ShoeMoney 2008 Plans
I have had a lot of questions about what we are going to do next… whats our next big thing. Well most that know me know I do not like to talk much about “coming soon” I rather just launch. I think so many people waste so much time talking about “whats coming” but here is brief quick summary of what we are working on for 2008:
First on our list for this year is fighters.com. (scheduled q1 launch). I want to build a somewhat social mixed martial arts community that really gets the fans involved. I feel there is currently NO good resources for fighters and fans to connect. It will start with basics (fighter/fan profiles) and then move more into other areas like fantasy leagues, online store front, meetups…. etc… We have some great investors involved that are committed to seeing it become very successful. This is a long haul project and we know its going to take a long time to really pay off. We are HUGE MMA fans and so for us this is a great fit atm.
Other things in `08 - I have a interesting dating product/companion site idea… a new way to do reviews that might be interesting… and a few other things. We are about ready to announce the 2008 elite retreat (april 3-4 in san fran)… and there are other things in the works. Should be a very interesting year 
Great domain name Jeremy, was it in your portfolio for a long time or have you recently bought it?
it was purchased by our investors last fall. I don’t want to disclose what we exactly paid for it but it was more then 10x more then I had ever paid for a domain before.
10x more than anything else, ya that’s a pretty premium name. I suppose you already feel a need to make this work?
Definitely $xxx,xxx or more
oh wow i just noticed the domain name… nice catch. the site will probably a huge hit when you launch it just from direct url traffic.
Of course, having a domain name such as this one will make branding a lot easier since it is something people will have no problems remembering. I am convinced that Jeremy will do a great job with this project.
I am sure it will take off due to the connections shoe has plus the money of the backers plus it is a great domain name very easily brandable… plus with all the hype of UFC and fighting in general as of late, it wont take much to take off. Wish you the best Shoe!
Given the fact the project doesn’t lack funding and that Jeremy is definitely a person who knows what he’s doing, I’d say that it will most likely be a smashing success.
Nice work in getting the new site up (coming soon). I like the little image you have on the page and hope the logo looks something like this. Get us some west coast coverage, we have a few fighters here!
PS: We were wrong about Liddell huh?
I won money on him
Shoe, where do you put your action? Have you shared that info before?
yup I always post my bets
He posts on Bodog if I’m not mistaken.
That name is awesome. That is gonna be a hit
Best of luck Jeremy
Givin that boxing just can’t get its act together, (e.g. Jones v Trinidad - would of been fun if they hadn’t hurt their hips getting out of their walkers) This will be money well spent
Sounds like a good idea and really digging the logo.
Yeah, it really is a nice logo
Wow Jeremy,
Fighters.com is an excellent domain name and I am sure you will make that a success.
MMC is becoming bigger everyday and an online venue for fans is a great idea.
Good luck with your venture.
John
Yea. I wonder how much he paid for that domain. I bet it was at LEAST 5 figures, probably more.
Best of luck on that site!
Sounds interesting Shoe. Good luck for 2008 - I’m sure you’re going to be hugely successful.
Fantasy league for fighters? Holy crap… nice idea. Haven’t seen that yet.
The guys at the Fightworks podcast produced one, you can find it at MMAPredictions.com
BTW Shoe - do you train and MMA or BJJ at all?
Oh nice Jeremy!!, we have the same interests: I am now talking about MMA on a regular basis on my blogs and I think your website will have a lot of success since this sport is becoming so popular.
…
Dating is also a very good niche. I transformed a few days ago my french dating guide in a Dating Blog.
It’s as easy to make money with a dating website (as an affiliate) than with Adsense
Fighters.com domain name is excellent!
easy to make typos imho..
Anything can have a typo created of it and since this is a generic word its easier to build your typo domains around.
Although if your building your revenue of typo domains, this isn’t really a sensible idea as its built on the basis of that company/site being sucessful and if it isnt well you make $0 too.
everything you touch seems to turn to gold. hope these work out well too.
There have been some pretty entertaining flops that he blogged about not long ago but yeah, he definitely cranks out impressive projects.
Well…everything aside from the ” Shoemoney Petroleum Company”
He’s had a few failures in the process though….just recently, he’s started to come up with projects with the correct execution
Sounds great Jeremy. I’m looking forward to the MMA myspace.
What will be great to see is how you monetize the site. MMA is great and growing, but that does not guarantee money. Can’t wait to see it.
What would be a goldmine is if websites like this http://www.ufc.com put an affiliate program on live internet pay per view
ufc already has affilaite programs on cj for ufc.com
nice, will have to check that out.
I’m sure i saw a affiliate programme for them on CJ the other day.
There’s definitely a lot of these aspects out there already in the MMA community, but none of them really in one site.
Sherdog has the largest community forum. ProElite.com has a social network thing going on and MMAPlayGround.com is a fantasy league. Also the UFC runs their own fantasy league.
Good luck on the site man.
I don’t really feel any of them do a very good job. I know we are not going to take everything over overnight but we are relentless. I think 2008 will be a building year for fighters. A lot of money and time will be invested.
When we made AuctionAds there was so many other competitors (including eBay). I thought that would take a lot longer but it outgrew us very fast.
Dude, fantasy MMA is brilliant (and probably a freaking gold mine)! Like others have said, it’s a fantastic domain name. Should be a huge success with you guys behind it. You definitely have a passion for the subject.
Can’t wait to see what you have in store for us
-Mike
sounds exciting!
Hmm I’m really into martial arts and looking forward to join
Hey Jeremy, how about having some kind of Elite Retreat related contest where the lucky winner gets comp’d the admission? I’m here in the bay area, so driving is not problem, but the admission, heeh, could use a little help with that.
Also,why am I getting a 401 on fighers.com? odd. that is..
Sounds like the fighting community you’re working on will be a huge hit. Kinda reminds me of bodybuilding [dot] com where people get to post their stats and such.
Isn’t there enough gratuitous violence in the world.
Change fighters into a social activism site. Fighting for justice or political or consumer justice.
But what is so appeal - ing about violence in a world where you can not even look at TV or read a newspaper or visit a news site without seeing images of the worst in humanity!!!!
That valuable domain name could be put to such better use
This is a project where a lot of funds are being invested, you really can’t tell people what to do with their money under such circumstances. Sure, I’d like to see more sites about fighting against poverty, for example (personally, I link to a series of websites such as TheHungerSite from my sidebar and always encourage other webmasters to do the same, but in the end, you can’t force anyone to do anything), but people do whatever they want with their money, it’s just the way things stand.
the great thing about our country is that anyone can do anything they want ;). I encourage you both to do the sites you think the world needs
There are a lot of great domains out there which could be put to better use but again, everyone has the right do make whatever decisions they want as far as their funds are concerned.
we can always make crime.fighters.com
I was thinking the same thing. Or poverty.fighters.com
how does copyright apply to subdomains, is it the same as domains? can you have ufc.fighters.com? seems that you could have ufc in the url, not the domain, but not sure on the subdomain. any suggestions?
I’d say that as long as you don’t do anything which hurts the brand in question, there will most likely be no issues.
How about google.fighters.com
Being a longtime fan, MMA has become huge as alot of people have jumped on the bandwagon since The Ultimate Fighter started. This should be an interesting project. Sherdog is for the hardcore fans, this should capture the casual fans great. I hope you incorporate multiple organization fighters and other disciplines. Good Stuff
Sherdog’s forums are pretty good community forums. I hope shoemoney’s forum gives out some shirts..
Thats an awesome domain to work with. Love to see how this develops to its full potential in 2008.
Sounds like a pretty good idea. I may be starting Muay Thai this year so I will definitely check that site out.
[...] have the necessary skills to always be an engaging and lively person. I don't even have enough skills to pay the bills most of the [...]
Another excellent and thought provoking post Jeremy!
I’m particularly intreagued by your “…new way to do reviews that might be interesting…” - I think this is going to be a really interesting sector this year and look forward to seeing your take on it.
Cool Domain And Cool Idea …..Perfect Combination !!!
GOOD LUCK Jeremy !!! - DD
fighters website is a flop. save your time for something else.
I doubt it….go google “fighters” and niches within the “fighters” industry and you’ll find their is a large niche here.
I highly doubt that it will be a flop since it is a niche which is extremely popular with young people, I know my son is crazy over these kind of things and so are a lot of his friends.
why would it be a flop?
Looks like a good idea you have there. A fighting community like a Rebel. That would invite a lot of people to join. That logo looks cool. would look great as sticker.
Not trying to kiss you ass here, but I agree. Even with the huge fan base, no MMA site is doing it right, yet. I spoke to Rener Gracie about this a while ago and wanted to get the Gracie family involved, but could never get a commitment.
Sean
fighters.com = I’m in! just let us know when we can sign up!
You should look at MMA.tv and observe what they are doing right. They are doing a lot wrong, but their numbers are huge for a reason.
Look forward to seeing fighters.com -
where’s my comment?
Another Elite Retreat would also be sweet.
[...] of paying $1400 for a fantastic Unique Theme from Unique Blog Designs, as done by ShoeMoney, John Chow, and Kieron, I have changed my theme to the Illacrimo Theme from Design [...]
I’ll be pretty curious to see how this one plays out. The UFC will likely only continue to get bigger, but Sherdog is the 800 pound gorilla out there for community…and mmajunkie is the premiere news site for MMA. Not that i would bet against shoemoney, but you’re pretty late to the game when it comes to riding the UFC bandwagon, so you’ll just have to work that much harder. Sherdog has an obscene amount of posts in it’s forum, i don’t see how anyone can compete with them.
And i don’t see the rationale in paying for fighters.com. If you’re targeting MMA, why not get something more specific to mma and pay a lot cheaper.
I believe he has stated that he thinks that such websites can be taken to another level and, if he’s got a solid business plan (funding is definitely not an issue) and can bring innovation to this niche, then I’d definitely say that things are looking good for the project.
And like I said, it’s a huge uphill climb with established MMA sites like Sherdog dominating right now. But I’d be curious to see how a guy like mmajunkie.com does. His ads are really random taht he displays.
While entering the market and attacking the positions of the big dogs is always a challenge, I’m sure that Jeremy is ready for the battle
MMA sure has taken off. I can remember some 20 years ago being in Brazil and hearing about “Vale Tudo”. At that time I had no idea what it was.
I’ve been training CrossFit style for over 2 years (also a cert. CF Level 1 trainer) and at 42 yrs old, I’m in better shape now than I’ve ever been.
I’ll be curious to see how the site goes.
New product reviews sounds interesting. I’m kinda sick of all the product review sites clogging the search engines though.
The domain sounds excellent. I hope to read some good fighter-tiipps on it in the next time
I was thinking that you shouldn’t let people know you run it since you’re not exactly the fighter type, but too late.
great domain. I am sure it costed a bundle
Indeed, premium domains don’t exactly come cheap but such a domain definitely makes branding a lot easier, and, as such, buying it will prove to be a wise decision in the long run if the people behind this project do their job right.
Sweet you’ll be in San Fran?! I live about 30 minutes away. I hope to be able to catch you there!
~Jonathan Volk
http://www.jonathanvolk.com
wow look forward to this, sherdog is there but it is too political and one sided because it doesn’t like dana white and already has ties with other fighters and places that makes it not always so truthful. I will be visiting the site on a regular basis once it is up. Fantasy league is a real good idea I think many people will like to try that out
I am looking forward to the elite retreats again. Last years, I couldn’t make the schedule work for me. I hope I can attend in 2008.
nice post…
This post made me even more curious! heh..
ufc is always the best mma tournament on this planet !
It’s great to see someone such as yourself with soo much drive, truly an inspiration. All the best for 2008!
Nice one shoe, some good ideas. Brave new world with the social media, but a good niche. Now I don’t usually copy but I wanted to do this anyway so I hope you don’t mind but here are FireflySEO Plans 2008
As you can see one of them is to go on Webmaster Radio. Come on invite us. You know you want to!!
Cheers,
Allan Stewart
just to note on the domain name. i just looked through all of my recent browsing history for 3 months. there are no domains that are pronounced one word domains. There are some that became words, like google, but none that were words before the domain was bought. i am not sure that google hasn’t killed the typing in of domain names, or atleast made it less common.
True, a lot of companies have made a name for themselves without having a dictionary word domain name. After all, the leading auction website is “ebay”, not “auction dot com” (although ebay was originally launched as AuctionWeb
)
I will continue what I do best and stick to the hedgehog principle.
very interested to how you proceed into MMA and UFC, IFL etc..
Ill probably hope to copy your steps..
well, I’m not a fan of mixed martial arts…at all….but I must say, that logo is fantastic. Kudos to whoever made that.
great idea and I tried to do it afew years back but for karate only..since i grew in the martial arts…i just revamped by site for more content but i think this is a sure hit!
[...] I think ShoeMoney’s new venture will really take off. It’s got the funding and it’s got the brains, and it has [...]
[...] posting plenty of UFC stuff on his blog, and this year he’s going all out with the launch of Fighters.com (a social network and other cool stuff for the mixed martial arts [...]
[...] my RSS feed or enter your e-mail on the top right to get updates by e-mail.I saw last week on the ShoeMoney blog that Jeremy and his crew were “about ready to announce the 2008 elite retreat (april 3-4 in [...]
08 should be intresting
You want to build something that is mixed martial arts, that is nice.
I used to friggin love martial arts when I was little. Bruce Lee, Jean Claude Van Damme, hell yeah. Perhaps I should look a bit more into this MMA thing.
Jeremy,
Here is some information I had e-mailed you about, I sold Blair and His friend Tom a “Used” car last month. Tom Crowley from Hybrid-x-snowboards, is another big MMA fan, fighter and trainer. My be something you can use or maybe help them with some marketing.
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=81883145
http://youtube.com/watch?v=BgNqH7qnBuw
http://youtube.com/watch?v=6aP6gVJySWI&feature=related
Good luck with fighters.com
David G.
Let me know if you want contact information.
Nice project. I am fighting too, not Martial Arts, but Kickbox. I like it and I doing it from my 7th year.