering football games.

It’s a smoke screen. Without the frat house atmosphere you’d see less attendance and we know where that leads.

Look at NASCAR. They took an event and turned it into Mardi Gras every Sunday afternoon. A huge segment of society wants that escape on a weekly basis. It’s a billion dollar business.

At the end of the day, the Big Ten wants to squash use of its name with such activities. But that doesn’t stop them from showing boozing on its Big Ten Network.

What made you start it?

There isn’t a great story behind the site. It was just a chance to talk sports and post stupid items of interest. Things started to evolve in September when I found the lack of interesting Big Ten sites. So much of the shit out there was game talk, game review, game discussion. If I wanted that I’d just watch the game at a sports bar with my buddies. There is so much more to the football scene. Once I went in the direction of debauchery and out of control fans, the site gained readership and a reputation.

Aspiring bloggers should follow this advice: Don’t think you are going to be the next Jimmy Cannon.

Be creative, timely and interesting. Controversial writing never hurt, either.

What is your background?

Traditional media. Print. Advertising. I’ve done just about everything there is in the newspaper world. Writing, pagination, design, production. Print will always be my love. I don’t subscribe to the notion that blogs will eventually rule the world. Blogs rip off the print industry every single day. Radio rips off the print industry every single day. Broadcast news rips off the print industry every single day.

I grew up with a newspaper being delivered to the house and feel its still the best source of portable news available.

Many bloggers feel its their duty to bash print. Take a look where the same blogger gets his information.

You did a tournament bracket for best sports blog of 2007, how much extra traffic did it bring you?

The sports blog tournament brought in terrific numbers. The blogging world embraced the concept and ran with it. Several blogs took it very seriously. I must say that Metsblog has a crazy following and a great product.

The blog tournament was derived from the lack of legit football in late December. I figured why not end the year with this idea of seeding blogs. It’s natural to see how you compare to other blogs. Connections made with some of the bigger blogs allowed me to spread the word quickly. Once word got out things fell into place.

What type of blogging software do you use?

Wordpress. Is there anything better? Simply a revolution in digital publishing.

What ad network(s) do you use?

Adsense and Adbrite. Ideally there would be more display advertising going on.

How much money do you make off your site monthly?

Not enough to give up a full-time job. But the opportunity is there to make dollars. That’s what makes the Internet so great. It’s impossible to buy a newspaper, but you can be a digital publisher in a matter of hours. Making money right now is secondary to building a great product that others think is interesting, funny and an escape from their regular lives.

What are some of your favorite blogs and what are some of your least favorite blogs?

There are so many guys producing great content. One site that holds my attention is TV Tan Line. It’s the next best thing to actually watching a football game. I never would have guessed posting screen shots would win me over.

I usually start my day with The Big Lead’s Daily Roundup. It’s a great place to find nuggets of information.

Blogs that attract my attention make a point and quickly. I’m not going to read a 1500-word report on why Pittsburgh should have gone for 2 in the 3rd quarter. Let’s not joke ourselves. We all watch SportsCenter. I already know what happened in the game. I want to know what it looked like outside the stadium before the game and afterwards when your buddy Tony was making out with the fat Cleveland chick.

Any bold predictions for the future of sports on the internet?

Will Leitch will have a movie made about his life becoming the all-time most famous sports blogger? That’s bold, eh.

On a serious note, sports blogging is in its infancy. Where we go will be dictated by advertising dollars and how badly the major media companies want exposure to a younger audience.

STN’s Take:

With Joe’s writing style and his inclusion of skin you really can’t go wrong with reading Busted Coverage. It would be interesting to see how many other blogs have been threatened with a lawsuit like Big Ten Tailgate was. We are sure they can’t be the only one. For those of you that don’t know, Busted Coverage was actually apart of our Top 25 Sports Blogs for December. Based on Compete numbers they basically went from 7,000 uniques in November at Big Ten Tailgate to 25,000 in December at Busted Coverage. We believe they received that huge jump in traffic due to their top blogger bracket tournament. We are real interested to see if they can keep that traffic around for January.

In regards to our suggestions, please take off the full page Adbrite ads. They are very annoying. Those are the types of ads that drive people away from your site. Also, I am not sure why some Wordpress blogs do this but their pages are indexed by numbers and that can cost you in the traffic category. Google likes to read the page index first and if all they see is a number instead of the title of the article, your page may not get indexed correctly.

Website: www.sportspyder.com

Interview With: Dallas Devries

How many founders does Sports Spyder have and what are there names?

Two brothers — Dallas DeVries and Derek DeVries

What are the founders’ backgrounds and qualifications?

I have a background in computer and systems engineering and Derek in fine arts. We ended up working together at a few startups together out of school. We’ve gained most of our technology experience working for these fast growing startup companies, and even went through a big acquisition on one of them.

What does your website do?

SportSpyder aggregates over 2000 news sources to a single location. Most of the sources show up on SportSpyder within an hour of when they are posted. People can use SportSpyder to comment, vote on, and subscribe to the articles we aggregate.

When did you launch?

February 2003. The site has gone through quite a few iterations since.

How have you built your community?

Sportspyder.com was built out of metsny.com. I orginally came up with the idea when I got sick of visiting a dozen sites to see if they were updated with Mets news. This was back when RSS was relatively new, and not widely adopted by mainstream news websites. Metsny.com was relatively successful, and we thought — why not do this for all the major sports teams? Our community now is largely NY sports fans but its starting to spread quickly to other areas.

What types of marketing do you utilize?

Mostly word of mouth. However we give webmasters the ability to easily include headlines into their website and many people have found us this way. SBnation also uses our RSS feeds in many of their blogs for displaying headlines for their specific team.

Do you have any revenue streams besides advertisement? Who is your ad provider?

We created an online store to for each team using Amazon Affiliates. We have several ad providers: Tribal Fusion, Value Click, Burst Media, Casale Media and Google Ads. We are testing driving a site called Pubmatic which is suppose to optimize all your different ad networks. They are in beta but in my opinion but could end up being a valuable resource.

Funding: Self funded, Angel Investment, or Venture Capital?

Self funded. Our startup costs are purposefully minimal, with the biggest cost being the effort we have spent developing the site in our spare time.

Are you looking for more funding?

We aren’t actively looking for funding but if the right opportunity presented itself we would consider it.

What is your favorite feature on your site?

Honestly getting my Mets news from dozens of sources within an hour or so of it being posted anywhere. This is why I started the site and why I think people keep coming back. Our search engine is pretty cool too, as you can search about 200,000 sports articles from the last six weeks.

What type(s) of technology do you use?

We started in PHP and migrated to the Ruby On Rails framework when it came out of beta. Derek has recently completed a book titled “Rails for PHP Developers,” which is in part due to experience working on the site.

Any bold predictions for sports and technology in the future?

Over the last eighteen months I have seen the sports blogging industry explode. When we initially started SportSpyder a lot of teams didn’t have much news outside of the major news networks. Now there are several great alternatives to the mainstream sites. Almost every mainstream site has added sports blogging of their own over the last year. I predict that decreasing revenues with print papers will result in us relying more on networks like SBnation and MVN for sports news. We hope that in the future that SportSpyder will increasingly become the gateway to for accessing and finding all the best sports content.

STN’s Take:

There is nothing better then a person with passion building a website for exactly for what they want. We can’t remember where we read it but a very successful venture capitalist said that he would only invest in a company where the founders are building something they would use on a day to day basis. This is great advice for any entrepreneur. Dallas has used his passion along with his brother to build the best sports aggregation site out there. There is really no reason anyone should not be using this site if they like to follow their team’s news on a daily.

We do have a few suggestions for them though. The first is that they need to do a better job of indexing their individual news pages. On the comment page they just have each individual article indexed with a number. We would like to see that page indexed with the title of the article. We think they will be very surprised by the new amount of search engine traffic they get when people search certain key words if they make that change. Odds are they will come up higher then all the dumb newspapers out there that haven’t hired a search engine optimization consultant. We would also like to see the comment page come up when one clicks on the page for news like the way Digg and Ballhype do it. This reminds people to come back and comment about the article and create a community feel.  Along with putting the comment system in front of the reader more, they need to give people a reason to comment by setting up a system that rewards the top commenters.

Website: www.lonestarstruck.com

Interview with: Kelly Horn

When did you start Lone Star Struck?

The website kicked off in November of 2006.

What made you start it?

I had created a Dallas Cowboys fan site on Myspace, and it became very popular, very fast, and led me to create a website.

What is your background?

I have a Bachelor’s of Art Degree in Graphic Design and currently work at a local newspaper as the Production Manager.

Do you blog for fun or are you trying to make it a career? What is your goal with this blog?

Currently it is just for fun and out of love for the team. As it is, it consumes a lot of time, but I call it my stress relief and enjoy it very much. My dream is to make it my career, although I’d never want to do it ‘just for the money’.

What was your tipping point? What put you on the map?

I’d like to give credit to the great season the Dallas Cowboys are having this year. I also believe adding more writers with different styles and personalities helped a great deal.

What type of blogging software do you use?

Movable Type

What ad network(s) do you use?

Google AdSense and LinkShare

How much money do you make off your site monthly?

Not nearly enough to quit my day job

If you could get something for free to help you out with your blog, what would it be? (Ex: design, marketing, ad optimization, etc)

I would be interested in learning more about Advertising and Marketing.

What are some of your favorite blogs and what are some of your least favorite blogs?

thedallascowboysshow.com, thelandryhat.com and metsmerizedonline.com to name a few

I prefer fan opinionated blogs. There are tons of them out there that just report the news, but the ones who share their perspective really get my attention.

Any bold predictions for the future of sports on the internet?

I believe that sports on the internet will one day mimic the growth of internet shopping, but not until the blogosphere attracts more talented and educated writers. Most sports fans do not take information they read on sports blogs seriously, and rightfully so. Too many bloggers create their own rumors and falsely report sports news. You even have a few of the bigger bloggers who actually establish quotas or set goals of 15 or more posts per day. They do this to garner more hits and page views, but the reality is that they litter the web with poor quality posts, inaccurate information, and junk. Once we start to become more organized, ethical and professional, you can really see sports sites making a huge impact.

STN’s Take:

As one can tell Kelly knows her stuff. It’s great to see that her site started out as a My Space page. It can be tough these days to start a website out of nothing and having a community to start it with can really help out. Kelly has some great experience being that she is a graphic design person and a production manager for a newspaper shows she wants to have integrity on her site. Plus the site is designed extremely well. We like that she has been able to bring in some other writers and the quality of content is very solid.

She says she doesn’t want to do it for the money and she is definitely missing out on some. Pretty much all his ads are buried. We think she could make some more money by being consistent on his sidebar on the main page and individual posts. If she moved an Adsense ad up to the top left and put an adsense ad at the end of each post, they would become much more visible and garner more clicks.

Ticketmaster announced today a major expansion into the resale business by purchasing TicketsNow for approximately 265 million. “Fans have embraced ticket resale, and the combination of Ticketmaster and TicketsNow will allow us to provide a safer, more reliable and efficient resale experience,” said Sean Moriarty, President and CEO of Ticketmaster. “We are confident that combining TicketsNow’s strong resale network with our audience and distribution capabilities will enable us to set a new standard in the resale category.”

This deal is long overdue for Ticketmaster who has been missing out on large amounts of money in the ticket resale business. Originally they launched their own Ticket Exchange thinking this would help them get into the market but that has obviously not worked out and with their new NFL deal they need a way to make this happen.

All other Ticket Brokers have to be really worried about this partnership. With the connections that Ticketmaster has and the know how of the people that work of TicketsNow, there is no reason why that shouldn’t dominate the secondary ticket market for years to come. Ticketmaster will create an integrated platform on which fans will be able to simultaneously review and compare ticket availability and pricing in the primary, premium and resale categories. Building upon its existing TicketExchange resale marketplaces and partnerships with the NFL, NHL and NBA, Ticketmaster will work closely with its venue, promoter, team and other live entertainment clients to offer ticket validation and electronic ticket delivery to fans purchasing in the resale marketplace.

It is also being reported that Razor Gator missed out on being purchased due to accounting issues. This has to be a big blow to that organization because there aren’t really any other other companies out there big enough to buy them. Maybe Ticketmaster will still buy them but it seems like they should be able to crush them now.

Website: www.hardballtimes.com

Interview With: Dave Studeman

How many founders does Hardball Times have and what are there names?

THT was founded by Aaron Gleeman and Matthew Namee. I was brought in during the planning stages.

What are the founders’ backgrounds and qualifications?

Aaron has had a baseball blog for many years, www.aarongleeman.com, that has been recognized as one of the best baseball blogs forever. Matthew was a research assistant to Bill James at the time we founded THT. I created the www.baseballgraphs.com site.

What does your website do?

We think of THT as an online baseball magazine. We have several articles a day, usually 1,000 words or more and edited by our editorial staff. We also have daily updated baseball statistics.

We’re not really a baseball news site. The goal of THT is expressed by our slogan “Baseball. Insight. Daily.” We try to present new insights for baseball fans, usually (but not always) based on current events.

We also have a baseball fantasy column, with content developed specifically for fantasy baseball players.

When did you launch?

March, 2004.

How have you built your community?

That’s hard to say. I guess it’s been word of mouth, primarily. Many bloggers have referred to our work over time, and we’ve received a lot of references from mainstream media, too. I think it’s fair to say that we’ve developed a reputation for quality work.

What types of marketing do you utilize?

Our most important marketing effort is the Hardball Times Baseball Annual, which has been published each of the last four years. We like to think that it harks back to the days of Bill James’ Baseball Abstracts. The THT Annual is sold on our site and in bookstores. The Annual has really helped get our name out there.

We have also started publishing an annual Season Preview, which contains statistical projections, team comments and fantasy baseball strategy.

Do you have any revenue streams besides advertisement? Who is your ad provider?

We use Blogads and Google Ads, but most of our advertising is sold directly.

Funding: Self funded, Angel Investment, or Venture Capital?

Self funded.

Are you looking for more funding?

Nope.

What is your favorite feature on your site?

We have developed a tremendous stable of writers over the years. I love reading all of their work, and I’m proud to be associated with them. Several of our writers (including one of our founders, Aaron Gleeman) have been hired by mainstream media outlets, and a couple of others have been hired by major league teams.

Any bold predictions for sports and technology in the future?

I think you’ll see tremendous use of the data being generated by MLB’s Pitch f/x, and the potential for synergy between mlb.com and the baseball blogging community is huge. I hope mlb.com remains as open as they are today.

STN’s Take:

For all you baseball junkies out there, Hardball Times is a must read. Their articles are definitely not for those of you that have ADD. You have to really love baseball to read all their information. One can tell that they have good writers by just reading their website, but one can also tell they have good writers by the way they have been able to build traffic over the years. We believe it is extremely hard nowadays to build a website following that is pumping out three 1000 word articles a day. With so much information available on the web, it is hard to dedicate that much time to one site.

We have a few suggestions and the first is to have a commenting system on their web pages. It is annoying that we have to go to BallHype to comment on an article. No one wants to go to another website to submit comments for an article. Maybe BallHype is paying them to do it but it just doesn’t seem worth it. It is much more beneficial to build that community of commenters on your website. They are basically handing over free page views and content to Ball Hype. The second would be to have a contextual ad at the end of each article. Seems like they are missing out on some money there.

Source: The Big Lead

In general between November and December overall sports traffic was down due to the holidays or maybe blogs are stealing away traffic.  Nah, its probably the holidays.  The NFL, NBA, and MLB sites where the only ones that had increases and they were pretty modest.  It would be great if we could get our hands on the full report so we could do a more detailed post.  If you are reading this and have access to the Comscore report, send it over.

Website: www.sportaphile.com

Interview with: Chuck

When did you start Sportaphile?

I started Sportaphile about one week into September ‘07, so it’s been up and running for almost 4 months.

What made you start it?

I started the site because there were no sports blogs that offered exactly what I was looking for as a fan/internet user. I wanted sports news/rumors/analysis/humor delivered to me from an urban perspective, but not so urban that it gave the impression that everyone wasn’t welcome. I also want to provide clean effective design and not beat my readers over the head with advertisements.

The second thing I really wanted was unique perspectives that spark debate and discussions, I’m not here to copy and paste articles from ESPN.com and Deadspin everyday, there are enough blogs that do that. The ultimate goal is to have other opinionated writers join me and have fun sharing our thoughts on sports. The only thing we can do to be completely unique is to inject our personality into what we write.

As of now, the site isn’t even half way to where I want it to be.

What is your background?

My writing/website background? Or my personal background? I’m a 24 year old from the Bay Area, born and bred. My sports fandom can pretty much be divided into three stages, hardcore baseball fan in childhood, hardcore basketball fan through my teens, and football fanatic from high school to now.

As far as writing and the internet goes, Sportaphile is my first website, most of this is all very new to me. I’ve been working as a writer on another website for the last year so. That provided me with experience as far as pumping out material on a regular basis but thats about it.

Do you blog for fun or are you trying to make it a career? What is your goal with this blog?

Right now Sportaphile is fueled by fun and success. I want to have a lot of fun, but ultimately I also want my site to be the best. I’d be lying if I told you “I’d be happy if just 10 people came to my site and loved what they saw everyday”. I’d love to have millions of visitors without compromising the original goal of the website. I’m just going to do what I do, everything else will fall into place.

What type of blogging software do you use?

We’re running on wordpress.

What ad network(s) do you use?

Right now all we use is Google Adsense, but we have been in talks with another network to run other ads. I REALLY don’t want to annoy my visitors with advertisements everywhere, but they will be present.

If there is one thing you could get for free to help you out with your blog, what would it be and why? (Examples would be design, marketing, ad optimization, editing,etc…)

The one thing my site needs is another passionate writer. As of now, 99% of the posts on Sportaphile have been written by me, so if I could get someone else to contribute quality articles that would be perfect.

What are some of your favorite and least favorite sports blogs?

http://thestartingfive.wordpress.com – It’s not very flashy, but they have great writers.
http://www.leavethemanalone.com – How many sports blogs do you know written by a black woman? The stuff I read here is pretty unique compared to the rest of the blogosphere.
http://www.tiricosuave.com/ – This site is pretty new, but they’re funny guys.

Any bold predictions for the future of sports on the internet?

Bold predictions? Sportaphile will be one of the biggest blogs on the internet. Might as well dream big right?

STN’s Take

For his first blog Chuck has done a very nice job.  Writing on the other website probably allowed him to think of what type of look and feel he wanted.  His header image looks fantastic and he does a great job of maximizing his ads without having too many.

Blogging about sports in general and giving your opinion is a tough space to crack.  Chuck is definitely going to need to break some big stories to get himself on the map but if he does, he should be able to keep some loyal readers.