This is a guest post by Jim Griffin. Thank you Jim for contributing here at SA.

There are very few people in the world of online gambling that are not well familiar with the Calvin Ayre story. Born to Canadian pig and grain farmers and a past that involved selling peaches road side to make a living, in 1994 he managed to scrape together $10,000 to start a technology company that he’d later rebrand as Bodog. After spending much of the mid and late 1990’s helping the first online casinos get started, in 2000 he launched his own sports betting website Bodog.com. His success came so rapidly that in 2006, Forbes magazine covered his story and estimated his net worth at over a 1 billion USD.

For gambling affiliates, there is ton we can learn from his story, so long as we don’t brush it off as luck. Doing so would obviously be foolish. After all, this a man that was virtually broke, and rather than working small jobs for someone else to make a little extra cash, he borrowed Cisco training manuals and began teaching himself network design. I’m sure during Bodog’s early years there were plenty of opportunities for him to sell and retire. He obviously passed on these and instead kept building, kept working and kept reinvesting in his brand.

While it’s easy to get lost in the idea that Bodog’s success came from drinking, partying, degenerate gambling and having fun, that’s all just marketing! When you scratch the surface you’ll see the foundation behind Bodog’s success is their constant desire to be the best. This one single element, a burning desire to be the best, has led so many other success principles to fall naturally in place. I’ll cover those shortly, but first let me show some of the ways Bodog proved their goal actually is to be the best.

In the early days of online gambling most sports betting sites were nickeling and diming players left and right. They charged high fees for a payout and had all sorts red-tape associated with their bonuses. In 2003, Bodog changed all this becoming the first online betting site to take deposits and settle with ACH e-check. Here deposits were instant, and came with an automated, no strings attached instant sign up bonus (yes, there were no strings, all you needed to do was rollover your deposit a single time – and the funds were free and clear to cash out). When it came to cashing out, again it was a free and you’d have the money in your bank account in a few days. At the competitors the only payout method was often Western Union and they’d charge 10-15%.

Bodog’s betting software also helped revolutionize the industry. When it came to customer support, this is another area they excelled. Elsewhere you’d get a Spanish speaker who knew just enough English to communicate. Bodog realized this and created a separate company in Canada. When you called support, the phone would ring no more than two times and you’d have a well-spoken, knowledgeable customer support rep ready to help. If you emailed them, you’d always get a response in under 15-minutes. Bodog paid attention to every minor detail and inside each detail they looked for ways to be the best.

It wasn’t long before Bodog was the most popular brand in the US market, and became the company the talent from around the industry wanted to go work for. After all, no matter what your position, be it a CRM, database, tech, or odds maker – if your background was a gambling and you needed a job, did you want work for some site called Direcbet, Lazer Wager or some other lame name that probably wouldn’t still be around in 2-years, or do you want to work for biggest name in the industry? It’s a fairly obvious choice and Bodog benefited greatly from this hiring some of the best talent from around the industry to be part of their team.

Having beaten around the bush enough, let me go ahead, be direct, and cover some of the things gambling affiliates can learn from the Calvin Ayre Bodog story.

1. Better Yourself Today – Remember Calvin Ayre might be best known for his wild lavish lifestyle, but back when he was living month to month, he wasn’t partying, nor was he focusing on earning more money for something “today”. He picked up Cisco Training manuals and learned a meaningful skill he could begin using to better his business future in the immediate.
2. Have a Vision –Many people like to say I’ll believe it when I see it, while successful people realize in order to see it they’ll need to believe it first. It takes a lot of guts to sell everything you own to scrape up $10,000 and invest it into your own startup business. To get anywhere in life we need have the vision and take our shots.
3. Be the Best – By this I mean ACTUALLY BE THE BEST! Many affiliate marketers get caught up in tricking Google to think they are best, or talking the talk and walking the walk at conferences, only to continue to build mediocre sites. One the biggest reasons Bodog became what they are is the fact they left no stone unturned in searching for all the small areas to strive for perfection. This is company that TRULLY strived to be the best. With this one element alone everything else will fall into place.
4. Trust is Everything – Bodog built a business model where their players, suppliers, business associates and affiliates trusted them. For more than a decade now, when you request a payment at Bodog it comes. Yes, this is with small hitches here and there due to DOJ or whatever else, but it’s hard to argue Bodog has not always gone out of their way to pay everyone timely.
5. Reinvest – In order to be the best, you’re going to need to reinvest. Over the years Bodog has bailed out several brands. The Big Book, WWTS, both leaders in their day later had all thier accounts migrated to Bodog. From here they reinvested in small areas, hiring away talent, marketing, etc. You won’t get anywhere without solid bankroll management, which means continuously reinvesting in your brand.

The final area is a point I couldn’t include on any list. It so powerful and such a key to making life as an internet marketer SOOO much easier you don’t want to miss this point. So without further ado my advice and what I best learned from Calvin Ayre is this: BE YOUR BRAND! Drill this into your head “I am the brand” “I am the brand” “I am the brand”. Say this as many times as you need to until you understand it and believe it. You see, if you focus on building the absolute best sites, building trust, and reinvest – and then put yourself behind it – people are going to remember “You”.

In affiliate marketing we sometimes changes sites, launch new projects etc. We all need links, we all need affiliate deals or advertisers. Most of us also need content writers, website programmers, graphic designers and so many other things. Can you see the advantage of being the brand yourself? Having people remember you? Now if you’re ignoring the other advice and are simply striving to game Google, work out the loopholes etc. there’s no need, in fact you want to stay private. If you’re truly focused on being the best this is where this advice best comes into play. From being the best, and being known as the best, affiliate deals, links, google traffic, quality staff – all this stuff comes your way so much easier. Also no matter where you go in gambling affiliating, the brand near certainly always will follow you.

A final point, you don’t need to use your real name. If your names John Smith, you brand could be something entirely different. It might be Dealer Dan or pokerprop (if you’re a PAL forum user I’m sure you get my point). It can however still be your own name – Michael Martinez and Randy Ray are a couple that come to mind, though I have no way to confirm if that’s their real name or if they’re pulling a Cole Turner. This is a small point – what I’m really getting at is this: if you’re in it for the long haul and building things that are truly special – you want put as much of yourself into the brand as Calvin Arye has done with Bodog.

This is a topic that I’ve been thinking about for a few hours today. I contemplated whether or not this is a discussion I’d like to have on here at this point, but I think I’m in a good position to talk about how to do what I want in life.

I’ve been taking a little bit of a look around Successful Affiliate and noticed one of my old posts about gaining success of move on. It’s important for me to re-read my posts and to take notes, because somehow I manage to forget my thoughts, and the things I discovered and learned at the time.

Since reading that post I realised that there were a couple of gems in the comments section. Roger from Compatible Poker suggested that I hang out the beach because it’s great for clearing the mind. It must have only been a matter of days after reading this that I went to visit my Grandfather who lives at the beach and did some soul searching.

I can remember vividly floating in the ocean and thinking about where I want my life to go. It was clear as day, at that moment my thoughts seemed to click. Within 24 hours I had booked a one-way ticket to Thailand.

The second bit of advice comes from Graham at iPokerAffiliate. At that time he was working out three times a week and looking for something else to do part time. It was in response to me basically failing with my lifestyle choices and looking for a way to improve it.

The post itself was about finding success, or throwing in the towel. I wasn’t earning a great deal of cash and was unhappy with my lifestyle. I even took some pictures and did my measurements so I could track how my progress was doing. There was a list of weekly goals, which I of course never completed.

It’s interesting for me to read this now because my thoughts change so rapidly and I manage to forget them and not actually realise my problems and mistakes and then learn from them.

At that time I reported that my weight was 180.4 pounds and that I was unhappy because I was out of shape. Well fast forward 12 months and I’m in the exact same position in terms of lifestyle issues.

I actually weighed myself when I was in Denver and I weighed 192.5 pounds, an increase of 12 pounds in 12 months. Sleeping patterns are the same ridiculous hours and my Acne is back. I have been eating healthier when I have the opportunity, but traveling has made this much harder than when I’m at home.

It’s Not All Doom and Gloom

This isn’t a depressing, negative post though. It’s more about learning about me and learning from this knowledge. I am going to be reading some books and doing some self development and Internet marketing type courses. What I’ve learned from my past behaviour is that I need to take notes if I’m to learn anything.

So from now on I’ll be blogging about these programs and books so that not only I learn, but others can learn too. Instead of making outlandish goals like write x pages per week, and do this x times. I’m going to be taking a slow and stead approach to my development. It takes about 21-28 days to change a habit and from what I’ve read it’s best to do one at a time.

What I Want to do in Life

This is what all that background information has been leading up to. In my recent post I mentioned doing what I’m passionate about in life. Afterwards I got involved in a conversation with a friend who said this resonated with him and asked what I want to do in life.

It took me a little bit by surprise because I’ve never really had a good idea of what that is. For some reason though, that has all become a little bit clearer to me now and I have a good indication of what I want to do.

I have a strong interest in topics like personal development, philosophy, fitness and health. So I think it’s only natural that I go down the path of the men’s self development website that I’m going to be working on.

Not only that though, it has always appealed to me to do those life coaching seminars, changing your life, live life to the fullest type “gurus.” Yeah I know right, sounds super corny.

One of the reasons this appeals to me is because I have to become a guru of myself. I am failing in a lot of these areas, even though that’s what I’m interested in.

The other reason I can think of that this appeals to me is because it actually makes a difference in people’s lives. An engineer will help build a village, but someone like me is best suited to influencing people and motivating people to improve their lives.

In a nutshell, what I want to do in life is to succeed at developing myself in all areas. This includes business, health and fitness to just name a few. I want to get so good at it that I can become a life coach and travel the world doing amazing things, conferences and influencing people.

This also ties in with my other major passion of travel. I want to document my adventures of the world and I can do that by going in the life coach direction.

What it comes down to is the fact I don’t want to be a normal person having a normal life. I want to do and be extraordinary.

How I’m Going to Do It

A recent thread on a forum about completing University sparked this thinking for me. I honestly don’t know if I’ll complete my degree, currently I’m leaning towards yes though. I think an influencing factor in that is because of the visa situation in some countries. In some cases the best visa is to get a skilled worker visa, where a degree is necessary. A large part of me though wants to rebel, and really hates the fact that I’d be doing it just because society says so.

It’s such a grind and pain that I can honestly not stand to do the assignments. The course material is actually quite interesting, but bullshitting to University essay styles is not something I’m interested in doing anymore.

I did take a look at personal training courses; yeah this is a bit of a laugh at the moment considering how out of shape I am. But ultimately, I’m going to need to have extensive skills in fitness and health, and this won’t be a bad route to take.

Like I alluded to earlier, there will be plenty of books and self development courses, but the crux of this post is slightly different to that.

When I talk about how I’m going to do what I want in life, it doesn’t necessarily mean the courses or learning I’m going to undertake. I mean in terms of dealing with family, finances and being able to do what I want effectively.

No one has heard the “get a degree” speech more than me. My Sister has two degrees and works for a private equity firm in London. She is forever hassling me saying that I can’t get anywhere in life without a degree because that’s just how the business world works. I even changed Universities to go to a more prestigious one because she said getting a degree from the other one wouldn’t be able to get me a job. I picked up a second degree (Commerce), which I hated, and this is when I started hating study and eventually dropped out.

My mother is more lenient, but still craves the degree. I have some sort of reputation in the family of being wild, so they think I “need” a degree because I’m likely to end up on the streets in Vegas.

My Father tells me to get a real job and his girlfriend tells me I have no morals because I work in gambling.

So basically, yeah I’ve heard it all. Up until recently I was broke my entire life. Still though, I persisted.

For me, even though I was struggling, I knew that this was the direction I wanted to take. I can never see myself working a corporate job, unless it’s running my own company or consulting. I could see the bigger picture and it’s now starting to pay off.

So when I talk about how I’m going to achieve my goal of being a life coach, I mean being able to do it regardless of other people’s opinions, ignorance and self-doubt.

This means that I’m going to have to confront a couple of issues when I get back to Australia, but that’s what it’s going to take. Avoiding outside influences and staying with core beliefs is something that I have struggled with and I’m sure everyone does. I kind of feel brain washed because of society and that’s something I’m definitely interested in working on.

The point here though, is that creating a lifestyle for yourself is something that only you know best. I should never have changed universities, nor picked up a double degree. It’s resulted in me not having a degree and hating study.

The first step is for me to actually do and be successful at life. The first steps include developing this website and my men’s self-development website. That will get the ball rolling on my own personal development and I can begin to develop the skills I need.

So how am I going to get what I want out of life? By trusting my instincts and acting upon it.

I’ve been in Edmonton for 9 days now, and have had the best of lots of different worlds. The first few days were hectic with partying, shopping, movies and eating out. After the initial burst of Edmonton excitement we spent several days recovering before another surge of energy to get us through the weekend.

It’s now Monday so it’s definitely time for an update and a more detailed account of what I’ve been up to since I’ve been in Canada because my last post didn’t go into much detail on this part of the trip.

I arrived in Edmonton on Saturday 16th of October. It didn’t go as smoothly as I would have liked because immigration thought this particular Aussie was suss. I didn’t bother to ask them what their problem was but I have a feeling it was because I work online, came from America and was visiting someone I hadn’t met before.

They went through my iPhone, laptop and tried to get into my camera. Due to the extraordinarily long battery life of Apple products (sarcasm), my batteries were dead. They even went to the trouble of getting their own battery chargers so they could get into my stuff. One guy spent a long time going through the messages on my phone trying to work out if I was meeting up with Aidan for business.

Eventually they must have worked out that Aidan and me met at eHarmony (jokes) and that we were meeting up for our first “real life” date. After calling him and confirming he knew me and why I was here, I was allowed into the country.

That afternoon I watched my first full Ice Hockey game on TV. The Penguins were playing and they thrashed Ottawa. This afternoon was spent with Aidan’s family who were visiting and sinking my new favourite beers, Mooseheads.

That night we went out on the town and got ridiculously drunk. This Aussie is such a bad influence that Aidan and his friend ended up puking, while I blissfully passed out. It was not so bliss the next day when we were trying to eat bacon and eggs.

My memory is a little hazy on some of the days from here, so I’ll recount the events and not the days. Note to self to update more regularly in the future so this doesn’t happen again.

The next night Aidan and me went to dinner and then watched Jackass 3d. I had a gourmet pizza, which had an oil base rather than tomato paste which is a little different than I’m used to. It was tasty.

Before going into the cinema I produced one of the greatest air hockey comebacks in the history of the prestigious sport to claim an emphatic victory.

This success was short lived after I realised that my popcorn with butter was not what I had expected. It’s a ritual of mine to buy the biggest popcorn and coke possible when I go to the cinemas. Stop judging me!!!

When the guy asked if I wanted butter, there was no way I could refuse this North America tradition. Boy, was this a bad mistake. It was oil poured all over popcorn. It tasted like a litre of cooking oil had been put on, and I’m sure I’m not too far off in saying that.

The movie was hilarious, sickening and downright ***** up at the same time. Was entertaining, brain-dead humour that we needed while we were fighting our respective hangovers.

On the Monday we went to West Edmonton Mall, which is one of the biggest shopping centres in the world (was the biggest at one point). This place is just insane, I’m going to have to go back to take some photos. It has a water park, casino, shooting range, mini golf, cinema, you name it. The enormity of the place is just intense.

I bought a few things while I was there because my wardrobe needs a rapid upgrade. I’m happy with the sweater I bought, long sleeved v-neck shirt and a pair of pants. Not so happy with one pair of pants especially, they make me look like a douche bag Doctor.

The Tuesday was spent recovering from all this activity and sleep that we needed to catch up on. This was probably the time I started watching some Ice Hockey matches and placing a few bets. I probably ended up even after I was a couple of hundred bucks up. I was mostly betting to help my buddy Jim cash his affiliate account out from Bookmaker.com.

Wednesday night the excitement fired up again and we went out for mid-week boozing, the night the locals go out around here. It was pretty quiet though and not much was going on. We went out for dinner and had a few drinks before we decided it was in our best interest to go to the casino.

The poker room rules are much more relaxed than they are in Australia. I was able to eat my meal at the table and there is free pop available (soft drink).

It didn’t take me long to get the table on tilt. Within just a couple of minutes I had one guy with steam bursting out his ears. The game was Dealer’ Choice and this hand happened to be Holdem. I had pocket aces and was way behind with a J J X board and several in the hand. After the turn I was last to act but the dealer didn’t realise I still had cards because I sit with my hands on them. He dealt a King but then the official was called to work out the situation. Eventually I called the turn and the re-dealt river was my ace.

After taking this decent pot I continued on my merry way, all within the first ten minutes. Playing Omaha I hit quads twice against the same guy and took his entire bankroll. I didn’t have time to finish my dinner before it went cold, and spent the majority of my time stacking up my chips.

That was one thing I noticed, they mostly had $1 chips. I’m super slow at stacking because I’m used to the dealer giving me $25 or $100 chips. At one point Aidan got too frustrated with this noob so he started stacking them himself.

By far the greatest story of this night involved Rage (I named Aidan this because he dyed part of his hair red). It started out because the guy that I had tilted and taken the money off, had finally won a big hand after re-buying. It was a sizeable pot in which he had quads and the other guy a full house.

The problem was that the guy only showed two of his four cards in this Omaha hand. The dealer said that in future he has to show all four cards otherwise it’s considered to be a muck. Mr. Douche bag Roids on the other end of the table that was fuming about the hand decided to forcefully say “ship it” and try to claim the pot.

This is when Rage gets invovled. He says “don’t pull that shit, it’s not cool.”

When the guy asks him what he said, Rage replied “don’t pull that shit, it’s not cool.”

Mr. Roids then asks, “Do you want to have a chat about this.”

This is the most comedic part of the night. Rage rolls his eyes and responds “typical response.”

At this point the guys starts shifting his body weight around and it’s increasingly looking like I’m going to have to get my fight on because Aidan had no chance of surviving (mean that in the nicest possible way buddy).

Instead though the guy mutters something about “gray matter” and that he’s a gentleman. I quietly said “rage” to Aidan and we were fighting back hysterics at this point.

At the end of the night, after winning plenty more hands and donking off a good amount I left $300 up and Aidan won $200 in the space of two hours. That turned out quite profitable for us and paid for some of the weekend we just had.

The next night was supposed to be just a chill out night with a few beers, that didn’t quite happen and was one of the funniest nights since I’ve been on this trip.

Aidan’s Dad came over for the night and he invited his friend over who I was calling “gypsy.” The night was full of banter and plenty of sledging about each other’s country was involved.

Big Russ and Gypsy

Manosterone betting moments at their best. Gypsy bet him $100 he couldn't do 15 slow reps.

Big Russ (Aidan’s Dad) decided it would be a great idea to feed me whiskey shots while we hammered down our Moose heads. Gypsy thought it was a great idea to give as much shit to me as possible about Australia, but I’m too witty and came out way in front from these exchanges.

Aidan’s Dad and “Gypsy” from Nick Haslem on Vimeo.

Russ with Gibsons Whiskey and Moosehead

Aidan was super excited we were getting our drink on. He was playing poker during this time. I ended up accidently kicking his weights. it really hurt.

On Friday night a big group of us went to dinner at a place called Earl’s where we ate dinner and got our drink on. After that we went to a bar called 100 that Aidan’s friend work’s at and we got free drinks while we were there. Needless to say, I had far too many vodka red bulls on this night. It ended up with me setting the dance floor alight to Michael Jackson, with one girl saying “you intimidate me.” I hope that was a compliment.

Saturday night I went to my first ever live Ice Hockey match. It was the Edmonton Oilers vs the San Jose Sharks. The Oilers scored within the first minute but ended up losing 6-1. We ran into a couple of Aidan’s friends who we ended up going out with.

Pre-game National Anthem at Ice Hockey from Nick Haslem on Vimeo.

Oilers vs Sharks game

Another happy snap of the game

Oilers getting smashed 5-1 at this point. P.s Wayne Gretzky used to play for the Oilers.

The “heroin beers” at the hockey stadium get their name because they rock you so hard. Wasn’t long before we had our buzz on and another big night was upon us.

This is Aidan and me with our "heroin beers"

Aidan, his friend and me with heroin beers

After getting off the subway (my first time) we proceeded to walk around in what felt like -50 degree temperature. Somehow we flagged down a cab, which saved me from dying on the spot.

Aidan's friends we ran into at Ice Hockey. This was taken later in the night at the Billiards Club. That's the chick Aidan asked where her muzzle was.

Later in the night I was hoping for some of that fresh air because we got our dance on and it got hot up there. We spent most of the night at the one place and finished the night with Indian food. Butter Chicken is the bomb at 3am.

This weekend was actually quite expensive, probably around the $500 mark. It sparked me into action though because yesterday I followed Aidan’s lead and made an account at budget pulse. I decided to enter in all of my transactions since I sold my Craps website, so I can take control of my finances.

I’ll make a separate post about the financials at the end of the month, but I am enjoying using the website in the initial stages. There are a few other pressing issues I have to get on top of when I get back to Australia, like tax, Paypal and university. But this is definitely a step in the right direction.

Today we were going to go Ice Skating but we’ve been sleeping ridiculous hours, me in particular. We woke up a little earlier today, but still it’s not ideal sleeping most of the day when on holiday.

It wouldn’t have made much difference today though because it started snowing! It’s only the second time I’ve been to the snow in my life so I’m excited like a fat kid in a candy store. It’s only a matter of time before Aidan starts to get bombarded by snow balls.

It started snowing today in Edmonton

Look at all the snow!

Tonight we’re going to one of Aidan’s good friend’s birthday pub crawl. It’s a Monday night so it’ll be quiet, but should be a good time because she’s a cool chick. I won’t be drinking much because I want t do plenty this week before Halloween and it’s only 7 days until I fly out to New York City.

As you can see, I’ve embedded my videos using Vimeo. There are a couple of reasons why I decided to use Vimeo. The first one is because Youtube wouldn’t let me sign in or make another account. The other reason is because I can show my videos without commercials. I paid the $60 for the Plus account, so I’ll see how it works out. It allows me to upload 5 gig a week, with each video being a maximum of 1 gig. My camera videos are quite sizeable, with a couple of minutes worth of footage being about 370mb.

I hope you’re enjoying the posts as much as I do writing them. It’s great to be writing on here again and having a story to tell.

Until next time, watch out for drop bears!

Excuse the generic, boring title of my first post here in 5.5 months, but it best sums up this post. In the past six months life has taken several twists and turns which has me currently sitting in Edmonton, Canada. It has also been one of the hardest and most difficult times of my life.

Last I posted I believe I had just returned to Australia from Thailand. I had planned to stay in Bangkok for about 12 months and learn the language, culture and Muay Thai (kick boxing). I spent a four nights in Phuket, and then my buddy and I flew to Bangkok. We stayed in a hotel for two nights while we looked for a condo to rent. He was always going home after a month, but I was staying on. I ended up getting a 2 bedroom condo for about $850 AUD a month. The complex had a pool, gym, sauna, and restaurant with room delivery, laundry and mini mart.

I met up with Bill Rini several times and he was super nice and made the transition to living in Bangkok easier on me. I was also living in the same complex as a member on his Thailand website, who worked online as well for a Turkish travel agency.

View from Bangkok hotel

Bangkok shopping centre

MBK Shopping Centre in Bangkok

View from Bangkok condo

Dining area in Bangkok condo

Authentic Thai food from condo restaurant

My buddy Henry at the condo pool

Out the front of the condo - Saw 34 military guys walk along here one day

Three weeks into the trip I found out that my Dad is dying of Bowel Cancer. I flew back to Brisbane a week later and my Sister flew back from London, and my brother up from Sydney. A lot of this time is now a blur to me, and I don’t want to go into too much detail here. But I’ll give a quick rundown of the events during these months.

My Sister and brother both went home and I stayed and looked after my Dad. He ended up going to hospital for about a month and things got rough, real rough. He was close to the end, and wanted it all to be over. He was in excruciating pain and didn’t sleep for six days. The tumor was pushing up against his sciatic nerve, which was sending pain signals down his leg. He described it as electricity and fire burning down his leg. Apparently it is the worst kind of pain you can get.

At this time they were forced to move house because the council had resumed their property to widen a main road. So I was waking up and doing some jobs around the house, driving in and visiting him at the hospital all day and then going home to help out around the house some more. It was these four weeks that were the toughest in my life, and wouldn’t wish it upon anyone.

Dad eventually got out of hospital against the advice of Doctors. Basically if he stayed there he was going to die. He was in terrible shape and we were told he had less than six months. Initial evaluation was 6-12 months, and then it changed to 12-24 months before he went to hospital.

I helped move them into their new house while he was in hospital, so when he came out he was at the new house. There was a lot of work to be done to clean up the yard, chopping down trees and all that fun stuff. During this time I was looking after him from Sunday-Wednesday and my Sister-in-law was looking after him the rest of the time. His partner had to work during the week so someone needed to be with him during the day.

My Sister came back from London on the advice of the specialist, who told her in his last days at the hospital that he didn’t have much time left and he recommended she come home sooner rather than later. She works for a private equity firm and she ended up taking the rest of the year off without pay.

After a few weeks of doing this I ended up meeting with Jess from Sports Betting Lines. I got to show him around for a couple of nights and get him shit faced beyond all recognition (ask him about the stripper).

After he left I decided I needed to get a kick on with my affiliate stuff. I basically hadn’t worked in six months, and needed to kick on now that my father was doing relatively OK. It didn’t take me long until I came up with a solution, I sold my Online Craps website. It was a great deal for both of us and I was able to pay off all the debt I accumulated from the Thailand trip that was cut short (lost two months rent for breaking lease etc). Now I’m debt free.

As my Dad’s condition remained steady it became obvious that having both my Sister and myself there wasn’t a great system. I had begun studying online to finish my degree, but now that things had calmed down I began increasingly edgy to get on with my life. I know this sounds kind of harsh, but I spent more time with my Dad in those months than I had in the last decade and we were on good terms for the first time in a long time.

Not long after I had my ticket booked to the US for 90 days. The Visa waiver program only lets me stay for 90 days and that seems perfect. I’ll be back in Australia on the 30th of December for New Years and my Sister will be back in London. Before I left I got to have a great weekend in Sydney with my best friend Carly. My Rugby League team was playing hers in the semi-finals and we went to the match and stayed in a hotel at Darling Harbour. My team ended up winning the Grand Final which is an added bonus.

Carly @ Darling Harbour before the big game

NRL Semi final - pre-match

Carly and me went to La Perouse. Best coffee I've had in my life.

The trip started by hanging out with Jess and NickM from Poker Websites. Nick was on a road trip around America and I had an absolute blast the time that he was there. Jess was kind enough to let me stay at his place and showed us around. We took a trip to the foot of the mountains in Denver, which was simply amazing. We went to a river and a fishing hole where the water was clean, fresh and pristine. It was great to feel alive again.

NickM eating a (in)famous Philly Cheesesteak the morning after Jess shaved his head

NickM and me at a golf course that has a $120k per year membership

NickM & Jess with buffaloes in the background!

This is the Debeers $700k fence. They own 90% of the world's diamonds

The second night I met Wes from Beat No Limit and TJ from Gambling 666. These guys showed me around “lodo” which is down town Denver. It was great to meet these guys and we had a ton of fun chewin’ the fat and having plenty of drinks.

NickM soon went home and Jess and myself began hanging out, working and I was studying. I had a couple of assignments due so I spent the majority of the time studying. This became too tedious when I was getting the second one done, and I decided to delay my studies because I found myself not enjoying my holiday as much as I thought I could. Ideally I would have been able to do both, because I really want to finish my degree, but it got the better of me.

I spent some days chilling with Jess, going to the gym and eating out a lot. We had some good days here, and we shared some great conversations about both work and life, some of which I’ll never forget.

I decided that now that I wasn’t studying I should get out and take advantage of the situation I’m in. I organised a road trip with my friend who is finishing up work in America as a racehorse trainer. He used to be my best friend up until the age of about 13, but he moved away and I haven’t seen him since. We’re going to do a road trip from New York City to Miami on the 1st November till the 21st. Then we’ll get on a cruise and go around Mexico and the Caribbean for 7 nights. He goes back home and I’m going back up to Denver to enjoy the Christmas festivities with Jess and have my first white Christmas.

After planning the road trip on the East Coast of the US, I had a couple of weeks to kill in between. My buddy Aidan suggested I come visit him, and a couple of days later I was all booked. I was super excited to come here because we had made plans a couple of times in the past for me to come visit him in Canada.

I had a fair bit of trouble getting into Canada though. Customs did not like the fact that I came from the US and that I worked online at all. They went through my laptop and iPhone and started questioning SMS’s. After about an hour of this I was allowed into the country for my holiday. It was kind of funny because I said I knew Aidan from online, we joke that we know each other from a ghey online dating website.

The first night Aidan, his friend and me went out to the bars and got hammered. Can’t remember much of this night, but it was a good time. Earlier in the day I hung out with Aidan’s family who were visiting and had some nice beers, Moose Head.

Yesterday I went shopping to by some new clothes. I haven’t bought new clothes in a long time, plus I was super cold being a silly Aussie with Summer clothes. The added benefit of this is that Aidan is quite the little fashion designer, so now I’m super cool just like him.

Today I woke up and was going to drop mid x,xxx on a domain but I decided against it in the end. There are a couple of reasons for this. One, I’m now in a situation where I can work on thing I’m passionate about in life. It was also a fair bit of money to invest in something I don’t have any experience in.

I’m all for still using my skills to leverage this cash to a new level. But I didn’t think this was the right opportunity. I’ve decided that I’m going to develop IntenseGambling.com, an all-in-one gambling site that I will have full ownership of, along with my Australian gambling website that I have a partner in. This is going to get fully redeveloped and become a massive website, we’re struggling at the moment to find the right people for what we need done though.

So with those two sites, that’ll be all the gambling I’ll be doing. It’s my bread and butter and I’ll be able to make a comfortable living just from them if all else goes pear shaped.

That opens myself up to do what I’m passionate about. The first thing I’m going to do is to develop this blog that I’m writing on right now. I see it as a great website that will cover travel and working from home. The life of an affiliate is something I find interesting and I think others will too. It will cover Internet Marketing and all those types of topics like residual income, but will also focus on living life as an affiliate. It opens up doors like living in any country in the world. A site like this allows me to express myself and to find great ways to travel the world doing what we love.

Now that I have the freedom to travel and the cash to do what I want in life, I have interesting things to write about. That was one of my main problems in the past; I didn’t have anything worth writing about.

My next project is something that I’ve always had in the back of my mind as what I want to do in the future, the end goal. I’m going to be making a website about self development for men. It’ll cover topics like dating, self help, health and fitness for males. I haven’t seen any great websites that do this, that aren’t men’s magazine websites. This is what I’m passionate about and I feel I’ll get a lot of value out of not only developing myself, but also being able to help and positively affect people’s lives. At the moment I have an income stream, not a business and definitely not something I’m passionate about. I think this will fill a massive void in my life and go a long way to making me proud of what I do for a living. The domain I’m going to develop for this is UberMen.com.

I have been on the lookout for premium domains in just about any niche. I will need to develop new websites so that I can get my monthly revenue to a level that I’m comfortable at, and not dig into my savings consistently.

Moving forward with Successful Affiliate

I can really see this website taking off. I have some great ideas for posts and will be able to post plenty of pics, stories and tips of traveling and online marketing. One of my dream jobs has always been to be a traveling journalist, similar to the guys from National Geographic Adventure.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over recent months it’s that life is short. My father is only 53 and I’m already 24. It’s time to take life head on and take control and design a lifestyle that I’m excited to live.

This post was a much needed update and recap of the last six months. I would have loved to have written some great entries while I was in Thailand but it didn’t quite work out that way.

There’ll be some big changes around here, so make sure you leave a comment and tell me what you think and any ideas you have!

This is a guest post from Adam. Several months ago we were in contact and Adam has decided to share with readers of Successful Affiliate his story of being a relatively new online affiliate. Adam runs MosesBet.com, and I’d like to thank him for taking the time to share his story.

My name is Adam, and I’m currently in my last month of university at Manchester UK studying Economics and Politics.

Just a newbie, I’ve been in the online poker affiliate business for about 7-8 months. My story is outlined below.

How I First Got into Poker Affiliating While at University

During summer 2009 after finishing my 2nd year I started applying for internships in investment banking, asset management, finance – the typical “I’m an economics student and need an internship” type of thing. It’s what everyone did, does, and will probably continue to do until bank bonuses are legally unsubscribed by the government, or new laws or raise income tax in the industry to bedlamite proportions (hmm 80%?).

In either case, I failed to get an internship because I was too late in the game. I had an interview in London with RBS but failed – not the interview (I aced that). I failed the maths component.

Thinking what the hell I was going to do with myself that summer, I was speaking to my friend sam who told me he was getting paid to write poker news for a small website (one of these was in fact aintluck.com – now a popular member of PAL’s website). Now, I did enjoy playing poker and was quite experienced at the time, so I too went looking for writing work and earning a little money on the side from being at home.

However after weeks of looking for work, emailing every website I could find in google for “poker news”, I could’t get a response. I was even looking for football writing work, tennis reporting on Wimbledon; I couldn’t find anything.

Finally, in what was probably the 100th email I sent out, I got a reply from someone saying that I could probably get some business at a forum called PAL if I was offering my rate of $10 per 500 words.

I signed up to PAL, got a writing job making about $500/month from one guy – and that was how I ended up in the poker affiliate industry. After a week or so I received more writing work from members of PAL – writing reviews, strategy articles, I even worked for Greg helping him with his Bingo content (though at the time I had literally no idea who he was).

The pinnacle of my success in poker writing was probably represented by the few articles I wrote for uk.pokernews about student poker. The editor was considering marketing more to students, and from my cold-call email for work he got back to me. I wrote a couple articles on student poker which were published on the website.

In total made around $2.5k from writing in the space of just 2 months (only working around 2 hours per day – the best of which was when I made $140 from just 7 hours work in a single day). All this was from the comfort of my own home, whilst playing tennis, golf, and going out with my friends. I was happy, my parents didn’t understand how I was making the money, but nonetheless the coinage was nice, and I had some interesting things on my CV.

Starting My Own Website – MosesBet.com

Towards the end of the holidays (by about September) one of my employers asked why I didn’t start my own poker affiliate site. I literally had no clue where to start, had no knowledge of html, domain purchasing, choosing a server, using CMS or wordpress etc. However, I was encourage to do so by my employer (who consequently I signed up as a sub-affiliate for); and before you know it MosesBet student poker and forum was built!

What was my niche? Student Poker.

Unfortunately this didn’t really work out. I had no knowledge of being an affiliate, didn’t have much guidance, so I just thought student poker would be a good niche to target. I am a student, and I play poker, and so do others. I thought it would be good. I managed to get onto the top spots for “student poker” in google, however I was never making money (Even with traffic of around ~70 users per day).

After reading the lexicon of knowledge form the amazing resource that is PAL, I soon realised I needed to regroup myself, get real, and target a new niche. I looked around and decided to target poker tournament strategy. The birth of MosesBet: MTT Strategy and Tournament Tips was born.

After a few months (by the beginning of January 2010) I had a reasonable collection of MTT articles, with about 25 strategy articles and 10 other pages for finding different online tournaments. At this moment I was still not making any money, however I became educated and soon realised this was because I had no CTAs. Again, my rookie self was still wildly evident, and I was basically sticking up content onto a site that had no direction, meaning or monetizing potential. I knew about poker, but knew nothing about affiliating.

Making Money – Getting Players and Starting to See Figures in my Affiliate Accounts

Traffic ~ 100 Per Day

I had signed up one or two players a month before this, but by March 2010 I had started to really learn how to monetise my site effectively, putting in relevant CTAs here and there, and trying to convert users by directing traffic to my best converting pages. I started learning more about my market, listening to PAL radio shows, reading existing threads in PAL about signups, about how to market online effective. DealerDan’s website and many others were incredible help. I eventually started asking myself how I should be monetising my site better. What were poker tournament players were really looking for?

I started producing pages on the best overlay tournaments, best beginner poker tournaments, the best original games. I began writing reviews of the best tournaments at poker sites, reasons to play there. I was actively targeting each one of the visitors on my site. A new wordpress theme, courtesy of Tom at Flytonic, went a long way to helping me achieve this, and making my amateur newbie website begin to look more professional and attractive to viewers. I prominently displayed recommended tournament poker sites on my site-wide sidebars which inevitably helped pick up players.

So, by this time in March my site, approximately 5-6 months old was starting to get at least 1 sign up per week – they usually deposited. Across Carbon, Full Tilt Poker and Titan I was beginning to pick up players for myself, and as I increased and reproved the content on my site, my conversions increased to perhaps 2-3 signups per week. I wasn’t making a lot (possibly $20/week), but at least my site was converting players, and I was never too stupid to underestimate the value of incremental income i.e. converting players every week will eventually lead to something in the big picture.

Future of MosesBet – Adding a New Section for the Latest Tournament Promotions

Traffic ~ 150 – 200 Per Day

My latest website updates which I just implemented today, involve adding a new tournament promotions/news section for players to find the latest online MTT promotions and events. This will hopefully be a massive converting section for me. I have a big enough tournament strategy section (over 65 MTT strategy articles), and I have enough traffic, but I feel I needed something fresh and more dynamic to add to my site and give players searching specific tournament strategy terms something to stick around for (add-value).

Now, I have MosesBet: The best tournament poker strategy, promotions and reviews.

I want to turn this site into something useful, unique, and value-adding to everyone one of my visitors – not just the beginners. Indeed, this was a mistake I think I made up until this point. I was just a one-way tournament poker strategy site trying to recommend users to poker sites and convert them. However for the 90% of traffic I was getting that already had accounts they were happy with at Full Tilt and Stars, they were clearly a lost opportunity to me.

However, now the visitors on my site can learn strategy, read reviews of the best tournaments, and sign up and view the latest MTT promotions in online poker. Hopefully this new promotions section will even be converting alot of the more experienced players that end up on my site through the serps (90% of traffic).

My goal at the moment is to get 10 signups in a single week. It’s quite a big challenge at the moment for me, but in my opinion, the bigger the dream and the higher your expectations, the more likely you are to really succeed.

Incidentally I should add I have 3 other website generating income since 2010. I am not a full-time affiliate, and I am looking for graduate jobs at the moment, however perhaps one day I will be successful enough in the industry to make a modest income from this work.

Yesterday I turned 24, it was also the day that I got some great news, wrote a controversial blog post and had my most productive day in months. I’ve taken several steps to becoming more focused, but as we all know these things don’t happen over night.

I want to thank everyone that wished me a Happy Birthday. I got a phone call from a friend that I hadn’t spoken to in years along with a whole host of Birthday wishes from friends and gambling affiliates.

I’d like everyone to know that I have seen the Birthday wishes on PAL, I thought it would be a bit rude to snob those wishing me a Happy Birthday.

It is a bit ironic that a thread was started, after I left PAL. But in all seriousness, I have met some great friends through affiliate forums and I’m thankful people found the time to wish me a great day. I did have a great day, so thanks

I’d like to make a few comments to follow up from yesterday’s post about the sheep dynamic at PAL. My Skype was burning hot all afternoon and night, it was still burning when I woke up.

Upon reflection, I think the general consensus is that I’ve been too harsh on Brandon, not harsh enough on Greg and didn’t explain myself well enough in terms of Jeremy.

Brandon Berndt Revisited

Like I said in the original post, Brandon has always been good to me and I think he’s a good guy. When I think more about the Chan situation and the role he played there, I think I was too harsh. He was just a normal affiliate manager and was looking to cut his break in the industry.

My argument was that people wasted a lot of time and money because they were following him, but at the same time Johnny Chan is a big name in poker and it would have attracted this kind of publicity anyway. Brandon has always been the non-marketer type and has leveraged his contacts (in a good way), to get where he is.

That being said, the Aced program is a completely different can of worms. He was in charge of the affiliate operation, and must have known full well that the program sucked. Affiliates were telling their players 6 months in advance not to play there and if affiliates were not biased towards Brandon it would never have received that much publicity.

It’s not Brandon’s fault that he’s a popular guy, but at the same time this situation has been dealt with poorly. Affiliates are sick of getting shafted, the manager pissing off until it all settles down and returning with a new program.

The point that I have been trying to make for a long time now, and one that should be perfectly clear now is that gambling affiliates need to make rational decisions. It isn’t rational to assume because Brandon is in charge that it is going to be a success. It isn’t rational to think that if you promote the BB & GP programs that you will be rolling in cash.

If Brandon and Greg want to take all of the free publicity and herd sheep to their new programs, than they must take some responsibility for the outcome.

It really is that simple. They are heralded as gambling messiahs and everyone follows them around, but when something goes wrong, where are they? Where is the transparency?

Greg Powell Revisited

I’ve only been in this industry for a few months over 2 years. That is why Greg scored a 0/2, with a 0/3 in the works. Since that post I’ve found out that Powell’s record is more like 0/7 or 0/8.

The difference between Brandon and Greg is that Brandon doesn’t get involved in the marketing hype much. So I guess it was unfair to put him in that category. I do apologise to Brandon for that.

In Powell’s case though, marketing hype is his domain. I don’t particularly want to harp on about this, because honestly I don’t have too many positive things to say other than he’s done well to make a lot of money.

Greg has always been fair to me on the few times we have talked. He has tried to contact me, but I’m not overly interested in talking to the people involved. This is not an attack on Greg, but allowing everyone to see the facts that should be readily available.

The Point Reiterated

Let me reiterate the point. It is that gambling affiliates shouldn’t follow GP and BB like lost puppies. With records like 0/2 and a possible 0/7 or 0/8, affiliates need to make rational decisions. Not based on the BEST AFFILIATE PROGRAM EVER!!!! hype.

Jeremy Enke Revisited

Jeremy is a guy that I have a lot of respect for and we have always got along well. He is also one of the most diplomatic characters you’ll ever see.

The way the system is set up, the hype can be geared and targeted in whatever manner he pleases. It also gives him the option of throwing up his hands and saying it has nothing to do with him and the forum is in the hands of the users.

We all have friends in this industry, but a certain level of accountability and transparency has to occur in situations like these, IMO. Berdnt and Powell need to be treated like any other affiliate manager. Not given a free reign with no accountability. Other affiliate managers are held accountable for their actions, why aren’t they?

Focus Manifesto

Moving on from the negative energy, I’ve found a great site written by Zen Habits author Leo Babuta. Focus Manifesto has opened my eyes up to a lot of things.

In the past few weeks I have been disconnecting from Facebook more and more. I deleted almost all gambling affiliates from my account. I don’t need to be hearing about work in my private life and vice-versa. The problem I had was that I have 3 different kinds of audiences; friends, family and work colleagues. I found it hard to keep these three separate so I deleted work from it and have found it works a lot better for me.

I’ve also been spending a lot more time outside and enjoying life. I’m writing this post on my back verandah so I can enjoy the day as well as the sun.

Programs to Help you Focus

There are a few tools I have found that are great with helping me to focus. The first one is Stay Focusd. It is a Chrome add-on so you can limit your time on certain websites. It is automatically set to ten minutes, but you can change that.

I have a word processor for my PC and one for my Macbook. The PC one is use is Q10 , which is a full screen word processor. There are others that look the same but have green writing, Matrix style.

The Mac word processor I use is OmmWriter. It is in Beta version so you have to sign up to get it. It is full screen, but the difference is the music and background. It has a serene background and plays zen-like music to help you concentrate. This is great if you don’t need to be on the Internet to write your article.

One of the keys to my change in focus has been my ability to rely less on the Internet. If you can copy the information you need into the word processor before you start, then you can focus on the task at hand. The constant flicking between tabs, websites and info can break concentration easily.

When you are in the zone you can tune into what you are writing and start to create articles and content that you are proud of, content your visitors will love, and add great value to your website.

The last thing that I have done is make this blog even more minimalist, and taking off the ability to comment. This makes the blog simple and I don’t have to worry about replying to every comment.

Thanks for the overwhelming support I received about the article yesterday and again to everyone who wished me a Happy Birthday!

Disconnect from your distractions and make today a winner.

For those of you that are gambling affiliates, you’ll know of Poker Affiliate Listings (PAL), the website of choice for poker affiliates. Over the past months I have grown weary of the constant battle to get affiliates some transparency to make smarter decisions.

I’ve decided to leave PAL for a number of reasons, for real this time. I’ve done it several times before, for a couple of months at a time. There is a cycle that I’ve been going through for a while now. It involves a 2 month break, returning to the forum and posting again… then getting pissed off with the bullshit and posers until I leave again.

I’m not the sort of person that would normally make a big deal out of these sorts of things, which is why I didn’t make a post on the forum itself. I simply changed my email and password so I won’t be able to return, and changed my status to “no longer a member.”

I feel that nobody has the balls to tell the truth anymore in this business, in relation to gambling affiliates, other than Jim who is known as Poker Prop. The only other person that is doing a decent job of commenting on the industry is Bill Rini. I’ve had the pleasure of having beers on several occasions with Bill, and he really knows his stuff and a guy that I trust a lot.

That being said, why is everyone afraid to speak out? I know it’s just not me, because on a daily basis when I post something “controversial” I’ll get multiple messages like “dude, you said everything I was thinking, but didn’t want to say!” That’s close to a direct quote from yesterday after I tried to tackle the latest issue of the Aced affiliate program shutting down.

Gambling Affiliate Program Failures

Brandon Berndt was in charge of the Aced affiliate program from the beginning. He has widely been built up as one of the great minds of the industry and the best affiliate program coordinator.

I haven’t met Brandon, but he has always been good to me. This isn’t a personal attack on him (or anyone), but I feel it is important to state the facts here instead of all the bullshit arse sucking going on at the forums.

Since I have been a gambling webmaster Brandon has been involved in two different affiliate programs, which to the best of my knowledge, he was in charge of. The first one was Chan Poker, it closed down and all the players along with the affiliate program was moved to Aced. This was dealt with swiftly, to his credit, but everyone is missing the point. The program closed down. How many mini sites did the affiliates build? How many sites did they add Chan Poker to because Berndt was in charge? How much time was put into promoting them by affiliates? How much money was spent purchasing links and promoting? The list goes on.

Noone was told what the real reason was. When approached many months later, some answer of “there’s nothing to tell” was given. This in itself is bad enough, after all the time and money that had been pumped into this program.

Now we move onto Aced. The program that had been pumped up as the knight in shining armour after the Chan Poker accounts were moved to them. Let’s be honest though, this room sucked from the get go, and is on the Merge network that sucked. You’d think people would have learned not to push programs based solely on the affiliate coordinator, but no.

Affiliates continued to spread the word about how great the Aced poker program is, with little or no consideration of the company itself, how bad the network is and the past performance of a Berndt run program. In the end, as many of us warned people, the program shut down. Gave people no notice even though another affiliate stated that he knew this 6 months ago, and the accounts have been moved once again.

I’m sure you are now thinking that people have finally caught on? Nope. The general consensus is that “programs fail all the time” and “Brandon Berndt is still awesome.” Now that’s a mighty fine reputation for someone with a record of 0/2.

What’s going to happen now? My prediction is the same as what happened when Greg Powell and any other issue at PAL that paints the clique in a bad light. Berdnt will now go missing for a month of two. He will then return in magnificent fashion with a new program he is in charge of. It will be plastered all over the forums as the best program in the history of poker, and that if Brandon Berndt is in charge, you can be sure that you’re in good hands and won’t be fucked over. To make money in this industry you need to get behind programs with solid people in charge, and he’s going to make you a ton of cash!!!!!!!!!!!

Shows that knowing the right people can get you a long way in this industry, despite your performance. The score 0/2.

Now let’s move onto the next member of the clique, Greg Powell. Greg is widely acclaimed in this industry for being a great mind as well. He is Jeremy’s right hand man, and gets the most coverage on the forums because of it.

Cardspike is one of the modern day fuck ups, the program that cheated affiliates and players out of money, a lot of money. Who was at the helm during that time, Greg Powell. He went “missing” during the time is all went down… even though he was seen browsing on other affiliate forums. He never answered any questions, and was never held accountable for his actions. The forums on PAP were on fire calling for his blood. Lucky he knows the right people, who were able to cover him up and clear the way for him to return months later without any sign of a tarnished reputation.

The issue was put down to Greg being ignorant about the whole thing and having his hands tied due to contractual arrangements. What a load of fucking bullshit. Seriously, Lou who was found to be a main culprit was well known to be a cheater and scammer. I had been in the industry for less than 6 months at the time, and even I knew what was going on behind the scenes. But, Greg was ignorant of all this, despite knowing Lou for years and most significant people in the industry.

How Greg Powell got away with this can only be put down to well known influences on PAP and PAL smoothing it over on his behalf. If Greg wasn’t friends with Jeremy and other significant people, he would never have been able to get a job in this industry ever again.

Moving on now, after somehow this all blows over, Greg returns to the forums several months later with a big bang! The Tower affiliate program. A program that everyone knew of, but didn’t really push, for a reason. But now that Greg was there, it was slammed all across PAL as the next big thing. People were shitting themselves to be apart of the Greg Powell bandwagon.

Senior members even got in on this one, after feeling he got a rough deal out of the last one. Tower went up on affiliate sites all around the Internet. It was pumped up to be one of the best converting programs, with numerous threads going on about how it was the hottest shit going.

The result on this one, can only be reported in terms of hearsay. I talked to between 8-12 different affiliates, with a wide range of incomes. I didn’t talk to one affiliate, who said they made remotely the amount of money they were expecting. The income was little to none, in every case. And I know some pretty damn successful affiliates. Throw in some PAL moderators as part of the group I’m talking about.

In my eyes, and the affiliates that promoted them, it was a huge flop. Powell went from a program that blatantly stole from affiliates, to one that flopped on them. Sure, Tower is a decent program for some, but was nowhere near the heights that PAL and Greg built it up to be.

The Final Score – 0/4 and Counting

• Brandon Berndt: 0/2
• Greg Powell: 0/2 (1 more flop pending)
• Jeremy Enke: Nothing to do with him, right?
• Affiliates: Screwed, fucked, robbed for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Nothing to do with Berndt, Powell, Enke or PAL right? Nope, just happened to be that no less than 4 programs in a row failed, flopped or stole without their knowing.

The point I am trying to make here is purely about the performance of the PAL clique programs. When will people finally wake up and realise they get massive sign on bonuses for just being who they are… which is a friend of Jeremy’s and an avenue to slam free ads on a popular affiliate forum. Sure we all have to do what we can to make a dollar, but at what point do they become accountable? How can so many failures result in a strong reputation?

Whether you like it or not, the answer is Jeremy Enke. They are successful by association, Powell especially. I’d be willing to bet a fair amount that if he wasn’t friends with Enke, he wouldn’t have a future in this field.

It’s time to wake up and realise you don’t have to be friends with the clique to be successful. You don’t have to be scared of posting the truth and you don’t have to be in fear of your reputation being tarnished.

Instead of coming to me and thanking me, grow some balls and speak out. I can understand that people don’t want the drama and the bullshit that goes with not going with the grain. But come on, do you want to be a sheep all your life.

I’m not sure about you guys, but I can make decisions without unsubstantiated hype. I don’t need to follow a crowd to be successful, especially one that is only concerned about their own back pocket.

With over 1000 posts I’ve found it necessary for me to move on. The information being posted is weak at best, if not deceiving. There are some moderators that simply can’t be trusted, and I’m not willing to participate where people are afraid to say what they want for fear of not fitting in with the crowd. It’s mind boggling to me, how many full time affiliates feel the same way as me, but don’t want to say anything. Maybe they are making a smarter business decision by being friends with everyone, but I’m not one to sit and take it up the arse.

Confirming My Point

A perfect example of what I’m talking about is the hype surrounding Eduardo. I personally know of five other people that have been fucked over by him in recent months. His designs are copied and ripped from previous jobs he’s done, they aren’t unique and his communication is appalling. With cases ranging from him simply refusing to change things because “he knows best” and that he wants to send it to the coder because the design is awesome, when the client is clearly unhappy. The two hour, $700 jobs he pushes through are low in quality and IMO, complete rip offs.

Out of the people I know that have had these problems, two happen to be a super affiliate. One replied “there’s no point trying to convince the Eyenod fans” and another exclaimed “wow, I thought I was the only one. Most of the people on PAL don’t know shit anyway.”

Why don’t the majority of people know about this? Arse sucking and clique members approval of him. Plain and simple.

Don’t be a sheep. Trust you own instincts.

You can’t change your entire life.
You can only change your next action.
—
You can’t change a relationship with a loved one.
You can only change your next interaction.
—
You can’t change your entire job.
You can only change your next task.
—
You can’t change your body composition.
You can only change your next meal.
—
You can’t change your fitness level.
You can only start moving.
—
You can’t declutter your entire life.
You can only choose to get rid of one thing, right now.
—
You can’t eliminate your entire debt.
You can only make one payment, or buy one less unnecessary item.
—
You can’t change the past, or control the future.
You can only change what you’re doing right now.
—
You can’t change everything.
You can only change one, small thing.
And that’s all it takes.

Courtesy of Mnmlist.

* Please note, I intended to have an image and photos but it’s not allowing me to upload for some reason.

This is the post that I have been meaning to write ever since I arrived in Bangkok. Even before then, I had plenty to tell, but for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to write about it.

A few weeks before I left for Thailand I had my four wisdom teeth out. I was in a fair bit of pain for a few days after, and couldn’t eat much for around a week. It set me back about $1500, but it was better that I got it done in Australia, rather than over here.

After that I went to Sydney and stayed with my cousin Steve. I was there for my brother’s wedding. I was out drinking a fair bit most nights and didn’t really get any work done.

I went out clubbing one night with Steve and Carly which was a good time. We lot Steve for a little while though because he walked off and we couldn’t find him.

Jono’s wedding didn’t have any issues so that was alright. My Dad was there for the wedding itself, but left before the reception. I think it was a big step for him to actually attend because my Mum was there. He hasn’t seen her since the divorce and still has deep issues with something, even though they both have new partners.

It was at Bulli which is just near Wollongong. For the unfamiliar, it is about an hour south of Sydney. It had a panoramic view of the ocean which was awesome. I wasn’t impressed with the facilities themselves though. The place was a bit run down and the rooms we stayed in sucked balls. There was plenty of free grog though, even though I bought my own anyway. For some reason the beer sucked too.

I stayed with Steve for another few days after the wedding and ended up going home with some sort of stomach bug. It took me a fair few days to get over it and I was in quite a fair bit of pain.

I went and saw my Grandfather the following weekend and picked up my Sister from the airport. She had also been in Sydney for Jono’s wedding. It was actually raining for a lot of this time, which Alice (my Sister) wasn’t real impressed with. She had flown in from London and was hoping to catch a few rays.

I loved spending some more time with my Grandfather before I left. We get along great and it’s always a joy hanging around him. He is 88 years old and knows more about computers than most people I know. I have taught him to do a few things and have written out Word documents and printed them for him. He can now go to a torrent site, download a movie or TV show, burn it and then print a label onto it. Talk about a cool gramps!

I went back home for a couple of days and tied up some loose ends and packed my stuff for Melbourne and Thailand, then headed off. I didn’t even bother to say any goodbyes, have farewell drinks or anything like that. My whole life I have been like that, don’t really know why. I think it has something to do with keeping my business and life to myself, even though I don’t necessarily want to do that.

I arrive in Melbourne for 3 nights, and had a great time. The first night it was just my Sister and I staying at the hotel. We went for a BBQ and drinks at my cousins’ house, who was getting married (Steve’s Sister). Except for one guy who though it was necessary to be the attention seeker of the night, it was fun.

The second day we had my Mum there, and things get a little heated. My family has already been dysfunctional, and we started to get a bit on edge. That night we went to my other cousin’s house (Steve’s other Sister) and had another BBQ and drinks.

After doing the whole family thing all night, Steve and myself decided to get the party started. We hit the town and did a pub/club crawl. We had one drink at each place until we found a club that we liked and stayed for happy hour. Eight drinks later we went in search of something a bit more hardcore, but couldn’t find anything to suit the occasion. It was 1am and Steve had to walk to Sister down the aisle the next day so we called it a night.

The next day was off the chain. I had an intense argument with my Mum, over my bow tie of all things. She turns into a real bitch at events and stuff like that. She tends to dig up the past and make nasty comments. She turned me trying to put my bow tie on into how I left the Army. Whatever, way too childish for me.

The day of the wedding itself was just unlike I’ve ever seen. There was a massive hail storm and flash flooding. Some of my relatives couldn’t even get out of their hotel because of it, and missed the wedding.

The wedding was delayed for about half an hour but it went ahead and was great to be at. Everyone got a bus out to the property where the wedding was at. It took about an hour, but let me tell you it was well worth the wait.

The groom’s father got rich from pharmaceuticals back in the day and has an awesome property. Complete with a horse racing track for his trotters to train on and a croquet field/pitch or whatever you want to call it.

They had a marquee set up for the reception, but the biggest surprise was the wine. They announced that the groom had been collecting the finest wines for the past 23 years. That wine is all about sharing with friends, and what better occasion than to share it with friends at his wedding!

After a night of drinking the best red wines I have ever tasted, I said my goodbyes and got back on the bus to the hotel, which went forrrrrrrever.

I was actually going to meet up with one of my poker affiliate buddies and my business partner while I was in Melbourne but I left it too late to try or organise it. I really do suck at organising things.

After just a few hours sleep I got on my connecting flight to Brisbane. That flight was the worst I had ever experienced. I had a shocking hangover, and everyone on that flight was in a similar position. The guy on the other side of the aisle was throwing his guts up, it was bad. I did well not to spew myself.

My friend Henry was coming to Thailand with me for the first month was waiting at our departing gate. We were both pretty excited and soon after we were on our way. All I wanted to do was chat about Thailand, all he wanted to do was watch TV. Boring bastard.
We arrived at our hotel at about 4:30pm Sunday, 7th Match 2010. The first night was off the chain, hectic and just plain wild.

We started off eating dinner at some dodgy place and it tasted like shit. It ended with my spewing in my bathroom and passing out with a bottle of water in my hand (which was all over me when I woke up).

We met up with a poker affiliate buddy on the second night, well at least I did. Henry didn’t recover from the first night and couldn’t get off the toilet.

My English friend (who shall not be named because he doesn’t want to be) came over with a few friends as well. We went out to all the clubs and got pissed, danced talked poker affiliate stuff and had a big night out. The vodka Redbulls got the best of me at about 2am when I started dancing like a maniac. I was either super impressive, or terribly bad because everyone was watching me. I’d like to believe it’s just because I’m a sick dancer, but I can’t be sure of it.

I didn’t go out the third or fourth nights in Phuket. I just went to the hotel gym and pool and generally hung out. It was good to just relax and wind down from the activities of the first two nights.

Then we were off two Bangkok. We had a sweet hotel in Nana, which is in one of the main club districts. The first night we went out and explored the shopping centres and walked around. We got around on their impressive train service and took some tourist photos.

The second night we went out drinking. We started in our hotel room, and ended with a massage. There is nothing better than getting a massage after a night on the piss. We stumbled home and slept like babies.

The third day we came out to this condo complex and got a two bedroom place sorted. The complex has a pool, gym, laundry service, 24hr mini mart and a restaurant that delivers to your door. We have 3 air conditioners, so I can work at whatever temperature I feel most comfortable at.

For the next couple of weeks we pretty much didn’t do anything. We went out a few times, but that is basically it. It took me a few days to sort out the Internet, and another couple of days to buy things like sheets and pillows, general condo necessities.

I started off by going to the gym and pool everyday, then just the pool, then not going at all. The last week has been pretty rough, so I’ve found myself chilling out by the pool again and reading a book.

** Section removed due to personal nature**

This is a guest post by David who has just launched F1 Betting, a new website targeted at the sports betting market.

It’s far to easy to get attached to one idea, way of thinking or website, build it, fall in love with it and then go around thinking it’s perfect. The truth of the matter is though that in reality your site or idea is probably riddled with flaws that you’re unable to recognize. I know my sites aren’t perfect, I’d like to think they look good and navigate well but I sure as hell know there’s always room for improvement.

There’s a process you follow when you build a new site. You plan, you keyword research, you design, you write your content or get someone else to, you add the content and then you start link building. I’d be interested to know how many people actually have multiple site reviews in their process. I don’t mean posting on a forum asking for one just so you can get a link either. I’m talking about asking different people with different backgrounds what they think of the site, how they think it navigates, what they think of your design and how interesting they find the content. I bet everyone reading this article has a pretty diverse list of MSN or Skype contacts they could seek feedback from.

Only today I was talking to one of my affiliate mentors on Skype and I showed him a couple of sites I’ve been working on this year. In the space of about 15 minutes he’d made two outstanding suggestions which I’m certain will improve my bounce rate and conversions. He spotted these things straight away and I’ve been looking at them for months. It proved to me that the importance of multiple opinions was paramount. I had been blinded by these two sites, looking at them everyday I’m not surprised it happened but I’m sure it must happen to everyone.

It really doesn’t matter who you get to review your site, in fact the more wider a range of people you can get opinions from the better. Having the opinions of other affiliates is important but having the opinion of real web users who aren’t thinking like affiliates is just, if not more, useful. These are the people who can recognize the flaws in your work instantly.

Everyone in this industry has their own way of doing things, their own opinions on web design, how to link build and where to send their players and you don’t have to get to know many affiliates to realize that their strategies can be worlds apart but still very successful. Something I’ve realized recently is that neither are correct or incorrect and that if I can take the things I feel are best about certain methods and combine them then I’ll have created a successful affiliate business. I would encourage any new affiliates reading this to seek multiple opinions from people they respect and try to use the feedback they get to create something which combines the strength of all of them.