Back with a Vengeance!

The summer is nearing its end, and the ‘good times’ are coming. Just like most other gambling affiliates, I suffer badly during the months of July and August – less traffic, less rake, and so on. During the 2009 summer I lost about 50% of my income, which scared the crap out of me, but thankfully this year, mainly because of investing a fair amount of money into SEO, I managed to keep a stable income. Fair to say, I hate the summer just as much as I love it!

Thursday we came back from our family vacation. This year we’ve spent two weeks in Estepona (15 km from Marbella) South of Spain. This is also the region we are planning to move to, at least in our dreams (until I convince Lydia that there are plenty of decent schools for our children). The climate is very good all year round, the Spanish people are really friendly, and life over there seems to be a real bargain compared to the Netherlands. And let’s not forget, with a possible government ran by Geert Wilders’ party… who wants to be here after all.

Anyway, the vacation was rather good, although the hotel could have been much better for a four-star hotel. The room was nice, the hotel looked nice too, including the poolside, but these douche bags were charging us for about everything you can think of! If you ever think of going to Estepona, think again before booking the Pierre et Vacances – Calendonia Golf Resort.

Three weeks before leaving I decided to do what Tim Ferriss says, the author of the 4-Hour Workweek. I decided to focus on projects that are currently generating the most of my income, to make even more with them, instead of putting my energy into newly launched projects. So I redesigned Poker For Free, the site got a complete overhaul. While I was doing so, I was split testing the homepage to see if the new design outperformed the old one, and it did. So after working day and night for three weeks, I decided to put the site live just before flying to Spain. Quite a risk, but I was so excited that I didn’t want to wait. Fortunately, it didn’t turn out to be a bad decision.

While I was gone I used my iPhone to periodically check my e-mail and my statistics, and was happy to find out that Poker For Free’s traffic went up by 50%!!! Of course, this had nothing to do with the new site, but all with the $20,000+ which I invested in SEO over the past 8 months. With my site performing so well, I couldn’t wait to get back and work, but on the other hand, I was really enjoying the time off with the family – so I let it rest.

As Pursuing Success is my personal and marketing blog, it’s about time that I should write something interesting about affiliate marketing, right? So my next blog will be about the new Poker For Free, and what I did prior to merging hundreds of pages into the new site. That’s a promise! But for now, I will keep it a little bit more personal though.

While in Spain, I kept going to the gym every other day while Dante went to bed for his siesta. Since I started working out in February, it has become one of my favorite pass times. I managed to lose 7 kg already (my current weight is 82 kg), but I think that it must be at least double as much in fat effectively, as I gained quite a bit in muscles too, obviously. I am now proud to announce that I have a Four-Pack, and it won’t be too long before I get to that much admired Six-Pack!

August 18, 2010 – I’m continuing where I left off 10 days ago, and of course many crazy things have happened in the meantime. God, don’t you love the affiliate life! One of the things that worries me is PokerStars. They are so big and powerful, and think they can keep screwing affiliates… over, and over again. And the shittiest thing about it is that I have just reinstalled them on Poker For Free, as a service to my US visitors, about 40% of my total traffic. Want to know why I don’t feel comfortable with my recent decision to continue working with PokerStars, please have a look at this PAL thread: PokerStars Partners are Fucking You Over. Read, or scan it, but you will get the point.

Before I left to the South of Spain, I received an email from Barry with Heaven Affiliates. One of my domains, pokerheavenreview.com, infringed their registered trademark, and he politely asked me to take it down, either by handing over the control to them or redirect it to another domain. I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t try to get something out of it, and asked them for a compensation of $250. Unfortunately, they denied it, but in a very decent matter, so I let it rest and told them I would take it down after I got back from vacation. So today I finally moved my Poker Heaven mini-site to its new location, and 301 redirected the old URLs. The new location, DepositPoker.co.uk, is a site I bought from a guy at the forums, which I already wrote something about in one of my previous blog posts.

During my daily workouts sessions at the gym, I have given some special thought to my next blog post. As you could read earlier in this one, my next post will be about redesigning an existing website with reasonable amounts of traffic. I think I might have found a few ideas to come with an interesting article, and with the transition of PokerKamers.nl the other day, the Dutch equivalent of Poker For Free, I also managed to refresh my own memory a little bit. I am actually looking forward to writing it, but I have some other really important things on the agenda first, such as the translation of the almost 3,000 words counting Poker Crusher Review. I shouldn’t be making any more promises, except to my kids!

Screenshot of Externally Linked ImageThe last topic, before I call it a day and visit my brother in law for a cup of coffee, is something I discovered while exploring my site’s statistics. I noticed a lot of hits coming from two specific freeroll forums. I am not mentioning their URLs on purpose, because I believe password thieves are about the lowest scum of the affiliate industry you can get. Back to the point, it came to my notice that the hits from these specific referrals were occurring because of an externally linked image causing a 404 error, an image that was deleted when I launched the new Poker For Free site. Today I gave them a Dutch treat, and replaced my image with a new one telling their visitors: “Type pokerforfree.org in your address bar.” I don’t know, and honestly, don’t care if I actually get any traffic off it, I just had some fun doing it. Next time you steal from me, or whichever hard working affiliate, think again bitch!

One Reply to “Back with a Vengeance!”

  1. Hi Giorgio,

    It’s always fun to read your blog, I really enjoy the way you write the things down. About the Geert Wilders subject, this was one of the reasons I moved to Brasil, nice people, nice climate and no creepy people around….. Our business we can run from anywhere…
    Keep blogging.

    Johan

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