A Fork In The Road

August 6th, 2009 by admin |

I’m struggling with a big decision, probably the biggest decision I’ve made in my life. I’ve never been one to shy away from risk, but I now have a big family and a wife that deserves nothing but the best. My decision is: To be a poker affiliate, or not to be a poker affiliate.

I think most people would say “Easy, be a poker affiliate”, but nothing is ever simple. I have a dream job with one of the largest corporations in the US, I’m on senior staff, unreal health Insurance, a fat salary, ballin’ office, and we get fat annual bonuses.

Right now I make more being an Affiliate Marketer than being a Senior Exec, but there risk on putting all my eggs in one basket is scaring me to death! Right now, I can do both, hell I’m in my office right now writing this post. I do not have someone looking over my shoulder, and they are always pleased with my work (I do Legal and Environmental Affairs).

Although in 2009 I make more from Affiliate stuff, I fear that that could change at anytime. I have a diversified portfolio of websites, but you just never know what could happen. I would be cutting my current income in half, and of course I could make a great argument that with more time to spend on websites, I could double that. There is also a chance my main websites could get bitch slapped by google just for fun.

If I didn’t have to worry about the wife or kids, I would be a full time affiliate in a heartbeat. The reality is that I have 6 kids and a wife that deserve to be taken care of, the flip side of that is that I basically work two jobs that consumes 18 hours a day and sometimes more. I don’t mind working that much, but I’m not sure I can do it forever, in fact I know I can’t.

So, I think sometime this year or by the end of the year I will have to make a decision. I don’t see selling all my websites, because even if I never touch them again I should still be getting income. Maybe I should just work on them more to get them producing even more to justify retiring form corporate life.

Affiliate Stuff – SEO Issues

Ok enough bitching, one interesting thing that came up over the last few weeks is that the wife and I are building a new poker site, the site is focused totally on Poker Rakeback and is really probably the best domain I own. The domain is Online Poker Rakeback .net – Although it is a .net (I have the .org too) I still think this will be a sick site to develop and google has been tweaking the algo over the last few weeks and one of the results is placing even MORE weight on exact match domains or KID.

Obviously, this is nothing new, but they have made an adjustment to combat SPAMMY websites which found a hole in the last major algo change which resulted in a large amount of un-relevant websites ranking way too good.I will expand more about this on my Poker SEO website.

Affiliate Tip – Get off your butt and go get some good exact match domains and develop them. Don’t waste your time looking for a mini site domain, get a domain you can build on

Tags: Affiliate Tips, Google Changes, Marketing

6 Responses to “A Fork In The Road”

On August 6th, 2009 at 12:38 pm Mike Says :

Hey man,

One thing to consider is that giving up affiliating is still putting all your eggs in one basket, maybe even more so. As opposed to having several sites earning income, you only have one job earning income. What happens if you lose that job?

On August 6th, 2009 at 9:07 pm Poker Rakeback Guy Says :

Hey Randy… stick with affiliating man… even if it means cutting down on the hours you work on your sites and outsourcing more stuff. Would miss talking to you on Skype and reading your blog

On August 7th, 2009 at 8:35 am Mark Says :

Interesting post Randy, there are always alternatives to the all or nothing approach of course… something along the lines of outsourcing the day-to-day of affiliating / building your network and taking a ‘directors role’ could work well…

Mark

On August 10th, 2009 at 9:33 am Poker Affiliate Gossip Says :

Dude your affiliate income is probably more secure than your corporate income simply due to the fact that being an affiliate, you are your own boss. I don’t expect you will fire yourself anytime soon.

With that said, I would keep doing both. You’re obviously on the right track and no reason to change that at the moment. I couldn’t imagine the cost of insurance for a family your size, lol!

On August 10th, 2009 at 3:02 pm MJ Says :

I can relate to this only a small bit, I gave up a business that made me a decent living to jump into this one (when I knew absolutely nothing about it).

Now that I have a son, I don’t think I could have done it – so I feel you.

I guess my advice would be you are very lucky to have no conflicts from your employer (imo that would change the dynamics of the decision), so what I’d do is put away 100k from affiliating, then jump.

That way you have a second nest egg sitting somewhere, that’s not tied to 401k or any other part of your financing. Do both while you can, filter some affiliate money to this chunk, and when you get there GO FOR IT.

You know you can earn in any niche, and more than you do currently, but if you need the security for your family, I think that’s the route.

On August 10th, 2009 at 3:19 pm Randy Says :

Wow, thanks for all the advice guys. I think everyone is spot on, I KNOW I would thrive if I made the jump, but not having too right now is a sweet position to be in. I’m sooo blessed!

I just started a new “flagship” sit that will be my main focus for a while, and I full expect it to compete at the highest levels against the big rakeback boys. If all goes as planned, I may take the jump in the next 12 months. I guess I’ll see how it goes.