$1 billion business of blood sport

dexterfly

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hi everyone,

I just received the May edition of Entrepreneur magazine in the mail and the cover article is about MMA and how the sport has become one of the most profitable business in the world.

I love to watch UFC nights, specially because the brazilian dominate it all. :)
But the question here is what should I do to make some money out of that. I was fortunately to buy two perfect domains that I will use to do that.

I was thinking of creating a blog and post some pictures and videos, but then I decided I could add stats and information about the fighters as well.

Plus, I can start to sell gear and ticket after a while. I think this is a potential market to go after.
 
I have heard that those who hold licenses will take you down faster than others with DMCA, so host offshore (leaseweb has been pretty resistant to those claims).
 
I have a decent ranking (Top 5) website for MMA in UK and I have to say that considering the amount of traffic I pull in I make a pathtic amount off adsense for it.

My advice would be to either find a niche with higher paying ads or try to find an ad network that will allow you some travel / financial type ads. I spoofed the content on it for a while and managed to pull in some good clicks but the ads that you get for MMA as your keyword will be very low paying.

I can get anywhere from $0.12 down to $0.01 for some clicks so choose your ad network carefully.

Jim

P.S If anyone has any info on MMAadnet I would be interested to hear it.

P.P.S The brazillians didn't do so well last Saturday night :D
 
I was once turned down by the UFC (other affiliations - LOL), but I think you can sell their stuff through CJ and other stuff at share-a-sale (mma warehouse).

(I think it is very lucrative depending on the content... I would not think adsenseless would work too well as your stand alone advertiser or income source)

It IS HOT (the topic) and will be for a while (IMO)... go for it, do it well, and you can make a living in this niche... again, my opinion - the category is still wide open.

(lights a doob and checks the UFC Calendar to see what's on today)
 
I have 2 mma sites that rank in the top 3 for most big mma search terms, I make some money of adsense and a bit more with banner marketing, but I make steady income off a premium membership that I offer. I noticed in the past that right after an event when I posted the videos a ton of sites would leech my videos and take my traffic, so now I protect them via membership, so when Zuffa hits everyone else's videos with a DMCA violation mine are still up.
 
I was thinking of sell some t-shirts with cool designs and affiliate with some other company too.
I think a membership site would be too soon for that. I will start small and if it hits big I will change it and try to scale it more.
 
Why dont you just put up a review site selling supplements that are "used by the MMA fighters" and can "get you just as ripped as them".....or something along those lines.
 
Selling affliction tshirts on your site dropship style using wp-ecommerce plugin or phpbay pro = making bank
youll want to take off all of your ads once you see how much that pulls in
affliction clothing = huge market because of mma
 
heres another suggestion : for each fighter, show a pic of him wearing an affliction shirt, and next to the pic, put your ecommerce widget with something like "Buy XXXXX XXXXX's signature shirt now!"
 
First thing I will have to do is hire someone to create the design. Then I will affiliate with supplements and clothes to sell on the website.
If the thing get big I will create a community to let the users communicate with each other.
I think this will be fun to work with.

thanks for the suggestions and if you have more share with us.
 
Dexter, make twitter accounts, put your url into the settings page on each account and start adding people from MMA-related twitter accounts with a mass follow tool. I tend to get alot of hits to my site when people first check my twitter page. You can also do mma updates to twitter if you find an rss for it using tweetfeed.
Also, when there is a big event coming up, i.e. two big name fighters, put up a huge NICELY DESIGNED banned for it, and under the banner add two ad buttons, one with a tshirst/product for each fighter, and something like "SUPPORT XXXX XXXX! BUY HIS SHIRT NOW" on one banner and "SUPPORT XXXX XXXX! BUY HIS SHIRT NOW!" on the other one.
 
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