So after checking the scales I noticed I had put on 7lbs since before Christmas, So back training for me. Actually down 3lbs since then, but still alot to lose. Also been lazy at work. PNB has been going really well, and sometimes when things are going good it’s easy to get lazy. However, I got my act together and started work on a few new sites again aswell as trying to improve PNB with some quality new articles.

Future Plans

So recently I’ve been spending alot of my time building a new MMA site: MMARankings.org. Biggest problem was trying to build the independent rankings system, which has now been done (took forever) and trying to workout how to make money from a MMA site as its a new industry for me. I have added a UFC T-Shirt section just now and plan on adding a Bet on MMA section and UFC Tickets section. So thats the plans for that site. But the main goal is to turn MMA into a brand and the strongest MMA Rankings site. I always think if you can build the best possible website in your chosen niche. If you do that the money will follow. So that is my main plan for that site for a while anyway.

We are at a good stage with PNB at the minute. It’s now making good money and gaining every week and month. Rankings are also improving all the time also. However, I’m now at a stage with PNB where we can invest some proper money into the site. Problem is I still haven’t decided what to invest in. I looking to add something new and cool. Some sort of app or something, just don’t know what yet. So will probably keep going over idea’s and see which one will be best for PNB. But hopefully by next year PokerNewsBoy will have some cool feature thats new to the poker industry. just need the idea and a top class coder who can do it and we’re there.

Future Events

So I’ll start with the Industry related stuff. The plan is just to go to the Dublin Super Show this year. Last year I went to the London Conference and the one in Dublin, and Dublin was far more enjoyable. So thats one reason, the other is the fact that Kev (my partner on PNB) is coming over from the US for Dublin. So if he can make it all the way from the US, I’m sure I can make it from Omagh (about 2hrs drive from Dublin). So if you are going to Dublin this year and I know you, or even if your a member of PAL let me know and we can meet up. Also if you do go to Dublin and you are a member of PAL, make sure you bump into Jeremy and buy him a Guinness. Rules are if you buy him a Guinness he buys you a stake dinner with all the trimmings. Only kidding, butting meeting Jeremy was cool last year, we drank alot and partied alot. Never did much work though.

So for my personal life: 3 weeks time I go back to the place where I meet the my fiancee (Edinburgh). Before moving to Omagh I lived in Edinburgh for 4-5 years. By the way Edinburgh is the best city in the world. Well best City I have ever been to anyway and Iv’e been to a few: Paris, Barcelona, London and Dublin to name a few. But not been back to Edinburgh for about 5 years. So looking forward to going back and meeting up with a few new faces.

The plan after that is to go to the Euro’s. As luck has it my mum and dad are staying in Poland for a planned 4 months from April onwards. Well my dad’s plans are 4 months, my mums is not to return. However, this gives me the perfect opportunity to go over and catch a few games. I have bought 4 tickets for the Denmark v Portugal and 2 tickets for the Denmark v Germany game. So I am hoping to make it to both of those games. So busy summer planned anyway.

By the way I’m looking to add some skype contact to my current list. So if you are a poker affiliate add me on Skype: pokernewsboy

So what have I been upto the last 8 months?

Improving my Poker News website?

The main thing I have been trying to do is increase the the quility, traffic and income on PokerNewsBoy.com. If any one else runs a news site instead of a normal static bonus site they’ll be able to tell you there is alot more work involved just trying to keep it fresh and upto date, aswell as trying to break stories and gain regular readers. Thats on top of the usual stuff thats involved with running a poker website. But we have been focusing more on the other stuff as I am now happy with the amount of content going up on PNB each day aswell as extremely happy with the amount of writers we are using and they way they work. So worring about news content doesn’t take up as much time as it did in the past. Getting to this point wasn’t easy though.

However, this game me more time to focus on the things that make money. Meaning we have been tracking SERPs more and trying to rank for much harder terms than we have did before. This has been working well, and PNB is probably on track to make 6 times more this year than we did last from rev share.

Trying to lose weight.

3 months ago I made the decision that I wanted to get back playing football (Soccer for the Americans) before I got to old and the chance wouldn’t be about for to long. The biggest problem was I weighted about 4st which is about 56lb more than I did the last time I played proper football. But since I’ve been back training I have now lost about 20lbs. Not bad in 3 months. The biggest thing is the feeling from feeling fit again. I still have a long long way to go, but I’m on the right track at the minute.

Trying to Quit Smoking.

So because I am trying to get fit again I wanted to stop smoking. However, losing weight seemed to be far easier than trying to stop smoking. I have tried a few times. Tried is the wrong word as I have actually never got past the cigarette in the morning. But I did think about smoking a good few times.

But this got me thinking about quiting smoking anyway, and I thought if I was to start a blog on it that might help. So I bought the domain Quits.co. The plans to create a site with articles that will hopefully help people quit what ever they want to quit. Obviously smoking will be one of the main topics and I plan on starting a blog on my journey. Not sure how well this will work, but thats the plan.

So other than that not much really happened. Had a great summer. (Not weather wise) Enjoyment wise. Went to spain for a week on holiday. Went to Scotland twice for two short breaks (one with the kids, one without). Went to the conferance in Dublin. Which turned out to be a great few days. Never did much work related stuff, but did plenty of drinking with Kev and Jeremy. But now just the winter to look foward to and a trip to Edinburgh hopefully.

However, lets get to what everyone wants to read. The important updates:

1. First thing I want to do is thank everyone who voted PNB in the IGB Affiliate Awards. PNB made the final cut in the Best Newcomer (Affiliate) category. So now it’s down to the last 10, I better start preparing my winners speech and sorting out travel and accommodation. In all seriousness I can’t see past BettingPro.com winning. There site is seriously sik. Just don’t know if they can be counted as Newcomers, but think they by far have the best site. Still cool to be nominated though.

2. The second thing to announce is the PNB Poker Awards and PNB Forum launch. Last month we launched the forum and a day or two ago we announced the first PNB Poker Awards for players to vote in. So I’m asking everyone who bothers to read this to pop over to the PNB Poker Forums, register and vote in the awards. Also feel free to leave some views in the forum. Could do with all the help trying to get the forum started.

3. Thats me and the family settled into the new house. Great having all the extra room. Plus the games room is awesome now, just full of boys toys. Xbox, Wii, Laptop and my computer. But its great to have all the extra space to breath, especially coming upto Xmas. Only problem is as we have all the spare room, we invited everyone for Xmas dinner. Now have 14 coming to dinner. Which I have to cook.

4. Other big step foward for PNB was PNB becoming the official Poker News source for PokerSpace. It’s pretty cool and means that PNB has the resources to reach many new poker players and it helps us by PNB being able to offer bigger promotions to our readers and gives PNB more credibility. Also makes it possible for PNB to give away free money at poker sites thanks to PokerSpace.

5. We also have two massive promotions starting in January and Febuary, both involving Lock Poker. First is the crazy freerolls that only PNB and PokerNews.com players are eligible for. In total they are four 10k freerolls, which involves $7.5k in the prizepool and 25 $100 bounties available to be won. Should have crazy value for the poker players that are eligible. Just sign up using Lock Poker Bonus Code: PNB1200. That bonus code will get you a 200% bonus up to $1200, plus means you can play in the $10k freerolls.

The other big promo is the BE A PRO competition that PNB and Bluff will be holding on Lock Poker. Can’t really go into much details as it’s still all top secret. But this is going to be massive. Just watch this space

Thats about all I can think about. But if you fancy posting anything on here, send me a email or message. And we can sort something out.

1. New Baby

So on the 13th of September I had my second child, a baby girl. That’s now two girls, Mia and Kara. Kara was a monster 10″3 when she was born, and if you don’t know much about weight’s of babies when they are born, well thats pretty big. So far Kara has been great, apart from the odd sleepless night, but otherwise she has been great.

2. New House

Currently Me, Tracey(my girlfriend), Mia and Kara live in a small 2 bedroom house. So when Kara arrived we decided it was time to look for something new. So after a few weeks of searching, we found the right house. Its a 4 bedroom detatched house with a big garden. The garden was the selling point. You can see a pic here currently. Don’t know how long it’ll be up.

3. Been working hard on PokerNewsBoy.com

Me, Kev and Stevie invested a few more $$$$ into PNB the last few months. Been adding lots of new content, upped the amount of Poker News alittle and spend a large chunk on SEO and advertising. So we are just all hoping that PNB cross over from being a decent site to a one of the leading sites in the Poker Industry. I think we are close to making some decent money as well. Over the last few months PNB has been increasing up the SERP’s at a decent rate. SO just hope it keeps going. The only problem is the forum, not that we have had any great push or advertized it anywhere, but was hoping to see a little more activity in there. So feel free to pop past and leave a comment. Talking about comments, PNB have opened up to comments in posts again. This will only last a few weeks and we will be closed for comments again. So if you are looking a link feel free to comment. However, only comments that add something to the post will be approved. Comments such as “Great Site” and “Awesome Blog” will not be accepted. It will feed my ego, but won’t get you a link back.

4. Irish Poker Awards

Next week The Irish Poker Awards will take place in Dublin at the IPO. And one of my mates and small share holder in PNB is up for an award. So I’m asking the few people who get this far down this article to Vote AllinStevie in the Best Online Player category. You can read an article about AllinStevie and the Irish Poker Awards on PNB or go straight to the voting page at Irish Poker Awards by click here. All votes for Stevie will be greatly appreciated.

5. Selling RakebackVictory.com

Due to having the new baby and moving into a new house, I have decided to sell one of my Poker Websites and the Victory Poker affiliate account to go with it. I am looking in the range of $12k for it. But can be negotiated. So if interested in the Victory Poker Rakeback website and affilaite account with over 400 players. You can hit me on skype: pokernewsboy.

So I think thats a big enough update for now. Probably be a few months again before the next one, but I’ll try my best to get an update sooner. Maybe try and talk one of my affiliate friends to write a guest post. You can hit me on skype for that also, if you fancy writing a guest post.

So what have I been upto? The honest answer is nothing much. I have been doing some work on a few other projects and been working more on the small changes and preparing for the official launch of the Poker Forum on PNB. This will hopefully be this Monday to co-inside with PokerNewsBoy.com being officially 1 year old. The Forum will be mostly News based, but will also contain some info on the league that will soon start and the staking section too. Hopefully add section as the forum increases, but it will be mostly Poker News related.

Other recent additions to PNB

The stuff that I have been working on (and still trying to tidy up) are new but essential things that any affiliate website needs to succeed. For example review pages, I have been adding Online Poker Sites reviews such as PokerStars, DoylesRoom, Full Tilt and a load more. I have also been focusing on trying to rank for there bonus or referral term as well, such as Doyles Room Bonus Code and Full Tilt Referral Code. Still no great luck with that, but slowly improving and will hopefully get there.

Other new additions are the Online Poker Rooms section and the Poker Player section (needs tiding up). So although I haven’t been as busy and productive as I should be, Poker News Boy is still slowly moving forward. So if you are looking to exchange a few incontent links give us a shout.

Other things happening in my life.

So for all you noisy people who love to know whats happening in peoples personal lifes, here is your fix. Although nothing has been really happening. Currently trying to quit smoking. Which isn’t going to well. Laptop recently broke. So never had a laptop for two weeks and had to use my old computer that is as slow as death. To add to the things breaking, my pride and joy broke (47″ HD TV). So that is still away getting sorted. With still no sign of that getting fixed yet.

And the big thing coming up is that I am expecting my second child in 3-4 weeks. So that will be a big change yet.

So apart from that nothing else really happened. Just trying to pick up my productivity and increasing the earnings. Ohh, Still not a millionaire yet either. But going in the right direction.

First was the great news of bring Kevin in on the mix on PNB, which has been great for me and PokerNewsBoy. Kevin will be a real asset for PNB and I’m sure will take the site to the next level. This also generated extra funds, so we have a new template that should be complete any day now. I have to thank Eduardo (Eyenod) for that. He has been really great through the whole process, even putting up with my overeagerness and everything else that comes when you deal with me. I’m sure Eduardo will agree, it can be a struggle just putting up with me, never mind anything else. So hopefully you will see the results from all Eduardo’s hard work in the coming week.

Next was the inclusion in google news. This was something I looked into near the start of PokerNewsBoy. unfortunately the first 2 times I tried I was unsuccessful, due to having the site set up wrong. I actually have to thank Marcus for giving me a help with that. He really helped getting PNB into google news.

The only problem was after changing so much on PNB, google dropped the whole site. Apart from still featuring in Google News. Thank God thats fixed now, but it was a really worrying week for me. This also caused some problems with plans to run a blog from the Irish Poker Open. As when I was there google wasn’t indexing any of my content. So I gave up after day 1 at the Irish open. Which turned it into a great weekend.

I went with my mate Stevie to the Irish Open. Stevie would be a fairly well known online poker player. Mainly because he dominated the high stakes tournament scene about 3 years ago, before turning to playing cash. He is probably better known from his online screen name “AllinStevie”. However, Stevie busted level 5 of day 1, which corrisponded with my departure from blogging. The bar was calling, and I hate to disappoint the bar. It’s never let me down before, so I try my best not to disappoint it.

So day 1 at the bar wasn’t to messy, day 2 was.

Day 2 at the bar started 11am by watching the Man Utd, Chelsea game and finished by me leaving a cash table at 4am because I got board funding everyone at the table. In Between is mostly a blur. But their is a few things I remember that I found funny or at least rememberable.

I can remember Man Utd getting beat. We actually watch the game with Teddy Sheringham, as he had also busted the tournament day1. This was followed by many Vodka Redbull’s. Then we meet up with a few of Stevie’s mates. (This is where the name dropping starts). So we ended up watching the David Haye, Ruiz fight with Chris Moorman. One of Stevie’s close friends. This is where one of the funniest quotes I can remember from the night happened.

So after a bit of slagging going on, mostly me slagging Moorman that his father was a better and more recognized poker player than him. Incase you didn’t know, Moorman paid for his dad to play in a poker tournament in the UK for his birthday, which he won and over took Moorman in live tournament winnings. However after that Moorman told us something his mum said to him, which I though was funny as..

Him mum said ” Why do you keep going to these live event’s to play poker. You never win. Why don’t you just stick to playing online with the amateurs.” I thought that was so so funny. Probably one of the best tournament players of my generation and his mum thinks he isn’t good enough to play live poker.

Apart from that going on, Marty Smyth, was also having his stag do with his poker mates. They had paid for a midget (sorry if it offends anyone but don’t know the proper term) to be hand cuffed to Marty for the whole night. That was funny as well. By the way, remember to Vote Marty Smyth into this years WSOP Tournament of Champions, hes giving any winning from the tournament to Charity.

After that its a bit of a blank, I can just remember leaving the cash tables at 4 after getting allin for about £600 with AQ v KQ. Lost that, King came on the flop.

Great weekend though.

And PNB also went back into google where it left the day I got back home, which removed alot of worry. Another good thing was the mini site I just built. I built a mini site targeting a few keywords, mainly Victory Poker Rakeback, and that has been ranking well and gaining a few sign ups.

So although their was a few low points over the 2 weeks, mostly just google dropping the site, it all ended up good, and ended up having a great weekend because of it.

Now that the excuse statement has been made, I can get to the point. As probably most poker affiliates, I like to play poker. Although like playing poker and being good at poker are two different things. The reason I actually got into Poker Affiliating was because I went bust playing poker, and was looking for some fast cash to get back in the game. That was my first mistake, their was no fast cash. However, it did get me hooked on Poker Affiliating.

So now I try my hardest to keep cash off poker sites. Which is strange because my initial plan was to make money to put on poker sites. The reason is because I am shit at poker. I used to think I was great, but really unlucky. But a man can only be unlucky for so long before he realizes luck has nothing to do with it.

So if, like me, you are affiliating because you can’t make the money playing poker, don’t think you can now. I made that mistake when I got a big payday on PokerStars. It cost me over $900 in one session. Wasn’t the brightest of ideas.

So here is my advice. At all cost try and keep money off poker sites. Some times its impossible due to a large amount of poker sites paying into you online poker account. But in some circumstances it is. For me I now only try and take cash from links sales or work that I have done over PayPal, unless its small like $50. But if someone pays me $50 I would be better just getting them to credit PokerStars and say me an hour.

The big problem is that I am probably a winning player. But at maybe 10c/20c stakes. However, If you get $1500 into you Stars account its hard to play at the 10c/20c tables. For me it is. To be honest I can’t remember the last time I was below $1/$2. Which obviously I’m not a winning player at. So any funds I don’t instantly cash out, are as good as spent.

I think this is a problem for most affiliates, apart form the 10% who would argue they are good poker players, just unlucky. You probably are just unlucky. However, to the poker affiliates who think because PokerStars paid them and now have a bankroll to play at much higher stakes, this doesn’t over night mean you are good. Cash out and start playing the 10c/20c games.

Poker Affiliates are usually Poker Affiliates for a reason. Because they are shit at Poker.

If you are one of the 10% of Poker Affiliates who are great at poker, please leave your name, so I can say sorry for suggestion you weren’t. For the rest good luck, and cash out.

Now that I have finished with what I’ll be needing and where it will be going, I am left with a site that will need 200 pages just to get started. Great. What happened to the idea of building mini sites. But I’m glad I got that sorted and now know what is needed content wise, and how much it’s going to cost me content wise. Although I will be writing most of the content, I just can’t face writing player profiles and Poker Site reviews.

So all I need to do now is get started on the writing. To be honest I am actually looking foward to going through this whole process of building a big site, as I have never done it before. Although Poker News Boy probably would be classed as a large poker site, that kind of happened by accident, and most of the content is news posts.

So now I need to go find a writer for the Poker Reviews and Player Bio’s and get a move on and stop talking about starting a site and actually start. To be honest, I will probably just use one of the writers that I use on PokerNewsBoy, that way I won’t be disappointed in what I get.

Just to put out a little shout out, I have recently started using PokerFelts, who is a member on PAL (Poker Affiliate Listings), as one of my Poker News writers and I highly recommend him. But please don’t over load him with work, I still plan on using him.

So now to get back to work on the new site. By the way if you have any advice, it be very much welcome. Just leave a comment with some suggestions. And again please excuse the messy writing. This is the last time I’m apologizing for it  though.

The reason I decided to start this Poker Affiliate Blog is because I have just signed up to Register Hosting. And after paying out for a years hosting, the nice people at Register gave me 3 Free Domains. So I did what any successful Poker Affiliate would do and i spent many hour looking to see if I could find the best 3 domains that are still available. Actually I didn’t.

Instead of actually putting in some research I did what I usually do and pick the first 3 domains I can think of that are available. Hence, PokerAffiliateSites.net. I also took PokerSitesDirect.com and InternetPokerDirect.com. Please don’t ask me why I choose those domains, as honestly I have no idea. Except for the PokerAffiliateSites.net domain, as I think I was reading Dealer Dan’s PokerAffiliateBible at the time I was picking the domains. So though it would be cool to have an Poker Affiliate Domain on the books.

Even if you look at previous Poker Domains that I have purchased, that would be a good example of how not to pick domains for the poker site you want to build. Take Poker News Boy as the prime example. What a horrible, horrible domain name. And by the time I bought a new Poker News domains, PokerNewsWorld.com, to replace PokerNewsBoy.com. I though it would do more harm than good changing over. I suppose all in all it turned out ok, people now know the name Poker News Boy and it gets searched regularly for people looking my site, so it turned out ok.

Ok, so now you know why I started this Poker Affiliate Blog. Well you know one of the reasons. The other is I am about to start a new poker site. One that will probably take some effort and planning. So I thought it be good to jot down what I’m doing as I build it, just incase it’s a success. Probably not though. Knowing me, I will build a poker site that gets loads of traffic but no sign ups. I’m good at building them. But just incase I’ll try and log what I’m at.

I hope you can follow my ramblings in this blog as well, as to be honest I will be writing most of these posts the way it comes into my head. So might be all over the place. But if you got this far down the post you’ve done well. And thanks for reading. Also can you please leave a comment at the bottom letting me know you got to the end of the post. Just so I know its readable, just!

In later post’s I will try and help with things I’ve learned in my short time as a Poker Affiliate. Might help the newbies or help them from making the same mistakes as me. And if you want to follow the progress of my new site, it’s called PokerRankings.org, from now on I’ll be referring to it as Poker Rankings or PR for short.

Hope you enjoyed my first post, and a small journey through my though process on how to become an unsuccessful poker affiliate. Actually that’s the domains I should have bought UnsuccessfulPokerAffiliate.com, probably suit my Poker Affiliate Blog better.