Thought I would give a quick update with what I am up to these days.

In my last post I talked about my Super Bowl site and wanted to give a quick update about that.  Overall I didn’t get as much traffic as I would have liked, but it was a great experiment and I got some sports betting sign ups from it.  Here is my Super Bowl Site Review recap blog post at PAL.

I also talked about how I was getting a mini site up focused on betting on the Winter Olympics.  I fixed it up similar to the Super Bowl site and have gotten only a small amount of visitors so far but have a couple sign ups.  I am actually working on the site with a friend who is trying to get into affiliating, so I had him do the content and I did the website stuff and SEO, and we’re splitting profits 50/50.  The site wasn’t as big as I had hoped when I bought the domain back a couple months ago but oh well I have a ton on my plate right now.

The last couple days I’ve been working hard on a  new site.  I actually started a blog series at CAL where I’m explaining step by step how I go abouts creating a new site.  Here is the first post on Creating a Site – Research and Planning. Since that blog post I have got my template back and have been putting some content on it.  My next post will come within the next few days.  The template I got for the site is probably my nicest template I have ever used, which has motivated me like crazy… I cranked out a bunch of work this weekend and didn’t even get into the alcohol at night so I could work the next day .  I might ask Eduardo from Eyenod to make a guest post here about the importance of a nice looking template, something that I need to focus on more because I have some ugly ass sites out there.

So next week I will basically just be working on my new site, making a couple oylmpic betting posts on my sports news blog, and possibly doing a few touch ups to other small sites that are starting to get traffic.  I have like 2 or 3 more domains that I want to get going soon too because I hate seeing good domains sitting around.  Check back soon.

This weekend is SUPERBOWL WEEKEND

Superbowl weekend should be pretty good to me this weekend for a couple reasons… firstly I love football and love watching the Superbowl, we will having a little Superbowl party at our house which equals beer and some great food, and also Superbowl is the biggest sports betting event in North America.  Since I have been building up a small base of sports bettors under me this football season I hope to see some good action on the big game!

I picked up a solid domain a couple weekends ago  which was focused on the superbowl niche – Bet on Superbowl.  I ended up getting some pages up on the default wordpress theme and getting some links to it.  I started to see some visitors trickle in the past few days and thought “shit the site will probably convert like crap since I haven’t focused on it much”.

I decided it would be cool to get some input from PAL members on the site for conversions, hoping a couple people would pitch in with a couple tips.  After making the post the amount of feedback I got back absolutely amazing.. it goes to show what a great resource PAL is for affiliates – check out the Superbowl Site Review thread.

I then went and ahead and started making some big changes.  I put the site on a new template, got a sick superbowl header made from Eduardo, fixed up the content, put up a newsletter thingy, added some pages, and even found out how to put a comment script in a static site thanks to JohnH.

The site looks 1000x and even more importantly will convert 1000x better.  I may not have done enough SEO work this year to get a huge amoutn of traffic, but I am expecting some decent traffic and conversions and then I want to hit it HARD next superbowl.

I am going to do the same thing for my Bet on Winter Olympics site (which I’m working with a friend on) and make a blog post probably at PAL with the before and after.

I will report back on how the Superbowl site does next week sometime, enjoy the game

Am I actually making a monthly goal post on the first of the month?  Seems hard to remember to do but I finally got it done (helps being a Monday).  I will start off by going over my January Goals that I posted near the start of January.

JANUARY AFFILIATE GOALS RECAP:

Get 5 pages up on my Winter Olympics Betting site – Sort of.  I put up 5 pages spread across my two domains (one I had thought was penalized or something strange, but it ended up jsut taking a really long time to get indexed for some reason).

Put up 4 new mini sites – Did this, still need to work on them some more before I drop a link to them.

Create new bonus codes – I think I got this done for only one room.  Will have to get this done this month as it might be costing me a few hundred dollars a month.

Finish up three pages on NBA site – I got two done and will probably do the third this week because I forgot about it.

Re-invest $1000 into my sites – I invested just over $1200 in ads, templates and a bit of content.

Earn $10,000 affiliate revenue – Not quite, but not too far off… maybe would have if PokerStars didn’t change their CPA requirements (complete bullshit but I may have to make a whole post about it)

Personal January Goals:

Workout 5 times a week and eat healthy – Worked out 5 times per week almost every week, overall felt pretty good in the gym.  I didn’t eat as healthy as I would have liked… seems for everyday I drink I have two bad days of eating because I like ordering pizza when hungover haha.

Wake up at 9am consistently – Did pretty good at this.  I am starting to get used to getting into bed before midnight and waking up earlier then used to.

FEBRUARY 2010 AFFILIATE GOALS:

• Publish a bunch of superbowl articles on The Sports Geek this week, plus work on my Bet on Superbowl 44 website
• 3 Sites to launch this month (sports betting related – one which I want to be a big money maker for me)
• Create those bonus codes I talked about last month
• Replace high exposure of PokerStars to another US accepting poker room (visit PAL to read about the new CPA requirements for their poor $75 CPA)
• Invest $1000 into one of my casino sites
• Earn $10,000 affiliate revenue (C’mon Son I need this!… hopefully I get some big superbowl bettors)

For personal goals I want to continue to working out 5 times per week.  I am also starting a bit of a “cleanse” from now (Monday) until superbowl Sunday where I am trying to eat extremely healthy… read something about how you’re supposed to do it once per year.  And I want to make sure I don’t donk off too much money sports betting this month.

Hope everyone had a good January, and lets work hard in February!

In my blog post at the end of December I talked about a little mini site experiment I was running.  Check out the post I linked to for the full details, but basically I tried creating a mini site for the BCS National Championship Game (college football) to attract sports bettors and get them to sign up at under me.

The terms I was targeting with the mini site were “BCS Odds” and “BCS Championship Odds”. I ended up getting ranked around 2nd-4th for “BCS Odds” in google, and just a little lower for the other term.  Initially I was thinking that I would receive well over 1000 visitors on the day of the game, and maybe like 3000+ visitors in total (just a guesstimation on my part).  I estimated that with that many visitors I could maybe expect 3-6 new sign ups that would be betting on the game.

The site didn’t do nearly what I expected, and I guess it kind of failed.  In the month surrounding the BCS game I got only 472 unique visits (mainly North American visitors).  Now the only problem with this experiment is that only 1 of the 3 sportsbooks I was promoting allows you to make individual trackers (so I couldn’t tell where sign ups are coming from on the other 2).  The one with separate tracking was the one I promoted mainly.  I had 65 banner/link clicks and 0 sign ups.  It’s possible I got a sign up at one of the other sportsbooks but it’s probably unlikely because of the differences in exposure.

So I am assuming $0 revenue from the site.  Now there is still an outside chance that one of the 65 people who clicked on my link might sign up with the sportsbook sometime soon and I would get credit.

Was this a complete fail and waste of time? Ahh no not really.. it was only one days work for me, the site has PR1 and can pass value to my other sites, and the BCS is yearly so I have the opportunity to grow the site more and try for a higher ranking to get some signups.

My next blog post will probably be a January recap + February goal post next week…

Unfortunately I head back to school on the 11th of this month, but that does give me a full week to work hard and accomplish a decent amount of work in January.  January is a pretty big month for my sports betting sites with the NFL playoffs around the corner.  I am hoping to get a couple new sites up and work on the ones I recently put up.  Here is what I hope to accomplish in January 2010:

• Get 5 new pages up on my Winter Olympics Betting site
• Put up 4 new mini sites (will release what they are once I get them up)
• Create new bonus codes for some poker rooms (I have some stupid ones that probably don’t convert well)
• Finish up the three pages on my NBA Predictions site
• Re-invest $1000 into my sites
• Earn $10,000 revenue

Other personal goals I have going on includes working out 5 times a week + eating healthy, consistently wake up at 9am or earlier to get used to my horrible school schedule of 8am classes, and put aside money for a trip on my spring break at the end of February.

Lets get off to a great start for a big year in 2010!

As 2010 is just a couple days away I just planned out my 2010 goals.  Although I find goals are important to have, I try to not get too disappointed if I can’t achieve one or two of them and I don’t get too happy if I hit them.

My 2010 Goals:

Work Goals:

• $10,000 revenue per month on average
• Hit $20k affiliate revenue in one month
• Try to spread out income between poker, casino, and sportsbooks
• Build one big site this year
• Increase conversion rates network wide by paying more attention to what converts
• Update content on my main money making sites

Personal Goals:

• Keep good grades in school (4.07 GPA first term)
• Workout 5 days per week and get weight down to 190
• Enjoy the summer away from school with a few vacations
• Live life!

Each month I will try to do monthly goals on what I hope to achieve in the upcoming month.  These posts will be a little more in depth than this yearly goal list.

The next part of this post is about a little experiment I have decided to test out.  I was visiting Casino Affiliate Listings and read a thread by Greg about College Football Bowls and Betting.  Basically he was asking if anyone had created any mini sites that target bowl games for college football.  No one had answered him so I thought it would be pretty cool to see if I could get a set up in time and make some money from the BCS bowl games.

I got a BCS Odds site up on December 16th (took me one night to complete) and started getting some links to it.  Around Christmas it got indexed.  I am ranking decent for a couple of the terms I was targeting and have been getting a couple hits a day.

Now a site like this will probably only get traffic for 3-4 weeks with only 1 week with any major traffic, but I think I can make some decent money off of it.  After only about 10 hours or less of work total (including contacting people for exchanges) I figure I should be able to generate 5 real money sports bettors, which could be $500-$1000 on a CPA plan.  This equals $50-$100 per hour of work, not bad.  The best thing about it is that this site will still be around next year, and the year after, and the year after that…

I am going to see if I can set up tracking for the site at the sportsbooks I promote (I know at least one I can’t track separate) and report back in another blog post with the amount of players the site generated.  If I can’t get that up and going I will for sure post google analytic numbers.

HAPPY NEW YEARS!  I’ll make a post at the start of January with some goals for the month..

Just wanted to say Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone who reads my blog.  Hope you all have a great time with your friends and/or family!

I am heading over to my mom’s house tonight (Christmas Eve) to do our xmas dinner and some gifts there, and then my Xmas Eve night usually consists of hangning out with some buddies having some casual beers.  On Christmas day I will be at my Dad’s house for dinner and gifts with that side of the family, and then me and friends usually get together for some drinks and head out to a local bar that is full of people we know.. always ends up being a lot of fun!

Enjoy your Holidays, and I will have a blog post before the New Years!