My Day
Top things I hate about drivers in Toronto
Jan 18th
Well, I was originally going to do this as a facebook status update, but I was limited to something like 450 characters. Anyway, I don’t know what it is about Toronto but people suck at driving. I have travelled to lots of different places and I think we probably have some of the worst drivers in the world. After another fun night of driving (and bear in mind I was out for only about 20 minutes yet most of these things happened) I have compiled together a list of things I hate about drivers in Toronto:
- People who don’t signal – they put that thing in your car for a reason
- People who break for no apparent reason
- People driving slow or not letting other cars pass when they are in the fast lane
- People who can’t figure out what lane they are in and sway from one to another (even though their may be another car in the lane beside them
- People who block traffic in other lanes because they don’t know how to merge
- People who enter an intersection late to try and make a light only to block traffic in another direction
- People who rush off a light to get in front or just to block someone else from getting into their lane, but slow right down after
- People who can’t adjust their driving to the weather conditions
I could probably go on, but thats enough ranting for one day.
For those going to London for LAC see you next week! Drop me a line if you will be there.
Winter is Coming
Nov 7th
So, its starting to get much colder out and lately I have been losing a lot of motivation to go out so I am trying to focus on getting a lot more work done. I guess that is one of the nice things about winter, you can just hibernate and work on things you have been putting off forever.
Work wise things have been pretty slow so there isn’t much to report on. I bought a couple of smaller sites that I am hoping to fix up and make more profitable, I guess time will tell. The men’s magazine type site that I have been working on for a while now is finally coming along and is almost ready for me to keep adding content to on a more regular basis.
I have spent the last few months in chef school (night courses) which has been a lot of fun. I have improved my chef skills quite a bit and am hoping I can use the knowledge I have learned to eventually open some kind of food related business offline. I love cooking, and good food so it is something I have always wanted to do.
I am probably planning to attend the London affiliate conference in January. Anyone else planning to go? I’ve missed the London one for a few years now as I haven’t had much desire to go to London in January (would be nice if they did this in the summer), but everyone who goes always seems to say its a great event and it would be nice to go to the iGaming Awards again.
Anyway, that is all for now… wanted to update this blog as it has been a while since I made my last post.
Summer Is Almost Over… That’s Probably A Good Thing
Sep 17th
Every now and then I click the link I have to my blog and keep thinking I gotta update this thing, so I figured tonight that I would write about what I have been up to lately.
Right now it feels like summer is drawing to a close. It is getting cooler at night, kids are heading back to school and the non-stop patio nights have drastically reduced. I think this summer has probably been one of my laziest ones yet. I keep pushing projects back, find it hard to get work done, and am spending far too much time going out. Fortunately as it gets cooler this means that I will be able to turn my focus back to work and start working on getting some sites up and running. It’s tough sometimes to keep yourself motivated when the weather is nice and you have sites generating you enough income to get by on (even though you know that well could eventually dry up).
Earlier in the Summer I decided to go visit a friend out in Nova Scotia for a week extremely last minute. Basically we were chatting on facebook on Thursday night and I jokingly said I wish I could come out there and before you knew it I was booking my flight about an hour after and leaving the very next morning. This was a really chilled out trip which involved a lot of drinking when we were in Antigonish staying with his cousin, and laid back reading time when out where his dad lived (out in the middle of nowhere). His dad had a Celtic monk staying with him and we spent a lot of time chatting on the porch to pass the time.
A few weeks ago I made it out to the CBG Affiliate Weekend. This is a great smaller event targeted more at the North American affiliates (even though a lot come over from all over the world). The event is put on by Judy, Dean and the rest of the crew from CasinoBonusGuy.com. Like last year, this event was a ton of fun and definitely one of my favorite events to attend (as I don’t have to get on a plane for 9+ hours to get there). They brought in some great speakers (I caught a bit of the SEO session), hosted some great dinners and of course you can’t go wrong with an open bar. I caught up with some old friends as well as met a few new people so all in all it was a great time. The weekend included the typical conference debauchery of strip clubs, gambling, excessive drinking, and partying till all hours of the night.
The week after the CBG weekend, I headed down to the Bahamas on a cruise with my friend John for a few days to relax, though it turned into more partying. The theme song of the cruise was David Guetta’s “Getting Over You”, which constantly repeats “we gonna party, and party and party… etc” so I knew it was going to be a long week. During the days we would get off the boat and explore wherever we were. Day 1 was Freeport where we went swimming, lied on the beach and I hopped on a jet ski for a bit. Day 2 was Nassau where John and I lived like we were kids again and hit their outrageously priced water slides ($110/day) at Atlantis. It was well worth it though as the slides were a ton of fun and the coolest was the one where you slide through a pool filled with sharks. Fortunately after returning from the slides John hit his first pull on a slot machine and covered the cost of the slides – thank you sir! Day 3 we went to Great Stirrup Cay, which was a beach owned by the cruise line and just laid in the sun drinking some tropical drinks and went swimming. On board the boat we typically went for dinner at one of the restaurants and like some kind of weird ritual would head down to the casino with our wine glasses and whatever wine was left in the bottle from dinner. This usually resulted in about a 4-5 hour session after which we would head to the bar or club. By the end of the first day I think pretty much everyone in the casino knew John and I by names and we had a drink guy that would check on us every 5 minutes or so. It was pretty fun! This was definitely one of my favorite trips I have been on and can’t wait to do it again sometime. Shout out to Norwegian Cruise Lines for doing an awesome job!
So that’s about all I can think of for now and I promise I will try to make a better blog post next time!
Real Estate Negotiations vs. Website Purchase Negotiations
May 6th
After spending the last 2 or so years trying to buy a condo which I finally found a couple months ago I learned a lot about the negotiation process (after many failed offers). Here are a couple things that I think could be used to negotiating the purchase of a website or domain (if you aren’t already using them).
Time Sensitive Offers (BUYING) – One of the things that I picked up that I thought could be applied to the affiliate industry is the use of time sensitive offers. Basically what I mean by this is putting in an offer, but telling the person your offer expires in X # of hours. This way you put the pressure back on the seller to either accept your offer (if it is the highest at the time there is a good possibility this will happen) and risk losing it, or holding out for a better one. Typically if you come in around the amount they are looking to get, but a bit lower usually you will get the site you want and save some money doing it. I find that far too many people on PAL and other forums have the worst approaches to both buying and selling their sites. People post offers in a thread (which is now visible to any other potential buyers) and give the seller an endless amount of time to make a decision. For me personally if I am going to commit to a purchase I want to know if I have it almost immediately, which is why I like using this approach.
Offer Conditions (BUYING) – Another thing that could work with purchasing websites (like they do in Real Estate) is putting restrictions or conditions on your offer. Almost every real estate deal will have some kind of condition on the offer, so why not do the same with virtual real estate (or domains). This way you can come in with a good offer and ask the seller to take the site off the market if he accepts, but also give yourself some time to do some due diligence on the property you are buying to make sure there is nothing funny about it.
Holding Back Offers (SELLING) – One common tactic used in the real estate market is to hold back offers. Basically this means you set a sell date, and allow everyone to present their best offer anonymously. This can create bidding wars back and forth as the seller will then usually try to work with the top 2 offers on price. Sure, its annoying as hell from a buyers standpoint and it might discourage some, but this could also lead you to making a lot more on the sale of your property than you had planned.
Anyway, I am sure there are some other things and I didn’t really plan to write this post so most of this is off the top of my head.
Life Update… Well I have spent the last month or so getting settled into the new condo. It has been a ton of work, but its pretty close to done now. Just need a couple more small things. Other than that I have been trying to get some other projects going that I have been working on for a long time. One is a men’s magazine kind of site that is a cross between Forbes and AskMen.com. Another one is a Casino Site that I will post more about once it is complete. Then I have a few more sites that I will be developing further down the road which include a real estate site, a local furniture store site and a site about local restaurants. I am really just trying to dabble in a bunch of different industries to see what works and what doesn’t. I also hired a writer that is helping me get many of these sites ready.
Here are a couple of pics of the condo that I think I promised in the last post:
The View:
My Workcenter / Dining Room
Guest Bathroom:
View of most of the place (there is a new sofa now and the dining table is now white glass):
Kitchen:
Affiliate Tip: I don’t think I have ever really posted many good tips on how to make money for a while so, here is an easy one. Scour around for domains that have some good keywords in them (I know all the really good ones are gone, but if you look for ones with lower search volumes or find dropped ones its possible – preferably generic with things like “online” “poker” “review” “code” “bonus”, etc. in them). If you have to spend $50-$100 to get a pretty decent domain. Then get someone to build you a decent template that you can reuse for several sites (this will be the most expensive part but it is a one time cost and the more you spend the more you will get in return). You should be able to get something decent for around $400. Write around 25 pages of good content (the more the better) and add it to the site. You should instantly be able to flip that site for around $2000 or more depending how much content is there on your $500 investment.
Bought a Condo!
Mar 1st
After looking for the past 2 years (pretty much) for a place to live I finally found a pretty nice condo that will do the job. It is right downtown in Toronto and for a downtown condo has a decent amount of space. The building it is in is pretty sick and has all sorts of cool ammenities including a pool, bbq area, gym, rock climbing wall, spin class / yoga studio, movie theather, business center and many more! I move in in just 3 weeks so will probably be scrambling to get a lot of things ready for the move.
Work has been getting pretty busy lately too. I am trying to develop a lot of the domains I have just sitting around with nothing on them. The biggest one that I am building is a casino site, which I will post more about when its closer to completion (just in case any of you readers have similar domains that you are building on 
)
Other than that, not a lot else going on in my life. Will try and write some better posts on this blog soon.
Robot Porn!!!!
Jan 25th
After years of linking to Brandon Berndt’s blog on my here I finally asked him why he never gave me a reciprocal link. I mean I always send him nice messages to see how his day is going and thought we were pretty good friends, but apparently my site is not link worthy on his blog. When I inquired about getting a link Brandon said he would only link to my site if there was robot porn on it. Here is the link he gave me:
I didn’t really get it, but apparently he has an obsession with Robot Porn and who am I to judge. So in exchange for the link, here is your Robot Porn Mr. Berndt:
And now for the video….
Cool Hand Poker… Could I Have Been Wrong?
Aug 27th
Well, I was at the gym the other day watching the TV and what should come up but an ad for CoolHandPoker.com. In a previous post I though these guys were just some random skin that was going to try and base their business model on affiliates, but it looks like I might have been wrong. It is good to see these guys are actually spending some money advertising.
It is good to see that they also updated their homepage from a picture of a bunch of dorks playing poker to a couple of guys with semi-attractive women. It looks like they are finally starting to find their niche. Will be interesting to see what comes of this place.
Other News
Affiliate Speedpay closed their doors today and I can’t say that I am surprised. I think it was great for some people, but I always had a feeling it wouldn’t last and was wary about having my money sent to some shady bank. I never really wanted to open an offshore bank account because I felt it all seemed a little too shady.
BUDAPEST! In just over a week I will be heading to Budapest for this year’s BAC. As usual Alex is doing an awsome job organizing it and it looks like this is gonna be one of the MUST ATTEND events of the year. Will be good to catch up with some friends and meet some new faces / people I have probably talked to a shitload online but never met. Thanks to Mark for organizing the dinner, looks like it will be awsome!
Anyway, that is all for now…. see everyone going to Budapest on the other side of the pond!
Summer Is Finally Here
Jul 10th
It is finally starting to get warm here. Yesterday I went golfing with a couple of friends but played like crap. Just trying to enjoy the nice weather.
I have been going to a lot of soccer games lately. A few weeks ago John Goldie and I went over to Montreal to watch Toronto FC take on Montreal in the final game of the Canadian Championship. Toronto needed to win by 4 goals which everyone thought was an impossible task, but I had faith they could do it. We did a little pre-drinking before the game with all of the TFC fans, then headed over to the game on the subway. The subway ride was insane. Everyone was chanting and jumping up and down, at several points it felt like the train may even derail. Once at the game, there were between 200-300 Toronto fans. Toronto quickly went down 1 goal after a penalty kick, but shortly after came back to score 2 before the end of the first half. The second half was insane as they continued to score and within the last 10 minutes put in the goal to give them their 4 goal lead. Just before the end of the game they sealed it and put in a final goal making the score 6-1. It was such a great experience as we stuck it out in the rain screaming our voices out and in the end were rewarded with the Canadian championship. The players all came over to our section after the game and threw their jerseys out to the fans.
Also soccer related, Zinadine Zidane came to Toronto a few weeks back and I watched him play a friendly against “the Canadian All-stars”. Most of the players other than Zidane and Palermo (Boca Jrs) were crap, but it was still cool to see one of the greatest soccer players of all time.
Next week I am going to start part 2 of my bartending training: the advanced course. It sounds fun and will be pretty cool because I get to invent my own drink and present it to the class. Also, I got tickets to see Sarah Silverman next week which should be fun.
On the work front, lately I have been spending a lot of time building a casino site. It seems like everyone is getting into the casino side so I figured, why not. If anyone has any good sites and wants to swap links, let me know.
My other sites are doing all right, just grinding on and not really growing much. Need to start spending more time on those but as usual I have either been too lazy or have been more focussed on getting the casino site off the ground.
Lately I have also been thinking about heading out to Budapest for the conference out there. Anyone else planning to go?
Back in Canada
Apr 2nd
Well, I’ve been back home for about a week now and have been kinda sick since getting back. Definitely miss Argentina and can’t wait to head back again.
Tax season is upon us now and one of my least favorite times of the year. Nothing is more fun then sending the government a big fat ass check that they are just gonna blow on stupid bullshit.
Missed out on Amsterdam this time, but looks like everyone is having a blast as usual. Trying to decide which conference to go to next. Where is everyone else going?
Jeremy Miller launched a blog recently. Please, turn off the stupid “YOU MUST BE LOGGED IN TO COMMENT”… where’s the fun in that!
Been having some awful poker sessions as of late. Just the other day was playing some 2/4 PLO and hit a set on the turn in a decent sized pot. The other guy bet, I reraised big, and he shoved me all in on a JT53 board (I hit 5′s). I made the call, and he showed AA97??? Anyway, river came an Ace… gg asshole. I need to stop playing.
This weekend is the Toronto FC opener and my brother is taking me (allegedly). I don’t always believe everything he says, but he seems to be serious so hopefully its a go because I really want to go to the game. Gotta pick up a new jersey for that.
Other than that, life is boring… can’t wait to travel again.
/end boring post
