Obviously the casino side of my business is nowhere near maturity, but I still have enough experience to write this article. Keep in mind that these are all opinions based on my own personal experiences – yours may differ. Ok, let’s get into it:

Search Engine Traffic

There is definitely more search engine traffic on the poker side of things. I knew this going in, but it has become really evident to me in the past month or two. Even some of the bigger terms in the casino market really aren’t that big. My Internet casino site ranks towards the top for some decent keywords, and the traffic has yet to impress me.

Content Ideas

One aspect I’ve really struggled with on the casino side of things is coming up with enough content ideas to build a massive site. I’m just under one hundred pages now, and am running low on ideas that still fit in with the site’s theme. Poker is much easier for me – just writing about poker strategy can add hundreds if not thousands of pages to a site. This is a stark contrast compared to, say, Pai Gow Poker strategy, which is basically one or two pages unless you really stretch it out.

I know there are some big casino sites out there, but I don’t want to add thin content just to get bigger. I think I can get this site to 150, maybe 200 pages in time without adding sub-par pages.

I think the real issue is that poker offers a lot of content topics that are opinioned, whereas casino stuff is almost always factual. There is only one correct way to play your video poker hand, while there are dozens of “correct” ways to play a Texas Hold’em hand, all of which can be discussed on your website.

That being said, I’m sure that once I start to see more keyword referrals I’ll be able to come up with a bunch more good content ideas.

Player Value

This is the real reason I got into casino affiliating. Everyone I’ve talked to at conferences told me I was crazy not to be in the casino market, because that is where the real money is at. So, what’s the verdict so far?…

Basically, I haven’t seen it. My average player value so far is around $200 on MGR, which is pretty good, but isn’t quite what I was looking for. I think as I get more players and have more time to let them play, I will see something more like $300 or $400 average value per player, which will more than make up for the lesser traffic numbers.

Plus, I have yet to recruit any “whales”, so if/when that happens my average player value will go up significantly. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Link Opportunities

The final major difference I’ve come across in the poker and casino markets is the link opportunities available. I find it much, much easier to acquire poker links than to acquire casino links. This is largely due to me knowing a lot of poker webmasters who are willing to link out to my sites, and not knowing many casino webmasters in general.

Also, emailing casino webmasters to discuss their site is very hard, as many casino websites are outdated and the contact emails aren’t checked (or maybe the people just don’t care).

What do you guys think? Have your experiences been different? I’d love to hear your thoughts, so Skype me or comment on this post if you like.

About three to four months ago my brother got me into trap shooting. In case you aren’t familiar, it’s where you shoot clay targets, known as birds, out of the air. Let me note that I had never shot a shotgun in my life prior to this. After going to the local gun club for the first time, I was hooked.

I have since gotten into two additional forms of target shooting, skeet and sporting clays. If I ever get around to getting a video clip of myself I’ll make sure to post it so you will have some idea of what I’m talking about.

I’m actually surprised I got so interested in this sport. I have never hunted and probably never will. It’s probably a combination of wanting to get better and the feeling of getting a perfect round that really keeps me hooked. Of course having the club filled with friendly people, all willing to help out and provide tips, is another bonus…even if they are all 30+ years older than myself, lol.

Biking

Another hobby I’ve been getting back into is biking. I’m basically just trying to get some more exercise and lose weight with this hobby. It certainly beats using the elliptical indoors.

Golf

I haven’t been golfing in over a month (due to a back injury), which is quite a drought given the fact that I was golfing almost every day at one point this summer. The time off from golf has actually been a good thing, as I am spending a lot more time in the office. I’m sure I’ll be back out there before long and I imagine it’ll be more of a weekly activity than a daily activity.

As expected with the increased work load, a lot is getting done and things are really starting to take shape. I recently acquired a domain I am really excited about and am in the process of acquiring another. At this point, I don’t think I would even consider developing a domain if it’s not an exact match. I am going to have a lot of work to keep me busy for a while.

As far as my posts about weight loss, that hasn’t gone nearly as planned. I haven’t lost weight and just haven’t been able to stick to a consistent diet. I still want to drop 40-50 pounds and have some plans to try again very shortly. Hopefully the next time I update the blog, I will be down 15-20 pounds.

I’m going to get up early and get to the office at a normal time, roughly 8am. When I get called to golf or whatever I’m into at the time, I am going pass unless I’ve already gotten a bit of work in for the day (I’m sure exceptions will be made, but not on a regular basis). As much as I like golfing, I can easily golf around work hours (just like the rest of the world does).

Another issue I need to work on is time management. Sometimes I’ll work with great efficiently, yet other times I’ll go to the office with something on my mind which will pull me from work and often from the office. It’s time to buckle down and take action! Fortunately, I’ve put in enough work to develop new sites like gamblingsites.org and a new blackjack site I’ve been working on. I’ve got some other domains sitting on my hands that need developed as well.

Time to Take Action!

Bottom line is it’s time to take my business to the next level. Look for a lot to happen in the near future as I plan to work 5-10 times more than what I have been per week for the past 1.5+ years. That may seem like an unreasonable amount, but I figure I’ve worked an average of 5-10 quality hours per week over that time span. My goal is to work 40-50 hours a week, which I have more than enough time for as I don’t have a wife or kids! Assuming I get to the office at 8, that gets me home at 5ish on weekdays. No where near an unreasonable schedule at age 21!

Some of this may seem like ramble, but part of it was for me. From time to time I will make sure to come back and read this post to help me along my new schedule. I really don’t think this will be hard once I get in the groove, as I use to work quite a bit. I simply need to get back into the entrepreneur mindset. I hope this post can provide at least a little motivation to anyone in the same boat as myself.

Niagara Falls Trip Report

Figured I’d squeeze this in here rather than make a separate post. First off, thanks for everyone that had a hand in making this happen. It was a great weekend and turned out to be a great event. Dinner Friday night at the Watermark was great – I’m just glad I wasn’t paying the Bill! The SEO session on Saturday turned out to be quite interesting. Dinner that night was at a Brazilian restaurant, where I ate plenty. I couldn’t let Mike, Tom or Zeko out eat me! Shortly after dinner we worked our way to the Bodog party, which turned out to be a lot of fun. That sums things up VERY briefly.

Graham and I also took a helicopter tour from Vegas to the Grand Canyon, which was stunning to say the least. Besides the Grand Canyon, just flying in a helicopter over the Las Vegas Strip and Hoover Dam where quite the sights.

The rest of the tip was a bunch of networking with other affiliates, which lead to some new motivation and got me thinking about how I’ve been running my business vs how I need to run it (aka increase my hours!). I always get extremely motivated after these trips.

I actually couldn’t wait to get to work so I put some time in while I was there. After seeing the domain that Jon Holloway landed, I got motivated to find some exact match domains for future projects. I just picked up a few that I can’t wait to develop, I just have to make sure I don’t start a project then leave it for the next one before finishing. Mike Wittmeyer just wrote a great article on this called: Ready for Summer, Multiple Sites or One?

What all this is going to come down to is execution. If I don’t put in the time and effort into my projects, they simply won’t go where I want them to. I am back to an early work schedule which helps me stay focused. Some of my current projects are starting to take shape, which have me super motivated as well.

Unfortunately, while writing this I just made plans with a friend to go golfing. I guess I’ll have to put work on hold until tonight.

To update a previous post about my 50 pound challenge, I hate to say…but it’s not going too well! I’ve lost on a few pounds, which is better than nothing but nowhere near the 50 I’d like to lose. I’m going to stick with it and try to get back in the groove of dieting.

Moving was a breeze since it was right next door and my dad came to help me move the desk. The difficulty came when I had to get my internet switched over. I never come to expect much from tech support these days. I’m lucky to get a person I can understand! Anyways, I called to get my Verizon internet switched over and everything went just fine and had a scheduled date to get the new service. The tech came on time and everything got set up properly. My internet was working just fine and was set up with my router.

I come in the next day and of course nothing is working. After 75 minutes with tech support, we got nowhere. They concluded that my router (third party hardware) is faulty…of course. So I ended up ditching the router and went directly to my computer from the modem since I no longer have more than one PC here. Unfortunately my neighbor was using my wireless, so she’s out of luck there.

That wasn’t too bad all considering. Where the real problem came was a week or two later when I called to cancel my internet from my old office. You would think it would be a simple call, right? Me too! Well I call to cancel and tell them to cancel the old service, etc. Well, while I was on hold (I believe they were deactivating the old internet at this point) I got disconnected and didn’t feel like calling back since it should have been taken care of anyways and I didn’t want to go through the entire process of getting an agent and explaining what happened.

A few days later my internet stopped working so I had to make yet another call to tech support. I was told that my internet had been canceled (for the new office rather than the old)! I didn’t think much at the time because I figured they could just re-activate it on the spot. I was wrong…They said they had to order all new service and have a tech guy come out and activate the line, which would put me out of service for a good week or two! Needless to say, I wasted a lot more time on the phone at this point, and was at least told that they would try to rush my service since this was a mistake. LOL, I’ve heard this before.

Anyways, long story short…My internet randomly started working again a day or two later. Now, I am all set and got my new A/C installed so should be all set for the rest of the summer. I will get some pics up once I get this place cleaned up a little bit.

Finally got around to the pics! Notice I’m in the penthouse of the tallest building in the city (7 stories!) – LOL

Update: I ended up getting faster DSL service for cheaper since Verizon canceled my service while I was on a promotion that is no longer available. In the end it all worked out, but I still spend way too much time on the phone with tech support, which I’m sure cost me much more money than if I had the internet and had been working.

Anyways, I’ve been working on some newer sites recently and have been in the search for links.  There are plenty of ways to get links out there, but today I’m going to discuss building links using your competition.  We all know how many emails it takes to get a couple quality links when just randomly emailing sites. Seeing what sites are linking to your competition can really make things easier.

With so many sites out there not willing to give out links (exchange, purchase, content for link, etc), your chances will be much higher of getting a link when they are already offing them to other sites. However, what I’ve been seeing in the gambling market especially, is many of these sites are just link farms are are sites you want to stay away from. I’ve had much better luck when using this method in the dating market.

Pick one of your keywords and Google it to get the results. Any of the top sites will work and you will probably want to look at multiple sites. After you’ve pick a site you’re ready to search Yahoo for the incoming links to that domain. That is done simply by putting “link:www.domain.com” into Yahoo search. Assuming the keywords are somewhat competitive you will probably see quite a few results come up.

There you go, a list of sites linking to your competition (most of which are probably related sites). I suggest sending a simple email to the site asking for what you are looking for. Just remember to look at the sites to make sure they are quality sites and not just full of links that clearly look like they are being sold. You don’t want to get a bunch of links from sites that clearly sell advertisements in the form of links. You never know if/when you site will get tagged by Google.

I plan to cut out a lot of the junk I eat, even eliminating most of the steak.  I recently bought an elliptical and will be working out on that every morning to go along with a smaller, healthier diet.  And once it warms up (if that ever happens!), I’ll get back to regular biking which is something I started last summer.

I weighed in at 200 pounds this morning and plan to reach 150 – 160, although I don’t remember what I look like at that weight.  I’m pretty sure I won’t be too thin at 150, but I’ll know once I’m a bit closer and will change my goal accordingly.

I am really determinded this time around and am ready to get the weight off once and for all.  I will be keeping a sheet to help me track my progress and how often I work out.  I’ll keep you updated on the progress a few weeks at a time.  This time around I don’t want to set a date that I plan to have the weight off simply because it hasen’t worked for me in the past.  I’d have to worry about losing weight at a certain pace, which would be VERY discouraging if I was got slightly behind schedule.  I simply plan to cut down the calories and increase my exercise, which has proven to work for me.

Anyways, it was so nice getting away from the weather in NY for a week.  I stayed at a timeshare resort in Orlando, which provided a really relaxed environment.  I went to a few dinner shows, which are one of my favorite things to do there.

In case you don’t know me very well, I am a huge car fan.  My brother and I went to an exotic car show where they had two Ferrari Enzo’s, two Bugatti Veyron’s, a Ferrari 599, a SLR McLaren, and much more.  The polished Veyron is a special edition costing 4 million dollars.

It’s was a fun week, but as always it felt good getting home especially after getting up to catch my 6 am flight!  I’m looking forward to getting back to work Monday and have a lot to take care of.

I am hoping to move into my new office sometime this month, but that all depends when the previous renter gets around to moving out.  I’m only moving next door to my current office to get something bigger.  I’m thinking about putting a pool table in there to help take my mind off work once in a while, but we’ll see how that goes.

Not too much in this first post, but I plan to update the blog pretty regularly.  However, I think we all know how that goes.