Was going to write a post but I have slept an average of four hours per night the past week or so, plus this blog doesn’t make me a nickel anyway so I don’t really care. Going to be working a lot tomorrow/today (I guess it’s 7 am already, whatever) though. Added seven pages to (OPSR) site yesterday, wanted to do same today, but went to races (out of need and because I wanted to obv) and get back at 1am-night shot. No excuse Saturday though, a lot to do. Well, probably not a lot, just a lot of crap. GOODBYE!
SEO is a funny thing because it is so complex, yet so very simple at the same time. It can take an eternity to learn, but the basic concepts at work are relatively easy to understand. I have been fortunate enough to work with some very, very smart people who have helped me a ton in many different ways. Of course, I have also spent a lot of time learning things on my own. There is a never ending supply of information on the internet, so no one has an excuse for I don’t know how to do this or that (most of the time, anyway). I mention all of this because I am seeing very solid and steady improvements across the board on my primary sites. It took a whole lot of work, but the results are starting to roll in. I might literally double traffic on one of my sites and it is a very good feeling, because this means I will double said site’s conversions and earnings.
Beyond the general poker type sites, I have also been getting into some non-gaming type affiliate sites. Wow are they easy to dominate. After you shift from gaming to another industry it is like a walk in the park. This only makes sense, though, as obviously gaming is an incredibly difficult area to compete in. If you can find even the smallest bit of success in online gaming, you will be able to completely crush in other areas. Yes, it will definitely take some work (depending on the industry), but the dividends will be much more immediate. This was one of the more surprising things to me. I genuinely expected to wait months to see actual results with these new sites, but this hasn’t been the case at all, quite the contrary, actually. If I wasn’t spreading myself so thin right now I would certainly pursue building authority sites for these different industries that I have started to mess with.
The biggest development since my last post was definitely the founding of my first real retail site. This site (which I would prefer not to link to) already has found some success in its progress and the fact that it has a fair amount of existing stock. If I have ever had a true “million dollar idea,” this would be it. I am going to be working a ton on this company/business over the next six months or so, and hope to see major progress by this time next year. It has seen some moderately large investments already, and the advertising budget will be ever expanding. This is just one of my “end game” type projects, and it will definitely take a lot of work, but that’s no different than anything else that aims to see legitimate results.
As I write this, I have been up for the better part of three days straight. Basically I have slept for one six hour span over the past three days. I don’t know if it’s insomnia, the need to get things done, the never ending desire to improve and build upon what I have created so far, or a combination of all of the above. Whatever it is, I honestly don’t care. People whine about not being able to fall asleep, but that just means that you have more time to do something productive. Don’t bore yourself, don’t do the same thing over and over, just do a ton of different things. For example, I wrote a 1,300 word article for someone else, wrote a few articles for myself, compiled a research intensive email, worked on some SEO on a site, added a few pages to a site, got my folders organized on the desktop, re-wrote the homepage for a project, worked on some link type things, and on and on. That’s a ton of different things, but it never works out that I went all out just writing six hours straight or something like that. Whatever, I like the accomplished feeling I have when things get done.
My sites have been improving, quite steadily, in varying capacities. OPSR is seeing great stability and increases in traffic, where CC is simply establishing itself as a solid site. These would be the two aims at the moment; one site really needs to start to flourish, while the other should only be taking form. Both are coming along nicely, and I have great plans in place for a solid amount of expansion. Aside from these, my projects with others (and CC) should be taking some major steps for the better in the coming weeks and months. Furthermore, I want to see how far outside of gaming I can go, but my ADHD gets the best of me sometimes, and I tend to spread myself too thin. Better to have a smaller amount of fantastic sites than a ton of poor to mediocre sites. However, many people have yet to realize that, not that I care.
As far as poker is concerned, I am pretty sure I simply prefer to be productive than to actually play any poker tournaments or get involved in a cash game regimen. Tilt has been a long-time problem of mine, and I don’t feel like seeking out a cure for it. The fact is that the absolute best poker players in the world make virtually nothing compared to even the top 10% of businessmen in the world. I hate that term, “businessmen”, as people tend to think of some idiot in a suit and tie, but you know what I mean. There are some people making tons of money off of poker, but most of them work in an office, not at the table. I’m sure I’ll play some live events when the opportunity presents itself, but I am not worried about grinding out any type of online poker. For right now, the opportunity cost is far too large. That is about all.
I have been working on what seems like an infinite amount of different projects as of late. Of course, virtually all of them pertain to different sites I am in the process of developing. There is always so much to do, and each task is often so different from the next. One minute I am building a site from scratch, be it setting up hosting and getting WP installed, while the next I am trying to re-work the SEO I did on a site from six months ago. Having a fair amount of experience under my belt at this point, things are certainly much easier. In the future I won’t have to go back and implement redirects on pages/sites that I already built, or re-do some clearly flawed SEO. Now that I have a clearer idea of what I am doing, it is a lot easier to just do it right the first time. I guess that would be where the phrase, “the first million is the toughest,” comes from, albeit on a smaller scale.
Having said that, OPSR has undergone a ton of work over the past month or so. From revamped SEO to the revelation of site maps for more effective re-indexing, the site has a whole new look and feel. Now, from the outside, little has changed. But it is the inside that really matters with a website, contrary, of course, to popular belief. The traffic has been suffocated to the site, largely due to many pages being redirected/eliminated, and the new URLs needing juice passed to them and/or to be indexed at all. I hope by next month to see a dramatic improvement in my prior traffic. My conversions are incredible, so with some added traffic, I would hope to see a significant jump in monthly, weekly, and daily signups. Perhaps I will soon be seeing hourly signups, skipping the daily landmark altogether. It certainly isn’t possible. Need to keep adding good content, improving the site, and on and so forth. I didn’t realize just how intensive it could be to create new images and implement said images into 20 different pages. Much of the tidy work is done now, though, so it is time to wait for some (hopefully) improved traffic and to continue building the site from all angles.
It really is laughable how most poker affiliate programs operate. I thought it was funny when someone said, “At least they have an affiliate program,” in a thread about Hold’em Manager’s awful offering. What do you think this is? They should be wanting affiliates, instead some people are dying for a chance to promote rooms. If you’re an affiliate, you shouldn’t be grateful that rooms want you to promote them, the rooms should be grateful that they have you wanting to push them. It is all backwards. A handful of programs have it right, but only a handful. The rest are a waste of time. I wish I knew who wasn’t worth the effort 9 months ago or whenever I started with all of this.
First we have places like bet365 and Chipleader. They are the best by a longshot, particularly if you are able to bypass the front line support. The affiliate managers are fantastic, and the programs are just great as a whole. Both rooms convert incredibly well, they track properly, back ends are great, and on and on. How the hell hard is it for the other poker rooms to follow suit?
All of the Merge rooms are a disaster. All of them. There is not one exception to this rule. I used to like Sportsbook, but they sent me a check that bounced, didn’t reply to support emails, make me jump through hoops for them to cover the fees I was charged for depositing a bounced check, and so on and so forth. At FTP and PokerStars, anyone who has a bounced check is AUTOMATICALLY credited with $100 for the inconvenience. When you can’t even match FTP’s customer service, that is when you know you are doing something very wrong.
These are the other general set of poker room affiliate programs and how they rank…
Aced-Honestly, just don’t even try.
bet365-The top non US room out there, for poker, casino, or sports betting. They have good AM’s, a wonderful backend, and they convert well.
Cake-Ok, if only because they accept US players. They charge affiliates a ton for player depositing fees, many players don’t track properly, and players often have issues with deposits.
Carbon-Same story as with Aced and any other Merge room.
Chipleader-The best US affiliate program out there, and it is not even close. There is not one aspect where they fall behind any other rooms, except maybe in payouts. Check payments instead of player account payouts would be ideal.
Doyles Room-I had an issue early on with them, but they (the AM) have been great ever since and the site has a solid operation in place.
Full Tilt-Sub-par at best. Good because they have brand recognition, but bad because the backend is terrible, payouts are awful, and support is weak.
Players Only/Sportsbook-The AM’s are typically helpful, but the site is often times a wreck. Are you prepared to make the trade off?
PokerStars-Terrible CPA and rev share rates. Many players don’t convert to RMPs anyway, and when they do you get pennies on the dollar.
Hopefully this helps out some people when they look for a new room to promote.
The local live games were OK for a little, but they play much too small to maintain my interest. 1/2 and 1/3 is as high as they will go. If these games were deepstacked, I could live with it. If players were regularly buying in for $400 or more, it would be quite profitable, especially considering how bad most of them all of them are. The problem with these games is that so many players buy in abnormally short, as in 20bbs or less. This ruins any game. Of course, I take poker much more seriously than most. I play to win, not for the hell of it. Soon enough there will be legit casino poker rooms around here, though, and I will be able to play 2/5, 5/10, and 10/20 whenever I want. Of course, the whole being 20 thing is still an issue, but that will fix itself in time.
FIFA World Cup is not of much interest to me, in fact I really don’t care at all. I’d rather watch a Micro Sprint race than US/England. Soccer just bores me so much, but whatever, I guess I am the standard American in that regard (a title that I would typically detest). However, this is a great time for my bet365 bettors to start betting a lot of their money at one of the best sportsbooks for soccer betting. Hopefully my players get caught up in the hype, most are from Europe after all, and place some big wagers. Aside from this, got some work done with the ringtones site, not much else on the “new site” front at the moment.
Still going to the races as much as possible, and made a trip to Big Diamond last week. Williams Grove yet again decided that it makes sense to cancel way too early, but whatever. Saw the USACs (non winged 410 sprints) in one of the closest finishes ever, something like a .028 time split at the line. Track was way too dusty, though. Wish they had normal 410 races on Sunday’s there, would be pretty nice. Slowly trying to make more of a push for my own car, but certainly isn’t something that is going to happen soon.
Also decided to close my Facebook account. I found myself deleting way more people than I would ever want to had. I get a fair amount of random friend requests from people I don’t know, and that is just stupid. Beyond this, most kids my are damn naive, stupid, etc. Can’t stand the nonsensical status updates, garbage lyrics plastered all over, and general garbage that floods Facebook. Lost in all of this is Facebook’s slow transition into a goldmine for spammers. The whole site is now full of spam and redirects to other websites. Blame the owners/management of Facebook for that one, but also blame the morons who join groups for everything under the sun. Just isn’t worth my time, and plus, what am I really getting out of it? As many others have said before me, if I really need to speak to you, I probably have your Skype/AIM/phone number, so what does Facebook do for me?
My new project is going to be Chip Cage, a multi dimensional site focused on casino, sports betting, and of course, poker. The online gambling site is going to be my biggest yet, but is also going to take a lot of work. I have a lot of creative ideas, but they are going to take quite awhile to fully implement. The home page is up, and I created a few graphics to go along with it. A logo is under construction, and I hope to have it up shortly. I am really going to try and not let my ADD get the best of me with this project. I figure I can cover everything on this site, and while it is starting all over from the beginning, sometimes that is what is needed. My other sites have been doing much better than before, most notably poker site reviews, but they aren’t nearly where I want them to be. Unfortunately, I feel like my other sites have limited potential, whereas this site can be as big as I want it to be. Instead of covering little niches, I want to see if I can cover them all. No, it won’t be easy at all, but the bigger challenge it is, the bigger the potential reward.
As far as poker goes, I have been playing a lot of live poker lately at some local games, in addition to some online play. With the exception of one day, both have been going alright. I got destroyed (it was my own fault) one day playing live, and then lost more online (not my own fault) that same night. It was really just a terrible poker day. Regardless, I am of course going to get back at it. Tonight I am going to be playing live after a day off.
I went to Canada a few weeks ago, and played at Casino Niagara and Fallsview Casino. I did great in the 1/2, and 2/5 games for the first two days that I was there. Interestingly, and unbenkownst to me, Niagara only spread 1/2 games. If I had known this, I probably would have just let my friend play at Niagara, while I played at Fallsview. But, since we were already there, I played a little bit of 1/2 at Niagara as well. I didn’t flop a set the entire trip, and only completed one of my draws, regardless, the players were so bad that I was still up $600 after a couple days. Then, of course, I move up in limits and have KK lose to AA all in pre flop for a massive pot. Nothing I could do about it, though, so I couldn’t be too upset. Canada was a generally boring place that was wildly overpriced, but this was probably due, at least in part, to the current exchange rate. I would need a good reason to ever go back up there, seeing as how many of the people were complete assholes and/or idiots.
That is about all, hopefully I do OK in the live game tonight and am able to make some steady progress with my new (and old) sites.
Decided to go to the Yankees game on Thursday night. We got there just as the game was starting and got a really good parking space on 161st street. Just a walk up some steps, and across the street was Yankee Stadium. You could see the old stadium partially torn down as we drove in. I have been to the new Yankee Stadium multiple times already, so I knew what to expect. It was my first night game, however, and the temperature was perfect. I was hoping Scott Kazmir would pitch better for the Angels, but he didn’t do too well.
The Yankees ended up winning the game 6-2, though the Angels had multiple opportunities to cut that lead, or even take the lead themselves. You can’t leave that many guys on base and expect to win. If you want to read about MLB betting you can see why the Angels shouldn’t have been such a big underdog in that game. Cano and Jeter killed Kazmir, though he had previously dominated them. Can’t win them all, though.
After the game I just headed past Stan’s Sports World and got a bunch of hot dogs. Besides them being better than the ones in the stadium, they are also 5x cheaper (literally). I knew the crowd wouldn’t be too bad, and I don’t really like making people get up during the game, so that was the much easier solution. The ride home was much smoother than the ride in (after you get out of the city, of course), as it usually is. All in all, it was definitely worth it, and I am sure I will go back a few times again this year.
Over the past few months, I have really gotten into sports betting. I have had some success as well. I am still learning some of the ins and outs, but I am positive that my analysis and general picks are pretty spot on. My weak spot is definitely over/under’s. I do the best with moneylines and spreads. The NCAA tournament was successful, but the Kentucky v West Virginia game was pretty killer. I had $400 on Kentucky covering +4. They would have covered this very easily if they even played below average, but instead they had a god awful game. I couldn’t believe how many threes and free throws they missed. I make the same pick every time.
Baseball is the most fun sport to bet on, as you always have a few good games to choose from each day. I usually narrow down 3-4 games that look good, and I typically go for the moneyline. Spreads are so tough in baseball, just because the lines are almost always between 1-2 runs. You push far too many games for my liking. I also feel like a lot of dogs are undervalued. The early season is where I have the biggest edge, but I might learn some things to the point where I am crushing even more part way through the year.
I have started up a sports betting site where I will make my daily picks for free. I analyze each game/match up and then share what bet I am taking. You can check out my free sports picks every day of the week.
Unsurprisingly, I have been back to tilting super hard online. I just realize I will never get that controlled when I play online. In live games I can go for 24 hours straight without too much tilt (or I won’t act on it), but online the smallest hands can really frustrate me. If I was of age I would just be going up to AC as often as possible, but for now I will just need to determine whether I can correct my tilt or to just slow down with the online play. I had been playing everything from HU, to 6-Max, to Full Ring the past week or so, with 6-Max going the best. When I play HU I will open shove for many hands in a row when I get the least bit irritated. Needless to say, this has amounted in solid losses. 6-Max I seem to tilt the less, but I tilt nonetheless. Long story short, it is time for an (online) poker break. There are too many opportunities elsewhere to make it worth grinding out 100NL or 200NL for 40k/year or whatever. I would never even play that much, and it is so not worth it. My goal for 2010 was much more than $40,000, and I will easily make it, but online play has just been holding me back from much more success. I will be playing some 2/5 and 5/10 games when I head up to the casino in Canada in a little, live play is where I love to play and where I do my best.
I applied to ASU (Arizona State University) today. I figured I might as well and am thinking I will get in. Accounting and Pre-Law were the areas of interest for me, primarily because accounting will always serve a purpose. Majors like finance, marketing, and things like that can be quite useless. Accounting is something that I can personally use in my daily business dealings. Do I want to be an accountant? No, not really, but I think accounting (proper accounting) is a very valuable tool for anyone who starts ventures of their own. I have skated by with my own accounting methods for the time being, but some college could definitely put me at the level of a professional.
For the rest of the week I will just be working on my own sites in addition to some video production and writing for others.