Hi All,

Been quite a while as per norm that I haven’t posted on here so wanted to write a quick post about what I have been up to and also share my thoughts on the recent debacle that has unfolded within the poker affiliate community.  First the fun stuff.

As most of you know I have been “living” in Buenos Aires for the last month and a half with my good friend Graham and truly enjoying the affiliate lifestyle (maybe a little too much) from down here.  All I have to say about Buenos Aires is wow, what a city.  The people are nice, the women are beautiful, the steak is great and there are tons of things to do.  Of course like any big city in Latin America there are some downsides to living here (safety, getting change*, day to day things) but overall it’s really a great place and I highly recommend that you take some time out of your busy lives to see the city one day.

*For those of you that were wondering why I said getting change is difficult, there is a unique problem here in Buenos Aires with the scarcity of change.  The problem is so bad that in some cases you will be refused service without perfect change for products simply because the store owners do not have it.  Some say the government didn’t print enough coins, while I have also heard that the change is hoarded and sold by the local mafias, but either way its a strange issue coming from North America.  Anyways as odd as it sounds this really isn’t a huge deal and you can manage in most situations without exact change.

The other big decision that I have made down here is that I am going to come back for at least a year in 2009 once I go home for Christmas, see family and get a bit more organized.  Unfortunately one of the downfalls of beautiful women and 35 degree weather everyday is that it slightly restricts your ability to focus lol.   I’ll leave that one at that.

Now on to the shitstorm of drama that has ensued in our industry over the past few weeks.  I am sure all of you are aware of the full situation, but for those who are not I will quickly recap the events.

Affiliate War 1

Basically the issue started when posts were made about the abuse of the PokerStars Marketing Code by affiliates and how they were essentially stealing players from others because of the override in the tracking.  This is obviously a huge issue, and something that I have very strong feelings against although at one point I did particpate in owning a marketing code site and let me tell you, there was a ton of money made by affiliates.  Throughout this thread, Graham posted a link to an affiliate’s website who was using this strategy and the link was quickly edited by PAP moderators as per the request of the site owner.  This obviously raised some concern amongst a few people as it was relevant to the topic even though it may have been singling one affiliate out and thus, the censorship battle ensued.

Affiliate War 2

As most of you are also familiar with, Jeremy Enke recently launched Poker Affiliate Listings which is a new invite only forum for affiliates to discuss business and life in a more closed environment which will allow for a more controlled and productive atmosphere.  Personally I think this was and is a great idea and really the timing couldn’t have been better.  I have always been a big supporter of Jeremy and the way he conducts himself in the industry.  It is really hard to find people that genuinely care about the success of others and I believe Jeremy is one of them.

Anyways up until this point Jeremy had been working with the people from Poker Affiliate Programs and CAP running their forums in addition to a number of other projects.  As you know, the forums originally started with PAW years ago and then made the brief jump to PokerNews and finally PAP.  I have been a member of this forum since the PAW days and although I was never a super active poster, the forum itself helped me tremendously and for this reason the URL didn’t really matter to me as much as the people and advice that was being given.  Recently all of this has change tremendously and in my opinion the PAW forums as they once were are no more.

This is a difficult subject for me to get into mostly because the people at PAP/CAP have been very good to me over the years.  I have gone to CAP events for free, been invited to CAP dinners at their expense and introduced to tons of successful people within the industry.  I have met Warren on several occasions and he has been nothing but nice to me and thanked me for attending their events.  While I sincerely appreciate everything that they have done for me, I feel that I need to express my opinion on these issues regardless of the ramifications they may have as I think supressing the truth and/or my thoughts about them is just something I am not willing to do.  While I don’t know all the details, I truly believe that the”decision” for Jeremy to move on was something that was long overdue.  I don’t know Jeremy super well, but he is definetely one of those people that needs to be an entrepreneur and when you have that mentality, having a boss just isn’t going to work for too long.  From everything that I have heard over the past few years, the process and methods by which CAP runs their operations is not in line with the best interest of affiliates and their respective programs.

Of course I understand that CAP/PAP is a business and needs to make money, but in my opinion there are two ways to make money, the right way and the wrong way.  I have met tons of millionaires throughout my life and to be completely honest with you, 90% of them are completely miserable.  The problem that most people have is that they think money is the answer and because of this they are willing to do whatever it takes to get it, only to realize that nothing has changed accept they have fucked a lot of people over.  I have experienced this time and time again and it has taught me a very important lesson of what is really important in life.

Anyways since Jeremy has left and started a new venture in the same niche, obviously his previous employers are angry as his following is quite strong and he has managed to leverage most of the important members of the community away from the PAP forums.  While this is obviously frustrating to his former employers, the reactions and actions that have been taken against him are absolutely despicable.  Childish jokes, slander and threats of lawsuits over what could (I would imagine) have been a very peaceful parting of two companies.  Because of the conduct taken by the management at PAP/CAP I will no longer remain on the PAP forums and will have a new home at PAL, a decision that was basically made for me.  I will also no longer be attending CAP events, as fun and beneficial as they were I just cannot justify the experience and effort it takes to make it to them to support a company that acts in this manner.  Anyways enough with this war, on to the last as this posting is already getting way to fucking long lol.

Affiliate War 3

What was supposed to be a great new poker room (CardSpike) has turned into an utter disaster mainly due to horrid support and lack of payments to both affiliates and players alike.  Regarding this issue, the first thing I want to say is that Greg Powell (former CardSpike affiliate manager) is a really great guy and I am 100% sure that his conduct at CardSpike was a result of behind the scenes decisions rather than what he personally wanted to do for affiliates.  Anyways regardless of what happened behind the scenes, the fact was that players and affilaites were owed money and weren’t receiving it, but apparently voicing this issue was not a good idea judging by the banning spree that ensued after it.

The issue was first raised by Randy (Ridge) as he had a ton of players asking him for their rakeback which of course he could not deliver without payment.  Throughout this issue Randy showed a tremendous level of patience which I am positive I could not have displayed in a similar situation.  Anyways the long and the short of it was that basically CAP/PAP was trying to hush hush the issue and even went as far to ban some members who commented on the horrible support from the CardSpike team.  Regarding the ownership/involvement of CAP/PAP in CardSpike basically I would say use common sense in coming to that conclusion

The Aftermath - WTF is going to happen Next?

So, we have essentially seen 3 small and easily solvable issues amount to a substantial loss of business and possibly total loss of credibility of a multi-million dollar company.  The lesson to be learned?  Don’t piss off your most important and respected contributors, lie to them and try to strong arm them and conceal the facts.  The problem with affiliates is most of us are smart motherfuckers, and we get really pissed when people try to rip us off and jerk us around.  I think the biggest issue that all this shit has brought to the surface is that the people are what make the forum, not the other way around.  Without the people, the insight and the advice all you have is another URL.  For this reason, I think that PAL will eventually become the defacto place to talk shop in the poker affiliate industry.  While I liked PAP, loved their conferences and a lot of their team business is business (LOL) and I need to be where the people I respect and enjoying talking to are.

Wow this post was long, my fingers really kill, lol.  I’m going to say goodbye for now but I am glad I got all that shit off my chest.  Back to the beauties of Buenos Aires and some work for that day.  Please feel free to comment on this post whether you agree or disagree with me.  I promise I wont block your IP, ban or threaten you Cheers bitches!

For those of you on the poker side of things, you most definitely know, have heard of or have been mugged by Jeremy Enke, fellow affiliate and honestly, a pioneer in our industry.  Today Jeremy announced that he will no longer be participating in the PokerAffiliatePrograms.com forums and has made the decision to focus more on personal business ventures that have recently been taking up more of his time.  The reason I am writing this post is that Jeremy has been a great help, inspiration and friend to most of our community and he will definetely be missed at the forums.  I, like most of the affiliates who have been in the game for the last 1-3 years owe a lot to this guy for motivating us and providing us a platform by which to learn, discuss and most importantly, make money.  Anyways, without risking sounding more gay than I already do, good luck Jeremy and look forward to meeting up again in the future.

I know it is no secret that I am one of the worst updaters in the blogging world lol, which I attribute half to laziness and half to the fact that I really have had much time as of late.  I am leaving quite soon to Argentina for the next few months with fellow affiliate Graham Rowlands to take in the sights (and yes do affiliate work as well) remotely from a new perspective and environment.  Fittingly, I also decided that I don’t like the domain or look of this blog, so in the coming days I will be starting a new website dedicated more to our industry and my personal experiences (and shennanigans) within it.  This will also be a place for me to update everyone on the trip as well as entice fellow affiliates to come down to Buenos Aires and get crunk with us, you all have an open invitation.  More to come soon.

Thankfully I am happy to say that I will be leaving boring Toronto tommorow to go to Barcelona for 8 days for work (sort of) as well as a small vacation.  I am really looking forward to meeting up with everyone again after the Canadian meetup and partaking in the heavy drinking that is guaranteed to go down.  The other exciting thing is that I am finally going to take advantage of this affiliate lifestyle (mobility) and plan to do quite a bit of travelling over the next year while working remotely.  I just recently booked a 2 month trip to Buenos Aires (Argentina) which will be home base for a while and I am planning on renting an apartment there with one of the my good friends.  I am really looking forward to this as I have always wanted to travel around South America and hopefully I will be able to get back to fluent Spanish as I once was.  In other news I also picked up a decent Online Poker Rooms domain today (<-lol at obv anchor text) which I will be developing over the next few months.  In closing, have gone through some personally tough decisions recently, I would like to advise anyone fortunate enough to be an affiliate to use it to your advantage and go out and see the world.  I waited for far too long but now I am doing it and I couldn’t be more excited.  I wish you all well and will write back once recovered.

John

Been a long time since I have posted as per usual but hey, I made no promises when I started this blog. I have been full-time affiliating for almost 2 months now and let me tell you it is no cake walk but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. The hours are longer, the money is shit (for now) and no one knows what the fuck I do for a living, but I am happy and enjoying every second of it. Myself and my good friend Graham Rowlands have essentially setup shop in our new office (Starbucks) where most of the day is spent working, talking and looking at the hot moms that come in one after another to drink coffee and talk about how cute their babies are. For the last few weeks I have been writing content 8-10 hours per day for some new sites I am building and as I am sure you all know this is an extremely tedious process. I am pretty sure I could write a PokerStars review with my eyes closed.

Anyways all this work has got me pumped up for the upcoming CapEuro affiliate conference going down in Barcelona this September. For those of you who have never been to a poker conference before, I whole heartedly recommend saving up the money to take the journey for a number of reasons, the biggest of which is the overwhelming motivation you will come home with after networking with successful affiliates for a few days. I was lucky enough to attend CapEuro London this past January on Poker Affiliate Programs buck (Thanks Warren, Jeremy, Greg, Chipleader and anyone else i missed) and it was a blast, so needless to say I can’t wait to get crunk (and do business) in Barcelona as well. I also used to live in Mallorca which is about a 5 hour boat ride from Barcelona so I’m thinking of heading there for a few days after the conference for some R & R. Another aspect of the conference that I am looking forward to (if I qualify) is playing in the ASOP, however I wish that this thing was hosted only on one site. Today it was at PokerKings and I downloaded their software to discover it simply did not work……good job guys. Anyways still a few qualifiers to go so hopefully I will be able to grab a spot.

Now on to a few tips that I wanted to share with everyone after going half insane from writing content for so long. For those of the new affiliates out there I just want to stress the importance of focusing your sites and their content around “money” terms that have a high chance of converting players to poker sites. We are in this business to make money, so why spend 2 hours writing a biography about a player when you could create 4 pages that could eventually bring you some cash. My point is that I can remember a fundamental change occurring in my 2+ years in this industry that related to how I “thought” the industry worked. When I first started, I was an avid poker player and really loved the game. I wanted to build a huge resource site that was dedicated to helping and improving poker players knowledge. While I do not have anything against this particular method (and many sites do it extremely well), I do have to say that over my short time in this industry I have shifted to really focusing on things that make money. If I am going to write a strategy article or a player profile, I am doing it to interlink pages, get traffic to convert through an on page advertisement, etc, etc. Always be thinking, HOW WILL THIS PAGE MAKE ME MONEY? Don’t go crazy, but keep that in mind the next time you are developing a site. Anyways my fingers are starting to bleed so I better go, cheers all and good luck (back in a month or so, lol).