2009 WSOP Satellites Graphs and Banners

The biggest promotion that all poker affiliates are pushing (or should be) is the 2009 WSOP Satellites. It is a great way to attract new or even established poker players as many know the stories of Moneymaker and all the past Main Event winners who became millionaires over night.

I have created a couple widgets and banners for seats given away for the 2009 WSOP Satellite Main Event at both Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker.

I am allowing affiliates to use them for a link back on that page or another high quality page on the site (excluding link pages or pages with minimal content).

They are updated every 15 minutes and can easily be inserted into any website since they are iframes.

If you would like to use them send me an email: kdollar (at) gmail.com. I will then email you a text file with all the iframe codes for the graphs and the banners as well as linking options.

All the possible WSOP Main Event graphs:

http://www.pokersatellitestrategy.com/widgets/

All the possible WSOP Main Event banners:

http://www.pokersatellitestrategy.com/widgets/banners/

Here are a couple in action:

Poker Stars All-Time Graph

Poker Stars 160×223 Banner

Poker Stars 468×60 Banner

Giants Opening Night

I went to the San Francisco Giants Opening Night and haven’t gotten around to posting pictures from the game. There was a ceremony before the game for Tim Lincecum who was given his 2008  CY Young Award.

I was able to get tickets in the Lexus Dugout which are seats behind homeplate. It was awesome sitting so close and being able to see the curve and breaking ball in action. Randy Johnson pitched well in the game but ended up losing giving up a homerun to the opposing pitcher.

In front of the Lexus Dugout Sign

Took a picture before the start of the game with my girlfriend Tess.

This is after the game and the stadium was clearing out and we had a chance to take a picture. There were fireworks after which we stayed around to see.

Stock Market Gambling with MGM

I have decided to start looking to invest some of the money that I have made as an affiliate marketer in the stock market. I have always been cautious to do so because I don’t know much about the stock market and I have always felt that if you don’t know why something will go up or down then you have no business investing in it.

I still can’t say I know enough to put all of my money in the market but since the stock market as a whole is down, I figure it can’t hurt to put some money in and see where it takes me. I have been trying to pick companies that historically trade at a much higher price but are down because of the fear of the US economy crumbling and generally are still a sound business.

It is still a gamble since the market can go down further but a quote that I like is “scared money never made money” so that is where I stand and here have been my investments so far.

I decided to buy MGM knowing that casinos make money and historically they trade at around $20 dollars. In 2007 they were up to about $100 dollars per share but that is when Vegas was booming and I wouldn’t expect that to happen anytime soon. Their stock has recently dropped like a rock because of the City Center their 76 acre property on the strip with a price tag of $11 billion dollars, the largest privately financed development in US history. They haven’t finished it and their are concerns that they may  go bankrupt (they still can).

This is the last 5 years for MGM Mirage <- Link to MGM Stock Ticker on Google Finance.

I bought MGM grand on 2/5/2009 for $6.50…This is about the time when all the financial analysts were saying do not buy them and were changing their rating to F. I figured if everyone was selling it was a good time to buy as they are eventually going to bottom out….well that didn’t happen. The graph below shows the stock on the day that I bought it up to today. As you can see the stock kept dropping right after I bought it and at one point was as low as $1.89….I decided to hold on to these shares and just hope that the stock would bounce back (I still have them).

Not to be discouraged, I still felt like MGM had a lot of upside and was going to go up. So like a smart investor gambler I bought a lot more shares at $3.20 and $3.25 on 4/02/09. This time it actually worked out and went up for the next couple days and I decided to sell mid-day on 4/06/09 at $6.15. It worked out and I was able to clear $2.95-$2.90 on each share. The stock ended up closing at $5.50 on 4/06/09, so selling at that time was a good decision.

MGM’s stock kept dropping after 4/6/09 so I felt like I would buy back in. I ended up buying back in at $5.19 on 4/9/09 and still have the stock and will see where it takes me. Currently it is looking pretty good but who knows where this roller coaster they call MGM  stock will go from here.

Free Poker Hand History Replayer/Analyzer

I saw that Bluffware recently went into beta and figured I would give it a try. Bluffware is a free hand history analyzer created by Beanie.  The basic idea behind the site is once you create an account you will be able to post your online poker hand histories. For each hand history posted it creates a youtube type page where you can replay the hand, leave comments as well as rate the hand.

I created an account and got the username Poker.  I am not much of a poker player and didn’t have any saved hand histories to post so I figured I would play at Full Tilt Poker and accumulate a a few. I multi-tabled at the nosebleed blinds of  .25/.50 playing No Limit Hold-em and pretty soon had some hands to post.

It was a little confusing posting the hand history because the Post A Hand button looks more like a header rather then a button. Though, once I got over that hurdle I was able to post hands and it was a smooth process.  When you are uploading a hand history you have the option to make it public or keep it private which is nice feature for people that want to analyze the hand without sharing it with the world.

Overall I thought Bluffware was a good hand history replayer and I think poker players will find it useful. I really like the youtube type page but was confused on how to use the Session Notes that are on each hand history page. I edited it on one hand thinking it was a place for the poster to put commentary on the hand but it then showed up on all of my hands…so I dunno. It was really nice visualizing the hand and having a way to keep my hand histories. When I play poker it’s not to make money so it’s nice having something to brag or in most cases tilt about after a poker session.

Bluffware.com also allows you to embed the hands anywhere including your blog…And with that…lets watch some hand replays. Also, notice how you can expand the table to full screen, it’s a nice touch.

Free WIFI at Las Vegas Strip Hotels

I recently went on a trip to Las Vegas and brought my laptop forgetting that hotels don’t offer free wifi. It is actually pretty ridiculous that you can stay at  most 2-3 stars hotels and get free wireless but you step on the Las Vegas strip and all of the 3-5 star hotels charge $15+.

It is not like I can’t pay the $15 dollars and often times I have but I would expect classy joints like Bellagio and the Wynn to offer complementary wifi. I would even be fine if they charged me a couple dollars more in the room reservation fee. That way they would end up making more in the long run and could hide the fee and claim that its “free” wifi and everyone is happy.

This time I was able to get my email and do a little surfing with my iPhone so I saved my $15 bucks for the next time I need to actually edit some sites or get work done.

I would have to say I hope MGM reads this…just bought some stock (I am a sucker for high risk stock) at $3.20 and $3.25 so hopefully they can finish the city center and start giving “free” wifi without going bankrupt….It’s just that easy.

What Domain Would You Choose for SEO purposes?

Recently, I found a keyword that I wanted to target and decided I would check to see if the domain was available. Of course, the .com was taken but the .net and .org were available.  I don’t mind developing domain names with either of these extensions but since it was a two word keyword, I also searched to see if putting a dash between the keywords was available. The dash .com was also  available. The last domain name option would be to add another keyword to the domain to get the .com.

The basic problem with .net, .org and dash is you you may lose traffic to the .com.

Using a domain with an added  keyword  makes the domain harder to remember and you may not get as much search engine benefit of having the exact keyword match.

I have used all of the above domain buying options except using a dash. So I bought a dash domain name and will report on how it goes.  I may buy a couple more to get a general idea on whether the search engine benefit is as much as you would get as if you used .net/.org counterparts.

I run into this question quite often and haven’t decided which type of domain name I prefer. I usually end up picking one and then the next time I have the problem go with a different option…I figure it can’t hurt changing it up because long term no one knows how google will rank extensions and dash domains but if anyone has any evidence or thoughts on which is best currently…let me know.

Initial Internet Marketing Attempts

Kdollar.com was my first domain name and was purchased on 10-11-2004. I bought it after I saw a deal on slickdeals for a year of hosting and a free domain for $7.77. As a slickdeal addict I couldn’t pass up the deal, even though I had relatively no experience making websites and had no idea what type of site I wanted to make.

The first website I did put up was in 2005. WayBack Machine has a screenshot of the site on March 17, 2005.  Like most poker affiliate marketers, it was a free money site. Easiest money in the world…I collect a $150 CPA when someone deposits and I give them back $50 or a DVD player. Well that didn’t last long, after signing up all my friends, the market dried up and no one else was coming to my site. That’s when I decided to post it on slickdeals…it didn’t last long as everyone claimed it wasn’t a good deal and their were more legitimate sites (smart people, hahaha).

So I put up a new and improve poker affiliate page on May 27, 2005. I was a little smarter this time and cut out the free money part…why give them money when you don’t have to. This page lasted until August 2006 when I took the site down as I had already launched a new poker site with an actual poker domain name that was getting search engine traffic. I probably made a couple hundred dollars with my new and improved page…that’s one or two real money players in a year (big time).

I decided that it was time to take kdollar.com to the next level and make it a deals site. I was going to take slickdeals head on and was going to beat them at their own game. Kdollar.com was going to be a cross between slickdeals and digg. Visitors would submit deals and then would be able to vote on deals (1-5 stars) and the deals with the most votes would go to the top. I thought the idea was original enough and slickdeals was just a simple forum at the time, so I figured their users would be stoked with my voting features. I found a php developer from China who took my rough outline of the site and made it a reality.

The kdollar deals site went live on Aug 29, 2006, with a basic design. I got the site re-designed as well as adding a couple features on October 4, 2006. The site in my mind was a success as it was my first php driven site that I took from an initial idea to a working site and it functioned almost exactly how I had planned…though I had no users.

The biggest hurdle for anysite including  kdollar.com was getting users. Right before I launched kdollar.com, slickdeals got revamped and added voting as well as some additional features which in turn made my site a lot less attractive.

So like any one that has a site with no users…you need to fake them. I hired a couple people from DigitalPoint forums to post deals. I had them post deals on the site, just a few deals a day with different screen names. I paid them a meager $15 dollars a week for around 25 deal posts.

The site got a huge traffic boost when SEOmoz listed it on their web 2.0 awards and I started ranking for a lot of the deals that were posted. The problem was the users that came through google didn’t stick around for long and most of the time they were taken to expired deals. So like any good internet marketer I added adsense and made a couple bucks that way.

After awhile I gave up on the kdollar.com deal site and had my posters stop posting deals as I realized I would need to put a ton of work into the site to ever get it going. The only people that ever posted were my paid posters as well as other website owners who posted their sites items…which were crap.

So today I decided I would take the kdollar.com deals site and turn it into my internet marketing blog. That was a long intro….but I figured the blog has to start somewhere. I am currently a poker and casino affiliate who is really lazy. Hopefully I will post every now and then but I wouldn’t expect much.