Website: www.nfldraftcountdown.com
Interview With: Scott Wright
How many founders does NFL Draft Countdown have and what are there names?
I am the one and only founder of NFLDC. It’s a one-man operation.
What are the founders’ backgrounds and qualifications?
I graduated from St. Cloud State University with a double-major in Mass Communications (sports journalism) and Communication Studies (speech).
What does your website do?
I offer free coverage of the NFL Draft. This includes scouting reports with the strengths and weaknesses of hundreds of prospects, coverage of the Senior Bowl live from Mobile, AL and much more. What the site is probably best known for though are my mock drafts, where I project who each team might select. Over the years they have been the most in-depth and some of the most historically accurate out there and my reputation in the field has kind of grown from that. Today NFL Draft Countdown.com is the most popular NFL Draft site in the world.
When did you launch?
Technically I launched the site on a America Online address all the way back in 1997 and I can still vividly remember having Tennessee junior quarterback Peyton Manning going #1 overall in one of my earliest online mock drafts. I moved to the current domain in October of 2002.
How have you built your community?
I actually started the site as a hobby because I loved the NFL Draft and I loved to write. Over the year it just continued to get bigger and bigger and when I finished college I decided to try and make a full-time go of it. Every year I think it can’t get bigger but it always manages to surpass my expectations. I also have a great group of members on my message boards and forums and I think being able to interactively discuss the draft and prospects is a nice way to supplement what the site has to offer. I have to give a shout out to guys like Ward, D-Unit, and JBond, and all the mods who do an excellent job of essentially running the boards for me.
What types of marketing do you utilize?
Basically just word of mouth. Because of the sites popularity I come up relatively high on a lot of search engines and have also done hundreds of link exchanges with other sites. Also, I have been around long enough that people have just tended to find me over the years. I do some freelance writing work around the country and do 3-5 radio interviews per week all over the nation as well.
Do you have any revenue streams besides advertisement? Who is your ad provider?
Yes, 100% of my revenue derived from advertising and thankfully I get enough traffic to make possible. That is how I am able to keep everything free and avoid memberships, etc. I use ValueClick, Google AdSense and Tribal Fusion.
Funding: Self funded, Angel Investment, or Venture Capital?
Self funded.
Are you looking for more funding?
Not really.
What is your favorite feature on your site?
I like the mock drafts. Whereas most people will just list the players with the teams or give one sentence lines about each pick I go much more in-depth. In fact, I write upwards of 300 words of analysis for each of the 32 first round selections so you see not only who I think each team might pick but also why and my reasoning behind it. Doing mocks like this is definitely a time-consuming process but I think in the end it is worth it and the feedback I’ve gotten over the years has been tremendous.
I also like the scouting reports. The way I do it is I try and condense my entire analysis of a prospects strengths and weaknesses down as much as possible so it’s quick and easy to read. With my method instead of having to skim through paragraphs of fluff to find what a player does well or needs to work on you can get a good feel for his game and how he might fit in with your favorite team in under a minute.
Any bold predictions for sports and technology in the future?
Technology-wise I am just starting up an internet radio show / podcast, which you will be able to find through the Prime Sports Network (http://www.primesportsnetwork.com/). I am really looking forward to that. Other than that I just think the internet will continue to play a big role in the NFL Draft’s popularity and to a degree I think we’ve already seen it start to creep into the decision making processes of actual NFL teams, who monitor notable draft sites to get a sense of what the perception is of what they and their rivals might be thinking. The NFL Draft is now one of the biggest events in all of sports, bigger than the Stanley Cup and NBA Finals, and I think the internet has played a major role in that.
STN´s Take:
Scottt Wright’s Draft Countdown is probably one of the best sports sites we have never been to before. All his information is very easy to find and the website is well designed. Scott has been going at this for a while and you can tell he is very accomplished. We wouldn’t be surprised if he hasn’t already received offers to work for media company. If he hasn’t, we would say he would have to be a top free agent.
Draft Countdown is already very established but here are ways we believe Scott can make it even bigger and easier to find. First and the most important is how Scott indexes his pages. An example of this is how the Vernon Gholston scouting report is indexed. Here is the page index for Vernon: http://www.nfldraftcountdown.com/scoutingreports/de/vernongholston.htm. When you search Vernon Gholston in Google Draft Countdown is nowhere to be found but when you search vernongholston, Draft Countdown comes up in the fourth spot of Google. Because Vernon’s page is indexed without an underscore or dash like this: …/vernon-gholston or vernon_gholston, Google does not know where his name begins and ends and this is the first thing Google reads when it comes to your page. My second suggestion would be to work all his content into a blog format by using Wordpress. Wordpress does such a great job at optimizing your content, you don’t have to worry about anything. And our last suggestion would be to have a mini version of his mock draft on his front page because that is bread and butter.
