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 
I don’t participate much on affiliate marketing forums anymore. There is a wide variety of reasons for that, but the biggest one is simply: time. I just don’t have the time these days to sit around on forums getting into deep discussions. I also don’t have the time to sit there for an hour critiquing someones website, when they just aren’t going to really listen or understand anyway.
My time is limited these days to working from 9am-2pm. With just 5 hours work per day I 100% have to focus on doing things that mainly benefit me.
However I did always enjoy writing and participating in forums over the years, and I made a lot of friends and associates while doing so. That’s why I decided to come up with this regular weekly feature where I browse around some internet marketing forums, pick a few topics that came up over the past week, and then add my thoughts on them.
It should be fun because I’ll cover a wide variety of topics, and there will be a more light-hearted tone. Plus I can speak out of my ass and no-one can flame me publicly!
So let’s pick out a few topics this week to comment on:
Pokerstars to Purchase Full Tilt
Thread Summary: Pokerstars apparently are purchasing Full Tilt, after Groupe Bernard Tapie pull out.
From a player perspective this is good news, and not just because there’s “some news”. The Tapie deal was always going to be a nightmare for poker players. I’m not sure how many people are aware of the specifics of the Tapie-Full Tilt deal, but it really looked like they wanted to have their cake and eat it too.
They didn’t just want to buy Full Tilt – they wanted to do it in a way where they would be benefiting financially right from the beginning. Instead of simply paying the players their money for example, they would force them to “clear” the money in a bonus-like structure, meaning they’d basically be forcing players to rake money and all pay for themselves. From a business perspective it makes sense – but it was a very cheap and half-assed ploy to spend the least. The last thing they needed was to piss off their playerbase(or what is left of it), but this would have did that.
Pokerstars from a players perspective are solid. They were the only company that really worked things out with the DOJ, and they did it in a very timely manner. They’re trustworthy, and really do seem to put the poker players first, and “give back” more than other rooms. So from a player perspective, it’s great.
From an affiliate perspective – not so much. Pokerstars have obviously never cared too much about affiliates – not that I blame them. They just don’t need affiliates, and focus so much on their own marketing that I’m sure very few affiliates bring players in on their own merits – more are a result of the brand name that Stars have brought for themselves.
It’s going to be interesting to see how everything works out. I have lots of friends who are out a TON of money on Full Tilt so I’m excited for them, for sure. As an affiliate? I’m not holding my breath.
Draw Something – How About $180 Million?
CAP: 6 Years. 35 Attempts. Then $180 Million Overnight.
Thread Summary: Link to article and brief discussion on Charles Forman, who was ready to give everything up then he launched “Draw Something” which had over 35,000,000 downloads and saw Zynga purchase it.
I love these sort of stories. Jeremy Enkes favourite quote is “There’s A Million Ways To make A Million Dollars, you only have to find one.” I’ve always liked that quote because it’s not just about getting lucky – it’s about working hard, trying everything you can out, and really just never giving up. You just have to keep trying and trying because you know what? If you’ve tried 1,000 ideas and they’ve all failed…there’s still 999,000 other ideas to try.
It’s funny – because you normally don’t hear about peoples failures until they succeed. THEN they’ll be happy to tell you about all their past failures. But make no mistake – there are PLENTY of failures every day. Successful people fail constantly. I fail constantly. For every successful website I build, there’s 1 or 2 more websites that are complete and utter failures. But it’s all about learning from those experiences, and using them to become stronger.
Google Updates: Panda/Anti-Spam:
Lot of threads on this one, but the discussion seems to be centralized in This PAL Thread.
Thread Summary: It’s been a huge week in the Google SEO World. We had the Google Panda update 3.5, as well as the Google Penguin(Webspam) Update. Overall, some MASSIVE changes in the search engine world.
People who think internet markets have it easy have never lived through this. Many of our livelihoods basically rely on one source: Google. There are a lot of affiliates and internet marketers who don’t utilize PPC or any other form of marketing: they focus 100% on search engine optimization. And overnight, they can be left in ruins.
I respect Google for working so hard at trying to make the web better for everyone. Google is a huge part of our everyday lives. Not just internet marketers, but the average user. I know so many people who don’t use bookmarks anymore; they google EVERYTHING. And Google is trying their hardest to make sure that when the user googles something, they get what they’re looking for.
And of course – Google have a problem. More and more people every day are starting up affiliate sites. Less and less people start up a website “to be a valuable resource”. More and more are starting up websites “to make money”. And unfortunately for every GREAT website out there that is able to be a valuable resource WHILE attempting to make money, there’s 10 or 20 more that are poorly-spun content farms, that provide no real benefit.
There’s lots of suggestions and advice on how to “combat” all this on blogs and forums all over the web but honestly – there isn’t really anything concrete you can do. Just building a quality website may not be enough anymore. I mean you look through the results for a lot of key phrases and they seem to be all over the place. The only real advice I can offer on this topic is don’t put all your eggs in one basket. If you’re relying 100% on one particular income source – you could be in trouble. If you’re focused on one specific niche, demographic for type of marketing – look to spread yourself out, and broaden your horizons.
If you’re wondering why I haven’t written much on Panda on here it’s very simple – I’ve never been negatively affected by it! When I’m not affected by it, it can be very hard to really write about it and dissect it. I’d like to think that the reason for that is I’ve completely giving up on buying links in the past 2-3 years, and I’ve focused 100% on building quality websites instead.
In reality, as we learned from my Wrestlemania trip report, I was just born with a horseshoe up my ass. Little bit uncomfortable, but worth it!
Oh No – Not The Martingale!
PAL: A common issue with regular online casinos
Thread Summary: Affiliate posts a complaint from a player who was martingaling roulette and hit 23 straight red in a row. Affiliate strongly suggests the online casino is rigged.
I’ll ignore the whole “23 reds in a row is an ‘unbelievable phenomenon” part because um, yeah, heh.
It amazes me that in this day and age, people still think casinos are anti-martingale. I can understand when players think that casinos are, but that’s only because most people think they have came up with some “amazing” system that “can’t be beat” – when in reality the martingale is a terrible betting system that the casinos WANT you to play.
Seriously, the casinos LOVE when people use betting systems. Because it means the player thinks they have an edge(when the house has more of an edge) and are more apt to spend money on it.
I just wanted to mention this because I did consulting with an online gaming provider not too long ago. Their whole plan was to allow skins the option to have a betting system feature. You know how some online casino games allow “autoplay”? Well it’d be like that, but the player could choose to automatically use a betting system like the Martingale, Base Five, Fibonacci or D’Almbert betting system.
What’s funny is I probably talked myself out of the job when I had to tell them that this was a mistake – people use betting systems like the Martingale because they think they have some sort of “edge” on the casino. By the casino directly pushing it on them and enabling it, it would make people skeptical and actually think more about it.
Actually, I remember when people asked me what my job was and I told them I was a poker affiliate. Then they’d spend the next hour telling me how Pokerstars was rigged, and how their aces “always got cracked on the river”. So I started telling people I was a casino affiliate. Then they’d start tell me about how they “always win” because of this amazing new system they came up with, where they just double up every time they lose.
Now I just tell people I’m a garbage man.
This article was written on April 27, 2012 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.
