Any advice on how to market my website?

Starting a website--Costs and Obstacles?

• I am currently pondering the pros and cons of starting a 'pay' website designed to offer daily/weekly analysis of American Football. This website would be geared towards 2 primary populations: 1) The Avid Fantasy Football'er and 2) Those who gamble on football. Of course, the above description is brief and non-descript, but most likely, sufficient for purposes of the questions that I would like answered... 1) After I register a web domain, what types of fees will I incur with finding a host for that domain? Furthermore, what range of costs am I looking at for hiring a person/company to design my website (weekly upkeep as well)? 2) It would be interesting to know how many people participate in Fantasy Football worldwide. Along those same lines, approximately what percentage of those players pay for fantasy football advice? 3) Are there any profit numbers available for sites that offer betting tips/strategies for professional and collegiate sports (namely football)? If so, is that market currently growing or saturated? 4) Because my website would be designed for providing tips and betting advice, rather than actual betting, I'd like to have (on my website) advertising from the numerous online gaming sites, which would take these bets. What can I expect to charge for advertising on my website (again, a range of estimates would suffice)? Please understand that this project is in it's infancy and there is much work to do before I move forward, but the above questions MUST be answered before I can begin to further advance the website. Furthermore, I am not looking for exact numbers in the above questions, just estimates (and/or sources) to help me start crunching the numbers. Thus, whatever you can find will help me greatly. I will tip based on the value, quality, and quantity of the information that is provided in the answers given. I thank you in advance for your time.

• Answer:

  <1. A basic web site costs between $200 - $300 for 2 to 3 pages. A site with 5-20 pages will cost $500 - $2500. The more elaborate the site the higher the cost. Hosting costs between $20 - $50 per month. Although you can find hosting at a cheaper price it is often better to pay a bit extra for a good quality, reliable service. http://www.cvcwebs.com/101.htm http://www.homebizbuzz.co.nz/article.php3?ArticleID=582 Maintenance costs vary from $10.00 per month to over $75.00 per month. Visionsite provide free maintenance to your website if you host your site with them. They also offer promotion services. The price is decided on a case by case basis. You will need to send them details of your requirements to get a quote. http://www.visionsitesolutions.com/pro/hosting/?f=maintenance Contact details. http://www.visionsitesolutions.com/pro/index.asp?f=getstarted Iwantmyfreedomain.com offers website maintenance from $10 per month. They also offer promotion services like keyword optimisation, link popularity, directory submission and pay per click. http://www.iwantmyfreedomain.com/maintenance.htm http://www.iwantmyfreedomain.com/serachengine.htm Silkwebs offer a site maintenance plan for £30 (approx $49) per month and web promotion for £20 (approx $33) per month. http://www.silkwebs.co.uk/acatalog/web_maintenance.htm Jpeg Design offers website maintenance from $75.00 per month. http://www.jpegdesign.com/new/solutions/website_maintenance.asp ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. According to Greg Ambrosius, president of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, there are at least 10 million fantasy football players in the U.S. each spending an average of $120 on the hobby. This makes the U.S. market worth $1.2 billion. The survey from Fantasy Football Toolbox (see below) shows that participation in fantasy football is 97% U.S. based. http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,59706,00.html The estimated market for Fantasy sports is about $1.8 billion this year. There are an estimated 15.2 million fantasy sport players in the U.S. They are mostly male, college-educated, white-collar workers in their 30s. http://news.com.com/2100-1026_3-5061351.html The major players Sportsline.com - $11 million. Details of revenue for 2002 are given at http://cbs.sportsline.com/info/ir/press/2002/fantfoot1002 http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/special_packages/business_monday/6444946.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp The company lost $16.3 million in 2002 and $27.4 million in 2001. http://www.paidcontent.org/pc/arch/2002_07_23.shtml Yahoo http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com/f1 ESPN http://games.espn.go.com/cgi/ffl/frontpage ----------------------------------------------------------------- 3. The sort of money can be made from a betting tips site can be gauged from the success of FantasyGuru.com which is a subscription based fantasy football tip giving site. It has over 10,000 subscribers each paying $29.95 per season. Subscription generate over $299,500 in revenue. http://www.fantasyguru.com/ Details of the success of Fantasy Guru.com are given in the publication Selling Subscriptions to Internet Content Summit _ $97. http://sherpastore.com/store/page.cfm/1950 KFFL.com provide sports news for fantasy football. It has tens of thousands of subscribers paying between $12.99 and $49.99. http://www.kffl.com/ The market is continuing to grow and looks to increase in future years. According to Kim Beason, associate professor at the University of Mississippi, there is strong growth in the number of games that fantasy sports people are involved in. http://money.cnn.com/2003/08/29/commentary/column_sportsbiz/sportsbiz/index.htm According to Screen Digest, Sports sites could be internet’s most lucrative heading for $15 billion a year value by 2005. http://premium.screendigest.com/content/pyp_00-05b_forecasts.stml/view ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 4. Sportsline – no rates shown on the website. ESPN – media kit (no rates shown). http://espn.go.com/mediakit/advertising_espn/ad_specs.html FantasyGuru.com does not accept advertising on its website. However there are advertising opportunities in its print magazine. http://www.fantasyguru.com/mediaonline.pdf Advertising rates for Fantasy Football Toolbox are from 0.50 per thousand views for buttons. The user profile for Fantasy Football Toolbox is 97% US based. 70% pland to spend over $25 on Fantasy Football and over a third plan to spend over $100. On average they participate in 2.85 leagues. http://www.fftoolbox.com/advertising.php Fantasy Football operators are finding that they need to charge subscriptions as advertising revenue is ‘miserable’. http://news.com.com/2100-1023-956784.html?tag=fd_top <Additional links:> The Fantasy Sports Trade Association http://www.fsta.org/> <Search strategy:> <"fantasy football" market million> <://www.google.com/search?q=%22fantasy+football%22+market+million&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&start=10&sa=N> <"fantasy sports trade association"> <://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%22fantasy+sports+trade+association%22> <"website maintenance services" "per month"> <http://www-sj.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%22website+maintenance+services%22+%22per+month%22 <Hope this helps.>