Hawkize has been around for over six months now, and we’ve had a little bit of success. Well…it depends on how you define success. If success is righteously pissing off a bunch of Iowa State fans, we are very much a success. If success is giving people with hangovers something to laugh at, we’re probably a success. We haven’t had any success with getting our own club box at Kinnick or getting a building at the university named after us, so we’ve still got room for improvement. We didn’t get an article published in the Daily Iowan either… our site “isn’t good enough”. I haven’t read the Daily Iowan since. But all in all, aside from the DI, some athletic department administrators, and Iowa State fans, people seem to enjoy what we write.

The only monetary investment we made in to this site was our hosting fees and domain name registration, which added up to about $100 for one year. We haven’t spent a dime on marketing. People have found the site mainly from word of mouth (links on message boards, e-mailed articles, conversation, etc.) We dropped some little print ads around campus earlier, but who knows if that helped or not. That’s how we’ve grown so far, and there are a few more things we’d like to get started.

We would like to be more of a presence in the blogosphere. Technorati says that Hawkize.com has the most authority among Iowa Hawkeye blogs. That would make me feel important except that there is only one other site listed. Why do we have no competition?

We’ve got a Facebook group, so if you go to Iowa and love Hawkize, you should join it. If you really want to be generous, you can buy us a Facebook ad. That’s for overachievers though–we’d be happy if you joined the group.

That’s not all–you’re in luck. We just opened a store. Forget about shopping anywhere else. From now on, your one stop shopping experience is Hawkize.com. Here is a sampling of the cool shit you can buy in our store:

We’re especially proud of the “Hawkize me baby!” thong. You can buy a bunch of other Hawkize items in the store. There is a link to our store on the right side under the Pages category. Every item you buy makes a (small) contribution to Hawkize and helps promote the site. Plus, walking around campus in Hawkize apparel solidifies your status as a true Hawkeye fan and all around badass.

Finally, we will gladly accept donations. Anything we receive will go to pay for the aforementioned hosting fees. If we ever get those paid off, we want to buy things that will make our content better. Things of that nature include subscriptions to Hawkeye All-Access, HawkeyeReport, ESPN Insider, etc. We also want to sponsor a tailgate, but that’s going to take some serious fundraising. We’re also open to advertising, so if you own a business and want to reach a demographic of dedicated Hawk fans, we’re your guys.

The bottom line is that if you love Hawkize, you should tell people about it. Thanks for reading our crazy shit.

On Iowa,
Go Hawks!