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The Gold & Silver Affiliate Market

Jeremy — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 06:20:42 GMT

I know a lot of people have been asking me what I've been up to lately since I've been a bit quiet on PAL this summer. Typically I don't like to share a lot of my outside ventures in public, but this has been a fun ride, so what the hell. PAL is my home, and I consider this community like family.

I started buying silver/gold a couple years ago as many of you know. I won't go into why and ruin this post though.....lol

Long story short however, naturally when I got into precious metals personally, I started looking for an affiliate program in this market. There wasn't a legitimate one, and it sucked.

So I contacted a company that I buy from www.apmex.com with the idea. Now mind you, this is the largest online retailer of precious metals in the world, they do around $600M a year in sales and are one of only 13 companies that can buy directly from the US Mint.

Fast forward 12 months, and my consulting company has helped them to launch a proper affiliate program on Commission Junction. We did our initial launch at Affiliate Summit East in the third week of August. Since then we have brought on over 800 affiliates and had well into six figures in sales through the affiliate program....in 2 weeks. :)

It's a completely different market however though than gaming, and I will never mix the two. But it's been a fun ride so far and I figured I'd share. Getting outside of gaming once in a while can be refreshing, as I'm sure many of you equally know. The precious metals market is on fire right now, so it's fun to be a pioneer on the affiliate side of it.

I am not going to go into all the details of the program or try to recruit affiliates from gaming. But here is a video we made up that gives an overview of what my head is buried in now days. Good times indeed, it's a whole new world and very challenging to say the least.

If there's one thing I've learned over the years as an affiliate; it's that when you have a passion for what you promote, it makes it so much more enjoyable.

Here's the overview video we came up with.

Win the New Wordpress Gambling Theme

Tom — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 15:46:37 GMT

I recently completed the new Flush Theme for wordpress. I developed it because I thought it would be great to use on a niche specific gambling site. Say you wanted to create an Omaha niche related site, you could easily create a nice landing page from this theme for it.

PAL users use the code: flush75 to get the theme for only $75.

I am offering one free theme that will randomly be drawn from the surveys below. If you already bought the theme I will credit the money back to you if you win.

Just answer the questions below and respond to me by PM or email: Thomas at flytonic.com. Entries needed by Sept. 2 and I will announce the winner on the 3rd of Sept.

SURVEY

General Wordpress Questions

1. How would you characterize your experience level with using wordpress? (Are you a beginner or do you have knowledge of programming/customizing themes?)

2. What are the main plugins that you use and their functions?

3. What would you like to see customized as a theme option, perhaps instead of using a plugin? Example: Maybe you would like theme to have its own SEO options instead of using a plugin for it. Perhaps you would like to easily edit the width or maybe the background of the theme instead of editing code.

4. What is the main thing you look for when buying a theme, what really sells you on it?

Casino / Gambling Related

5. What types of items do you regularly use on a review page for a casino/poker room, like site logo, site screenshots, etc?

6. What fields do you use in a bonus/ top sites table, like review link, logo, site name?

7. What type of theme would you like to see created, what niche inside the gambling industry?

8. Name a widget that you would love to see created for your gambling site even if you are not sure it is possible?

These answers will help me develop future themes, thanks - much appreciated!

Scaling A SEO Campaign.

cernus11 — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 14:38:16 GMT

I wanted to talk about scaling an SEO campaign because I feel that a lot of people are already doing the right thing but aren�t taking full advantage of the resources available to them. Scaling anything in business is how you make small business big business so it is only sensible that with SEO you can do the same thing.

You need to look at the things you are already doing and seeing how you can improve this process to make sure you are using your time the most efficiently. I only promote link building methods that have longevity, yes you can get 1000 links in a day but none of them will stick and this is a very risky business model.

Article Marketing � So you are submitting your articles to the big article directories to get links back to your articles. This is fantastic and a great way of building authority to your sites for a number of different keywords.

So how do you scale article marketing?
Easy, start using an article spinner to make HIGH quality spins. Article spinning is process where you rewrite the same article to create 50+ unique copies of that article that you can submit around the web. To give you an idea of time frames, it takes 30 minutes to write a 500 word article, a further 1 hour to do a high quality spin and the result of that are 50+ articles that you can submit to article directories. If you spend the time making a HIGH quality spin you will get accepted around the web and give you decent link juice.

Blog commenting � Whatever anyone says blog commenting works, again I only advocate high quality blog commenting. No one likes blog spammers and this is not what I am advocating, when I answer a blog I look at the post and try to add some value.

So how do you scale blog commenting?
There are two ways you can do this or even combine the two, either pays someone to do it manually from a site like fivver.com which is extremely cheap to outsource too. Or get a program like blog commenter Daemon to really shorten the process of finding the blogs. What I did was set up one of my employees up with blog commenter Daemon and let them run with it. If you decide to employ someone make sure they are giving out HIGH quality comments because what they write will affect the reputation of your sites in the long run.

Link Exchanges � Regardless of what people say link exchanges are a great way to diversify your link portfolio and they WILL improve your rankings. With link exchanges make sure your site is a quality one and make sure you are exchanging links with quality sites. You must also make sure that each of your exchange requests are completely unique and not just a copied and pasted message.

So how do you scale link exchanges?
Link exchanges are a harder link building method to scale because you need a personal touch. The way I have ramped up my link exchange successes is looking at my competitor�s links page. You can almost guarantee that a lot of links on your competitor�s links pages are doing link exchanges. This means that you KNOW these sites will link exchange and when you contact them you have a much higher success rate.

Directory Submission � Directory submission is another great way to diversify your linking portfolio. You will see a change in rankings by getting these links and they are one of the easiest methods to scale.

So how do you scale directory submission?
You can do a few different things, you can either hire a service to do directory submission for you which works but is not my favourite method. I prefer to use a free program such as Digi Xmas, it is a fantastic tool that will give you a massive list of directories to submit your site to on semi automation.

Thank you for reading and I hope it this article has at least sparked a new idea for you guys to really start to scale your business.

James Macfarlane

Black Box Approach to Affiliating

Sebastian — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 08:30:09 GMT

Hey Guys,

I've been scaling my network recently, and having good results. I thought I'd share what I learned over the last few months.

Many affiliates start off with a content & SEO driven approach, which is perfectly sound. They usually rely on a few sites for all their income, and have modest revenue.

I found that taking your network to the next level depends on two skills: outsourcing and scaling.

These two qualities are what set monster affiliates apart from the rest. You probably know who I am referring too. They have networks of hundreds of sites and make 6 figures a month.

Different way to think about affiliating - Forget about SEO :

Rather, think of each site as a blackbox and think in terms of input/output/ROI only. If you think in these terms, affiliating becomes a business equation, and SEO becomes largely irrelevant. For example, instead of improving the SEO of your own site, you could just buy the 3 sites ranking above it. And dominate the top 4 spots of Google for a query.

Here is a great scaling recipe. Scaling successfully means showing an ROI of course.

* Scale by acquisition first
* Scale your new assets by outsourcing

I've been doing both recently with a nice ROI. Last month I bought 6-7 sites, and this month I'm focusing on depth, not on breadth. I'm buying articles for each of these sites, with title tags that will pay for the content and show an ROI.

How to scale on autopilot via acquisition + outsourcing

Let's say you buy a site. With trial and error, you'll get a feel for the variables below:

The input of the black box should be x amount of posts, x amount of links (could be x ezine links, x press releases), etc.. This should give you an ROI in a few months, with around x CPA...

Once you have this down, create a detailed brief, and hire someone you can trust to implement it. Actually have them do everything from end to end (including posting the content.) If your formula works out, and you get an ROI from this, you can rinse repeat, use the income to buy more sites, and build a massive network of strong sites.

When I realized how fast my income was increasing recently, this just clicked in my head. I'm pretty excited to continue expanding this way.

Anyways, feel free to PM me if you have tips about outsourcing effectively.

Back To Blogging

MJ — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 03:15:00 GMT

After a crazy few months I finally decided it was time to get back to blogging once in awhile, I'm in the top five "ADD Affiliates" around here and often have wayyyyy too much going on which leaves me often guilty of either not blogging at all or throwing up half spammy posts which I've been avoiding lately. I'm sure MikeW and JohnH didn't really enjoy having their guest blogs stay as my most recent post for the last six months either so I figure it's time I give an update.

Summer

Wow what a crazy summer this has been, I had 100+ sites that were basically placeholders and literally all of them either sandboxed or were hit hard by the "may day update" from Google. A lot of these were "post it and they will come" type sites but they contributed to my income, imagine having 100 sites each getting 5-10 targeted visits a day going poof - bam - just like that you are down 500 visits a day collectively.

The bad news about that is the cure to the MayDay update is links, and I've found it extremely difficult to build links in scalable fashion. The good news is the we've been seeing all those 10-20 page sites start to come back a bit without much work on our part, I tell ya guys AGE is not to be discounted in this industry, it's damn tough to get a site to break out for big kw's until it's at least a year or two old.

Anyways I spent the summer outsourcing, we built 7 sites to 100-200 pages from scratch, took 15 placeholder sites and brought them to 20 pages, and setup another 100 placeholder sites while I spent the summer on the golf course and on the lake. I'm a bit new to golfing but fell in love with it so I bought a cart and since I live near the country club I just drive it from home - I'm the worst golfer you ever met that plays the most - I started the season shooting 120's and now I'm down to about 95 so I guess the improvement is good but I still suck overall. Anyways it's hard to find people who can play every day like I do so I started playing with 3 retired guys every morning, they've all been members at the club 30+ years and shoot high 70's to low 80's so it helped a lot for my learning curve.

My two year old son also started golfing with us, since it's a "private" club or whatever - we just take him with and let him play a few holes, he loves it - I really need to get some pictures.

Redirection

The big thing that came up this summer was my decision to scale myself out of the gaming market, I have acquired 450 gaming domains since starting two years ago. I will never build all of those and I've grown a bit bored with the industry overall, plus I've noticed since I started building a lot of sites the overall quality of my sites is diminishing, especially as I've outsourced content that rarely goes as "deep" into a subject as I'd like. I plan to keep just 10 domains and sites, as I've jumped into three new industries outside of gaming as well and it's just too much to keep up with it all. The ten sites I'm keeping are "big keywords" and will require my full attention anyways.

Here is a taste of a couple of my new projects:

http://www.bestgamblingsites.com

http://www.bestpokersite.com

http://www.bestbettingsites.com

http://www.onlinecasinosites.com

All need a lot of work, especially in content and design - but we are having a blast building them out. Good god can someone please help me with logos lol.

New Income Streams

While I'm not going to discuss any of them now, we have earnings sites now in 3 industries outside of gaming. The money is not great so far, a few hundred a month, but it's coming from diverse streams and has received very little of my focus compared to gaming. I've come to love the idea of $25 CPA's in a high volume low competition industry compared to $150 CPA's in a competitive industry with less stability, simply put I think I can sell 6 cpa's in other industries with less work than I would need to put in per CPA in poker or gaming.

Finally - An Exit Strategy

At the end of the day nobody could build 450 gaming sites and do a good job at it, so I plan on selling off most of my domains and sites over the next year if there is sufficient interest. We don't need the money, but my "retirement" plans involve flipping houses and I'm driving myself crazy seeing great opportunities out there and being too invested in gaming to make a push at it. I was formerly a contractor before becoming an affiliate and I have secret dreams about pounding nails again for some reason - only this time I want to manage rather than labor myself.

Anyways, this blog is running way too long - it's going to be a crazy year in my world so I hope to start blogging again, but there is a very real possibility I won't be around in a year anyways if all goes well, can you imagine being "retired" under 35? I never could, but I can now. In my next blog post I'm going to give my complete history to how I got where I am now, I'm no baller but I flipped my way up from $10 domains and a site I bought from Prop to where we stand now and I think it might provide a bit of inspiration for new affiliates who feel like they don't have the budget to compete.

Hopefully I'll remember to include all my failures in that post too, because the one thing we surely did wrong through all of this was not concentrating on one site - but I'll elaborate more on that in the next post. I hope this serves as a good reintroduction to blogging for me, I was certainly more successful when updating regularly and really hope to get back to my roots so to speak.

Remembering Allan Leonard: APCW Perspectives Weekly for August 6th, 2010

APCW Anthony — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 16:20:36 GMT

This past week, the online gambling industry lost one of it's best. Allan Leonard, affectionately known as the "Captain", was a well respected and loved member of the affiliate community. His passing was a horrible end for a man who spent his life blessing others with kindness. He will be greatly missed, especially by his many friends in this business.

YouTube - Remembering Allan Leonard: APCW Perspectives Weekly for August 6th, 2010;

Online Gambling Goes Live in Canada! APCW Perspectives Weekly 200th show

APCW Anthony — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 22:19:22 GMT

The 200th installment of Perspectives Weekly looks at the launch (and crash) of the first legal and regulated online gambling site in Canada! Not only that, but Barney Frank brought his new online gaming bill to committee this week! It's one a heck of a show!

YouTube - Online Gambling Goes Live in Canada! APCW Perspectives Weekly for July 23rd, 2010

Creating Multiple Streams Of Income

Jeremy — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 06:35:21 GMT

I know I have been pretty silent lately, aside from getting mixed up in the various hot threads or debates on PAL. But I figured I should make a blog post about what has been on my mind lately...and actually always.

The topic is creating multiple streams of income. This is such an important concept for every affiliate or entrepreneur to understand. Throughout your career, money will come and go. Some deals will be good for a while and then disappear. Sadly, I have had plenty of those experiences in life. The key however is having multiple sources of income to draw off of.

As affiliates and internet marketers, we are in a unique position where we are given this opportunity. I know it's tough when you're busting your ass on one website and seeing dismal results. Of course you have to keep working that project. But always be thinking about the next thing, or what comes next.
Over my career as an entrepreneur I have been very blessed. But I can honestly say that I have had more failures than I have had successes. Luckily the successes have always covered the failures. (Welcome to the life of an entrepreneur with no regards for money :p).

However I have always had my hands in in many different pots, if you will. The older I get, the more I am realizing that this is the key to being ultra successful. I often read back over some of my old posts, and I ran across this today. It is traits of millionaires I know. I thought it would be a good thing to share since I am slacking and haven't been blogging lately.

Enjoy! (Some of you may remember this original post)

1. It�s better to have small equity in several things than big equity in one thing - This really comes down to diversification. You should never put all your eggs in one basket. The key to building wealth is being able to absorb the losses or failures with the big successes. If you�re diversified, one failure should never hurt your overall business.

2. Never spend your own money when there is venture capital or investors waiting in the wings - All the true millionaires I know have at one point leveraged other peoples money or utilized venture capital at some point to build their wealth. Think about it for a second, it makes sense. And it makes even more sense as an investor or VC when you can simply leverage your money on a great idea to give you a nice return for doing no work.

3. Surround yourself with, or hire other brilliant people who can make money for you - Very few of the multi-millionaires I know have done it as a one man show. Most have hired other successful people and simply pay them a salary or a % to make more money for themselves. If you�re �working for the man�, and generating a ton of revenue, then you may understand what I am talking about unfortunately. Most millionaires also are literally making money while they sleep courtesy of someone else�s work.

4. Leverage your existing money to make you more money - There is a truth to the saying that your first million is the hardest. Once you have millions of dollars you can diversify and spread it out to make you even more money. Hence you become one of the people in #2 making money while doing nothing, and growing your wealth just because you have the money to invest.

5. More Money, More Problems (sometimes) - Having multiple streams of income and businesses really creates a lot of chaos in your life. Although it may sound like fun to have your hands in multiple things, every day is a new day of dealing with �issues�. Although the money is great, living this type of lifestyle will never be a 9-5 job. If you want to be a millionaire you have to be willing to put in the hours and deal with all the daily annoyances that comes along with running multiple businesses.

Cake Network Security Alert!

Pokerkeep — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 10:02:59 GMT

Another day, another scandal....

So, a few months ago Poker Table Ratings reported that Cereus Poker Network was using xor data encryption technology which was easily hacked allowing said hacker to view sensitive data in real time. PTR could actually access players hole card information during game play! Cereus fixed the problem by upgrading to the industry standard, SSL encryption, something they should have done years ago...

Well, guess what? They did it again!

This time, it's Cake Network that failed to make the grade. PTR reported yesterday that Cake Poker Network uses a weak xor based encryption mechanism for all network transmissions instead of the industry standard SSL. The encryption key is sent in plain text and can be used to dump data from the datastream to the cake client application.

Hole Cards Revealed in Real Time
PTR reported that while playing at Cake Poker they were able to view players hole cards in real time! Yep, they had super-user capabilities! PTR has reported the security flaw to Cake and has posted a warning on their blog - so far there has been no response from Cake on this matter.

Please, warn your players, every poker room on the Cake Network is open to this hole in their security. Play it safe, don't play on Cake Poker or any of their skins until this is resolved. They need to install SSL encryption before it will be safe to play in their rooms.

It's a sad day for the online poker industry. One would think that after the roasting Cereus took over their lax security, all poker networks would have taken measures to ensure the same would not happen at their networks. I guess not....

Chess and Poker

GFPC — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 05:57:50 GMT

For many years before I started playing Poker I was a chess player. I guess I started playing at around the age of 15 years. My brother who was an International Master in Chess ) a well known member of the Canadian Olympic Chess Team) was always studying different positions on our kitchen table and I could not for the life of me figure out why he loved the game so much.

Well at around that age I opened my first chess book. I was hooked! My first 20-30 games were with one guy i thought i could beat. He beat me every game and this lead me to continue to learn more and more and find anyway to beat him. One day I did!! Since that game he never beat me again. That was my start to playing serious competitive chess.

Unfortunately my brother passed away in 2004 from a long serious illness with Cancer and around this same time we often spoke about Poker. I recall stories of his glory days playing poker and always enjoyed discussing poker with him.

It was at that time I started playing online poker. Its just to bad he is not still around for us to share poker stories but i always feel his presence.

I have always wanted to write a peace on Chess and Poker but never got around to it. A member here Ed who was recommended by Dealer Dan said he could write me up a nice article. It really is a nice peace of work. So i wanted to share it.

In dedication to my bro who passed on August 3, 2004-He loved both games.

Chess and Poker

Cheers

California Poker Dreamin' : APCW Perspectives Weekly 2 July 2010

APCW Anthony — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 14:44:31 GMT

This week the talk of legalizing online poker got serious, and it met with some serious opposition. Also, could we soon see specific domain extensions for internet gambling sites?

YouTube - California Poker Dreamin' : APCW Perspectives Weekly for July 2nd, 2010

Summer = Poker Affiliate's Nightmare

KevinMcC69 — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 01:56:19 GMT

Man is it ever tough to work in the summer! I had big plans for this summer to get a lot of work done, but it hasn't happened so far. I'm a big believer in having fun and "living life" so I don't feel to bad about it - I just hope I can continue growing my business at a reasonable pace over the course of the next couple months.

I managed to do pretty well with the World Cup on my sports betting sites, but didn't work on much the past 2 months besides that. I finally got back into the poker side of things after selling my network with two new sites I am working on (Downloadable Poker and UB Referral Code). My casino sites all dropped after the google update which was a bummer - I am thinking about selling off some of them as they are great converting domains and have nice pr and age but I am up in the air with that in case they start ranking again. I think my best bet right now is to focus my energy into The Sports Geek and turn it into a big site with lots of repeat visitors.

Anyways, the purpose of this post was just to rant about how hard it is working on a computer in the summer - after a couple nights partying in Ottawa for Canada Day and the long weekend I am heading out again tomorrow to visit a buddy in Calgary and to party at the Calgary Stampede. My liver is going to be hurting when I get home that's for sure. I won't be around the computer too much while out there, so sorry if I'm late to responding to PM's or messages.

Anyone been to the Stampede or going this year at all?

Where have I been you may ask!

ColinA — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 17:28:27 GMT

Hey PAL,

Well as many of you know, I have been a pretty regular face here at PAL since the site opened a few years ago, and have always been a pretty big believer in bringing the partnered programs I worked with over here also as sponsors.

Well as some of you might know, I sort of went silent last month and I wanted to briefly share with you, what has went on to make be quite distant, as many of you here have become more than just affiliates that I deal with, but more like close friends.

So my friends it all started on June 2nd, just after returning from The I Gaming Super Show in Prague.

The Super Show in my opinion was a huge success for the company I was employed with at that time, The new contacts we made were going to show positive growth,and the continuous growth of the site was primarilary thanks to my efforts upon arriving there.

I received a call on The 2nd Of June, from a few of my high end players, asking what had happened, which really annoyed the hell out of me.

I received an email 15 minutes later thanking me for me services and wishing me good luck at my future endeavours.

I will leave this part alone now for legal purposes!

Then on June 5th, My wife and I separated.

The difficult part about any separation is of course the fact that we have three young children, who have always and will always be my main priority in life.

When you think it can�t get any worse, I found out on June 8th, that my grandmother was in a very ill state and didn�t have too much longer to live.

We found out today that she is ready to go has no more than 48 hours left in our world, and will be joining my grandfather up in heaven, where we know she will no longer be in pain and suffering.

I decided it was necessary to take a small break from the industry during this time, hence the reason for my absence.

Now that we are over the sad part of things, I am happy to tell you that I have been in very serious talks of getting back into the industry I love and have dedicated so much time too over the last 8 years.

I class many of you as close friends, and PAL as on of my homes, and have been lucky enough to meet many of you on numerous occasions at conferences or in Vegas.

I look forward to working very closely with each of you again in the not to distant future...

I would finally like to thank everyone who has supported me over the last month as this is what this industry is all about...

I will be back to my regular self again very soon and look forward to great things ahead, with the great people here at Poker Affiliate Listings...

i cant thank you enough for all your support!

Stay Tuned Friends!

Colin Anderson

World Cup 2010 - Semi-finals

TheGooner — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 22:36:09 GMT

So after an incident packed Quarter-Final round, the stage is set for a pair of classic semi-finals with three European nations Spain, Germany and Holland and South Americans Uruguay.

Holland v Uruguay
Betting Lines - Holland 1.61 -- Draw 3.50 -- Uruguay 7.00

Holland and Uruguay will face off in the first semi-final on July 6th in Cape Town, with the Dutch side marked up as strong favourties to progress to the final.

Holland have won all five matches so far, beating Denmark (2-0), Japan (1-0), Cameroon (2-1), Slovakia (2-1) and of course Brazil (2-1).

Uruguay are still unbeaten, although the "Light BLues" have been less impressive, starting with a draw against France (0-0), and wins over South Africa (3-0) and Mexico (1-0). The knockout stages saw South Korea defeated 2-1, and then a penalty shoot-out win over Ghana.

Spain v Germany
Betting Lines - Spain 2.62 -- Draw 3.20 -- Germany 2.80

While 2008 European Champions Spain and 2008 Runners-up Germany will face each other again on July 7th for the other final spot.

Both sides went through the group phase with a 2 win / 1 loss record to top the group, but it is the Germans who have been more impressive in knockout play beating England 4-1, and Argentina 4-0.

In comparison Spain's efforts in beating Portugal 1-0, and Paraguay 1-0 have been quite lacklustre affairs, although in most part it must be said that this has been because of very defensive opponents.

World Cup Outright Odds - Semi-final stage
Despite having to face each other in the semi-finals, it's Spain and Germany that are still the favourites at the bookmakers to win the World Cup - with Uruguay the marked outsiders priced up at 10/1.

Spain 2.87
Germany 3.00
Holland 3.10
Uruguay 11.00

All World Cup betting odds taken from UK Bookmakers Bet365 - check them out now

World Cup 2010 - Quarter Final Draw

TheGooner — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 23:39:18 GMT

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The second round is now complete - and we can all fill in our "wallchart" and work out the fixtures for the quarter-finals and beyond.

If you don't have your wallchart handy - I'll run through the fixtures now :

Friday 2nd July :
- 4:00pm Netherlands v Brazil -- RESULT : 2-1
- 8:30pm Uruguay v Ghana -- RESULT : 1-1 (4-2 on pens)

Saturday 3rd July :
- 4:00pm Argentina v Germany -- RESULT : 0-4 :eek:
- 8:30pm Paraguay v Spain -- RESULT : 0-1

(all times local South Africa, BST is -1, US ET -6, AUST +8 NZT +10)

There will then be a two day break before the semi-finals on the 6th and 7th of July, with the first two quarter-final winners meeting in the first semi-final.

Best Betting Odds For Outright Winner :
Brazil 3.50 (+250) at Paddy Power
Spain 4.00 (+300) at Eurobet
Argentina 5.75 (+475) at PinnacleSports
Germany 8.00 (+700) at Bet365
Netherlands 8.50 (+750) at Victor Chandler

-----------------

My outlook is that Spain probably have the easiest Quarter-Final matchup against Paraguay, but then may then have to beat both Argentina and Brazil in order to win the World Cup - a very tough ask.

Argentina get no favours at all with a likely run of Germany, Spain and Brazil in order to claim the title - that's also a very tough list of fixtures.

So I fancy Brazil - who should have enough to get by the Netherlands - and then will be favoured by the easiest semi-final opposition of either Uruguay or Ghana.

Brazil to win it for my money then - although all five of those listed teams have a chance. What do you think ?