http://www.pokeraffiliatelistings.com/forums/blogs/mj/ An Poker Affiliate Forum and Community For Poker Affiliates To Discuss Poker Affiliate Programs en Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:00:22 GMT vBulletin 60 http://www.pokeraffiliatelistings.com/forums/images/styles/ShinyBlue/misc/rss.jpg http://www.pokeraffiliatelistings.com/forums/blogs/mj/ http://www.pokeraffiliatelistings.com/forums/blogs/mj/1301-back-my-roots.html Wed, 15 Jun 2011 05:01:46 GMT I entered this business in 2009 as a player, with the idea of being a player advocate. I remember my first website, which was RakeVIP.com - I'd get player emails asking questions, and even providing info I didn't have related to different countries - at the time I made good use of it and sent players to places I thought was safe. This was "user submitted" content at it's finest, and led to several five figure rakers. I MISS those days with a passion, and hate the business of seo born gambling affiliate marketing - the difference is most notably in my ethics, and I intend to go back to my roots.

Over time, as I become an "seo affiliate" or whatever you'd call it - I crossed over to the dark side, I admit it. I saw some success, made some money, and pretty much caved to the dark side - I admit it.

I'm making this announcement I'm going back over to the white side, getting back in touch with my roots, and finding my voice again.

Let's put this in perspective - if you are an operator that treats players and affiliates fairly, I'd like to promote you. If you are a scam operation (especially a problem on the sports betting side) or a crap affiliate program that screws over affiliates, we are done. At the very least if you are good for players and shit for affiliates (aka Bwin) you will be on prepay or cpa basis only.

I look forward to a day when we can be back to a business of honest gambling, this is a fucked up greedy world we are living in - the house always has the edge and often that isn't enough.

On the affiliate side, I've let quality slip as well. I promote shit books, and marginal content, all in the name of profits. I admit it.........hell most of you do too. I'm done with that though, I can't sleep at night without promoting honest businesses to real players.

I'll expand on this with a future post, but you can expect to see a lot less of me this summer. I'm going to be revamping my websites in order to get back to the basics of providing players with good honest value, in theory there should be a fortune made off of that alone, and I have the network to do it with.

That is all, best luck 2011 y'all. Stay tuned for a blog post where I'm not half drunk explaining my position.....bottom line I'm sick and tired of being an affiliate that puts pages up just to chase keywords, there is no future in that anyways, I'm getting back to my roots of being a straight shooter, making a living off gambling I feel like it's the only way forward anyways. ]]> MJ http://www.pokeraffiliatelistings.com/forums/blogs/mj/1301-back-my-roots.html http://www.pokeraffiliatelistings.com/forums/blogs/mj/1150-life-too-short-build-empires.html Tue, 19 Oct 2010 00:43:40 GMT You guys have probably noticed I'm cleaning house a bit, some people can run empires of sites and do it effectively. I've personally always been unorganized, and this has led me to sloppyness. Aside from cleaning house, I've realized life is just too damn short to spend in front of a computer screen 18 hours a day if my business is growing without me.

Over the last month, two affiliates have passed away. In the last year we've even seen one murdered in the PokerListings CEO. I also read about another Pal member having a heart failure scare recently on his blog, I'll leave him nameless in case he doesn't like to talk about it. This has really awakened me in terms of balancing quality of life and quality of business.

Take me for example, I have at least 10 sites that if taken to fruition would me rich by anyones standards - yet I'm constantly hunting for more domains and starting more projects. If I had put the energy of the last 10 150 page sites I built into building one 1,000 page site, I'd probably be pretty happy about my results.

Don't get me wrong, I still want to conquer the world - it's just that I'd rather conquer life first. I haven't travelled enough, I haven't seen enough of the world, but I've surely spent enough time in front of this f'ing computer.

I've clawed my way from an absolute nothing to something in this business, but I think it's time to live life a little more. Again I make a great example:

Since I started this business, I've gained 80 pounds. I can't change that part of my life by sitting on a computer - the constant "I need to do this, I have to stay up doing that" led me to say "no time for dinner with the family, let's just order a pizza" wayyyyyyy too many times.

I was a competitive wakeboarder and freeskier when I started my affiliate business, I haven't done either in 2-3 years. My boat this year, sat dry and didn't even get wet once.

Is it worth it? Hell yes man! I'll take this poor health and losing things I love so I never have to work again (of course assuming some day I can find someone with enough cash to buy me out). However, I'm not willing to lose my life over it - so starting now things change.

I purchased www.musclebuilding.net - it's a new site, barely started, no design, etc. I'm going to use that site to make me rich while improving myself. This site will be a beast in a few months, bank on it.

I think the impact of earning money helping people improve themselves is going to feel great, and at the same time I could easily make myself a case study or example of real life improvement instead of some douche like Vince Del Monte (I really need to remove that clickbank ad btw haha!).

I recently took up golf, and I'm trying to buy real estate on the course at the club I play at - maybe I'll do a "walk 18 holes a day to slim down" ebook and clock bank while I'm doing something I love, who knows.

All I know is I have an active son, and I need to improve myself to enjoy life with him - and one on the way. I'd rather golf and go wakeboarding with my two kids everyday than constantly strss over a mile long to do list, that's why I got in the business!

With that, here is my kid playing a bit of golf with me, he's 2!: (anyone know how to embed facebook video?)

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=481769221797 ]]> MJ http://www.pokeraffiliatelistings.com/forums/blogs/mj/1150-life-too-short-build-empires.html http://www.pokeraffiliatelistings.com/forums/blogs/mj/1143-big-change-direction-narrowing-focus.html Thu, 14 Oct 2010 17:01:16 GMT Anyone who's followed my progress in this industry might know that I entered without a budget, without any skills related to the trades (coding, design, writing, etc) but I did come with big balls and a willingness to go all in at any time.

Part of that crazy ambition meant that my plans have always been laid to go big or go broke. As many around here have witnessed, I applied myself mostly in acquiring a domain portfolio, with dreams of building a huge gaming site network. I've always operated as if I wanted to make $100,000 or more a month, not $10,000.

At the time, I had the ability to try and build massively without a huge budget - I had a programmer and project manager on staff - who supervised outsourcing design, coding, custom admin development, and content. I constantly reinvested 110% of my income into acquiring not just more, but better domains, and getting started building them.

I never came up with a million dollar domain, but I don't think anyone would deny that I'm certainly a player when it comes to my gaming domain portfolio. I achieved this by going all in over and over, if I found a great domain that cost $5,000 and I only had $5,022 in the bank - we jumped anyways and found a way to make it work.

I can say that in my first "big sites" we did really well, but I make a strong note that I personally gave the site a lot of attention. Those sites made me six figures.

The move to 100% outsourcing I think led me to build much lower quality pages than we used to - so I'm making the big move to go back to working on things page by page myself. I will still outsource mundane repetitive tasks whenever possible.

With this change comes a realization it's time to liquidate, especially combined with my projects outside of gaming, I have way too much on my plate - especially now that I have parted ways with my developer. The focus going forward is going to be on a select number of my premium sites, on only my best domains.

I may sell off the rest, I may keep them for juice, I don't know - but we are going to focus on what I've always known I needed to do - increase the quality, research, time, and attention devoted to each page I publish. It's going to be quite a challenge, but I feel it's time I do it - plus I think "jumping in" will help me learn some necessary skills as I really don't have any technical knowledge to be doing what I do.

Fair warning - some of you might get sick of me asking tech related questions in the forums, as I'm surely going to need a lot of help in the beginning lol.

I recently found out baby #2 is on the way, so the all in mentality has to change a bit - it's a good time for me to focus. My girl is a bit sick of riding the roller coaster too, and I'm kind of sick of not spending time with my kid and always working, so we're going to concentrate on taking the steps to scale ourselves down and live life a bit - what's the point of all this taking over the world stuff if we don't slow down and appreciate it after all.

Anyways I'm rambling a bit now - I just made a commitment to get back to blogging about my ups and downs here and felt like making a post to remind myself of what I'm doing.

If anyone wants to invest in buying domains or started sites I won't be building out, now is a good time to talk to me.

Cliff Notes:

1. came into business with big head and little skills

2. made the most of it

3. working hard showed me success

4. working on too many things hasn't shown me the same success

5. relied on employees who weren't experts in gaming

6. played a lot of golf, didn't get much better :)

7. fired employees

8. back to doing everything myself, focusing on quality.

9. We're having another baby!

I hope to blog again soon, I don't proofread or anything I just sit and type till I stop, hope you guys enjoy it. ]]> MJ http://www.pokeraffiliatelistings.com/forums/blogs/mj/1143-big-change-direction-narrowing-focus.html http://www.pokeraffiliatelistings.com/forums/blogs/mj/1096-back-blogging.html 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. ]]> MJ http://www.pokeraffiliatelistings.com/forums/blogs/mj/1096-back-blogging.html http://www.pokeraffiliatelistings.com/forums/blogs/mj/936-great-guest-posts-johnh-mikew.html Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:26:09 GMT As I haven't had time to work on my sloppy affiliate blog, I've been inviting affiliates who write better than me to do my work for me :)

Check out this great post from JohnH on being a producing affiliate VS being a parasite affiliate, I couldn't agree more with everything he says here and you will find that posts written by me often take the same stance.

http://onlinepokeraffiliate.org/producers-vs-parasites/

Next, MikeW wrote a ridiculously insightful post on how to write great reviews. I've always sucked at reviews, so I usually outsource them, but outsourced reviews will always be less unique than written by yourself so I need to read this one and learn myself.

http://onlinepokeraffiliate.org/how-...great-reviews/ ]]> MJ http://www.pokeraffiliatelistings.com/forums/blogs/mj/936-great-guest-posts-johnh-mikew.html http://www.pokeraffiliatelistings.com/forums/blogs/mj/934-sometimes-life-gives-you-lemons.html Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:25:20 GMT So you better make lemonade. I was set to take a family vacation in Florida this week, myself my girl and our son and this time we were going to... So you better make lemonade.

I was set to take a family vacation in Florida this week, myself my girl and our son and this time we were going to also go with my Dad and Mom. Decided to take the jetski with us so we were driving rather than flying....and living in Madison WI we headed out to pickup my parents in Chicago.

Upon arrival in Chicago, we stopped to catch a bite to eat and roll out. My son was outside the joint while I was paying, and my mom was running after him - tripped and fell, shattering her humourous in as the doctor quotes "more places than I can count".

LOL, ok no Florida - F it. We'll go back in a couple weeks instead. Now that I have a have whole 12 days cleared that I didn't have planned I'm going to get some serious work done. For some reason, this event has me seriously motivated like it was meant to happen for a reason.

Been talking about a pretty ballsy project in collaboration with TonyG and crew, so I plunked down the deposit of x,xxx and we're going to go to town to get this thing off the ground. Project has huge potential, is regulation proof, and is going to be FUN unlike some things in this business. I can't wait to get it off the ground and show it to everyone here, it's a ridiculous amount of PHP development that is way over my head, but I'm thankful to have a developer who is also a friend locally that is going to rock out with me on it.

Today I'm sitting in Chicago, we'll run around and do some fun stuff for a day or two and head back, but I'm planning on this being the most productive week I've had in 2009. That's the best way to make good out of a shitty situation, so I say bring it on.

I don't have my whiteboard with me in Chicago, so I'm going to break the rules and work on a new site. I'll post back here when I get some pages up and see what I get done in a day or two, breaking all advice from Dealer Dan in the process.

They say when life gives you lemons make lemonade, but I think I'll put some vodka in mine and see if I can't get into some trouble while I'm at it. ]]> MJ http://www.pokeraffiliatelistings.com/forums/blogs/mj/934-sometimes-life-gives-you-lemons.html http://www.pokeraffiliatelistings.com/forums/blogs/mj/928-struggling-keep-my-eye-prize.html Sun, 20 Sep 2009 20:16:10 GMT As many may well now I try to blog here mostly to keep myself in check, and today I figured it's time to slap myself in the face and keep my eye on my immediate goals.

I am the first to admit that a. I don't have a background in this business, definately learning as I go and b. I've never been much of an organized person to begin with, I've also struggled with ADD my whole life.

I'm definately an idea man, I have lots of those. I also have a knack for finding domains, and that's just become a monthly expense nowadays since I can't keep from buying up domains I see available.

Recently I decided it would be best to unload a lot of my portfolio in order to force me to focus on any of the dozen or so high potential projects I have, but really what I know I need to do is focus on only ONE until it gets where I want it to be.

I'm also slightly jealous of Kaus who manages juggling a lot of work, family, admin duties at PAL, and still has an intense focus on her website about Online Slots. If you haven't seen that site it kicks ass, and over the last months I've watched it grow in an orderly fashion.

Does anyone have any tips for how to FOCUS on one site or certain immediate goals?

I know it's my weakest link, along with my lack of technical understanding. We all have so many grand ideas and big dreams, but in the end that's not how we make the kind of money we want to. I think the wise man that is Randy Ray told me "the man who chases too many rabbit holes finds none" or something to that effect, we could all learn from it.

In the month of October, I intend to pound on one site of mine. I'm blogging here so that hopefully someone will kick me in the ass if I fail. Also, even though I'm focusing on another site for awhile, I got a new domain recently I'm slightly excited about. It's not a huge exact match, but a nice three word combo and an old, aged, .com - so I'll make it a website about Online Poker Bonuses when I meet some more immediate goals. ]]> MJ http://www.pokeraffiliatelistings.com/forums/blogs/mj/928-struggling-keep-my-eye-prize.html http://www.pokeraffiliatelistings.com/forums/blogs/mj/924-what-kind-partner-you.html Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:46:47 GMT I just wanted to write this post to give my opinion on being a partner. I don't mean partnering with another affiliate, but partnering with operators as an affiliate.

So what kind of partner are you?

Do you send programs players they wouldn't otherwise get without your help? Or, is your business model entirely setup to capitilize on players seeking a code that were already planning on signing up.

Are your reviews and landing pages honest and well written? Are you drawing general traffic and introducing visitors to programs they otherwise wouldn't have gotten? That's the whole point of our business, in case some of us have forgotten.

I try to make damn sure I'm a good partner to the rooms I work with, since I know my bonus code signups are not really "converted" traffic, and wanting to keep that earning oppurtunity out there I make sure I build quality resource sites in addition to any oppurtunistic sites I build like (sitenamebonuscode.com) - since I'd like to keep earning in this business.

The reason I'm writing this post is because lately it is starting to feel like the environment is becoming affiliate vs. operator, with operators making a lot of moves that seem aimed at reducing and in some cases eliminating the payments they are making to us I really think it's our responsibility to make sure that we are acting like a partner, and not just a leech.

So while we are busy building sites, let's all try to be good partners. In light of the talk of AU and GAP and all these other things, I'm hoping we can convince operators to see us as partners and not adversaries.

I run bonus code sites and will until I can't anymore, but I do it in addition to building quality resource portals.

Give this some thought on your next project, and the next time you approach an AM asking for a higher CPA or Revshare rate - what kind of partner are you really going to be? I feel like this is a very important part of what will shape our business in the next few years, and whether it will even exist in it's current form. Even if I'm wrong, I know I'm practicing good business this way.

One thing is for sure, a lot of operators are clearly looking at us differently lately. With subjects like the Affiliate Union and GAP coming up, I think it's important we all try to remember that we are in fact partners with operators, like it or not. ]]> MJ http://www.pokeraffiliatelistings.com/forums/blogs/mj/924-what-kind-partner-you.html http://www.pokeraffiliatelistings.com/forums/blogs/mj/919-changing-directions-time.html Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:22:29 GMT I've been giving some things in life and business a lot of thought lately, all starting when I hit a brick wall this summer from having too many websites and a domain buying addiction that really is comparable to chasing crack rocks. Bottom line the quality of my sites and my production levels really suffered from "too much to do" syndrome.

I got to this point where I wasn't getting much of anything done, current site earners and income that was growing on it's own made me a bit lazy, but mostly it came from not having any real focus and direction towards my most immediate goals. I work off a whiteboard, and I keep a to do list, but we all know how easily our "priorities" can change when we get excited about a new site, domain, or niche right?

I'm writing this blog so I can keep myself in check, I've only been in this business for a bit over a year and I've managed to accumulate well over 300 sites and domain names. I have been especially guilty about buying and building minisites, which are indeed quick money but I'm starting to see it as short money as well.

I'm excited about new directions I've been heading, even new industries. I realized I suck at making big sites, but it's what I'm going to do even if it kills me.

Recently, I've acquired a few premium domains. Going through my Godaddy account one day I realized something, if I just develop 50 of my best domains and sites (which is extremely unlikely to happen) I would be rich by anyones standards. Ok, so, how do I do that? I have to start by cleaning my plate.

The Eurolinx situation cost x,xxx a month to my pocket book, and actually started hitting me 3 months ago. That didn't help my motivation this summer either but thankfully I have enough base at other rooms to keep my business going and growing to support our young family.

To the point of this post:

I'm as of this moment done promoting stand alone rakeback sites. I needed to just say it, that I'm done with it for now and my recent failures at it were of my own design - even if it's just because I'm making more money in other markets, it's still not an excuse.

Going forward, I intend to just keep offering my players the best available deal, this helps in retention. But, I have no desire (or time) to compete for rakeback traffic anymore, my business slumped many months ago when I stopped doing just that (competing). No rakeback business in 2009 can survive on organic search signups alone, trust me on this. Rakeback has become a service and referral industry, you need to make it your primary focus if you want to get big, period.

My heart just isn't into that, in fact I'm damn sick of all the player support, IM requests, and overall headaches - I got into this business because I want to be out on my boat doing nothing, not sitting at my IM box all day helping players figure out deductions and moving money around. Kudos to those of you who enjoy doing that, I say you can keep it lol.

So if anyone is interested in buying any rakeback sites and domains, please drop me a line. I'm not looking to give anything away but I have various levels of oppurtunities available for anyone who wants to take a shot at the business.

I'm keeping several of my premium domains as a backup plan just in case I change my mind - but really this is the final curtain for me before moving into other markets.

Outside of the rakeback niche I literally have 50 websites I'm selling (pm me!), and well over 200 domains I'd be happy to part with. I'm tempted to just flood the PAL marketplace with all my stuff, but so far am limiting myself to posting a couple things a week. Bottom line, if you feel like buying I feel like selling.

Could be an interesting month if I put 100k into my bank account just by getting rid of some sites and real estate huh?

As funny as that sounds it's not even a joke - I almost thought about taking a prop bet on that, but with the poker economy not as great as it used to be I decided not to offer it up, lol.

I'm hoping to limit myself to about 10 really quality websites in 2009, even that is already a long shot. Hopefully this post and the fact that I don't blog very often will help me keep my 2010 goals in check. ]]> MJ http://www.pokeraffiliatelistings.com/forums/blogs/mj/919-changing-directions-time.html http://www.pokeraffiliatelistings.com/forums/blogs/mj/916-great-post-randy-about-promoting-rakeback.html Tue, 25 Aug 2009 03:51:53 GMT To anyone thinking about promoting rakeback, check out this guest blog Randy did on my (very neglected) affiliate site. ... To anyone thinking about promoting rakeback, check out this guest blog Randy did on my (very neglected) affiliate site.

http://onlinepokeraffiliate.org/adva...oker-rakeback/

I think anyone could benefit from reading this who is considering the rakeback as a niche. ]]> MJ http://www.pokeraffiliatelistings.com/forums/blogs/mj/916-great-post-randy-about-promoting-rakeback.html http://www.pokeraffiliatelistings.com/forums/blogs/mj/838-more-vacation.html Sat, 16 May 2009 02:08:28 GMT Man, I'm really starting to love the joys of fatherhood and being an affiliate marketer! You see, I've always been self employed, literally since I was 19 - in some form or fashion as I've owned a few businesses in my time (some failed, some did fine).

The thing is, in all of these businesses - I needed to be "fixed" where I was at. I had crews to supervise, customer service to handle myself, and I also happened to be my own best sales force, so I tended to have less time and work 60+ hour weeks.

Last week I was in Florida, chilling on the beach with my son - I packed up my 24 inch Imac, aircard, and laptop - and hit the beach. Watching my son at 16 months old play on the beach, I got hooked.

Suddenly, I'm thinking "Vegas this weekend"? Nah, I'd rather fly my kid to disneyworld lol.....they joys of fatherhood really do kickass.

So anyways, after seeing how much fun my son had playing with shovels and buckets on the beach, I figured he was ready for the waterparks. I grew up on the water and was waterskiing by the age of four, I figure he'll follow that track too - so here we are:

http://wildernessresort.com/ Hanging out at this huge indoor waterpark, four indoor waterparks to be exact - it's really fun for all of us.

We took my son to the toddler pools right away, but he loves slides and it wasn't long before we would just hold him and take him down the adult slides with us! He giggles and laughs and just LOVES IT!

I'm so grateful we can do this, again I packed up my Imac and here we are - and fortunately this resort also offers 24 hour shuttles to my favorite local poker room which is only 2 miles away and allows 150bb deep buyins which I prefer.

How nice is it that I can vacation, bond with my son, still get some work done and use poker to pay for it all in the same spot??

We are all so lucky, I try not to forget it. ]]> MJ http://www.pokeraffiliatelistings.com/forums/blogs/mj/838-more-vacation.html http://www.pokeraffiliatelistings.com/forums/blogs/mj/823-vacation.html Mon, 04 May 2009 20:30:56 GMT I'm taking a working vacation this week, so outside of how busy I usually am and a bit difficult to get ahold of sometimes if anyone needs anything please just be patient :)

I'm definately online getting work done half days, but a lot to do - will return back to normal schedule next week.

http://www.moonspinner.com/owner_vir...tual_tour.html

^ my office for the week.


Sometimes we have to reward ourselves for a job well done, I got a lot done in March and April including opening four new sites, improving some minisites that were sitting, and now I'm completely revamped one rakeback site with four more to go LOL.

My girl is with me, she deserves the vaca more than anyone - and my son is here as well, this trip is mostly for him and so far he is LOVING the beach.

I'll be off and on, I hope your start to May is also going well. ]]> MJ http://www.pokeraffiliatelistings.com/forums/blogs/mj/823-vacation.html http://www.pokeraffiliatelistings.com/forums/blogs/mj/820-prop-bet-wsop-40k-field-size.html Tue, 28 Apr 2009 05:22:52 GMT This year's WPT 25k championship drew 338 entrants, which was down sharply and boasts what is probably the best structure in any tournament.

With WSOP doing away with rebuys and adding the 40k NL Hold'em events as one of the first events, with only two WSOP events being televised this year I got to talking with Beanie about field size, he predicted over 500.

While his is more educated of an opinion, my gut tells me a 40k event in these times can't draw over 500 runners - so we agreed on an over/under of 500 with me taking the under for $200 at 1:1.

I think it will be close, probably 450-500 - but I still think I have the best EV in this bet, any opinions? ]]> MJ http://www.pokeraffiliatelistings.com/forums/blogs/mj/820-prop-bet-wsop-40k-field-size.html http://www.pokeraffiliatelistings.com/forums/blogs/mj/816-why-pokerstars-dominating-us-market.html Thu, 16 Apr 2009 17:57:20 GMT This is my personal opinion of course, but I really feel like PokerStars is dominating the US market right now starting at the cashiers window. ... This is my personal opinion of course, but I really feel like PokerStars is dominating the US market right now starting at the cashiers window.

It's really simple folks, PokerStars has no fee deposits via Echecks along with no fee cashouts via both Echecks and paper checks.

Here's the kicker, these cashouts via echeck at PokerStars (source: http://www.pokerdepositoptions.com/n...ightning-fast/ ) are being processed and delivered into players bank accounts in 24 hours. Combine that with the fact that it's FREE and you have your reason why Stars is kicking tail across the industry. The paper check cashouts are also free ($100 minimum) and arriving on average in 4 days, any poker room would do well to allow players quick and easy access to their cash.

It's my belief that allowing players to deposit small and cashout small ($10 deposits and $100 cashouts) is great, a player shouldn't be taxed 25% for cashing out $100 on another poker site with a $25 paper check fee, it's ridiculous. Might as well make the cashouts on those sites a minimum of $250 so it's never more than 10% (still too high!).

PokerStars does not offer much in the way of signup incentives, and a $50 signup bonus definately is not why so many players sign up.

Now,I'm not one to take away from other achievements - PokerStars has excelled in customer support (although that has slipped recently according to my players) and obviously Stars is a leader in SEO and rocks out a huge advertising/marketing budget.

However, the point remains that if ANY poker room with US facing intentions wants to compete with PokerStars, you need to start at the cashier window. ]]> MJ http://www.pokeraffiliatelistings.com/forums/blogs/mj/816-why-pokerstars-dominating-us-market.html http://www.pokeraffiliatelistings.com/forums/blogs/mj/806-plenty-domains-still-available-reg-fee.html Fri, 10 Apr 2009 22:28:29 GMT I find new domains every day that are still available and not registered, I don't know if I'll ever get the time to develop them all properly but it feels a bit like gold prospecting and even a bit like real estate investing to me.

Today I was thinking of random casino domains and after poking around for awhile, here is the domains I purchased today all for reg fee:

BlackjackDepositBonuses.com

BlackjackBonuses.org

SlotsBonuses.org

CrapsBonus.org

RouletteBonus.org

It took me ten minutes of work to find these domains, and they were available for reg fee only I didn't have to deal with some domainer to get it. I'm honestly suprised some of you vets didn't snatch domains up years ago, but I've been happy to do it almost daily for the last six months.

I'm addicted actually, I really think I should stop buying domains but I can't seem to pass up the "cheap" oppurtunity.

It's almost like gambling in a way :) ]]> MJ http://www.pokeraffiliatelistings.com/forums/blogs/mj/806-plenty-domains-still-available-reg-fee.html