Dealer Dan, pictured here with WWE Superstar Mick Foley, has been in internet marketing since 1996. He likes hugs, long walks on the beach, and making money while wearing his jammy jams. For more information, you can read all 
Thanks Vince Gilligan for the best TV series ever.
’nuff said.
With Breaking Bad over, I thought I’d go through TV Series that I’ve actually watched and rank them. I think it’s IMPOSSIBLE to do an actual numerical list – because some shows are just joint bloody awesome so it’s hard to rank them above each other. So I’ll put them in tiers. I won’t bother including sitcoms:
My Top TV Series:
Tier 1: Breaking Bad, the Sopranos, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia.
Tier 2: The Shield, Prison Break(Season 1-2).
Tier 3: Lost, Mad Men, The Walking Dead.
Tier 4: Dexter, 24, Entourage, Criminal Minds(up until Gideon left), Arrested Development.
Few notes:
Dexter: Dexter is a tough one to rank. I haven’t seen the final season yet(and I hear it’s not good) but it has some seasons that are much stronger than others. For example – Season 4, the John Lithgow season, I’d put up there in Tier 1 as it was as good as anything Breaking Bad and the Sopranos ever produced. But then there were some real stinkers which drag it down.
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: While not a serious show, I feel this deserves a special mention just because of just how amazing the show is. I rewatch this show constantly and am still in hysterics. Charlies “Dayman” song is my ringtone and it never gets old.
24: Just started watching this and halfway through season 1. It could go higher.
Of course the real thing that is apparent from this list is just how little serious TV shows I’ve watched. So much of 24 still to watch, The Wire, Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire, Deadwood etc. Such a nice problem to have!
Blackberry:
As someone who was a Blackberry fanboy for about 10 years – I’ve watched with interest over the past week as one disaster after another occurs, as more bad news hits Blackberry/RIM every day.
And all I can think is: GOOD.
I used to love Blackberry, and I’d defend them to death. But one thing I absolutely hate is when stupidity is rewarded…..something that seems to happen way too often.
Thankfully, not with Blackberry. I’m just amazed it took this long. I’ve never seen a company more out of touch with their userbase, and I’m taking great joy in watching them collapse.
I mean seriously – think about some of the decisions they’ve made. Ask any Blackberry user why they remain loyal to the Blackberry? The keyboard. So RIM of course focus most of their marketing on non-keyboard phones, and made them the forefront of marketing come OS10.
Why else would users stay loyal to Blackberry? BBM. Hey, let’s allow Android and iPhone users to use BBM! I’ve read their reasons for doing that but I just can’t agree with them. They were just clutching at straws there.
Why do many people leave Blackberry? Apps. So what do RIM do? Why they don’t give a toss about the Blackberry App store.
Another major problem was the operating system. Every time a new operating system came out, their marketing was basically the same: “Yeah our last OS was a POS, but this is the best one and it’s super duper awesome.” I remember that vibe for OS 5, OS 6, OS 7 and OS 10. However if you wanted the new OS? Most of the time you needed to buy a new freaking phone!
There was no upgrades. On the Bold 9000 on 5.0? Well bad news – you need to buy the Bold 9700 to get 6.0. Oh hey you did that? Well bad news 6.0 sucks – you really want 7.0. But you gotta buy a Bold 9900!
And yes – I went through all of those freaking steps. Then they announced the Blackberry 10 series, crapped all over their previous OS – and that was the last straw for me.
Compare that to Apple. iOS 7 just came out – compatible with the iPhone 4, released back in 2010!
Sorry for the rant – but you have no idea how much joy I am getting out of it. As I said – I absolutely HATE seeing stupidity rewarded, and so I am sitting back laughing and loving it, reading all the news…..while on my Galaxy S4.
Suck it Blackberry.
On A Semi-Related Note:
If you’ve never seen it, PLEASE watch the documentary Startup.com.
This is one of my favourite documentaries ever, and I go back and watch it at least once per year. It’s a fantastic look at online businesses during the dot-com bubble, and what happens to one startup who are rolling in investments when suddenly – oops, bubble burst.
White Label Casinos:
Tomas asked:
Sometimes when I read your articles and you describe the volume of traffic you send to casinos and the amount of experience you have, I wonder, why do you keep sending players to Casinos for a share of the revenue instead of opening a white label casino of your own. I’m sure something like this crossed you have even tried it.
It’s something that has crossed my mind for sure – but at the end of the day I just don’t feel it’s worth it. The big one for me is lack of control – I’d still be forced to go along with the software providers regulations and restrictions.
Really more than anything – I much prefer just focusing on the marketing part of it. I’d only want to run my own casino if I had full control – if I had the software myself, able to add whatever games I wanted to it etc – and even then that’s a whole huge hassle by itself.
Long story short, it’s just not for me.
Affiliate Rewards:
Although I have no real interest in running my own casino, white label or otherwise, I do like to sit down and fantasize about things I would implement if I ever did run my own casino.
One thing would be affiliate rewards.
If you’ve ever been to an affiliate conference, you’ll know that one of the biggest appeals of a stand is free shit. I’m sure any affiliate manager reading this will be nodding their head at the next statement – the majority of affiliates who show up to their booth are only there for one thing – swag! And it doesn’t matter what it is. I’m sure most affiliates have picked up over 20 travel mugs, 30 affiliate t-shirts and a desk drawer full of branded pens.
I would LOVE to see affiliate programs use free gifts as an incentive. I’ve said it before but when I was mainly a rakeback affiliate, I’d do freerolls for my players. And I’d ALWAYS get a bigger response when I offered an electronic item to players, as opposed to cash. Actually I’d get about twice the amount of interest in a freeroll with a PS3 offered as the top prize, as opposed to $500 as the top prize, even though the PS3 was substantially cheaper.
I’d have some sort of incentive plan. Like let’s just say on average an affiliates share is 30%, and after all fees and so on, the affiliate program averages about 30%. Have something like this:
$500 Revenue = Kindle Paperwhite.
$1000 Revenue = iPod Touch.
$2000 Revenue = PS3 or XBox 360.
$3000 Revenue = Digital Camera.
$4000 Revenue = TV DVD Boxset, Lost complete series or something.
And so on, and so forth. I haven’t even put much thoughts into the rewards either – I basically looked around my office at what’s sitting here and put them on the scale. But it’s just a good way to keep affiliates pushing your brands. It may sound crass, but if I earn $1000 from your affiliate program and you throw in an extra $150? It’s nice and all but it doesn’t really stand out. But I earn $1000 and I get a package in the mail with $119 Kindle Paperwhite? That stands out to me like crazy.
And I know it’s not just me. I’ve seen the results of many surveys operators have conducted where most people say they’d love rewards like that.
In this day and age, so many affiliate programs all blend in. Hopefully one reading this will stand out and try something outside the norm, and get some strong affiliate loyalty out of it.
Neat Idea:
This was a paid ad I saw while reading the newspaper, but I felt it was worthy of linking:
5DollarBlog.Wordpress.com (Note: Since I linked him he’s added a couple of articles nothing to do with the topic of blog so scroll down to find the ones I am talking about)
Basically what the guy does is buy stuff on Fiverr, then blog about it while posting his affiliate link.
That’s the kind of affiliate idea I LOVE to see. It might not make a lot of money but you just never know – and it’s the type of thing I want more people to try. It’s also a fun way to do it because you get to go through Fiverr and get a ton of random things.
If you play poker – take some time to blog about it afterward. If you bet sports – have a blog somewhere where you write about the bets you made and you bet them.
People love reading that sort of personalized content. I used to run a website – DansCasinoBlog.com – where I would take $100 on a Monday, deposit it at a casino, claim the bonus then play for the week at that casino.
The website isn’t around anymore because it was a bit of a time hog – but I would play at the casino and blog about it, throw in tons of screenshots, some video etc and report how I did. It was pretty fun and I ended up actually winning about $1300 overall over the 6 weeks I kept the site updated.
The key to a site like that is not making it look like an affiliate site, offering a resourceful/interesting read for the viewer, and then marketing the hell out of it on StumbleUpon, Reddit etc with a hook that will get people going.
It can also be a good way just to add content to a site. If you check out the blog over at Multi Card Keno I have blogs posted where I buy actual keno scratch cards, and scratch them off while taking pictures.
It’s really nothing exciting – and very few people read it – but it’s still easy content to add, and it picks up enough long-tails to totally justify doing it.
Plus hey – it’s a good excuse for me to gamble it up!
Alrighty:
I’m checking out for 2 weeks unfortunately, as I’m heading to Mexico this week. Who knows maybe I’ll do an update while there – for some reason I tend to write AB content while on vacation. I remember being at the cottage one year, relaxing in front of the campfire when I came up with an article idea and 20 minutes later I was inside cranking out about 4000 words.
Have a great couple of weeks. And remember to check out that documentary!
This article was written on September 30, 2013 however all articles are looked at on a monthly basis and updated to keep them relevant.
If you need to contact Graeme, please see his Contact Page. If you are an affiliate manager wanting promoted please see this page.
