End of the Year

I can’t believe it’s the end of the year already. The year has gone by pretty quick – especially the last few months.

The last couple of months has been crazy. I moved to Full Tilt to play the 90-man SNGs since PokerStars kicked me off. Everything was going ok after that. I was making decent money (averaged about $7 a game iirc over 700 games), final tabled a few MTTs and the girlfriend and I decided it’d be worthwhile to move to Oregon so I can pursue poker a bit more aggressively.

And then FTP decided to pull out of Washington. I guess I can’t say I was shocked when it happened. It would’ve been nice to have some sort of warning though (from both sites). But I guess if they were to do that, many players would likely cash out and Stars/FTP wouldn’t be able to squeeze us for whatever rake they could.

So, my staking deal ended as a result. There just isn’t a site out there where I can put in any kind of volume, so it didn’t make any sense to continue with it.

Since I had a bunch of free time open up, I thought it would be a good idea to get my affiliate business going again since I stopped doing it 9 months or so after I started to play poker. But then I had to make a decision – do I focus on my affiliate/media business or do I try to move to Oregon? I had a few people willing to help me out and get me to Oregon to play, so that wasn’t that big an issue. And I didn’t want to wait until my lease was up (4-months or so) to move because I’d likely be working on my business and would have to put it on the backburner again to play.

After some thinking and reflecting on where I am now and where I wanted to be, I decided I had to chose between poker and my business. Both were in it’s infancy so to speak – I wasn’t invested much more in one than the other. So, it didn’t make much of difference which I chose to do, I just had to pick one or the other. That way I could focus 100% and really excel.

I ended up choosing my affiliate business. It’s bittersweet to be honest. I really enjoyed playing and I was really getting good (obv thanks to my coaches and peers). But at least now I can focus on building a sucessful business.

So now I’m in the process of planning and launching a site. I was originally going to do a poker site or two, but after seeing what’s been happening the last few months combined with all of the other affiliates bitching about this program or that one, I decided to get the hell out of the gambling affiliate vertical for now – maybe for good. Only time will really tell.

My focus now is on smaller info/niche product sites. I’ll be launching 2-3 between now and the end of January/beginning of February. Once those are up I’ll be creating a training program so I can outsource these smaller sites so I can focus on a few authority sites I’ve been wanting to start. I’ve also been wanting to start a blog about building sites/affiliating. But I’m on the fence since so many different “niches” within the vertical of making money online is saturated. It’s not that I feel as if I can’t compete with those guys, I just don’t want to create a site that isn’t unique or that sounds like a broken record. No one wants to hear the same shit that’s repeated day in and day out by all the successful bloggers now. So, once I can come up with a few ways to make myself different while still providing value, I’ll launch the site and let everyone know about it.

Speaking of which, if everyone who stops by could give me some thoughts or suggestions for this blog (the one I’m thinking of starting), I would really appreciate it. Things that would be helpful to know include:

• Things you struggled with as an affiliate when you were first starting out. If you don’t do any affiliating now, what questions would you have?
• What kinds of tools would’ve been helpful when you were first starting out? These could be programs, plug-ins, templates, etc, etc
• Fast forward to now – what kind of help can you use and in what medium (outsourcing, software/programs, diversifying, tech, etc).
• Are there things you want to learn, but don’t know how to do? This could be coding, design, PPC or getting started in other niches.

Anything along these lines would be helpful. Better yet, I’m sure many of you guys read at least 1-2 blogs (if not more ). What topics or ideas do these guys get across well/don’t get across well? This will obviously vary from person to person, as everyone learns differently. But still good to know nonetheless.

I think I’ll leave this post on that note. Since what I’m doing is changing and I’ll be working on different projects, I should have more newer and/or interesting things to blog about. I’ll be posting a “2011 Goals” post here in the next day or so too – hit me up on skype/msn if you want to do some cross posts/links if you’re doing a similar kind of post.

Have a happy holidays!

~Matt

Category: blog