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 
Wheee – been a little while since I have written on here hasn’t it?
Hope everyone is well. The last time I wrote on here was in August 2017. I wasn’t sure why it was that I hadn’t written here in awhile until I saw the actual date.
That coincided with a new schedule change that I was making with the kids going back to school. Basically I have a “daily to do list”. Something I have to do every day – even if I’m on vacation or even if it’s the day Santa is visiting – and it can take 2-5 hours depending on the day and the tasks.
The daily to do list consists of things like going through all my e-mails, catching up on reading on various forums, websites and subreddits for work, and doing sports tips. I’d have NHL every day, NBA 4 days a week, golf once a week that sort of thing.
Along with the daily to do list, I of course have a ton of other work. Site updates, site maintenance, building new sites, testing out new marketing, research on topics etc etc – you know the drill.
In the last week of August, we went to the cottage for a week. It had been a busy Summer both work wise and family wise and I decided to do something rare – take the entire week off. Not do my daily to do list for the first time in forever. Only check e-mails and deal with anything uber important – that sort of thing.
And I have to say – I loved it. I spent my time doing stuff with the family or just relaxing and reading. Spending a couple of hours reading Fantasy Football magazines to prep for the new season etc – that was the life.
It was also a good time for reflection. Nothing like sitting out at a campfire drinking beers and just being alone with your thoughts. And I just kept thinking “I want more of this”. I wanted more of the relaxation. I mean if you work from home you know how hard it can be at times – it’s very hard to switch off.
For example I watch about 4-5 NHL/NBA games per night. But do I do it sitting on the couch relaxing? Or pop down to the local sports bar for the atmosphere? No I do it at my computer – while working.
So “working too much” was a weakness I had – not being able to separate the work life and the home life. Also the inability to really regard items as low priority – if a work item came up I “had” to get it done even if it could sit on my to do list for a year and not really be a big issue. Another big weakness I’ve always had is delegation. Over the years I’ve been very, very poor at delegating work.
So come September and the kids going back to school, I set myself up with a new schedule and try and conquer those two weaknesses. That schedule would involve me doing the daily to do list every day as per usual – however on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays when I completed the daily to do list I was DONE for the day. That was it. So often my work would be done by around 9am-11am depending on the day and the time I woke up at, giving me the rest of the day for myself.
I’d work just Tuesday-Thursday instead. Those would be my big work days however due to the fact that I was working just three days a week, that’d FORCE me to delegate large portions of my work.
Over the last year it’s been mixed results. For the most part it’s worked out quite well. I’m delegating more and more every month. It’s hard to stick to that Friday-Monday off schedule at times simply because hey lets be honest – I love work. My house usually becomes sleepover central for the kids on the weekend. My wife likes to stay up late on Fridays watching movies/TV so I’d be up at 5am, get my daily to do list done by 7am on that day, and see a bunch of sleeping kids all over the living room and the wife fast asleep upstairs. Welp might as well spend my day watching soccer and working then!
However I do think that schedule is the best for me and it’s something I’ll be working towards maintaining going forward.
Now – what does this all have to do with Affiliate Bible and the lack of posts? Quite simply Monday was always a day off for me, and Mondays are when I’d write this article. And honestly knowing it was my last day off before the work week – every single week It’d show up on my to do list and I’d think “Nah not this week – I just want to go chill on the Xbox”. And that’s basically happened for the last 49 freaking weeks.
Of course another reason is that I just ran out of topics to really talk about. A lot of the writing on Affiliate Bible is by “motivation” as in I’ll randomly start thinking about a topic and then get motivated to write 1200 words out of nowhere about it. However I for whatever reason just haven’t had that motivation to write about topics.
Anyway I’ve no idea if I’ll keep writing here or what. I’m going to go through my massive spreadsheet of article ideas and hopefully get to doing some of them – but just wanted to check in rather than make the site look like it’s sitting dormant. I did always enjoy writing here and hopefully that continues.
Web Hosting:
The title of the post references a recent web hosting move I did.
I’ve been with Hostgator for years and years. I was there back when they were the best in the business, the pre-EIG days. All the way through that period where Hostgator servers seemed to go down every freaking day and where they had like a two day downtime at one point. All the way up to the current days where they don’t even have e-mail support anymore.
About 3 years ago, I purchased a server at Liquid Web and moved a few of my sites there. I’ve been generally quite happy there although had a few issues. In the fall of last year I decided to move the rest of my sites from Hostgator to Known Host. I like having two different servers at two different hosts as all my eggs “aren’t in one basket” plus call me paranoid but it feels good splitting my gambling sites up from my non-gambling sites.
In February of 2018, I said goodbye to Hostgator for good after moving every single site I had away from them.
Now as soon as I left Hostgator, I was ready to write this article and it was going to be scathing. I was going to rage on Hostgator and their downfall over the years. There was a few specific reasons as to why I finally got the motivation to leave and I was going to rant about that.
However I thought about it and really – why bring more negativity on the internet? Did I have issues with Hostgator? Yes. But what’s ranting and complaining about it going to do? I did the only thing we should all do if we have the power – react with my money. I wasn’t happy with their service so I switched.
So instead of ranting about HG I want to thank them. In the early days they offered excellent customer service. And while things have went bad I have to say that my server didn’t go down ONCE in the last two years. Not even once. That’s freaking incredible and while they suck from a customer service standpoint, something like that is remarkable.
Thanks Hostgator for the overall solid service throughout the years. Maybe someday we’ll meet again.
(Note: I deliberately didn’t include affiliate links for Liquid Web or Known Host as that wasn’t the purpose of this post. However if you’re interested in signing up with them I’d love it if you could shoot me an e-mail at dan@dealerdan.com. I can offer advice on what server to go with and also give you an affiliate link that way. PS: I also have a non-gambling site that offers blog post links for all sites including gambling sites – if interested, same e-mail address.).
New Sites:
Remember earlier when I said that I generally write Affiliate Bible articles based on motivation? That seems to be the same way I launch websites these days.
I have a strong base of websites and income – what that means is when I plan to launch a website I’m not looking for “what will make me the most money”. It’s more what I am passionate about at that time. I’ll get the itch to launch a website and so I’ll look through my sites and something will stick out. Over the next month I’ll formulate the plans for the website both in my head and on my notepad, then I’ll launch it over the next month.
It’s quite nice as I’m not too concerned about monetization. I generally launch a website, set up a content/backlink plan for the next year, then go on auto pilot. After one year has passed I get a notification via my calendar and it’s basically “Right, let’s see how this website is doing”. Then I dig into the stats, the analytics etc etc and figure out what to do with the site, how best to monetize it at that point etc.
So far this year I have launched two new websites. They are:
WhereToBet.Net: This is a website I’ve had on the drawing board for years and I launched it in February. It’s a complete guide to where to bet online. General articles such as Where to bet the NFL and then more specific articles like Where to Bet NHL Race to 3 Goals.
It’s a really fun website to run and at its core it’s what I love doing best – providing helpful information. Even better is it’s a good sign of my ability to delegate – after the initial launch, the only thing I now perform on the site is admin duties. I have two employees writing all the content so my work is minimal while I let the site age and grow.
BetSoccer.ca: This is a daily soccer betting tips site and man am I happy to finally launch this one. I’ve got so many sports betting tips sites – NHL, CFL, NBA, Golf, WWE to name a few – but there’s no sport I love more at its core more than football.
For whatever reason I was never in the mood to do football tips save for the big tournaments. Long term readers will remember I had a Euro 2012 site (BetEuro2012.org) and then a World Cup 2014 site (WorldCupBettingTips.org I think it was). It was nice dedicating a site to those big tournaments and I enjoyed it. For Euro 2016 I did all the writing at SportsBettingTips.org. And while that was nice – boy did it ever mess up my historical analytics:
That big spike was Euro 2016 of course and it makes looking at historical stats a pain ha.
With the 2018 World Cup coming up I decided the time was right to launch a soccer betting tips site. One reason for that is I’ve lost interested in soccer over the years – I still watch it but not with the same passion. I think because I’ve gotten into American sports so much more.
So I decided to launch BetSoccer.ca in time for the World Cup, then following the World Cup do daily soccer betting tips. And I have to say I am LOVING it. Yes it means more work on my daily to do list but it’s got me into soccer so much more. In the past year I’d basically watch the EPL, the SPL and the midweek European games. That was it.
Now I’m sitting there at night watching streams of Brazilian Serie B, games from Finland etc and am completely invested in them. It’s awesome!
Anyway it feels good to be at this stage in my internet marketing life – basically launching sites more for fun and passion than anything else. It’s something everyone should aim for – I just find I do a much better job that way, and I care more about the sites and enjoy actually working on them. As opposed to “ugh keno is doing well for me guess I have to launch ANOTHER keno site” even though it was such a chore.
Alright that’s it from me – hopefully I’ll be back writing here more often in the future. Maybe I’ll have to switch it to “Thank ____ It’s Thursday” and write the article prior to my long weekend or something.
Hope everyone is doing well – feel free to reach out in the comments below or shoot me an e-mail at dan@dealerdan.com.
Cheers!
This article was written on July 30, 2018 however all articles are looked at on a monthly basis and updated to keep them relevant.
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