NikodeJonge.com

I finally finished my last semester of University in December, which sets the stage for 2012 to be my best year ever, mainly due to the fact that I am now a full time affiliate marketer!  I’m planning to stay in the gambling sector this year and really try to build my online sports betting presence, while keeping a few online poker sites running and bringing in some cash.  If opportunities arise to move into some other verticals I may take them, but the focus for this year is going to be on my sports betting network.

As a self employed entrepreneur it is very important to set goals in order to stay on task and achieve what it is you are striving for.  A goals list is a great motivator and whenever you start to feel lazy it’s good to have a list to refer to in order to gain some momentum and inspiration.

So without further ado here is my list of goals for 2012:

• Do not start any new gambling websites.  This year I want to focus primarily on my bigger websites, such as Sports Bet Listings and really try to build these sites into authority portals.  It seems like mini sites are having a harder time ranking well in Google and for this reason I do not want to start any new miniature sites this year.  Instead I will continue to build my current websites and build out my current mini sites into bigger, more authoritative sites on their specific topics.
• Create a “To Do” list for every working day.  I find if I have a “to do” list I can stay on task much better and get a lot more work done than if I just try to think of things to do while I work.  I’m going to try to create a “to do” list every night before bed for the next day.
• Continue to post every day on NHL Betting Tips during the season.  This site has been doing very well and I want to continue to build it and focus on posting a new prediction every day throughout the regular season and playoffs.
• Build NBA Betting Predictions up to the same level as NHL Betting Tips.  I don’t know a lot about the NBA so I have a friend writing the predictions every day, but the hope is to build the site up to the same level as my NHL predictions site by the end of the year.
• Build out all of my current sites to at least 6 pages.  I currently have a lot of websites with only 1 page up in order to age the site.  These one page websites are on some solid domains and if I can just add a few more pages the  websites will seem much more legit and trustworthy.
• Improve Download Poker Online into an authority site for online poker downloads.  This is my main online poker site nowadays and I plan on continuing to build it throughout the year into a site that ranks well for a variety of download related terms.
• Earn $50,000 in net income throughout the year.  I think this is a very doable goal as I have continued to increase my revenue streams and being able to work full time this year should push me to about that mark.  And the great thing about building websites is that the income generally grows as long as you maintain your sites.

It’s been a while since I made a post on here and I want to get back to at least adding my monthly goals and assessing my last months performance.  It should help keep me on task for the month.  Actually once the summer ended I was able to refocus and have been getting much more work done in the past two months.  Buckling down after the summer was my main goal and I feel I have achieved it fairly well.  I still have 3 courses at University and still don’t get much, if any, work done on weekends.

November Goals

• Add 10 more static pages of content to SportsBetListings.com and continue to get at least 5 posts up a week at the site.  Sports Bet Listings has recently reemerged as a solid site in Google so I want to keep this trend alive and add more pages to provide a better service and to rank for some more terms.  The posts aren’t very well liked however, sometimes taking days to be indexed, but hopefully continued posting of quality should turn this around.
• Add 20 more static pages of content to BetOnIt.org, a new site of mine where I will be attempting to go after some “bet on” key terms.  I’m launching the site today, but it still has a lot of content that needs to be added.
• Continue to add daily NHL predictions to NHLBettingTips.com.  So far my NHL predictions have been doing great this season and I have seen a lot of traffic to this site.  I want to keep up posting winning picks.
• Add a weekly post to OnlineTennisBetting.com about the tournaments taking place that week.  This is more or less just to continue to build the site and not leave it sitting.
• Add at least 1 post to all of my other “online gambling” blogs.
• Build more links, especially to SportsBetListings.com and a few to BetOnIt.org to get it started.
• Develop a new “Bet On College Basketball” site with 6 pages of content and build some links.

This list should keep me busy for the month, especially with the last few school projects finishing up before exams next month. I’m really looking forward to being done school and being able to focus all of my energy on making money!

Good luck in November everybody!

Sports betting has been my primary focus over the past year and now with the Black Friday fiasco and Full Tilt closing it’s doors poker is definitely on the back burner for myself.  That being said it seems like sportsbooks are following suit and leaving the American market.  Sportsbook.com has left the American market and changed their domain to Sportsbook.ag.  BetUS is another bookie to leave their primary market and they have changed their domain to BetUS.com.pa.  Bodog, one of the bookmakers that I would have expected to stay in the United States no matter what, has even announced that they will be leaving the American market when their license expires at the end of the year.

With all of this uncertainty in online gambling in the United States it only seems logical to be on a CPA plan rather than a revenue share model.  If the sportsbook is forced out of the American market or even leaves voluntarily all of the American players that you have been receiving rev share on will dry up and your income will diminish greatly.  Affiliates who were on the Full Tilt Poker revenue share know all to well about this occurrence.

I’m currently in the process of attempting to switch my revenue share accounts to CPA, at least at the American facing rooms.  Some sportsbooks are not as receptive to the idea, while others will work with you to ensure that you promote them to the best of your abilities.  I suggest other affiliates of American facing sportsbooks or poker rooms follow suit.

Goals

In August my goals are to maintain my websites, continue to add content and just slowly improve them.  I don’t have any big plans for August because it’s the last month of the summer and I intend to enjoy it.  I haven’t done a lot of work this summer, instead opting to hang out with friends and enjoy the summer.  Come September I will need to buckle down and work hard because as we know the online gambling industry is becoming harder to turn a profit in.

One thing I am happy about is my main online sports betting website is finally getting some love by Google.  This past month the traffic grew by 600% and I’m actually ranking for some solid terms.  I hadn’t focused on that site for almost a year and was almost ready to call it quits with it, but now I have a renewed energy to make it the authority site that I had set out to create.

My friend Adam has been working on a Free Mobile Casinos website, which I think is a great idea because mobile gaming is certainly the way of the future.  I might have to look into at least putting some more mobile oriented pages on some of my main sites.

I recently went out and purchased about 5 different “bet on” type domains for different sports or sports leagues.  I have noticed that even though these exact terms, such as “Bet On MLB” receive less searches than a search such as “MLB Betting” the conversion rate should be much higher.  An individual who searches for “bet on MLB” is no doubt interesting in betting on the MLB and looking for a betting site where they can place their bets.  An individual searching for “MLB betting” may also be looking to sign up at a sportsbook, but they could very well just be interested in learning about MLB betting and how its done.  I think the “bet on” mini sites will work great because the conversion success rate should really be based on the home page call to action.  I’m hoping that these “bet on” type sites are similar to bonus code sites in that the visitors have already decided they are going to sign up at a sportsbook, they just want to know where to go.

In a little bit of a follow up from my last post on the horse race betting mini sites my Bet Grand National website brought in 6 real money players, which isn’t great, but I wasn’t ranking where I wanted to be, which leaves me pretty happy with the results.  Add in the fact that the site was extremely easy to create and doesn’t require much upkeep, I think it was a smart buy and creation.  We will see how the next site, Epsom Derby Betting, does next month, along with Bet Belmont Stakes.

With me being pretty well done school I want to start taking the online marketing business more seriously, but it is hard to get a lot of work done in the summer when there is something going on seemingly every day and night.  I have been working on my tennis betting website, which is a solid domain that I purchased from Jess at PAL.  It still has a long ways to go, but I am going to try to make it the authority site for tennis betting online.

That’s a quick update for now.  I’ll try to do another one soon with my goals for June.

With the Triple Crown approaching I remembered how successful the Kentucky Derby betting website that Kevin and I worked on last year and wanted to check out if there were any other races worthy of individual sites. To do this I followed a few quick steps that I’ve outlined below.

• First, I did a few quick searches in google for “top horse races” and “popular horse races”.
• Once I had an idea of some of the more popular horse races worldwide I headed over to the Google keyword tool and started plugging in the race names with betting terms.  For example, “Melbourne Cup betting”, “Bet on Grand National”, etc, etc.
• Every time I found a phrase that had enough exact matches I headed over to Godaddy and checked if any of the .com/.net/.org extensions of the name were available.
• If they were I put that domain name into my spread sheet with the approximate number of exact matches that domains key words get per month.  After going through a wide variety of possible horse racing betting keyword combinations I had my list of available domains.
• For each domain I then went on Google and checked out the competition to see how difficult it would be to rank for the exact match and other similar keywords.  To do this I basically just entered in the different key terms and then checked the quality of the websites ranking near the top of the first page.  I looked at backlink profiles, age, and also just overall appeal of the site.
• This weeded out a lot of domains that I felt would have too much competition to be worthwhile for me at the time.  I ended up purchasing 3 horse racing domains, each for a different popular race worldwide.

Last week I got the sites all set up.  They are each just 2 page sites for now, but I will add to them when the races approach.  I like these kind of sites because they generally only require focus from you for a week or so of the year and can still make a lot of money in this small timeframe.  I created a Grand National betting site for the upcoming race in April and also an Epsom Derby betting website for the upcoming Derby in June.  I even looked far enough ahead into the future to create a site dedicated to Melbourne Cup bets, which will likely not make a dime until November, when the race is held.

These sites were very easy to create and if I can build enough links to them they should be able to rank high enough to make a decent profit come race time.  There are still a lot of solid exact match domains out there.  You just have to put in a little work to find out which ones are worth your effort.

There was a good post on PAL about everyones goals for 2011 and I figured this would be a good topic for a new blog post here, rather than adding to the PAL thread.  As you can tell I have let the personal blog slide so some new material was a must.

In 2011, I would like to continue to build my online affiliate business, but I will be looking to diversify away from online poker and sports betting.  I have many online poker and sports betting websites currently producing income, but with poker affiliate income seeming to fall of late I will be focussing my efforts for new sites away from poker, while still maintaining my online poker network of websites.  I actually just created a new poker download website over the Christmas break and I expect this to be my last poker site for at least the near future.

I currently have some coding being done for a new site in the “local deals” area of business.  That’s all I will say about this now, but I will have a new post up when the website is up and functioning.

So here is a list of goals:

• Diversify online portfolio
• Increase net revenue by 25% over 2010
• Become more organized and protected (use keepass, dropbox, etc)
• Continue to build links to sites with potential – even if they are not earning
• Finish University

2010 was a very good year for my business and I hope to continue to build on things in 2011.  I was everyone reading this good luck on their own 2011 goals and don’t be afraid to post your goals in the comments!

My last few posts have been about my new online sports betting website SportsBetListings.com.  I’ve been building links to it for about a month now and it still has yet to improve much in Google.  I’m being patient though and will continue to build links to it hoping that by the end of November I see some improvement in the SERPS.  That being said I wrote a predictions post on another site of mine NHL Betting Tips about a month ago and found that my post immediately ranked number one in Google for many of the terms relating to the post.  I think it was a predictions article on the Toronto Maple Leafs vs Pittsburgh Penguins game early in the season.  After noticing how much traffic this one post was able to generate for the day I realized that even as I’m waiting for Sports Bet Listings to take off I already have a solid NHL betting site that could use some TLC.

I decided to revamp the look of the site using the same template I had previously purchased from Eduardo.  I got him to make me a new logo for the site and change up the template colouring to make it blue.  I think it came out very nice.  I’ve added a few more pages to the site and I’ve been trying to post NHL predictions articles daily.  So far my NHL free picks record for the season is (12-4) for +8.81 units, which I’m quite proud of.  I hope that this success will entice visitors to return and also to sign up for my newsletter that I’m running through Aweber.  I just have a small call to action for the newsletter in the top right of the homepage and I checked today and I already have 16 signups.  I am going to start adding a newsletter sign-up form within the predictions articles as well and try to build a strong mailing list for the site.

It’s always nice to see a site that you have had for a while and never really thought to do much with to really take off.  Sometimes rather than starting an entirely new venture it’s good to look at some old websites that already have some age and some links pointing towards and deciding first if there is anyone to improve these sites because the website is already up and functioning, which gives you a big head start.  I was able to improve the traffic to NHL Betting Tips tremendously (up to about 100 unique visitors a day) and turn a site that I thought may have some potential into a solid site that I am extremely proud of.

I guess the moral of this post is to take a look at some old websites and make sure they are at their full potential before starting any new projects.

My new online sports betting site, SportsBetListings.com, is finally up and running!  It took a while, especially after being broken into last month and losing 30 pages of content I had set for the site.  The design was done by Eduardo and I think it looks very professional.  After I heard that Google will be giving more value to larger, authority site I figured it was time to take a break from minisites and really make a large site I can be proud of.

The site currently has 53 static pages of content and I have plans for 63 more over the next few months and probably a few more after that.  I will also be constantly adding posts in the sports betting news section of the website with current sportsbook promos players should take advantage of, as well as predictions and odds posts.  I’m going to be outsourcing these posts for the sports that I’m not as involved in such as baseball or basketball.  I know outsourcing work is important, but I’ve always been against paying for content that I can write on my own.  Hopefully with outsourcing I’ll be able to add more blogposts and get the site to be the authority I want it to be.

Now that the site is live I’m trying to build links to improve its google ranking.  I’ve done a few link exchanges, but I’m eager for more if anyone is interested.  I’m also interested in doing some blogpost exchanges.  I’ve purchased a few links, but I’m trying not to get too many links right away because I want the link building to look natural to Google.  My strategy is to build links gradually to many pages of the site and to actually build more links after the first month or two than right away because I think this is what Google views as the natural way that links are built.  Of course, the two links in this post help my link building efforts .

Other than that I’m just in school, trying to finish up so I can finally go full time as an internet entrepreneur.  I’m excited that the summer is over so we now have NFL football, the NHL season has just begun and the NBA season is right around the corner.  I’m taking the Colts this week in the PAL survivor pool, so hopefully they pull through for me and get the W.  In the PAL fantasy football league Randy Moss let me down last week getting 0 points in Monday night football, after I only need 4 points for the win.  I’m hoping Favre and him gain some chemistry in Minnesota because I need big production from Moss if I have any hope of having a winning season.

This past month I have done very little work and to be honest I don’t expect to become too productive until the summer is over.  I have several more trips planned and with many of my buddies not working it’s just too easy to go out and party.  That being said, I am doing a little work here and there on a new sports betting site I am working on.

I am currently just creating content.  I have about 20 pages done and I’m looking to get at least 30 more done before launching the website.  Then I will be adding daily posts with odds, predictions and sports betting news.

I have pretty big plans for this website and for this reason this will be the first time I hire a web designer to create my template.  I have a pretty good idea of what I want and I’ll hopefully be able to have the template ready and start adding some of the content soon.

The website domain I’m going to go with is sportsbetlistings.com.  It came down to sportsbetlistings.com or choicesportsbetting.com and in the end after talking to many people I decided to go with sportsbetlistings.com because it sounds more official and trustworthy.

This isn’t much of an update, but I haven’t been doing too much lately and most of my work time in the near future will be focussed on this project!

So far my summer has not been very productive in terms of online affiliate marketing.  I’ve only been working about one day a week and to be honest I’m not too upset about that.  I wanted to enjoy my summer and get outside for a lot of basketball, beach volleyball, soccer and blading and so far I’ve been able to do a lot of that and also hit the bar on occasion.  After about a month and a half of slacking off the urge to be productive has hit me and I am considering creating a large sports betting website.

The World Cup really pushed me in this direction because I really have no website that will benefit from all of the World Cup attention around the globe.  I have a champions league betting website, but that won’t generate sign ups and neither will my various nhl and nba websites.  This fact along with what I’ve been hearing about google possibly giving better rankings to larger branded sites rather than the super targetted mini sites I’ve been making has really made me consider creating a large sports betting portal.

At the moment I’m trying to figure out a great domain name that is brandable and memorable and I have enlisted the help of friends and family to give me their take on some domain names I’m considering.  If I do make this website I want to do it right so I will also be buying a custom made template and will be writing over 50 pages of content pre-launch.  I just think there are so many extra things you can do with a large website that you can’t really do with a minisite (contests, mailing lists, etc).

In other news I’ve been plugging away at the CPAlead websites and have been making ok money.  It’s enough for me to continue pumping out the websites, but it’s nothing spectacular like I was hoping it could be.  The websites don’t take long to create or rank for though so it’s still worthwhile for me now until I find something that takes up that time and is more profitable.

Also, this month I’m going to be trying to build more links to my PKR bonus code and Full Tilt referral code websites.  They are both at the bottom of the first page or top of the second for their main terms and I hope to improve on that by the end of the month.

Anyways, that’s enough for me right now.  I hope everyone is enjoying the nice weather and your websites are doing well…even if it is without much TLC at this time of the year .