Welcome to Part II of my State of the Union Address. If you missed yesterday’s intro, I decided to post updates on how some of my networks sites are doing. Let’s continue.

Tebow Zone
This is a fan site dedicated to my favorite Gator, Tim Tebow. We have a daily blog, videos, pics, and more… pretty much everything you’ll find in a fan site. During the prime of college football season in 2007, Tebow Zone was ranked as high as #2 for “tim tebow”. Now it has dropped down to like #8. Traffic is hurting some because of it. This site is a great earner when it is ranked #3 or above, but not so much at the bottom of page 1 in Google. Before college football starts in September 2008, I really need to get this site back up in the rankings. Other than that (and posting almost every day), there isn’t much else to this site.

Philip Rivers
Another sports fan site I own. It does OK during football season because it is ranked high in Google for the search term Philip Rivers. In the offseason it’s dead, but during the season it gets 150-200 uniques/day… even more if the Chargers are winning or Rivers is having a good fantasy season. I don’t put too much into this site, and don’t expect too much out of it. Besides posting daily during the season, I think a redesign before the NFL season kicks off might be in order. A redesign will help with ad positions and general usability.

Harvin Zone
See Tebow Zone.

Mass Effect
One of my newly acquired fan sites for the Xbox 360 game Mass Effect. Believe it or not, in the two months I’ve owned this site it has pretty much made me back what I bought it for. I knew I got an awesome deal when I bought it. And best of all, this site has become the number 1 referring site to Mass Effect Forums and no doubt has contributed to the forums growth. I’m not going to do much with this site other than keep up with the posting. It gets a solid 100 uniques per day, and could be double that if it gets on Page 1 of Google.

Assassins Haven
The other newly acquired video game fan site. Assassin’s Creed news has been dying down some so it’s hard for me to keep up with the posts. There is still a sequel (and possible trilogy) in developement so I don’t have anything to worry about. In time I’ll be provided with more material. This site has also proved to be a great buy. It gets about 500 uniques/day and earns about $30+ a month in Adsense. This site will have paid for itself in another 2-3 months. A possible redesign may be in the future, but for now I’ll concentrate on adding content and building backlinks.

I have so many other websites, I just don’t have time to write updates on them all. If I didn’t mention them in yesterday or today’s post it doesn’t mean that they are dead sites or don’t get traffic/revenue… it just means that they may not be top priorities for me. Some sites I just care more about than others.

I’m not the President of the United States, but I am the President of my small network of sites. I haven’t done this in awhile, so I wanted to just run down some of my website and give everyone an update on how things are going, sort of a State of the Union Address that the President makes every year.

This will be a two part post since I have quite a few websites I want to talk about. Doing it all in one post would be too much to read, so be sure to check back tomorrow for part II.

Pimp Myspace
One of my longest running myspace resource websites. Took a big hit by Google five months ago and has still yet to claim back into the rankings. I still add new content to it every now and then to keep things going in case one day it returns back to glory. The site is very consistent right now with traffic and earnings. I have no plans of selling it.

Myspace Tweaks
Another myspace codes site I owned that suffered from the infamous Google murder. I also update this site often with new content and have recently tweaked with the page titles in hopes it helps bring back some Google rankings. This site is also consistent with traffic and revenue. A redesign may be in the future if the rankings come back.

Fight Song Lyrics
This is as automatic as a site can come. I’m talking absolutely no maintenance. I haven’t updated this site in 2 years or more. It’s a great site for people to check out the lyrics to their favorite fight songs. I think it’s my oldest site now, running on 3+ years. It’s very consistent and has always been there for me. During football season it’s a great earner. I have no plans to redesign or sell this site.

Gator Envy
I see big things for Gator Envy in the future. Right now the forum is a little slow (maybe only 15-20 members online a day), but that’s because football season is over and the Gators didn’t make the NCAA Tourney. During football season last year it averaged 30+ members online a day and probably 500 uniques/day. Once Vbulletin 3.7 goes gold, I will be upgrade my current vb 3.6.4 to 3.7. I’ll also be changing the forum to a fluid width, which will allow me to place side columns on the forum home (this means more ad spots). There will always be Gator fans, so I really don’t have any plans to sell this site. I’m going to keep marketing it (it’s almost on page 1 for “florida gators“) and let it mature over the years. By the end of 2008, I want to have 1200-1300 members and 50,000 posts.

Mass Effect Forum
This forum has really started picking up over the last two or three months. Traffic is steady and memberships are on the rise. I have a great moderator and no problem members. The forum currently averages around 20 members online per day. Right now there are 300+ members and 6,000 posts. I really wouldn’t be surprised if this forum overtakes Gator Envy in popularity by year’s end. Mass Effect is a big time game and is part of a trilogy, so that means this site will be popular for at least 4 more years… maybe more. The only problem I’m having with it is I can’t seem to figure out how to make money off it. It makes a few bucks a month in Adsense and that’s it. The audience is mostly teenagers who are web savvy… so they don’t click ads. Over the summer I want to get a custom design for the site and upgrade to Vb 3.7.

That’s it for today. Be sure to check back tomorrow for the State of the Union Part II. If you want to see my entire network of sites, look in the sidebar.

I rarely browse the non-marketplace forums at DigitalPoint, but this morning I found myself looking through the business section and stumbled upon a thread titled “why do you want to make money online?” A very interesting question. It made me stop and think about what my reasons are. Before I get into my own, I’m going to post a couple of responses from the forum members.

GrAveTzT said:

“I want to make money online because I don’t like my job or working in general. The working world is tough because there are so many people that I have to watch kissing butt or manipulating their way to the top of a company while I work like crazy. Good workers do not get anything in return. It’s the cute girl or some talky person who gets ahead. Its a horrible thing but happens everywhere.”

Nickswift said:

“so i can sit at home in my underwear.”

Toytown said:

“I do not have the capital to open a brick and mortar location yet. I want to be my own boss. I want to work doing something I am very passionate about.”

Chathura said:

“I am a married person. I have one child. I am working as a document controller. But cost of living is very high. So earning are not enough. So i need to make money online.”

So I wonder what the percentage of people who make money online for a living is vs. the number of people who make money online just for supplemental purposes? It’s clear though that not everyone makes to make money online just for financial freedom or they hate work a “real” job. Some people just want a little bit of extra cash to support a family. Or maybe just fun money.

Right now, I want to make money online so I can continue to live my current lifestyle. My online earnings do not support me. I do not need this money to pay my bills and buy groceries. I use it for savings and stupid luxuries we think we need. I feel similar to toytown above. I want to open a brick and mortar store someday and do not have the capital for it. I want to make money online so it can fuel other business opportunities.

I was a big fan of eBay like 5 years ago. I have sold over 100 things on eBay, mostly just random junk and old video games I don’t play anymore. However, over the past year or two I have been relying on Craigslist more and more to sell unwanted household items. I’m not saying this will ever happen, but it wouldn’t shock me if one day Craigslist had a larger marketshare than eBay. If I’m not mistaken, eBay also owns a stake in Craigslist… so that could factor into things as well.

What makes Craigslist so much better than eBay in my opinion is that there are no shipping fees to pay! You can buy and sell everything to local people who will meet you somewhere to exchange items. In just the last year I have sold two couches, end tables, a coffee table and a 48″ projection TV. And I did all that with out ever leaving my house. People just come with their trucks and pick the items up. It’s great!

And not only is Craigslist a place to buy and sell merchandise, but you can also look for jobs/services or join in the discussion forums. Another big thing on there is finding houses for sale and condos/apartments for rent. I think I found my first place to rent after college by browsing Craigslist. It is easily one of the best websites created in the last decade.

One thing that surprises me about Craigslist is that they haven’t found a big way to monetize the site yet. Their whole mission is the provide free classifieds for everyone, but at some point you have to think that they’ll want to cash in on everything people are buying/selling. When was the last time a website didn’t cash out?

If you’re not using Craigslist, and you’re still hawking items on eBay, then you’re seriously missing out. Not only do you not have to worry about shipping items or paying listing fees, you also have a pretty good chance to make more profit for items sold. eBay is so saturated that you won’t get fair value for your items.

Ok Bloggers… I’m a bit disappointed that as of right now we only have 4 people in the 2008 Bloggers NCAA Tournament Pick’Em Contest. We had 10 people last year, and only 4 this year? Shame on you!

What do you have to lose by signing up? Nothing. What do you have to gain by signing up? Free links and bragging rights!

You don’t need to even be a college basketball fan to sign up. All you need is a Yahoo account. You have only two days left before brackets have to be turned in, so step on it!

Click here for more details on how to sign up.

It’s been 5 months since two of my website were murdered by Google. Can you believe after all this time, I still don’t have my rankings back? I’m starting to think that they will never come back. Perhaps the domains were blacklisted and won’t ever be the same. This would mean that I need to scratch the websites and rebuild the same content just on to a different domain.

For those of you not in the loop, my then two biggest websites were penalized by Google. They weren’t completed banned, but they were penalized big time. I lost all my big keywords and went from getting a ton of Google traffic to now very little. I never found out the exact reasons for the penalty. I speculated it could have been using TLA on the websites, or even linking to ba neighborhood sites.

I took the necessary steps for reinclusion many months ago and have just been patiently waiting. I’m getting tired of waiting though.

I remember those days before the penalty was put on me. I was on my way to making $xxx a day easy. I was excited, motivated and have a lot of fun doing this. Since the penalty, my earnings have slowly dropped every month and I feel completely helpless. I’ve lost motivation and it’s not always fun for me.

I’ll keep working at it though. Keep staying patient in hopes some day soon Google will restore my rankings.