I’m leaving this morning to go on vacation with my wife. We’re actually headed up to Ohio, where she is from, to visit some of her family. This will be my 3rd or 4th trip to Ohio in the last 4 years. Most of the time we spend up there is hanging out with her family that we don’t see often. While we’re up there, her uncle is celebrating his 50th birthday so there will be a big party on Sunday.

One thing we have planned for the trip is a visit to Cedar Point… an amusement park that houses some of the world’s tallest and fastest roller coasters. Cedar Point is about an hour northwest of where we’re staying and it’s located directly on Lake Erie. Saturday, we’ll be going to a Tampa Bay Rays vs. Cleveland Indians game. I haven’t been to a Major League Baseball game in probably 3 years. I think the last one I went to was an Orioles game in Baltimore. It will be fun watching the Rays play because they’re one of the best teams in all of baseball. One final destination I want to make on our trip is to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

In total, we’ll be gone for a week. We come back on Tuesday the 15th. I won’t be posting live while I’m on vacation. I also won’t be working on any of my websites while I’m gone. But luckily we have a nice little friend called “timestamp” on blogs.

Today is July 4th, also known as Independence Day in the United States. Today is a day we celebrate our country’s freedom. Over 225 years ago, our fore fathers drafted the Declaration of Independence and officially declared themselves at war with and independent from Great Britain. The American Revolution would go on for years, until eventually the British were defeated and Americans won their freedom. It was at the battle at Yorktown where Lord Cornwallis got his ass kicked by George Washington.

It is on this day every year that Americans celebrate and proudly show their patriotism. Even though we’re at war today in far away lands, we still don’t forget what they’re fighting for. Freedom. It’s something no one should take for granted.

The 4th of July is often celebrated with massive firework displays, cookouts, parades and family get togethers. It’s one of the best holidays of the year. It is a national holiday in America, so we don’t have work or school. All government offices and most businesses are closed.

The reason why I posted a picture of Mel Gibson’s The Patriot is because I try to watch this movie ever year. Some channel like TBS will probably run it all day, but I’ve got the movie on DVD so it’ll be easy to check out. While The Patriot isn’t as historically accurate as you would hope, it gets the message across and definitely instills that sense of American pride in you.Other great movies to watch on Independence Day include: Saving Private Ryan, Independence Day, and Gettysburg.

Today, I’ll also be hanging out at the pool and grilling out with friends and family. And at night we’ll of course go watch a spectacular fireworks display. I hope everyone has a great holiday, even those of you not in America.

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.

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.

You often hear webmasters wanted to get into a specific niche, then someone else saying “oh, don’t do that… it’s too saturated.” There are plenty of niches out there that have tons of competition (make money online blogs, myspace resource sites, online dating, xbox sites, etc.). The trick is to provide someone unique that the other websites don’t offer. That’s the best way to succeed in a niche that some will say is “too saturated.”

Plentyoffish was able to climb to the top of the online dating niche by providing the visitors something different. Youtube wasn’t the first video site on the web, but it let users easily upload their own created content. John Chow wasn’t the first “make money online” blog out there, but he was able to creatively take advantage of sites like Digg to drive traffic by the thousands.

Remember, some of the most “saturated” niches are the most popular searched niches. So if you can find something to separate yourself from the competition, you will be able to get traffic coming back to your site. There is always a way to attract new visitors to your website, you just have to be creative. And once you get good rankings in a “saturated” niche, you’ll be reaping the benefits of thousands of unique visitors every day.

Maybe I’m just crazy, but I could have sworn like 2 or 3 years ago you could actually go to a webmaster forum like Sitepoint, Namepros, or Digitalpoint and find a quality site for sale. Now, Sitepoint does have a Premium site sale section, but either the websites are $70,000 or they’re scammy sites anyways. Where have all the quality websites for the little man gone?

I have a few theories. One, webmasters who build quality websites just aren’t selling them anymore. Or sites are being sold privately. Seeking out private buyers and sellers ensures that the visitors to the website will be unaware of a sale. This is ALWAYS a good thing. I sold a site once, and as soon as the members found out, they all started spamming the forums cursing me and saying that I’m a sell out. So, now I firmly believe that they less a visitor to your site knows, the better.

Quality sites are extremely hard to build from scratch, so I can also understand why webmasters might be reluctant to let them go. That’s why all you see for sale on webmaster forums are proxies, made for adsense sites, auto blogs, image uploaders, and other crap.

If you’re looking for website ideas. Come up with a way for buyers and sellers of websites to be connected for quality site sales, and for people on the outside to not know what website is being sold.