So I thought I would take some time and point out a great example of how NOT to run a business. This doesn’t just apply to typical land based businesses, but also to websites projects, product sites, service sites, etc. If you are reading this post, then I’m going to assume you are in the online marketing business, or selling a product, or offering a service. So this will apply to all of those situations. All of these things are similar, if only for the simple fact that you are trying to offer something people want or need. In all these cases, if you are not focused on your customer, listening to their feedback, and adapting to changes in the market then you will be out of business quickly.

You can simply google “woopra reviews” - And quickly see posts made within the last 2-3 years, and people were saying how awesome woopra was, how great the stats were, and overall just how useful the data was to serious webmaster. Woopra was the talk of the web world. winning a ton of webby type awards right out of the gate. The initial closed beta rocketed woopra to the radar of sites like Tech Crunch and Cnet.

So where did it all go wrong?

The Downfall of Woopra.com

If you haven’t heard of woopra.com before, let me tell you a little bit about it. Woopra was founded as an alternative to programs like Google analytics, site meter, piwiki, etc. At first I thought, why would anyone PAY for an analytics program, when a Billion Dollar Company like Google was allowing people to use their analytics for free? I quickly found out that they offered things other programs didn’t. Not only did they track website visits and metrics like all these other programs, but they also offered an awesome Desktop application, which allowed you to see Real Time Analytics on your website. even more, they offers a ton of information about visitors on your site.

When Woopra Beta was launched a few years ago, several programs offered something similar, but woopra showed it in real time, and displayed it in such a way even a novice could understand what was happening on their site. Woopra was in beta test for over a year, and approval was done in short batches, so they created scarcity and curiosity. Word spread, and everyone was wanting a chance to beta test the product. some of their features were just that good!

After Beta Woopra ended, they came out with a paid version, anyone could get a basic taste of woopra for as little as $5 a month per site, and they even offered a basic Free version, you just had to put up with the ads within the desktop app. Woopra quickly created a small cult following, they released frequent updates, listen to the user feedback, had an active forum community of users that we helping refine the product. Members we even volunteering to help develop Iphone app, android apps, etc. It has all the makings of the next awesome product for webmaster.

I was honestly impressed with the level of interaction I was seeing in the forum community, everyone was praising them, paying them, and helping them provide what paid users wanted. Then, woopra made the biggest mistake a company can make. They stopped listening to their members.

Woopra Fails

Towards the end of 2010, the woopra team announced they would stop updating the desktop app, and put more focus and resources into the web browser app. this confused everyone (including me) – As communities do, they made posts explaining why they didn’t like this direction, some user said they would be cancelling their paid memberships, etc.

The woopra team keep assuring everyone, that eliminating the desktop app was the best thing long term for users. They kept repeating this over and over, and even though the members disagreed. Woopra decided they knew best what their customers wanted. So for over a year, the desktop app remained static, no updates, and alll efforts were poured into the browser application. Users still posted their concerns, post saying things like “The Desktop app is the ONLY reason I am paying for woopra” and “the desktop app is what makes you different from other programs, please don’t eliminate it”.

Of course by this time, woopra had removed the desktop app from their website, stopped updating it, and they were confident they knew best.

The Woopra.com Result

Now keep in mind, woopra is still in business, but they have for all intent and purposes shut down the community forum, and replaced it with a few sections for reporting bugs, and REMOVED the rest. the forum is now 90% spam posts. They apparently got tired of listening to their customers tell them what they wanted. The Woopra Facebook page has not been updated in 2 months. I’ve seen a few people post on there various questions, and all posts, and most comments are quickly removed. The Woopra Blog has not been updating in almost 3 months. If you sent a message through the “contact form” on their page, you get back a canned email response.

So let’s review:

• They shutdown the forum
• Stopped updating their blog
• Stopped updating Facebook
• Stopped responding to paying customer emails

So, this is exactly how you kill a business. No matter what type of business you have, you must listen to what your customers want. If you’re not sure, ASK them. If you don’t like what you hear, then you need to seriously re-think your business model. Woopra is the subject of this lesson, but you can replace Woopra with a hundred different business. This is a common mistake, and one that will be repeated. I hope by reading this, your business won’t be the next one I write about.

Did Woopra help improve Google Analytics?

Yeah, Probably – Is my answer. With all the google labs projects and innovations. I think a product like Woopra probably made all analytics providers take notice. Woopra wouldn’t be the first company to splash on the scene and get hyped up. In Woopra’s case the hype was true. But after getting the latest email from the Google analytics team, and seeing the headline “Real Time Stats” – I knew it was signaling the end of woopra. That’s went I went to post on the woopra community forums (where I use to post regularly) and I realized they have deleted the forums, they delete comments and questions of their facebook page, and they don’t respond to emails. Remember, I pay well over $100 a month to Woopra, every month, since they launched their paid models. I’ve been their biggest fans.

Oh and BTW the new features in GA:

• Real Time Stats
• Mobile Stats
• Email Reports
• Custom Modules
• Multi-Channel funnels
• Flow Visualization

Anyway, I guess you guys get the picture by now. Although, I’m still paying for woopra on 12 sites and using a hacked version of their old and no longer updated desktop app. I spent ah hour today playing with the new Google Analytics interface. It’s honestly awesome, not only the new design, but the new data is easy to find and understand.

The Lesson for us all

So to wrap this up. Woopra has failed because someone. I dunno if it was the owner, the board, the investors, or who. Someone at Woopra chose to ignore what the users and community was saying. I know before the community was shut own, one of the longest and most viewed threads were post pleading with woopra to stick to what worked. They chose to go in another direction, and left their customers behind.

As I’m sure you’ve heard, good rolled out a new Algo update a few days ago, which they are calling the “Freshness update”. According to google this new update will affect 35% of search queries, and is based on their caffiened update. As the name implies, this update is aimed at providing search results which pull the most current information on a topic.

bigG + Twitter = RealTime / +1 + Google+ = Fresh

You may remember last year Google teamed up with twitter to provide “Real time” search results, and this just a couple months ago they needed their partnership with twitter. So before they were grabbing updates form twitter feeds, recent posts, etc. Of course, even when they stopped collaborating with Twitter, users didn’t see a big change in results. Then google publicly launched +1 which moved into Google + – So they now have their own Social Network and real time results to dish out. So who needs twitter?

According to google this will bring Real Time updates back forever (I’m not sure it ever left) – So the concern in the webmaster world and SEO world is that smaller site with a staff of 4-5 editors, can’t keep up with large companies of 50 editors. Now I don’t think I agree with this, but in the SEO world the sky is always falling it seems. But never fear,SEO’s are here (joking obv)

3 Google Freshness Tips For Online Poker SEO

So, I’ve already been getting emails asking:

“what can I do to make sure my site doesn’t get smacked by the new update”

Now first I’ll say that I’ve yet to see any major changes due to this update, yet anyway. But I expect we will see some soon, and we will have webmasters posting impact results from this. So until then, given what Google has told us about the intention of the update. I think there are a few simple things you can do now.

1. Add a Blog to your website – This should be a no-brainer, and most companies already keep a blog of some kind. Google wants freshness, so what better than a blog/news section on your site to keep it fresh. Just be sure to make 3-5 updates a week. These don’t have to be 1200 word articles of awesomeness, but something interesting.

2. Make sure and Time/Date Stamp all your pages – You should be updating pages regularly anyway, but if you have a mostly static website, make sure you have a “Update” or “Revision” tag in there somewhere.

3. Update Your Pages – This sorta goes with the last tip, and again you should always be updating your content, or adding new content. I think we will see the biggest impact to static sites that haven’t had to update their content often. Especially in the uber competitive gaming market, you should be updating pages with the various monthly promo’s, new tournaments, reload bonuses, software updates, etc. There’s no excuse not to be, people want to know the information they are reading is current. Now, so does google.

Also, here is a great video by the guys at SEOmoz discussing the new update and how it might affect everyone.

Google Freshness Update Video Tips

So, that’s a few good tips on ensuring you don’t see a negative impact from the new update. I’d love to hear some more tips from everyone, so please leave us a comment and tell us what you think.

Most of the visitors and regular readers of this blog know who I am, but for those of you who don’t know me. Let me give you a little background. My name is Randy, and I’ve been working in the online marketing space, and more specifically the “gambling” market since 2004. After the initial struggle of learning how to compete in the gaming markets, I pushed my poker sites to the top of the search engines for keywords that make $20,000 +  a month. Now I’m not telling you this to brag, just stating a fact and hopefully giving you a little more confidence in what you read here.

The bottom line is, I’ve made a lot of money in the gaming market, and I easily transitioned into the non-gaming markets over the last few years. I still own a few gaming portals, but I spend most of my time consulting and playing golf now. Online Marketing and SEO have given me and my family a life we only dreamed of before. What I find amazing, is that anyone can do what I have done. Of course there is a learning curve, and what holds 95% of people back from making real money on the Internet is simply that they are unwilling to put what people share with them into practice.

Do you want to learn SEO?

Granted, I was like that once myself. I thought “I knew it all, and if I just had enough money to buy enough links I could compete with the “big boys” and make bank!” Then one day I realized what I was doing just wasn’t working like I thought it should. I knew I had to make a change, and that change was to finally start listening to what people said, and put the ideas they gave me, the tools they recommended, and the advice they shared into action.

Sound familiar?

Learn The Best SEO Secret

So if you are serious about learning to make money, then decide right now. I want you to set aside the next 30 minutes to deciding to take your business and your life to the next level. I’m dead serious, either decide you are willing to open yourself up to changing the bad habits, or keep reading and start learning and growing today.

If you are still reading, then good for you. you are about to have a big advantage over your competition. If you have ever been on this site before, then you know I don’t write a ton of posts, but the post I write are ones where I have something to say or I have something to share that I think is of value. I don’t pimp out products, I don’t blast a ton of emails trying to sell the latest widget.

Thankfully people in the online marketing industry and the SEO industry just pointed me in the right direction, showed me what tools worked, and game me a good foundation to start with. that is my goal for this site. to give anyone who reads this site, a solid foundation to expand on. They couldn’t do it for me, and I can’t do it for you.

So, while we will be making some serious updates to this site, and some of our old tools. I’m going to give anyone who is reading this post a head start. My good friends at Copyblogger, who run one of the best SEO related site on the web, sent me a new 24 page book on SEO. Before I read it I thought, well here is another book to add to the pile of good, but not great. But they asked me to read it, and give an honest assessment. I did, and I have to say I was blown away.

The Best WordPress SEO Plugin

As I mentioned, to me the “Scribe” plugin is the best kept secret in the online marketing world. Of course that sounds like the usually “Sales pitch” talk. But I just don’t know any other way to say it. The Scribe plugin is simply awesome. Here is a few things scribe can do for you site:

• Scribe Analyzes Keywords for you, so you know what Keywords people are searching for
• It Analyzes your content for you, and gives real suggestions to optimize your content
• Scribe can even analyze your older content and make suggestions
• Scribe can help you find great easy to obtain links from other sites

I could go on, but it’s honestly just hard to explain what the plugin does. The best thing to do is take Scribe for a free test drive. I am so confident you will find it useful, if you try it and don’t like it, send me an email with your order # and I’ll refund your money personally.

Scribe SEO Plugin

Not only did they write a top notch book on SEO, but they also included some teaser info one what I consider the must have SEO plugin if you run websites. I was a little worried about them giving so much SEO information, and then adding details about the plugin. But as I’ve said for years, you could literally hand most people the google algo, and most of them would never look at it. It’s just the way most people are.

New SEO book That Can Change Your Life

The new book is called – How to create compelling content

So, I won’t rambling on anymore, if you have read this far then you deserve to get something out of it right? So, thanks for reading, please leave us some feedback in the comments. I want to know what YOU think of this book, and give me some topics to hit on in my next article.

Click here to grab your free SEO report

I had to take a couple weeks away from posting my thoughts and tips. Thankfully, the family (6 Teenagers) and my wife Durana had an awesome vacation in Branson, MO – The last few years we have leased this condo on a beautiful golf course. Branson is a great place for a relaxing family themed vacation. We needed the rest more than we even realized lol.

Since the now famous “Black Friday” the poker world has been upside down. Working with hundreds of sub-affiliates on Elite Affiliate Software, I’ve seen a lot of poker affiliates having rough time adjusting. I mean lets face it, time are just tough. As rough as it has been, I truly believe that any poker affiliate that can stick through these rough times will be in position to have  a great business in the end. Let’s face it, most people don’t like adversity and most people quit when times get tough. So if you can stick it out, you will reap the rewards very soon.

CPA or Revenue Share?

Lately, the most asked question I get is weather *I* think affiliates should opt for CPA (where you get a flat amount for each player) or Revenue Share (Where you earn a percentage of the player rake) – I’m honestly AMAZED to see affiliate still going for revshare when given a choice. Obviously, revshare sounds a lot better. Most room promote something like “Earn 30-40% Revenue Share for LIFE on players” – Right off the bat you should see the obvious issues. How long is forever in the poker world? As you know, since black Friday 2 of the top 3 poker rooms have essentially shut down completely (Full Tilt Poker) or they just won’t pay people like UB or Absolute Poker.

So let me ask you again, how long is “Lifetime”?

As most of the reader of this site know, I’m known mostly as being a Rakeback Affiliate. What most of you probably don’t know is that over the last 2 years I’ve slowly been moving to almost all CPA deals and I’m glad I did! With CPA I don’t have to worry about a poker room closing down, banning a country full of my players, etc. I send players, they qualify, and I earn on average $200-300. After I earn my commission, the player then is the rooms and that is that. Rinse and repeat.

So as I’m sure you can guess, anytime I’m asked about CPA versus Revshare – My answer is CPA every time! Now that may not always be a choice you have, some rooms do not offer CPA’s and then you just have review what you know about the room. Factor in things like:

• What network are they on?
• Who is the management or owners – What’s their history?
• How well do you think the traffic will convert?
• What things are the company speeding money on? Promotions, Advertizing, player promos, bonuses, etc
• Do they offer rakeback?

Rakeback vs Revshare or CPA

The last issue is one of the biggest. In most cases I think its a bad decision to do revshare if the room offers rakeback. If the players you are sending are good, then they will eventually want rakeback. So even thought it may be against the T&C”s for them to move to rakeback from revshare. I can assure you without a doubt it happens at every room. So again, if the room offers rakeback, and you don’t offer rakeback. Then you better take the CPA.

I wanted to continue with the “Poker Affiliate Tip Monday” series this week, and I’ve had a lot of feedback and requests for some topics. So thanks to everyone reading and giving us ideas. This week, we are going to go over some simple ways to increase your poker affiliate website traffic. This is a super important part of your overall plan to make money, without visitors/traffic, you just can’t make money.

First, let’s throw a common myth out the window. One common myth I hear is: You need XXX Visitors a day to make money. This is simply not true and silly if you think about it. If your website only gets one visitor, and that visitor converts into a real money player, then you have made money. Sort of a dumb example but you get what I’m sayin’. Sure, the affiliate market can be a volume game. If you are optimizing your Calls To Action’s based on what you are seeing in your analytics, then you should be seeing a nice conversion rate regardless of the amount of traffic. Keep in mind EVERY visitor is a potential customer walking through the door.

Tips To Increase Your Website Traffic

Ok, so back to the main topic of increasing your website traffic. Of course the easy answer is always “add more content” – We all know that is the key to having a good website, but we need to take it a step further and make sure we are adding content that means something. If you have a typical Poker Website you probably already have sections covering:

• Poker Room Reviews
• Poker Strategy
• Promotions
• Poker News

Using analytics to increase your traffic

That is the usual stuff everyone has, I’m sure you can think of more I’m leaving off, but again every website has these things. I’ll even go a step further and say every site should* have these sections. These sections don’t usually provide great value to your site, and probably won’t make you much money. The thing is, by having 40-50 pages of this type of content (which I call common content) is that you will end up ranking for random Long Tail phrases that you didn’t intend to rank for.

For example: You have a Party Poker Review page which is 750 words – Chances are if you have a new site, you are not going to rank well for Party Poker Review. But with 750 words on that Party Poker Page, you may end up ranking for other info on that page. Maybe you have a section explaining how the Party Poker bonus is cleared, or some other random snippet of info found on that page. Obviously your intention wasn’t to rank for “Clearing a Party Bonus” (or w/e random LT you see) – But don’t ignore the fact that you did get some traffic for that phrase. Remember: Traffic = $$$$$

Here are some examples I see by looking through my Woopra Live Stats: Note these are all real phrases I see from today

• What is Bum Hunting
• How Do I stop Running Bad at Poker
• HU 3betting ranges on Cake Poker
• When to leave a cash game
• How do I calculate variance in a cash game
• 6max and HU SNG tips on Pokerstars

Use your analytics to create content

So by looking at the short list above, you can see there is a lot of potential content that can be created around those long tail terms. you can write an entire article on “Bum Hunting” – Top 10 bum Hunting Tips or “Guide to Bumhunting” – We can easily make a “Top 10 Tips to stop running bad” – Or an article on “Knowing When to quit a good game” – The possibilities are endless. By checking out your stats and finding these search phrases, you can easily generate new content which will without a doubt drive new visitors to your site. The best part is these are the types of articles you don’t see on a million other poker sites. So you will actually be offering something of value.

Other Ways to increase your poker website traffic

A few other easy ways to come up with content ideas is to check out large poker communities like the 2+2 Beginners Forum. Now I’,m not a huge fan of 2+2 mainly because the signal to noise ratio sucks. that being said, it is a very large community and that means lots question being asked on the forums. Some threads I see right now are:

• Winrates at various games
  Screen Name – what to choose
  How do you study the game

As you can see, this is a great place to look and come up with new article ideas. The best part is since its being asked on the forums, you know people want/need this information. So its a gold mine.

So, these are just a few ways I come up with new content ideas for my website. Adding new content increases my traffic, and more traffic means more money. I’d love to hear ways you use to drive new traffic to your site, and ways to come up with new content ideas.

First off, I wrote most of this post on Sunday night, and got side tracked with more industry drama. So I guess this is “Poker Affiliate tip Friday” - I wanted to continue with the series of “Poker Affiliate Tips Monday’s” and come back this week and share some of the biggest mistakes I and many other new poker affiliates make. Keep in mind that when you start a website with the intention of making money online, then you are in reality starting a business. Like any business you need to have clear defined goals. Having goals will force you to have a plan, and if you have a plan then you are already ahead of 99% of other webmasters. This leads me into the first poker affiliate tip of today;

Affiliate Tip #1 – Not having a plan

Keep in mind that you don’t need to have a 20 page plan to get your website started. If your website is already launched/live, you need to stop now and come up with a simple plan. Simply giving yourself a plan will help you focus and most importantly it will help you maximize the time you spend working on your site. Some things you plan should include are:

• What type of visitor/player are you targeting? This question should dictate the rest of your plan
• What is your target visitor looking for? This should drive your content creation
• What is that “something special” that YOUR website can offer? There are a TON of poker websites out there, what can you do to set yourself apart? Content? Offers?.

Affiliate Mistake #2 – Trying to be the “everything” website

I think this is a mistake almost all of us make, we have the best of intentions to make the best possible poker website in the universe.I mean c’mon, who doesn’t want to be the one stop shop for everything related to poker. Unfortunately, the reality is that being the next Poker Affiliate Listings or PokerNews.com will require a serious budget and a ton of staff. Most of the affiliates I know start as a one or two person operation and they have a minimal budget.

The simple truth is, you don’t have or need to be the next super website to make money being a poker affiliate. One of the great things about the poker affiliate and casino affiliate industry is that anyone can start a website and make money with a very small budget. You just need a plan, motivation, and focus.

Poker Affiliate Mistake #3  -Don’t Be Scared “Homie”

Alright this is a weird one, but I think there is an issue that need to be cleared up. You CAN make money and compete with the “big boys”. Just don’t TRY and be the big boys (see #2). I use to think that ranking for words like Poker or Rakeback would make me rich. I knew deep down I didn’t have the budget to go after those terms though. Still I continued to build my sites and something odd happened, I got traffic and some signups! I was getting traffic for random keywords I would have never thought to specifically target. So on the advice on my good buddy Mr. Ray I dug into these phrases and expanded my content to go after these “low hangin fruit” type keywords. So instead of randomly ranking #10 or on page 2 for a KW, I went after the #1 ranking. By itself a single KW usually doesn’t make a big impact, but if you do this 10 times, then you have something.

My last thought on this topic is this, don’t be scared to go after BIG keywords either. Just because the KW is competative and known to everyone as a good kw to rank for, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try and provide some good content on the subject. It’s amazing to look at the sites ranking for some of these big keywords, you will quickly realize they may not be the best resource on the subject. So there will be opportunities there.Don’t let anyone tell you that its not worth it to go after xxxx kw. Ever!

Almost all markets including poker are what I call “fluid” and always in motion. Keywords that were extremely profitable in 2009 are not the same in 2011. There are a number of reasons why; the market has changed, google has changes, and most importantly the way people search has changed. So don;t be afraid to target big KW, small kw’s, and especially keywords or niches that you *think* will be hot in a year or so. After all this is a long term business, if you are looking to get rich quick then you are screwed.

With all the crazy stuff happening in the Poker Affiliate Industry since Black Friday (April 15th, 2011), if you have decided to stick in the poker world then you need to be squeezing every conversion out of your traffic. Over the next several Monday’s I will be posting Tips For Poker Affiliates. I’ve been a Poker Affiliate since 2003 and I WISH I knew then what I know now. Everyday I see ways I could have done things differently and saved myself a ton of work.

Affiliate Tip #1- Never Publish a Page that is not ready to convert

When you add a new page, make sure it is optimized and ready to convert a visitor - I have sites that have been live for years, and once you grow a site for that long it can be tough to keep all pages updated. Even worse, I keep finding pages that were never optimized to begin with. My on-page SEO is weak, my calls to actions are lame, and sometimes non-existent.

I use to have a bad/lazy habit of publishing articles in a rush and just figured I would remember and go bac when I had time to fix it. Well, some of those pages are now 5 years old. So I’m making a commitment to myself to never publish another new page of content unless I’m very confident it is what I’m going to call “Web ready”. This means every page will:

• Target my desired keywords
• Have an effective Call To Action
• Have Clean Code

These are three simple things we can all do to ensure you won’t have a mess down the road. By not following those simple steps, I may have cost myself a lot of income over the years.

Wow, so yeah its been a while since we made any type of decent post on here. Like everyone else, life keeps us busy! I was actually driving home from the office yesterday, and since I have a 45 minute commute it gives me a lot of time to think, plan, and catch up on my favorite podcasts. Yesterday I was listening to the Mixergy Podcast Interview which was actually done live with Gary Vaynerchuk – you can get it here free: Mixergy – This is a great interview and I had never heard of this guy before, but awesome information anyway for any entrepreneur.

Anyway, it got me thinking about the three websites I visit the most, and I thought I would share them. These sites all have something for everyone I think, especially if you are a small business owner or marketer.

Mixergy

#1 – Mixergy – As I said above, this is a great site with awesome interviews and information. It was founded by Andrew Warner who does great interviews with some of the worlds most interesting entrepreneurs and business men/women – He always asks good questions and keeps the interviews flowing. He also pushes to get something of “value” out of the interview for the listeners. Just good stuff all around and I highly recommend you give it a listen. Below is from his “About us” page

Mixergy is where the ambitious learn from a mix of experienced mentors.

Hi, I’m Andrew Warner. In my 20s, I used credit cards and ingenuity to create a $30+ mil / year (in sales) Internet business with my younger brother. I created Mixergy to help ambitious people who love business as much as I do learn from a mix of experienced mentors. I do that by inviting speakers to live events and online interviews

Seth Godin

Seth Godin – (founder of squidoo) I’m amazed anytime I mention Seth’s name or one of his books that some people have no clue who this guy is. I guess it makes sense if you are what most people consider “normal” – But as Internet Marketers, if you don’t know who Seth Godin is, then you are on the wrong path my friend. Seth has produced several books but I think some of his best work is actually  on his blog which you can check out here. Seth Godin’s Blog – Every time Seth posts on his blog, or does an interview, or writes a book. It seems to me that he is speaking directly at ME and challenging me to do something better than what I’m doing. Best of all he seems to be one of those people who are “great” but doesn’t have the ego to go along with it.

Anyway, I encourage everyone to check out his site and blog. Below is a short snippet of his bio page:

SETH GODIN has written thirteen books that have been translated into more than thirty languages. Every one has been a bestseller. He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership and most of all, changing everything.

American Way Magazine calls him, “America’s Greatest Marketer,” and his blog is perhaps the most popular in the world written by a single individual. His latest book, Poke The Box is a call to action about the initiative you’re taking – in your job or in your life, and Seth once again breaks the traditional publishing model by releasing it through The Domino Project.

Michael Jackness

Michael Jackness – Now I’m gonna guess right odd that not too many people know who this guy is… Yet anyway. He has a fairly new website/blog where he is basically documenting his life and the evolution of his business. He is covering everything from RV travels with his wife, to how he is building his next million dollar company. He is one of the founders of several very lucrative Poker Affiliate Websites including Poker Source Online. He has now retired from day to day operation and is looking in new directions with his new company Terran Marketing -

One of the things he is doing is he is blogging about his Step by Step process of taking a website concept into money making reality. He has started this for two projects, one is a Website Hosting . You can see Part 1 of this process here: The First 60 Days – What amazing is that since I have experience doing similar projects, I know he is doing the right things and putting the information out there for ANYONE to see and use it. What’s even more amazing is that 99.999999% of the people who read it, will ignore the gold mine of information or just never act on it.The net is a funny thing…….

So, if you want to learn something from someone who is giving away information most people would charge 6 figures for, check this guy out! Below is a bit from his bio:

I’ve always been an entrepreneur at heart and on the day I turned 18 I started my first business. Armed with a starting capital of $200 I bought a box of business cards and a pager. My new business was called Discount Computer Consultants and I provided computer support mostly to home computer users. My business grew, mostly by word of mouth, from doing home computer consulting to helping businesses with their computing needs. One of these businesses that I consulted for offered me a full-time job as their Director of IT. The job was at a fast-growing sales organization where I felt like the opportunity to learn, not only about corporate networks, but also about corporate lifestyle outweighed my desire to own my own company. I worked in this position for seven years and the experience was invaluable. I learned how to hire people, manage people, and unfortunately fire people. I also got a feel for how larger companies work; from the inside. Learning about human resource issues, growing pains, budgets, interacting in a corporate structure, and dealing with layoffs was great real world experience.

Even though I enjoyed almost every minute of my corporate position as Director of IT, it was impossible to hold back my entrepreneurial spirit much longer. In January 2004 I discovered online affiliate marketing when checking out Party Poker’s website. Their website offered “a whopping” $75 for every player you referred to their site. At that moment I immediately had the idea of giving away a free book in exchange for someone signing up under my affiliate link. Since I had a background as an eBay power seller, I put two and two together, and listed an auction for my free book offer. This offer was very successful and it prompted me to discuss my ideas with Party Poker. At that point, they offered me a higher commission which allowed me to give away a free set of poker chips verse the meager book I was giving away originally. In 2004 and 2005 poker chips were the number one gift in the United States; everybody wanted a set of poker chips. To say the least, we were at the right place at the right time and from this idea Poker Source Online was born. Our business continued to grow which allowed us to invest in, purchase, or merge with several top online poker affiliate companies. However, by late 2010, our business and the industry evolved to a point where I was ready for a change.

On January 1, 2011 I officially got out of the online poker affiliate business and started a new company called Terran Marketing. The focus of Terran Marketing is also in the online affiliate business, however outside the online poker arena. My initial projects include working in the WordPress themes and RV affiliate spaces. My interest in WordPress themes stems from my use with WordPress over the past couple of years. We also purchased an RV in late 2010 and want to build a successful network of affiliate websites around our experiences traveling with it. As the business continues to evolve I will post updates on this page.

Yeah its been a while since we put up a good post on here, the end of 2010 was a very busy time for us. Poker Affiliates and SEO’s had a serious challenge in 2010, we saw so many changes to the Poker Industry and the massive changes from Google, then introduction of the “new” bing engine, and the phasing out of Yahoo. It was serious tough to just keep up with everything. So here it is, a little late but better than nothing. This is essentially just a repost of info already out there.

Here is a nice post detailing all the major google changes made in 2010

December 11, 2010.

Sentiment analysis added to the algorithm

Following an article on the New York Times, denouncing the fact that a merchant who causes the dissatisfaction of its customers and generates many complaints in blogs and forum gains an advantage with search engines, Google reacted.
Indeed, when we denounce the practices or content of a site, we put links on it to provide examples, and these backlinks are treated as a popularity indice by search engines, which translates into better ranking in the results!
Google therefore developed an algorithm for sentiment analysis, which aims to recognize if the text surrounding a link is positive or negative towards it, depending keywords it contains to penalize sites that we complained.
Google also advises the nofollow attribute to put a link on a site without wishing to contribute to its positioning.
Being bad to your customers is bad for business.
Large-Scale Sentiment Analysis for News and Blogs. Analysis in English of the algorithm.
December 2, 2010.

More results from a domain

A same domain until new did not appear more than twice in SERPS. Now this limit is broken and that could let other websites to lose traffic.
November 17, 2010.

Instant preview

A magnifying glass icon on the right of snippets provides a quick thumbnail of the page corresponding to the result.
It already existed a firefox extension to display a thumbnail of each site beside the results.
November 9, 2010.

Black Friday

Since 21 and 22 October depending on the region, a modification of the algorithm on the ranking in results affected a lot of sites, some losing up to 80% of their traffic. The Alexa search engine, has published graphs showing huge losses or gains equivalent to some sites.
These changes seem permanent.
The purpose of these chan ges appears to be intended to improve the relevance of results.
“You are not alone”, Alexa blog.
November 5, 2010.

Custom Location

It is now possible to define a location. By default the search engine identifies the location of the user and selects the results based on it.
For various reasons, you may want to break free, when for instance you are been searching for the next day where you’ll be in another city!
You must have results already displayed to show the panel of options on the left.
Custom locations.
October 18, 2010.

Keyboard Navigation

Instant is enhanced with the possibility for the user to use the keyboard to select a row among the rows in the suggestion box.
This can have an effect on the traffic of sites.
Section and explanatory video.
September 30, 2010.

Google Instant

The real-time search goes on the main search engine: a results page is displayed as soon as you start typing a query and its continuous changes based on the words you add.
A suggestion in light gray is proposed also to complete the application.
This works on Chrome, Firefox and IE8.
Instant Will it end optimization for search engines, as some think? This tends to personalize the results page and then it changes the rules, but does not certainly removes the need for optimization. This will at least disrupt statistics in GWT and Analytics.
FAQ Google Instant.
Video: Google Instant by Marissa Mayer Google’s staff.
September 8, 2010.

SVG indexed

SVG content now indexed either it is in a file to include or embedded into HTML code.
List of files formats supported by Google.
August 31 2010.

Realtime search

It now has a special page. Conversation may be followed in realtime on a chat. Gives results mainly on Twitter.
The note from the Google Blog.
Realtime Experiment.
August 27, 2010.

Interactive result page

As you type a query, and the function Suggest proposes to complete the text, another thing may happen: if it is already displayed, the results page may change gradually depending on keywords that you add in the query.
To heve a best understanding of how it feels, a demonstration video.
It is a function under test and only a few netsurfers were able to observe it, but it has been confirmed by Google.
August 21, 2010.

More than two results for the same domain

So far the same domain could not appear more than twice in one page of results (except with the command site:).
Since August 20, 2010, that changed for some specific queries on which a site can be the one to many results, it may appear more than twice.
Showing more results for a domain.
August 20, 2010.

Harmful internationalization?

Some webmasters have seen their traffic increased from search engines other than Google Google.com or that of their country.
So Americans can see the arrival of visitors who visit other ccTLD engines, such as google.co.uk or google.fr for example, implying that the engine of other ccTLD includes U.S. sites in the results.
This could reduce the audience for the sites in these countries.
August 20, 2010.

History

A history link appeared on the page of search engine (on U.S. version only at first). It will displays previous searches and make to reappear results already found in the past.
This only works when you are registered to your Google Account, but it is accessible from any computer or mobile. You can edit the list and delete the results.
You have to activate this feature in the configuration of the account at the option “Save searches”.
Introducing search history link.
4 August 2010.

Definitions at top

Many surfers use the search engine for the definition of a term. Google has so created a special section that appears at the top of the result page and provides definitions from online dictionaries Merriam-Webster, Dictionary.com, Answers.com, The Free Dictionary.
The snippets include pronunciation and grammatical information.
For now only on the English engine.
Example: Search for “persistent”.
Announcement.
July 25, 2010.

Google image modernized

The results pages of the image section enlarge images in a box when you move the mouse over the images and display them in a window with the page that contains them in a grayed background, on the principle of the lightbox.
July 21, 2010.

Caffeine builds a fresher index

Google announced June 8 that the new indexing engine, Caffeine is finalized. It offers a new index with 50% fresher results.
Its operation differs from the previous system which was updating as a whole, by waves. Caffeine updates the index incrementally. New pages can be added and made available for search as soon as they are discovered.
The new architecture allows also to associate a page to several countries.
Caffeine vs. previous system.
June 8, 2010.

MayDay: The long tail evolves

This was confirmed by Matt Cutts at the Google I/O in May, the radical evolution in the month of April comes from the change in the algorithm, to promote quality content on the long trail.

This is an algorithmic change in Google, looking for higher quality sites to surface for long tail queries. It went through vigorous testing and isn’t going to be rolled back.

Remind that the long tail is the set of queries with multiple keywords, each being rare, but which together form the bulk of traffic to a site.

Webmasters gave the evolution the name of MayDay. I have previously called Black Tuesday. This has been disastrous for some sites well established but having not enough content in deep pages. This happened in late April and early May depending on the sites, even though other sites have experienced a loss of traffic for other reasons.
This has boosted traffic on scriptol.com.
Google confirms Mayday impact. By Vanessa Fox that says also Caffeine is not live yet.
Matt Cutts explains Mayday in a video. It is not related to Caffeine and is definitive. Webmasters must add content to their page to retrieve the traffic lost.
May 27, 2010.

Short answers

From the Squared engine as the previous technology, short answer is trying to directly answer a query that looks like a question.
For example if one asks the “date of birth x”, the engine will give a direct answer, date of birth of the person, then follows a list of pages containing information related to the birth date of x.
May 12, 2010.

Something different

In certain queries may appear in the sidebar to search by category, a new section: “Something different” and a list of query below.
In the case of a search on an actress, it will be a list of other actresses.
This has been developed for the Google’s alternative engine , Squared and integrated to the standard search engine.
May 12, 2010.

Black Tuesday: Ranking changes on the long tail

The long tail is the set of pages on a site that make few visit each but all together have a large traffic.
Queries on multiple keywords, make the long tail.
Many sites have seen a change in traffic of these pages since April 27. Some have lost up to 90% of their traffic. They attributed this change to Caffeine, the new infrastructure of Google indexes more pages and creates more competition, but it has been confirmed later by Google it is a change in the algorithm (see May 27).
April 27, 2010.

Similar Sites

For a while the search engine has a feature sites offering similar content. The “similar” link to a similar page near a result in addition to “cached” to the cached version.
This function becomes more important. We can now possibly find a block of sites similar to results at the bottom of results page.
April 28, 2010.

Rich snippets go international

Including rich snippets for recipes.
April 26, 2010.

Real time improved

MySpace, Facebook, Buzz, Twitter are integrated in search results. When, after viewing the results page you ask to show more options and you clicks on “Update”, you can see activities on social networks about the query, for a given period.
Replay accross Twitter.
April 14, 2010.

Snippets for recipes

The recipes are displayed differently in results, provided that their page has an internal format that is suitable.
Google supports 5 formats including RDF and microdata.
Introducing rich recipe snippets.
April 13, 2010.

Site speed

is officially a ranking factor

This was announced a few months ago, it became reality: a site that is too slow is now downgraded in SERPs or at least has a chance to be in conjunction with other factors.

Today we’re Including a new signal in our search ranking algorithms: site speed.

It is possible to know if your site is too slow from Google Webmaster Tools (Labs -> Site performance).
Using site speed in web search ranking.
April 9, 2010.

Microdata

Microdata as specified in HTML 5 are now included in the description of the results if they are defined in the page.
They adds social data about the site.

Microdata in snippets.
March 12, 2010.

Public data in search results

The search engine now provides access to public statistics and displays graphs directly instead of links, like Wolfram Alpha.
To do this, you type in the search bar keywords like “unemployment rate ” with the name of a country or region and the image of a graph is displayed under a link to click.
You can check with “unemployement rate usa” that things are not going very well in USA.
This service works only for USA in March 2010.

More information and video.
March 9, 2010.

Assigning stars to results

Google abandons the SearchWiki service which imitated the principles of Wikia and allowed users to annotate, vote for or delete pages in results. (Wikia dropped this service for a while).
But it retains a feature that is extended to the general search engine: the user can assign a star to a link in results. When he returned on the search engine, links that received a star appear at top of the page ion a special list.
This rating is personal, it does not change the results for other users.

More details.
February 4, 2010.

Local Search option

A new option “Nearby” appears in the panel of specialized search. It restricts searches to regions.
The advantage is that the search will no longer depend precisely on keywords but on a region, without the need to found all the different terms used to designate towns and various places…
Refine your search by location.
February 26, 2010.

Sponsored links in results

As an experiment and for the cities of Houston and San Jose only, Google highlight sponsored links in search results listings. They are marked with a yellow rectangle.
The sponsored links on the side or top of the page still remains, this is a new different service named “Google Enhanced Listings”, costing $ 25 per month.
This subscription does not guarantee a better position in results.
More details and examples.
February 16, 2010.

Search engine and answers

To add the feature of the Wolfram Alpha engine, Google now wants to offer real answers to questions from webmasters. For this it offers a richer snippet (description under the link in results) and includes the response in bold.
Clearly, if we ask how many people are living in China, the snippet should contain the answer. What we can easily check …

The difference with Wolfram is that the user can click on the link for more details. In addition, the snippet has a limited size, while Wolfram can provide an answer on a full page … that the Web site linked by Google can also do. Webmasters may have to change their writing habits to adapt to that.
For example, to use Ajax to give to his visitors an unique information. If the information is not unique, they will find it in snippets of other sites and it is not recommended.

Explanation: Answer highlighting.
January 2010.

The speed of a site will be a ranking factor in 2010

This is what Matt Cutts has just said in an interview.

“Historically, we haven’t had to use it in our search rankings, but a lot of people within Google think that the web should be fast.
It should be a good experience, and so it’s sort of fair to say that if you’re a fast site, maybe you should get a little bit of a bonus. If you really have an awfully slow site, then maybe users don’t want that as much.
I think a lot of people in 2010 are going to be thinking more about ‘how do I have my site be fast, how do I have it be rich without writing a bunch of custom javascript?”

This should favor static website with no SQL. See our article, How to build a CMS without database.
See also Let’s make the Web faster.
November 19, 2009. The interview.

I wanted to throw up a quick post to let everyone know that our newest Ebook is now available FREE to download. This book has been months in the making and I want to give a big shout out to my boy Greg for all his hard work on this project! This Ebook is titled “Breaking Into a Niche” and takes you step by step and shows you what it takes find a niche and dominate it!

What’s in this eBook For You?

We used a real life example in this Ebook, one of our most recent campaigns was targeting “Double or Nothing” Terms, Keywords, and players! So this book will teach you how to identify a niche, plan your attack, build a mailing list, and make the coin! It doesn’t matter if you are a new, a struggling Affiliate, or a seasoned veteran there is something in this Ebook for everyone.

Give us your feeback!

We want to ask each and every affiliate that reads this ebook to give us your feedback! The Affiliate market is ever changing and in constant motion! We are already working on “Part 2″ of our Ebook series, so check back soon!