I am officially going to leave ServInt this week and move to a new dedicated server I have purchased. The vps I was running on just isn’t cutting it for me. I was experiencing a lot of slow load times on the sites running SQL databases, and since I can afford it now, I figured dedicated was the way to go.

Here is the setup I am moving to:

• Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Dual-Core Processor
• 2GB DDR2 RAM
• 73GB 10,000 RPM SCSI Hard Drive
• 2,000GB Monthly Bandwidth
• CentOS 4

It’s not a top of the line dedicated server by any means, but it blows away the vps I was on. And best of all the server is fully managed and comes with cpanel/whm. I tossed around the idea of getting a self-managed server because they are a lot cheaper, but I really don’t know what I’m doing yet when it comes to servers.

I can get by in Web Host Manager, but that’s about it. I don’t know SSH or anything like that. It’s best that I have someone managing my server 24/7 in case of any emergencies.

ServInt was a decent company to have a VPS for, and I might have bought a dedicated from them if they weren’t all sold out. Their tech support is usually top notch, except for one time one of the guys gave me some lip on the phone. I guess he got tired of me calling all the time :/

After my sites are moved over to my new server early this week, I’ll give you an update and how the transition went and the name of the company I’m hosting with now.

I feel like I haven’t been posting as much as last few days as I used to. I’ve been super busy at work. That’s one of the downsides of having a desk job. If you get work piled up there, it leaves less time for my websites. I’ve been thinking about going through some changes in my network, but I haven’t decided yet on any course of action.

I will be back to my normal posting schedule this coming week. I don’t foresee any big projects coming my way that will take up all my time.

Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend!

Pimp Myspace has been performing extremely well the last week or so. If you’re new to the blog, Pimp Myspace is my best performing site (money wise). It is not my favorite site, but it requires very little work and brings in the most cash ($25/day average). It’s the basic Myspace resource site, but with a lot of custom layouts.

I have not designed any of the content myself. I purchased all of it from Myspace Pros, think of it as a DigitalPoint for Myspace Resource site owners. Adding new content to Myspace sites is crucial. I never would have thought how much much traffic came in for specific keywords.

For example, I added Superman layouts. Well ’superman layouts’ is one of my highest searched keyword phrases now. The same with ’spiderman layouts’, ‘300 layouts’ and ‘harry potter layouts’. I rank page 1 for all of them, and many more specific keywords. I would not be getting any of that traffic had I not published fresh new content.

About 1-2 months ago I was sitting at 1,000 uniques/day with just the standard default layouts. Now that I’ve added probably 100 unique layouts, I’m at 3000 uniques/day. It’s crazy. I plan to keep adding more and more layouts every week. The more layouts you add, the more traffic you will get.

I just wish Myspace resource sites were respected within the industry. A lot of people hate Myspace resource sites and don’t consider people who own them to be successful because they are easy to set up and take virtually no skills to run. Myspace sites won’t be around forever. If Myspace ever builds their own layout library, we will all be in a world of hurt. That’s why I don’t think you should put all your money and time in myspace sites, but I do think it’s a good idea to cash in on it while you can.

Before any of you crucify me for doing this, I have a very good reason for the sale. I just can’t tell you what it is now, and you probably won’t know until April. But this sale is an absolute must. You will understand why once I tell you.

So anyways, I’m auctioning off one of my better, but still underperforming sites. the Myspace Directory I own, will be aucitoned off by 6:00 PM EST today. You can view the Digitalpoint auction here.

It is a PR4 directory with tons of PR3 subpages. It gets 150 uniques/day and makes $10-20/month with ZERO maintenance. PR tools predict this to reach PR5 next update.

I hate having to sell a 0 maintenance site, but like I said above I have my reasons and they are more important than a Myspace website. The BIN is set to a low $200 thats about 10x monthly rev. I know some of you out there might be interested. So head over to the DP auction and bid it up. I want to see this site end up in good hands.

It’s been about 2 months since I launched my Florida Gators forum, Gator Envy. It is still my favorite of all the sites I own. The community is growing. The members are awesome. We haven’t had any problems with trolls or spammers. Everyone seems very knowledgable about the topic and willing to help people out.

As of right now there are 109 members and 4,098 posts. My goal by the end of 2007 is to have 1,000 members 75,000 posts. I don’t know if that’s realistic or not. I’m really banking on this site to pick up once football season starts.

Most of the search engine traffic coming in is for ‘florida gator myspace layouts’. That’s not good. It takes the visitors directly to a page in the Fan Zone that has free myspace layouts. While it’s good if they use the layouts because I put a link to Gator Envy in it, it would be much better if my top searches were post topics. People coming in from search engines to find out information about something gator specific are more likely to sign up and post than someone who is coming in just for the myspace layout.

On average we get just over 100 unique visitors a day, with about 40 or more of those returning visitors. Word of mouth is key for this forum. People need to spread the word and tell everyone they know.

To increase posting activity, I will be starting a contest this month. To be eligibile for the prize, all you have to do is average 1 post/day. In everyone’s profile it lists how many posts/day you average. If a member get’s it above 1, they will be eligibile. This might keep people coming back daily to make a post, or they may just post 30 times in 1 day. Either way, I think this contest idea is better than a standard referral contest.

So what’s the grand prize for the winner? An autographed Chris Leak 8×10. Chris Leak was the star quarterback that led the Gators to the National Championship game. He will be drafted into the NFL this April. I haven’t announced the contest on my site yet, I probably will today or tomorrow.

As far as advertisements and making money on the forum…I think I might do my first test run before the NCAA Tourny starts up.

About a month ago I signed up for Advolcano. I’m always on the look out for new revenue streams for this blog. Advolcano is CPT (Cost Per Team) Advertising. From what I’ve seen it’s very similar to Text-Link-Ads. You can put your blog on there as a publisher and advertisers can purchase space on your site. You put a piece of code into your blog and then Advolcano takes cares of the rest.

Yesterday I was surprised to see an email from Advolcano. It said I had a pending application. I looked over the application. It is for Jay Profeit’s blog, and the Advolcano ad can be seen just under my blogroll. The ad will run for 1 week.

I set my Advolcano profile to accept on 1 ad at a time, this way I’m not filling up my sidebar with 8-10 more text ads. The price is $5 per week. I’m surprised that it took over a month to land my first advertiser. I now have $4.50 ( $5 minus a $0.50 fee) in my balance.

Advolcano looks like a nice up and coming advertising company. There are some big blogs using it. And what’s nice is that you don’t have to have a blog to run it. You can use Advolcano on any site. Just as you can publish ads on your website, you can also purchase ads on other websites.

Check minimum is $20 and it doesn’t look like you can do direct deposit. I also can’t find any referral program. But anyways, if you’re looking for a new way to make some cash from your blog, you might want to give it a try.