Kiyosaki is the Man

Man it's been hot here lately. Let me turn on the fan and grab a drink. Today's spelling list:

• Chess Money
• Robert Kiyosaki
• PublisherForums PreLaunch!

Chess Money

I pop into ChatWebDev every 2-3 days to talk amongst my collegues and peers. People must have been more bored than usual (actually that's a false statement, members actually have a pretty good work ethic it seems) because somebody, Bhirst, out of the blue asked if anyone was up for Internet chess for $1 a game.

I took him up on the offer and we proceeded to play on Yahoo. It started out at $1 a game, but I felt bad for taking his money as it was quite an easy win, so I offered him a $1:$0.75 odds handicap (I pay him $1 if he beats me, and he pays me $0.75 if I beat him.)

We play two more games, and I win those as well. For pure bragging and egotistical purposes I'm keeping a running total of the wages and games won and lost in the chatroom. Another member, pixabit, challenges me to a game as well. I decide to play them both at the same time as I highly doubt their skill (in my experience, most people who simply know the rules of chess for some reason think that they are good at chess). I beat them both, in fact, I beat pixabit in 2 moves!

This morning pixabit challenged me to a few more games, but I gave him better odds this time ($1.25 to $6.00). I wanted a bit more than $1 a game as it was starting to be a waste of my time. Luckily he didn't pose any threat so I could work on my sites while playing him.

All in all, after playing some chess for fun with my webmaster friends I made $15.00 and won 15-0.

I wonder if I should have told them that I used to be really into chess when I was a lot younger and went to tournaments. Nah. Here's a link to one where I won first place at the Victoria Labour Day Open (I won in the U1800 category which means Under 1800 rating).

Anyhow, just thought I'd post this. Thought it was fun and interesting. I'm always looking to make a quick buck :)

Robert Kiyosaki

Watch out for this man. He's smart.

I was watching PBS yesterday (PBS rocks, it has great documentaries but also has Arthur) when I was flipping through channels and hit PBS which showed a man pointing to a chart which had words written on it in large writing such as: Investing, Assets, and Liabilities. Thinking this was another boring lecture on putting money away in RRSPs (or for you US residents 401k's) and mutual funds and so forth, I didn't plan on sticking around long. However, I quickly because absolutely glued to the program, and was watching it intently, trying to absorb everything this man was saying.

The man turned out to be Robert Kioysaki. Haven't heard of him? Ever read or hear about Rich Dad, Poor Dad? Yes, that's him, the author.

I haven't read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, but I definitely heard great things about it many times in the past. In fact, I've only heard praise in biblical porportions about the book, and so once I realized that this was the man talking to me on PBS, I became even more engrossed.

Unfortunately I only managed to catch around 50 minutes of the program as I happened across it through the middle. Also, since it was a PBS program which was basically pitching special DVD's and books for viewers to purchase (oh, sorry, PLEDGE), it was more of a teaser and inspirational and motivational program than real specific information. Yet, the concepts and inspiration I did get out of it was awesome. So awesome, in fact, that immediately as the show ended, I got up and wrote on my grocery list to pick up Rich Dad, Poor Dad. I did this so that I'd force myself to buy it. I was meaning to buy it before I saw the program, but then got lazy and never did.

I don't know when I'll have time to read it, but I'll buy it so that I'll have to read it eventually. And even if I read it and end up procrastinating and never do a single of his pieces of advice, it's extremely valuable information anyhow, and is pretty much required reading if you want to get ahead in this world.

The following snippet is taken from Wikipedia and sums Kiyosaki up well:

A large part of Kiyosaki's teachings focus on generating passive income by means of investment in real estate and small businesses, with the ultimate goal of being able to support oneself by such investments alone. In tandem with this, Kiyosaki defines "assets" as things that generate money, such as rental properties or businesses, and "liabilities" as things that cost money, such as house payments, cars and so on. Kiyosaki also proclaims financial leverage to be critically important in becoming rich.

Kiyosaki endorses what he calls "financial education", which he claims is never taught to most people. He also advocates learning through experience and failure. Both of these are portrayed as more important than traditional education taught in most schools and universities, much of which he claims is increasingly irrelevent in the "post industrial age".

I'll end this section by linking you to his merchandise store. He has some very interesting products for learning tools here.

This one looks especially interesting. If it wasn't so expensive I'd probably buy it.

PublisherForums PreLaunch! I am hereby officially prelaunching PublisherForums.com.

My original intention of PublisherForums was to focus on the publishing aspect of web development in the sense of monetizing your site as well as online business and entrepreneurial discussion. However, as I created the various forums, I felt that other sections would be just as welcome.

What's the difference between a prelaunch and an official launch? Well, I'm prelaunching it because the forums are up and running and I want to start attracting members and discussion. I've finished creating all the forums, descriptions, edited everything such as user titles, options, hacks, and template changes.

I've commissioned Terrorist #2 to do the skin, and I'm hiring my logo guy to do the logo, so the forum will have a very sexy yet professional look to it. I will officially launch the forum once the skin is done, and I will be advertising and promoting the site on various webmaster sites and blogs. In fact, I've already chagned my Sitepoint signature and removed everything including the famous "Earning $167 a day and growing :)" part and replaced it with a large link to PublisherForums.

Lately, largely due to my controversial Space Rangers post, this blog has been receiving a lot of discussion with 18 comments last post and 33 before that. PublisherForums will now be a great platform to discuss topics such as the whole Space Ranger issue.

I have a lot of faith and hope in PublisherForums, and hope that you go register and post :) Tell your friends, too. Thanks. Hope to see you there.

Good luck, and good earnings!

Beware the Phone Call

Sorry guys, it's been a week since my last post. I've been very preoccupied with many things, and I've also been busy procrastinating :) Today's topics are:

• My Response
• Replayer Roadbumps
• MrScribe.com
• PublisherForums
• ProjectAA Revealed! ...Kinda

My Response

My last post garnered a response of 33 comments, a couple e-mails, and a few IMs! Most of the comments were negatively directed at me, and so I will respond to them here.

First off, this is a blog. This is my blog. This is a blog where I keep an ongoing journal on what I'm working on day-to-day, occasionally provide some personal entries, and give my comments and thoughts on things. I'm not a journalist, an editor, nor a politician. Therefore, I could CARE LESS on what you think of me or what I write about. So don't expect a lot of replies on such matters from me.

Secondly, if you don't like what I write about: LEAVE. Nobody is forcing you to come here and read my blog. That's all you. If you don't agree with what I have to say or easily cry, I'm not going to apologize and give you a hug.

Thirdly, pretty much all of the comments were either hyperbolic statements or attacks from SpaceRangers who were obviously upset. I'm not going to respond to any of that crap, it's not worth my time.

It's strange. So many SpaceRangers got upset. Why? Why so insecure? Perhaps they are afraid I'm right, and feel threatened and unconfident? I mean, if you don't agree with me, a simple "I don't agree" would suffice or else ignore it altogether and don't reply at all. There's no reason to be a crybaby about it and start launching personal attacks on me. This is my blog, I thought I'd be able to state my opinions without having to hold everybody's hand.

Replayer Roadbumps

Sigh. Things with Replayer have again been.... crappy. It's really been an up and down ride with Replayer, but I've been going downhill for a while now. It's not me, it's him. My programmer for this is just absolutely horrid in terms of communication and deadlines. The whole site was supposed to be finished about two-and-a-half months ago or so, and it's sitting at around 65% right now.

I've gone through many 5-7 day periods before where I wouldn't hear from him, but now it's been over 2 weeks since last hearing from him and I'm beginning to get really scared. Has he finally ran away with my time and money? Is what's done so far for me safe? Or will he illegally sell the code and such to others?

This is the dark side of hiring freelancers from outsourcing companies. In fact, it may be the last time I do so. I may have to hire from actual company sites in the future... which is a pain, as they are difficult to find, and usually expensive. But at least I won't have problems like this in the future.. hopefully.

In fact, I'd say that 9/10 people I hire are always very late in getting work done. But hell, this is worse.. I'm terrified he's going to run away. I've thrown thousands into this...

It's a shame too because the site has such enormous potential and what's done so far is quite good, it's just all these problems I'm having with him. I mean hell, you've seen the screenshots, and it's working. When I say it has potential, I don't just mean it may do decently and make a few bucks; I have a whole viral-esque marketing plan and I'm confident that once/if the site is done and get past it's early development stages, that it could be adding thousands a month to my income. I don't say this about many of my sites.

Well, I'm getting desperate now and so I hunted down his phone number. I'm not sure whether he's still on this number or not, but we will see tomorrow. If he is, I'm going to be sure to let him know that I need this done... beware the phone call.

Wish me luck on this guys, I really need Replayer to be finished...

MrScribe.com I've received another paid plug advert, this time for the site MrScribe.com: "MrScribe.com is a quaility content writing service, in which content is written soley by our writers. Bear in mind, an emphasis is on quality, thus you won't find any $5 -10 articles here. Only custom written content charged per page. We have SAMPLES, you may view all of our writers samples and choose the one whom you prefer and have him/her write your specific article. Stop by and check us out, and get the content you need for your site."

PublisherForums

I'm going to be getting to work on PublisherForums fairly soon. Unfortunately, bad timing has struck and it seems as though Terrorist #2 is away on vacation until around July 3rd or so, and Terrorist #1 won't be able to help me for about another week. So, I'm wondering whether I want to wait for these two, or go an alternate route and hire a guy I found. He's cheap and his work is half decent, which is fairly good by my standards. However, I'm not sure whether I want to have PublisherForums only 'half decent'.

PublisherForums is my webmaster forums. It's going to focus on web publishers and monetizing sites, buying and selling, and entrepreneur discussion. It will have a professional yet friendly tone, and will use Sitepoint as a role model. It will differ from Sitepoint in that it will have more of a focus on the entrepreneurial side and monetizing sites, although I plan to still have room for other areas such as design discussion and hosting.

I have big plans for PublisherForums, and plan on advertising it here, telling my network of webmaster friends about it, doing a bit of paid advertising, and doing a bit of a joint coadvertising with Mook Jon (each plugging each other's webmaster forums, as his is a lot more casual and shoot-the-breeze while mine is more professional).

On a side note, it seems that three new webmaster forums will be opening within a week or two of each other. Mine, Lee Dodd's, and Mook Jon's. If we were smart we'd all come together and make one big one, but we're not smart :D

I'm not sure yet but I may start PublisherForums by populating it with forums, allowing people to register and post before we have a logo and skin, simply because I can't wait :) I've already installed the vBulletin on the site.

ProjectAA Revealed! ...Kinda

Remember ProjectAA? I haven't said a whole lot about it, but since initial development on it is almost complete, I'll give away some details :)

Unfortunately, I'm not going to actually tell you what the site is about yet... sorry :) I'll release that once the site is near-ready for launch. However, I will release what the domain is. It's PublisherSpot.com - I plan on making it a type of sister site with PublisherForums.com, although it's obviously not another forum :)

My long-time programmer is the one I hired for this, and he should be back from a little trip he made anytime now, and development should get back on track. I've hired him countless times and so I know for certain that the site will be 100% programmed as I want it. Deadlines... well, that's another story.. :)

Anyhow, that's all for now folks. Good luck and good earnings!

I Hate MySpace Sites

It always surprises me how fast time passes. I can't believe it's already been 5 days since I last posted.

I Hate MySpace Sites

In case you've been living underneath a rock for the past year, MySpace sites are a very popular craze right now. I know virtually nothing about MySpace and MySpace sites, but I'll comment on what I do know.

MySpace sites are MySpace resource sites that usually offer some type of content or service, usually such as backgrounds, layouts, or other bits of crap. Like MySpace, they are usually ugly and don't really offer anything useful. MySpace webmasters, whom I will hereon refer to as Space Rangers, then litter their sites with either AdSense or YPN.

They then will send bulletins to thousands of 'friends', essentially spamming them. Surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprisingly since people who use MySpace are morons, a fairly large % of people click on the links contained in the bulletin and then proceed to click with a high CTR on the adverts on the Space Rangers' sites.

How do the Space Rangers get so many friends? Oh, through various means. Many use automated scripts/bots which basically spam/auto-add people. Many people buy names off of other people, and I've even heard of a guy hacking/stealing people's accounts by setting up a fake website getting people to enter their passwords.

No matter the way people are getting their 'friends', they are essentially spamming them. I have an immense hatred for Space Rangers. They are making an absolute KILLING, and I don't use that term lightly, by taking advantage of the sheer size of MySpace, the stupidity of the members, and worst of all, spamming them. Quite frankly, I'm very surprised these SpaceRangers make so much money.

Now, most web entpreneurs in my 'circle', my circle being peers who are around my level of webmaster experience and income, are SpaceRangers, and many people may say that I am either jealous and/or stupid (for not becoming a SpaceRanger and making dough until SpaceCamp ends).

Let me rebut to that. I won't deny that I may be slightly jealous of how much SpaceRangers are making - did I mention how much yet? Many are making between $300 and $800 a day. But then again, I would never join the ranks and become a SpaceRanger for the following reasons:

1. I Have Morals

I just won't do anything that I don't feel comfortable with. And I don't feel good about making money off of spamming people.

To be honest, I view SpaceRangers not much different than WareZ sites or Porn. Not that WareZ sites, or even porn for that matter, make a whole of money these days. But with porn, at least that's not harming anyone.

"It's only bulletins Tyler, calm down".

No, it's not. It's spam.

"But a lot of people like it. They even bookmark my site."

Ah, but what about all those who don't like like it? Too bad for them? What you're doing is no different than those LONGER ERECTIONS and FREE UNIVERSITY DIPLOMA e-mail spams everyone gets.

2. This Won't Last Forever

This MySpace thing is only temporary. It is not a long term solution. MySpace will eventually wisen up and crack down on all the spam and such, because it will only get worse. Also, I'm sure that the advertising agencies including AdSense and YPN will eventually not allow their ads to be on the Interplanetary Sites of SpaceRangers. Many SpaceRangers expicitely violate terms such as falsifying their page so that ads look like links to other content on the site - yes, this violates their terms. There's a fine line there.

And many people are riding off of YPN. Obviously YPN is guaranteed to plummit once it's out of beta.

It's interesting because I see and hear so many SpaceRangers suddenly seem so big and confident because they're making half a grand a day. They suddenly think they are all that and a can of beans. They think they are as good as me. Just kidding, a bit of levity there for you kids :)

But kidding aside, they are really putting themselves into a false sense of success, as they are not engaging in true hard work and reward, but are more like hitting the sweetness of a temporary monetary pinata.

3. Bad Habits, Good Experience Lost

While the SpaceRangers are busy adding 12-year-old children to their lists, they are essentially cashing in any past good habits they may have had, for new bad ones. Again, they may start to get into a false sense of security and success, thinking that something like MySpace will always be around for them to rely on. They will then ingrain bad habits, such as depending on things such as mass bulletins, 'free mass traffic', and inflated CPC rates.

Apart from any bad habits gained, SpaceRangers will be losing valuable experience. The time they spent adding a new MySpace background to their site, they could be learning new and useful SEO techniques, better PHP, better site ad management, marketing techniques, and just overall becoming a more robust entrepreneur.

4. I don't know MySpace

I don't know MySpace, and I'm not interested in it. I could learn, it wouldn't take long, but again I have no interest in it. And that would go against my utopian ideals of being a web entrepreneur. That is, I love what I do and I try to only do things and make sites on things that interest me.

5. There's More To Be Made than Money

There's more to be made from websites than just money. There are countless of priceless things. Friends, knowledge, contacts in the industry, respect, and giving back to the community.

Now, there's only one thing that people can say about my view on this: "Even though you hate MySpace sites, why don't you just join in anyway for a few months and make the $500 a day until you've made $50,000 or so and then stop and put that money into other things?"

I don't have a good response to that under than: "First off, MySpace sites are hit and miss. Not all sites make money. It's not guaranteed, of course. Secondly, I'll refer you to points 1, 3, and 5 above. Lastly, I'm a stubborn person. Or sometimes I just stand up for what I believe in. Whatever you want to call it... but I don't want to add to the crap on the Internet by joining in. There's far too much crap on the Internet now as it is.

It's time somebody started cleaning it up with good, high quality, useful sites.

Rawr.

No more tacos, please...

If I don't eat another taco for a few years, I don't think I'll complain. Here is today's list of topics:

• Taco Bell and McDonalds
• Bookmark Update
• Internet Grade
• Blog Income
• Poker Affiliate Update

Taco Bell and McDonalds

I've been eating pretty unhealthy lately. A while ago, I got into a good habit of doing daily exercising, drinking water and eating fruits and vegetables. Apart from the physical benefits of doing this, I'm not sure, but I believe this gave me more energy as well. As a result, I believe I had more focus available to direct towards work, as well as simply more energy to work period. However, I'm not positive of this.

I didn't eat out as much before because I didn't have a car. I also cooked more at home. Unfortunately though, recently I've been getting pretty bad again. Here's a video from a couple days ago:

I've started exercising a bit again, which is NOT fun (pushups and crunches), and started to drink water again (at least 1 glass a day). I'll gradually add the fruits and veggies to the list again and up the water and exercising - but things must proceed gradually. I'm logging this on my blog because I want to document if this does indeed increase my energy and focus levels. Because I've been sleeping so horribly lately and have had absolutely no energy. That needs to change. I need to work and make some moola.

Oh, as for the McDonalds in the title - I was hungry the other day (yesterday?) and so did one of my midnight (1:30am) food runs. I was really tired when going out, but just going out and driving around and such really woke me up and gave me a lot of energy. I took advantage of this and went immedately to work. Why am I writing about this? I don't know - I guess I'm just really interested on observing and documenting things that give me more energy and things that let me work. Because I haven't been getting a ton done like I used to. Not like the old days. Man.. I used to get SO much done it would scare you... I need to get back to that energy level again... Bookmark Update I was looking for more good potential buyers for Bookmark. I managed to find a lengthy article on the overview of 2005 for domain sales and was able to pick out 4 great domain acquisition companies there. I googled their contact information and contacted them all. After a day or two, I haven't heard back from any yet, but they are good sources nonetheless; one is very good that I'll contact again if they don't return my e-mail.

I wish the owner of the domain would accept a lower price for it - I've received a large number of bids so far, but none seem to be too close to the price we're asking for.

I won't give up though - I'll find a buyer! I will! Internet Grade

I've received another paid plug advert, this time for the site InternetGrade.com:

Internet Grade combines Pagerank, search engine backlinks, alexa rank as well as other factors and produces a grade for your site. It's a very useful tool for webmasters. Check it out!

Blog Income

My blog has started making more money. This is very interesting as I never created the blog to make money, I created it due to various people telling me I should. And even once I started it, I never wanted to put many ads on it. All I do now is use a 468x60 and paid plugs. I could most likely at least double my income if I were to simply put more ads on, but I really want to keep the blog as ad-free as possible.

The only reason I do put a couple ads in is to help compensate, not for my writing, but for sharing ideas. I've had a lot of people blatantly copy my ideas and such as a result of this blog; in fact, the other day a reader of this blog showed me a site which blatantly copied one of my logo's. They did a horrible job, but it always feels horrible when somebody rips you off. Monetizing the blog, while great for obvious money reasons, is still done mainly to help pay myself back for people copying my ideas and such.

Anyhow, sorry, got a bit off track there, blog income has steadily been increasing. Here's a quick rundown:

• March: $30
• April: $50
• May: $85
• June (so far): $110

Now, while that seems like petty cash, I'm actually very happy with that amount coming from a blog. That actually equates to around $15-20 per post on average. So now how I think of it is "Oh, it's about time for another blog post - hey, I'm getting paid $20 to write it, cool!".

I'm already pleased with the income of this blog, but my 'goal' would be set at making an average of $50 per blog post. If I can do that, I think it'd be fair to say that this blog was a great success (income-wise).

Poker Affiliate Update

I apologize if I'm annoying anyone with the repeated updates on this, but I'm still very happy and pumped about this.

This one poker player on this poker site, in just 9 days so far, has already made me $409. That's $45 a day. If I were to tack this onto my daily average earnings, that'd be over $200 a day and $6000 a month on average!

The scary thing too is, if I add enough players to this site where I'm making a lot more rakeback for them, I can have my rakeback increased from 35% to 40%. If I were to take 5% of that (I wouldn't, I'd only take 1 or 2 more and give the players the rest), that would essentially double all my earnings instantly. And that means a lot. If that were to happen now, that'd jump me up from $45 a day from this one site, to $90...

I'm using this to really feed my motivation for working on affiliating. It's just too bad I have so many things on my plate right now where I can't really focus on it yet, but I will... I will :)

Satan Worship?

No, I do not practice satanic worship, but I can't help but notice that today's date is 6-6-6 and all I've heard today has been good news.

• Poker Affiliating Update
• PageRank2
• Bookmark Updates
• Replayer Updates

Poker Affiliating Update So I've been eager lately checking my stats every day on one of my poker sites I'm affiliating. I have been excited about this ever since I signed up a decent player. I made $600 from him last month, and have already made $300 from him this month. The chart below shows my earnings from him with only 5 days playing in June so far:

That averages out to $58 a day or $1751 more a month if he stays on this trend. I'm really excited about poker affiliating now, and once I get my ginormous todo list out of the way, I'll definitely focus a bit more on affiliating. PageRank2 I've received another paid plug advert, this time for the site PageRank2.com:

"PageRank2.com offers outstanding virtual show-girl dancing just like in Vegas. The girls are fast and hot, so are our cookies. We are able to deliver free steaming hot cookies right to your door, must be 18 or older to do so. But honestly, everything above is a lie, we do - though - offer impressive PageRank services as fast as our girls, and as hot as our cookies - So give us a chance and ya won't regret it." So there you have it, now go make my advertisers happy and check out PageRank2.com.

Bookmark Updates

I've been back to working on Bookmark, and have found a number of interested parties in the past few days. What's good is that these individuals and companies are exactly the type of people that this domain is suited for: people who are interested in purchasing high quality generic domain names that do not infringe on anyone's intellectual property rights.

I've had a few offers from them already, one for $60,000, another one in the high 5-digit-range. But I'm waiting for offers in the $325,000 range still.

Oh, by the way, if you refer a person to me who ends up buying Bookmark, I'll give a 10% cut from my cut. (That's 1% of the final price; if the domain sells for $325,000, that's $3250 in your pocket I'll pay you.) So if you know anyone who may be interested, you may want to send them an e-mail :)

Replayer Updates

Ah, where to start? I had this whole big motivating speech planned, but I didn't get very much sleep last night so you'll have to settle for whatever follows.

In fact, I was up until 4am partly because I couldn't sleep, but also because I was discussing the future of Replayer with a poker player friend, and I started to again see the true potential of it all. I got excited about it again.

Below is the latest screenshot, with pretty much the finalized graphics of the actual Replayer. You can click the image to view the actual size:

Now if that isn't sexy, I don't know what is. In fact, I honestly believe it to be among the top poker graphics out there in the history of the Earth.

It's also functioning just fine, being able to replay hand histories, replaying with sound and animation.. the whole nine yards.

Now work will focus more on the server aspect of it, allowing people to register accounts, send URL's to friends, etc.

I also have a secret little project I'll be working on with it which my friend helped me conjure up last night. It could be big. Very big.

I now have complete confidence in Replayer, and it will definitely be one of my major sites, if I don't sell it for $50,000-$100,000 before then.

Maybe affiliating isn't so bad...

Good evening class. Today we shall learn:

• Monthly Earnings
• Poker Affiliating
• Replayer Updates

Monthly Earnings It's June and I've kept with tradition and recalculated my daily and monthly earnings. Here are the results: So, to those who don't already know, I recalculate my average of the past 6 months on the 1st of each month. The chart above therefore reflects the recalculations of the previous 6 month averages, not the income for that particular month.

May came out to only a +$3 daily average increase over April, which is definitely not great news. I'm happy it's positive at least though.

I've decided that I'm not going to recalculate once a month anymore, but once every two months starting now. There are two reasons behind this.

First, unless something really major happens soon, next month will have a lower daily average. This is because six months ago I had a really good month. Shifting over one month would not factor this month in anymore and thus I'd have to show a lower average for the first time. By recalculating once every two months, this will help reduce the importance that one month can have.

Secondly, by recalculating once every two months, it will allow me to save time. Calculating the earnings of all my sources of income on all of my sites, then making charts and graphs on my blog takes a fair bit of time.

Poker Affiliating I've always made the vast majority of my income on PokerForums by selling advertising privately; that is, I sell via my own rates and not by using a 3rd-party ad agency who gives me 50%. However, that is not the strange part. The strange part is that I do very little affiliating.

I sell all of my ad spots to advertisers - when slots are unfilled I'll either fill them in with nothing, an "Advertise Here" banner, or else a site I'm an affiliate of. I also have other areas on the site with my affiliate links, such as the Poker Site Reviews section, as well as whenever certain keywords are posted in the forums (they get automatically linked to my affiliate account). The rest of the site are all private ads.

Most other poker/gambling webmasters I've talked to were surprised I was doing this and wasn't simply affiliating all the sites myself. I've always rebuted stating that I wanted a more stable income so that I could gauge and predict trends easier. I've always felt that affiliating is a rather risky business; after all, players must not just click, download, and sign-up, but click, download, sign-up, and then deposit money. In many cases, after depositing money they must play a certain amount before any money is released to the affiliate!

Anyhow, I've heard stories of many people making $20-30k a month from affiliating, and some people as much as $100k+ a month. In fact, most poker affiliates I've talked to are making a lot of money from affiliating. I guess I've just always been skeptical.

However, the other day I was checking my affiliate earnings and saw the real potential of affiliating. The following image is taken from one of the many various poker sites I'm promoting. The stats are from the month of May:

I rarely check up on the stats of this site because the site is not one of the major sites I'm promoting, and in the past has not been making much to warrant often viewing. However, apparantly a new user signed up sometime in April and is an active mid-to-high stakes player.

He raked in over $11,000 in one month! The rake is the portion of each hand that the casino takes for their own profit. I was curious as to what limits this player was playing so I signed up on the site myself and looked around until I found him (they didn't have a search user feature). He was playing the 5-10£ NL tables, which is around $10-20 NLHE in US currency. Pots there can go as high as $5,000-$8,000.

Anyhow, this user gets back $3,965 as a result of signing up through my offer which gives him a 30% rakeback (34% in this case as he's reached a certain tier) for life. It also gives me 5% for life. So, I made nearly $600 as a result of his playing this month.

Wow. Imagine signing up 9 more players that play medium-to-high limits who play around the same number of hands as him. That's $6000 a month! And the real funny thing here is that you keep earning for life as long as they keep playing - you are not selling ad inventory or having to keep a site up to date. In fact, if you really wanted to, after you signed up those players, you could shut your site off entirely and retire (as long as they keep playing).

Now, the problem here is that most people you end up referring are micro-low limit players. And they usually don't last long; they'll lose enough money where they'll stop playing (at least at that site). The real goldmine is signing up very good players (or really really bad but rich players who play high limits).

Anyhow, this does shed a different light on things for me now. I may be more willing to affiliate on the site now, as well as actively promote them more.

Replayer Updates

A couple of blog posts ago I had mentioned how I was disappointed with now Replayer.org was progressing. Well, I'm pleased to say that there have been a number of positive developments since then.

The programmer hired for the project had difficulties last week with PHP on the server. This seems to have been resolved (mysteriously) and he can now get back to working on my server directly as opposed to on his local machine (made showing me things difficult) which was having connectivity problems.

I had mentioned before how I was very disappointed with the actual website part of the project - granted, I had only wanted something simple and would have it revamped by a proper designer later, but it was (is) still of an extremely low quality, and so I had assumed that the main graphics for the Replayer would be way below my expectations as well.

Luckily, I was wrong :) Below is a screenshot from mid-development of the Replayer's graphics:

Sexy, no? :) It is still being revamped and worked on; it already has complete player graphics and proper logo integration, but other aspects such as chips and cards are still being worked on.

Anyhow, this development gave me a lot of confidence and optimism for Replayer.org. I was talking to Mooky on AIM and he was very impressed with the project. I told him I was possibly thinking of selling the site when it was completed for a minimum of $25,000. He spit on that idea and said I'd be stupid if I sold it for anywhere near that cheap. Well, here's hoping that it will take of well...

Anyhow, that's all for now folks.