Website:  Sports Tube

Interview With: Sion Davoudi

Is their more then one founder? If so, who are they?

The founders of sports-tube.com are Sion Davoudi and Michael Arakian.

What is your background and qualifications?

We are both graduates of California State University- Northridge and we have been involved in web design for years. Our passion for the internet and sports led us to create SportsTube.

What does your website do?

With SportsTube you can view the latest sports-related videos. Publicly share your videos to the world. Securely and privately show your videos and photos to your friends and family around the world. Chat with friends, communicate, watch video clips… and much, much more!

How do you generate revenue? If through ads, what ad network do you use?

We currently use Google Adsense, but are planning on branching out in the near future.

How have your marketed your site?

Word of mouth, other sports-related websites, and newspapers.

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

Self Funded

Are You currently looking for funding?

We are looking to find an angel investor in the near future.

What type(s) of technology do you use?

Ajax, PHP, JAVA, and FFMPEG for video conversion.

What is your favorite feature on your website?

Personally, I love the categories feature. I can watch videos of all the different sports.

Any Bold Predictions for Sports and Technology in the future?

With technology and sports growing by the day, I would say the future for both is bright.

Previously we did an interview with Tim Dierkes of MLB Trade Rumors and mentioned that his site was the top free agent when it came to independent sports content on the internet. It looks like CBS Sportsline listened to us and has snatched up MLB Trade Rumors and featured them on their site. As you can see here, MLB Trade Rumors is featured on the front page of CBSSportsline’s Baseball Page:

We dropped Tim an email but unfortunately he can’t comment on the deal. Since he can’t, we will speculate. We assume that CBS will pay Tim x amount of dollars to syndicate his content on CBSSportsline. We actually think this is a mistake by CBS not to just to buy out Tim and make him an employee like ESPN did with Henry Abbot and True Hoop. Maybe they tried and Tim wanted too much but with CBS just syndicating his content they are missing out on Tim’s vast amount of readers that come directly to his site.

This is great news for Tim and all bloggers as more and more major media networks snatch up amateur content.  Fox Sports has already done deals with Bleacher Report and Yardbarker as we have previously reported.

Next week, Fox Sports will formally announce that they are featuring Bleacher Report content on their site. This is an outstanding example of “fan journalism” being recognized by mainstream media as a source of quality insight. 
 
Bleacher Report is thrilled that Fox Sports views this fan-generated as strong enough to be positioned alongside that of its star writers such as Ken Rosenthal, Joel Sherman and Jay Glazer.  Bleacher Report articles are already live on the site and have secured prominent placement. Take a look at these links for some examples of the Bleacher Report content featured by Fox Sports:
http://msn.foxsports.com/cfb/story/8205942/These-QBs-have-a-lot-riding-on-their-arms
http://msn.foxsports.com/boxing/story/8206900/Flaws-aplenty-in-MMA’s-network-debut
http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/8137630/Time-for-Pats-fans-to-embrace-the-dark-side

This deal with Fox Sports is the first in a series of partnerships Bleacher Report expects to announce as it continues to syndicate its content to other sources and works towards its goal of becoming the “AP of sports editorial.” 
 
Meanwhile, Bleacher Report continues to score impressive milestones.  The site is poised to crack the one million monthly unique visitors mark, with nearly 4,000 writers who have contributed a total of 30,000 original stories since going online in September 2007.

Its pretty amazing that Fox has scored two deals with both Yardbarker and Bleacher Report while no other major sports media network have done anything.  If deals like this can allow Fox to make a move in the Comscore rankings where both ESPN and Yahoo dominate, it will be intersting to see if the other networks follow suit.

Previously we featured Bleacher Report and Interviewed one of the founders, Dave Nemetz.

Website: http://juicedsportsblog.com

Interview With: Mitchell Blatt

When did you start your blog?

July, 2007

What made you start it?

I have been writing sports online since 2004, and the fantasy football site I was writing for in 2006 went under. The market for paid fantasy football writers is a tough one, so I decided, why not start my own site?

What is your background?

I am 18 now, heading to journalism school at Indiana University. As I said, I have been writing sports online for 4 years, for various sites, and I have also been writing as a music critic at a local Ohio magazine for three years. I do concert reviews and interviews, notably with P.O.D. and Yellowcard. Some of my writings and interviews, including one where Desmond Clark says he is among the most talented tight ends in the NFL, are available at http://mitchellblatt.com

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

I want to go into media/journalism as a career. I say that because there is some uncertainty as to what media will be like in the future, but there is no doubt it will be there. If that ends up being blogging, that’s fine. I just like writing, reporting, covering events, and expressing my opinion.

What was your tipping point? What put you on the map? (if you bring in more the 5,000 uniques a month)

I got over 5,000 uniques the second month because I was linked by Deadspin and other sites quite a few times. The first article that did it was on how the Buccaneers and the NFL have been hiding Cadillac Williams’ herniated disks: http://juicedsportsblog.com/2007/08/cadillac-williams-herniated-disks.html

I got that story a few years ago from one of my associates at an old fantasy football site who was close to the team doctor, then I got it confirmed by Will Carrol of ESPN. It got linked up by Deadspin, Pro Football Talk, Fanhouse, and nearly every Buccs blog, Buccs forum, and fantasy football forum.

In January, I got about 25,000 uniques because I was linked by Blogger as a Blogger-powered blog of note, despite the fact I had already switched to Wordpress by the time they mentioned me.

What type of blogging software do you use?

Wordpress, because it is simply the best with all of it’s customization, plugins, link-tracking, and other features.

What ad network(s) do you use?

Yardbarker gets me by far the most revenue of any network, but I also experiment with Adsense, AdBrite, and AdToll.

Most of my revenue comes through private sales, though.

How much money do you make off your site monthly?

Over $100 each month since December. Most months, I increase revenue. I set my personal record with $125 this May.

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’m not a great programmer, so that is probably where I need the most help. There’s some ideas I have for design that I don’t know how to program into Wordpress.

What are some of your favorite blogs?

http://thesportsdollar.com – I really like what Kellex is doing with the “make money sports blogging” niche, and I guess blog for him often.

http://friendsoftheprogram.net – Funny posts.

http://sportsagentblog.com – A unique look at sports business through the eyes of a sports agent.

http://sportsbusinessdigest.com – Another good sports biz blog.

Any bold predictions for the future of sports on the internet? They don’t call this new media for nothing! I honestly can’t think of anything for this question. The big thing is going to be how mainstream media adapts to the internet. It’s going to happen, whether newspapers find their way, or big corporations get their news organizations started. People talk about blogs and how they are changing the game, but they are mostly relying on what the MSM has already reported. The MSM is a necessity for reporting info, and they are here to stay.

According to The Sports Dollar Yardbarker has partnered with Fox Sports.  The Partnership will allow Fox Sports to pull sports content from Yardbarker.

This a great move by Fox Sports as they will be able to get a ton of new content at bargain prices.  Bloggers will just be happy to get linked up by a major network.  It will be interesting to see if some other major networks follow suit.  Fox Sports also has a deal with Bleacher Report as well.

*Kissing Suzy Kolber is hosted at kissmesuzy.blogspot.com and Kissingsuzykolber.net. Most of their traffic goes to the blogspot address so we used that address for stats. The same is true for Awful Announcing.  Mgoblog is only at Mgoblog.blogspot.com

Honorable mention goes to Larry Brown Sports (16,303 uniques), and Mister Irrelevant (15,654 uniques).  New sites added this month are The Offside, Brahsome, and Cuzoogle.  Busted Coverage has been removed from the list due to too much tail and not enough sports.

It’s interesting to see that all the major blogs had huge jumps in traffic from April’s Top 25 Sports Blogs.  Not too sure why that is.  I wonder if anyone has some thoughts on that.

As always the list is put together using Compete.com’s measurement statistics of unique visitors for the month.  Keep in mind that these numbers aren’t necessarily accurate but Compete.com does a great job comparing one site to another making the rankings accurate.  Alexa is used to rank sites that are not tracked by Compete.  If you think your site should be on the list send it to info{a}sportstechnow.com and we will check it out and consider it for next month.