The way I changed blog themes around here, you’d think I was a teenage girl trying on a prom dress.

Those of you who visit this blog regularly will notice that I once again have changed my blog theme. I made my last change like 2 weeks ago. After about a day or two, I got sick of the theme. It just didn’t look professional. It looked like something I would have had 2 years ago.

After a long search I finally found my current theme Bizfresh. Surprisingly, it was a free theme. In my opinion, it’s one of the top free themes I’ve ever seen. The colors and layout of the theme are great and match my style. Anything better then these would have to be paid for, and you all know I’m cheap when it comes to this blog. There are places for my advertisements as well as all the content.

I’d like to remind everyone that I have advertising space available for a very cheap price, so grab it while you can. Also, feel free to contact me or ask me questions. I used to get questions all the time and make posts out of them. By asking me a question, you get a free link back so keep that in mind.

I just recently updated my blogroll and removed some long-time bloggers I had on that list. I didn’t want to do it, but basically if you haven’t posted in 2 months, I’m going to remove your link. The links are there to provide my readers with other blogs that they may enjoy. If you aren’t posting anymore then they probably won’t enjoy your site.

So I’ve got some room open on my blogroll for like 3 more blogs. If you have an established make money online, web entrepreneur, business type blog and want to be on my blogroll, please contact me or leave me a comment here. I’ll take a look at your site, and if I like it, I’ll add it. I would appreciate it if you also added my site to your blogroll.

You don’t need to have a PR5 site or get 500 uniques/day. Just have a nice blog, with unique content.

Yesterday I received my very first Football Fanatics Affiliate check. Football Fanatics is a sportswear shop that is local to where I live in Jacksonville, Florida. They sell collegiate and professional sports jerseys, hats, shirts, and accessories, so naturally it provides a great opportunity for all my sports sites to sell merchandise and get paid commission for it.

Football Fanatics pays out 10% commission on orders. Since I started running their offers on my websites, I have completed 3 orders for a total of $166.85 in sales. That would be $16.69 in commission earnings.

What’s weird is the check I received in the mail yesterday was for only $9. My Tim Tebow site made a $90 sale in May, so I was mailed my $9 commissions for the month of May. It all adds up, I’ve just never heard of a company mailing out checks for such a small amount. Generally you need to make like $50. And something else I thought was cool is the check was actually signed by a real person, not a print out like other affiliate checks we get.

Once football season starts and my traffic picks back up on all my sport sites, I’d ideally like to get my commissions up to $100/month. Right now, I only have links on my sites that say like “Shop”. Once football season comes, I plan on featuring specific products in prominent locations on my site. Or on Gator Envy I could run a hot deal of the week and just feature an item on clearance.

If you’re interested in joining Football Fanatics, let me know and I can get your info to my account manager. I’m not sure if they approve anyone or if they have a referral system.

It’s been a long time since I ran a contest on Gator Envy. I used to run them in conjunction with major Gator sports events like the NCAA Tourney or the Heisman voting. When you run a sports site that focuses on college football and basketball, the summer months are very slow and long. To keep things somewhat active on Gator Envy, I decided to run a contest. The prize is any piece of Florida Gator merchandise from Football Fanatics ($20 limit). I’ll let then winner pick something out, then I’ll buy it and ship it directly to them from the online store.

Contest Details:
Any Gator Envy member can enter. The only qualification is that you make 10 new posts between June 4 and July 4. I will then use a randomizer tool to randomly select a winner.

It’s a very simple contest and we’ve already had a dozen or so people complete the task. The purpose of the contest is just to have fresh posts coming in everyday, which can be tough when there is absolutely no Gator news coming out right now.

The best thing about running the contest through Football Fanatics is that I have an affiliate account with them. So when I purchase the item for the winner, I can buy it through my own affiliate ID and I’ll make commission off the purchase. I only get 10% commission, but it’s still better then nothing.

And on a side note: Gator Envy surpassed 1,000 members the other day. That is a big time accomplishment in a forum’s life. It’s the first time I’ve ever built a forum to over 1,000 members from scratch so I am proud of myself. Once football season gets kicked off, I have a good feeling that Gator Envy will be pushing 50 members online per day and 100+ news posts daily. Right now we’re at 28,430 total posts.

Texas Senator Kirk Watson (Democrat), who is a Barack Obama supporter and campaign rep, got absolutely owned on Chris Matthews. Matthews asks him one simple question: “Name a single legislative accomplishment of Barack Obama.”  Watson is dumbfounded and has no response.

Watson is a guy who is backing Obama and he can’t even list  any of the Senator’s accomplishments. Why? Because Barack Obama hasn’t accomplished anything!

Check out the video of Watson getting owned.

Those of you who have been reading my blog from the beginning are now seeing this site undergo it’s 6th facelift. I seem to update my wordpress themes ever couple of months. Not only do I get bored of seeing the same design every day, but I always feel like I can improve on the functionality and layout of the site.

So you’re looking at my newest design (that is unless you’re reading this post via RSS… in which case I highly recommend you actually visit the site to check out the new theme). This was a free template I found online, you can find a link to the theme in the footer. I change some of the colors, and obviously the header. For now I went with an easy shark picture. Most of you know I love the beach and am fascinated by sharks.

My previous theme had a nice place for a 728×90 advertisement at the top, and this one does not. Since I sold the ad space on June 1, I still have to keep an ad up there. However, once the ad expires (or if the ad buyer doesn’t care), I want to play with the placement of this ad and try to find a new location. It kind of sticks out. But once the ad expires, I may just leave the header clean from ads.

I doubt that I’ll ever get a custom made blog design for this site. It just doesn’t make enough money or have enough traffic to warrant a purchase like that. Free themes are the best, but they’ll have to do for now. Let me know if you like it, let me know if you hate it.