Fight Matrix: 8 Years and Counting… The Site, Sponsorships and More

Last November, I made a post about the rating system and how it works.  This is a quasi-followup and focuses more on the non-technical aspects and the site itself.

1. We’ve been around since late 2007.

We’re right around 8 years of being online and in this time, have posted over 450 ‘official’ updates to the current rankings.  If you count screw-ups and tests, we’re probably closer to 500.

2. Not all of the data is online.

What you see on FightMatrix.com as it relates to data is the “thin” version or the essentials if you will.  It is much more efficient to keep the guts offline, using technologies I’m familiar with and then propagate the results to the web site’s online database.  We’ve often been asked if we’ll post a bout history like Sherdog’s Fight Finder, but that’s not in the cards at this time.  However, this does not mean that we will not continue to add to the available content.  I love good ideas and field them whenever presented.

3. This thing is a lot of work.

Although much of the bout recording is automated, it is manually triggered and almost all of the time, supporting information like weight division and scorecards are input manually.  Sometimes this information is not readily available, so it requires quite a bit of research.  Needless to say, this is very time-consuming, though I consider it a labor of love.

I estimate that the bout recording process, adding the supplementary info and the ranking update process alone has accounted for about 2,000 hours of supervision or actual work in the site’s history.  This may not sound like much over 8 years, but I work fast and this does not include the server administration, site maintenance or the coding related to the rankings/ratings themselves.

4. I don’t like ads.

Being honest and realistic, this site does cost money to keep online and it takes quite a bit of resources to keep running.  I’m not talking about “keeping the lights on”, but to fuel the motivation to keep putting in all of the hours to try and make this site the foremost professional MMA ranking site in existence.  Like I stated earlier, it is a labor of love, with the keyword being “labor”.

Given that, we’ve unfortunately had to resort to (at times) annoying advertisements to gain some monetary compensation.  Outside of the occasional MMA-related sponsored post, this is our sole source of income for the site.  Add to that, we’ve yet to have a “big money” advertising deal although we’ve come close once.  Without this “big money” deal, we are essentially topped out on advertising income as our traffic, although respectable, has seen better days.

5. So I’ve got an idea…

OK, so I said I don’t like ads… BUT, as a way to give people an opportunity to “give” back, we’re going to offer 1-year ad/sponsorships to particular pages on the site which will allow for a text-only advertisement at the top or bottom of any page (except the main page).  It will probably look something like this:

There will be some limitations: character limits, nothing obscene, etc., but you can use this space to do whatever you want — advertise your own site, say we rock, promote your favorite fighter, etc.  You can stay anonymous if you want as well.  We’ll manually inject this into the page, so I’m hopeful they won’t get blocked by ad-blocking software.  The price will vary depending on which page and which location you select (top or bottom or both), but it will span between $10 and $150 per location.  The actual location will be in the page, below the heading and any accompanying description or at the bottom, somewhere above the comments.

If you are interested, Email us at advertise@fightmatrix.com.  Link the page(s) and position(s) — “top”, “bottom”, or “both” and we’ll get back with more info.