In today’s post I wanted to take the time to revisit some of my old websites. Some of the sites I’ve either started from scratch, or purchased, but for some reason had to let them go…whether it was a need/desire for money or because of boredom with the site. There are some great deals, and as I look back there are some regrets. A few of these sites I owned before I started blogging, so you may not have heard of them before.

JaxForum - My first forum was a local community site for the city of Jacksonville. It had a couple hundred members and over 10,000 posts when I sold it. I sold it for only like $300 back in March 2006. Now it’s changed hands a few times and is filled with phpbb spam. I definitely regret selling this one.

Historum - I regret selling this one too, but at the time I needed the money. The site was getting too hard to be run. I was running out of thread ideas, however having such a niche forum is very valuable. The forum is still somewhat active. I guess it’s been 8-9 months since I sold it. The new owner transfered it from phpbb to vbulletin and adding some nice additions.

Sportslitter - This was the first site I ever made, and the first site I ever sold. I think I had nearly 200 original posts. I sold it for like $60 on Namepros. Man did I get ripped off. However, at the time I was so excited because I was a newb and didn’t even know I could make money selling websites. Having a blogspot domain sucks, but if I would have kept it I’d have nearly 2 years of blog posts on it. Probably readership in the thousands.

Fan Sites - I have made a ton of fan sites over the years, mostly for athletes. A-Rod, Barroids, Clemens, Yao … you name it. If I would have kept them all instead of selling them for like $50-80 a piece I would have a huge network of 20+ fansites bringing in a steady online income.

Sonic Wild Fire - I really loved this site when I started it. I actually owned a domain .com to the exact video game title, Sonic Wild Fire. Unfortunately, SEGA changed the name of the game 3-4 months later and I luckily was able to sell the site for about $250. The new owner was a big time Sonic fansite owner, so it still complimented his network.

MVP Times - A Pligg powered soprts news site. I don’t regret selling it for $100 because the guy I sold it to has become a great friend of mine. The relationship we’ve built because of that sale on NP is worth a lot more than the $100 he spent on the site.

Pet Cookies - One of my greatest flips. The site doesn’t look the same now, but I purchased this site, domain, and ebook content for $10. Within 24 hours I flipped it on DP for $100 even. Not a bad turn around for 0 work.

Well, we hardly scratched the surface of previous sites I’ve owned. I’ve made some good money selling sites in the past, but of course there are those regrets. Those few sites that had I have kept, would increase the value of my current portfolio 10 fold.

 

I was tagged again by Khalid and Matt. This is one I think I’ve done before, but I’ll go ahead and post a few more. It’s facts about me.

• Each player must post these rules first.
• Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
• People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
• At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
• Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

So here we go:

1. I have a miniature pinscher at home. I kind of adopted him when I asked Katie to marry me. We are also soon to be the proud parents of a cat next month.

2. I was born in Houston, thus the reasoning behind my obsession for the Astros and Yao Ming.

3. I’m addicted to Starbucks even though it destroys my stomach.

4. I like to gamble. I enjoy playing poker with my friends and I love playing card games at casinos. Even though you lose money a lot of the time, the entertainment value is well worth it. You can spend $200 going to a Jaguar game and it’s 3 hours long, or you can take $200 to a $5 min. blackjack table and last 3 hours. Gambling is all right as long as you know its just entertainment.

5. In elementary school, we had a contest every year called ‘Invention Convention’. Students just had to invent something and do a huge report on it. I won it for my grade level in Kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd grade. Got to go downtown to compete with winners from other schools. My best invention was a pen that had a built in light on it, so you could write in the dark. Keep in mind this was probably 18 years ago. And now you see these pens everywhere!!! If only I had a patent.

6. I like to read. I think it’s funny that growing up I hated to read. Didn’t like reading in school and college. I never read for enjoyment. I only read a book if it was a requirement. Now, I try to a read a book a month. However, most of them are business related, and not fictional.

7. I love playing Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne, specifically Defense of the Ancients (DOTA). I’ve been playing WC3 for about 5 years now. At one point in my junior year in college, my roommate and I were ranked #70 in the world in 2v2. #70 might not sound very higher, but just think about how many people play WC3. I don’t get to play much anymore, but it’s still my favorite game. DOTA is just awesome.

8. I love fantasy football. I spend hours and hours a week researching and reading fantasy articles during the season. I’ve been playing with the same group of guys for about 4 years now, and we’re highly competitive. This will probably be my 7th or 8th year playing fantasy football. I always prepare for the draft. I come with a notebook and spreadsheets. I’ve pretty much made the playoffs every year I’ve played. My best year was 2 years ago when I drafted Shaun Alexander, Tiki Barber, and Larry Johnson (6th round pick because Priest was still their starter until he went down in like week 5). I was unbeatable that year.

Billy Donovan will pick you right back up.

I’ve had an Auction Ads account for a little while now, but haven’t taken advantage of it… until two days ago. I’ve heard good things about Auction Ads. In case you’re wondering what I’m talking about, Auction Ads are those ad units you see on websites that display Ebay products and have a pictures and price of the product.

I have replaced my leaderboard Adsense unit on Gator Envy with a leaderboard Auction Ad unit. Just visit Gator Envy and you will see it near the top. I figured Gator Envy would be the perfect site for Auction Ads. I mean what Gator fan wouldn’t want to bid on products.

So how much do you make with Auction Ads?

When your site’s visitors click on an Auction Ad listing and take an action on eBay you earn cash. Actions are defined as a Winning Bid, a Buy-it-Now or a confirmed user registration. AuctionAds is committed to paying out a minimum of 100% of eBay commission revenue.

eBay’s revenue is usually like 2-4% of the winning bid or BIN. I’m not exactly sure, but when I sell stuff on eBay, the cut is usually a few bucks. The eBay affiliate page says they also pay between $25 and $35 per new user signup. That’s some nice cheese! Sure everyone has an ebay account by now, but you may get lucky with a few signups.
Best of all, Auction Ads isn’t contextual… so that means you can run it in conjunction with Adsense or YPN. There’s really no reason why would shouldn’t slap it up on your website, especially if you have a product related site.

So if you haven’t signed up yet for Auction Ads, go ahead and do it under my account and I’ll earn a bonus 2% of the revenue you earn for the next 6 months! Go to Gator Envy and click the “Ads by Auction Ads” button on my site.

This post is somewhat inspired by Jon’s new buy blog comments service. I already posted my opinion on the service on his blog and many one or two others, so I’m not going to get into it here.

But while I was sitting here reading the posts from other bloggers (Matt) about Jon’s service, it got me thinking. Would you still post comments if you got no recognition for it? Would you still post comments if there was no link field and all that was shown was your name? Would you still post comments if it just said Anonymous and no one even knew it was you?

I think that’s the true test to see if your commentators are truly telling you what they think, or if they’re just out there to self promote. I gets you thinking … would your volume of comments decrease by 50% ? Or maybe more..?

Throughout the life of my blog I’ve always noticed one commentator who has never left a link back to go with his name. Marc has always given me the best advice on my blog. He leaves thoughtful comments, not just one liners. He has given me a sense of direction and encouragement when things don’t go my way. And Marc doesn’t just do this on my blog. I’ve seen him post on others and never leave a link back.

Sometimes I wish he did so I could find out more about him? Maybe he does have a blog, and I just don’t know (so if you do… then tell me!!). But I think Marc is one of the perfect examples of a selfless commentator. He’s surely not doing it to promote himself. He comments because he has something to say.

Now, my blog doesn’t get a lot of traffic. Around 100 uniques/day + my 80 or so RSS subscribers. I have a lot of loyal readers here and I’m confident that most of you would still comment even if you didn’t get a link back. It’s not like my blog is going to send you tons of traffic through the comment field. Blogs like John Chow and Pro Blogger probably do get hit with a lot of self promoters. But that’s just something you have to deal with as your site grows.

So if you own a blog, or comment on this blog, stop and think for a minute… would you still comment, or would people still comment on your site if there was no recognition for it?

I worked on my new site Bass Pictures the other day. It was added to my network list in the sidebar if you haven’t noticed. I started out by searching for a decent free web template. I usually go to OSWD and pick out a design from there. Since they’re open source, you can do whatever you want to them.

I tried to pick a simple blue/white theme. I feel like fishing sites should be kept with that watery feel. However, when I was stripping the footer and sidebar from the theme I downloaded, the header didn’t quite match up. I mean it looks ok, but you can tell it was my first attempt at skinning a script. I’ve never take a script like plogger, wordpress, or phpbb and tried to add a design to it. I’ve always just downloaded premade skins. But since Plogger is so new, I don’t think there are many skins, if any, to download.

So I just wanted to give you guys an update on it. I doubt I’ll keep the design that is on it now. It just doesn’t look right. I should be able to have it complete by the end of this week.

Also on a side note, I think it’s funny that since I made my post last week about Bass Pictures, my BLOG made it to the front page of google for the search “bass pictures”. Check out the SERPs here. I guess my blog holds a lot of weight in Google. If my blog was able to get on page 1, that gives me some hope that it’s not a competitive keyword and I should be able to get my site near the top.

And if you’re wondering … I actually have had some hits to my blog from that keyword