The Committee on Financial Services will meet in open session on Tuesday, July 27, 2010, (and subsequent days if necessary) at 10 a.m. in room 2128 Rayburn House Office Building to consider the following measures:

(1) H.R. 5814, Public Housing Reinvestment and Tenant Protection Act of 2010;
(2) H.R. 4868, Housing Preservation and Tenant Protection Act of 2010;
(3) H.R. 2267, Internet Gambling Regulation, Consumer Protection, and Enforcement Act;
(4) H.R. 3421, Medical Debt Relief Act of 2009;
(5) H.R. 4790, Shareholder Protection Act of 2010; and
(6) H.R. 5823, United States Covered Bond Act of 2010.

For all us gambling affiliate today could be a major turning point. Let’s hope it goes well!

The webmaster gave me access to his site so I logged on to take a look. Within a few seconds of logging into the webmaster’s WordPress admin it became clear to me the source of the problem. The site had over 12,000 comments waiting to be approved. In simple terms the site was being spammed to death. A quick glance at the site’s traffic stats showed only a small trickle of search engine traffic and no traffic from quality referrals. In infect most of the 150 daily visitors were simply spam bots. I advised the user to mark the comments as spam plus close comments on posts and pages that were being spam attacked.

This episode reminds me of a friend who purchased a site with reported traffic of over 500 uniques a day. On closer inspection the traffic was mainly either spam bots, hot links to images plus believe it or not to a hidden porn page on the site.

How much of your site’s traffic is real quality traffic?

For those who do stick it out I have some great news for you. As your site and of course your back link age then you will start to increase you traffic every month. As you are adding new content every week you will of course be generating more long tail search queries. As you are increasing the number of pages of your site your internal site wide links will also become more powerful. All you have to do is keep at it; it is as simple as that.

If affiliates simply stuck with a couple of sites, concentrating their efforts on these sites then they would have a great chance of success. The trouble is that many get distracted ending up with dozens of sites so dilute their content and link building efforts. A thousands back links and pages have far less ranking power when they are spread across a dozen sites rather than a couple. I strongly advise you to start with no more than two main sites, not even thinking about adding more sites until at least one is generating a healthy monthly revenue stream.

There are though always exceptions to the rule. In my next article I will tell you about how a site I had neglected went from zero traffic a day to over 2700 visitors a day in just 9 days.

This year we have seen perhaps more major changes in the Google algorithm that ever before.  I know of many affiliates who have lost rankings overnight. I know others that have seen a big drop in long tail traffic plus I have seen on many webmaster forums that new sites are simply not picking up the initial traffic they use to. I have been hit by these tweaks to the Google algorithm. Some of my sites have seen a decline in traffic although my main sites seem to have benefited from the updates. The updates though have spurred me into action so I now have a completely revamped strategy compared to just a year ago.

I strongly believe that for those affiliates who are willing to spend time with test sites that the rewards can be great. When Google does tweak its algorithm many webmaster simply wait for an answer to appear on webmaster forums. Those who are willing to test different techniques to find the solutions are the ones that will prosper.

If you want to give the Virgin Games Affiliate Program a try then please use our sub affiliate link. It costs you nothing but will ensure that we can continue to make Gambling Cash Cow a great resource for affiliates. All those who sign up with any of our sub affiliate links will also get help in becoming a successful affiliate with our private mentoring service which we plan to launch next month.

If you have any question for future interviews or comments please post a comment.

Enjoy the interview!

Virgin Games 50% Offer!

Later this week we will post a one hour interview with members of the Virgin Games affiliate team including Pierrick Leveque, Head of Acquisition, Ollie Wilson the Casino Account Manager and Craig Perrott, Virgin Games Bingo Account Manager. I’m currently editing the interview down to around 60 minutes but can tell you that the interview gives great insight in to the gambling affiliate industry.

Next month we will posting a full one hour audio interview with the Betfair team including Joe Legge who is perhaps one of the most experienced UK account managers as he has worked for Paradise, Virgin and currently Betfair.

At Gambling Cash Cow we believe we are breaking the mould in regards to gambling affiliate techniques and information plus we feel we have a lot more to offer our readers. We intend to make GCC a complete resource for those either entering the gambling affiliate world or even for those who are struggling to generate revenue from sites with potential.

We are committed at GCC to skip the bullshit to give you advice and techniques that really do generate income!

As you know I’m trying to make Gambling Cash Cow a complete resource for those entering the world of gambling affiliation. I feel there is a gulf between affiliates and account managers which sometimes can result in misinformation or even in some cases bad feelings. To perhaps bridge the gulf I intend to obtain interviews with all of the top UK account managers.

I’m delighted to announce that Andrew Hawes has joined Gambling Cash Cow. Andrew has a vast amount of broadcasting experience including working for the BBC as a football commentator. He also has experience of poker reporting, including working for Poker Tour Radio for which he was involved with most of the broadcasts from Dusk Till Dawn.

Our first interview is already in the can which features three of the team from Virgin Games. We hope to have this interview edited and online within the next few days.

We are also on the lookout for established UK affiliates who would be happy to be interviewed. We would be happy to visit you anywhere in the UK. This would not only give you the chance to promote yourself for free but give you the chance to help new affiliates. If you are interested please contact us here.

Toolbar Page Rank updated on April 03rd 2010

Toolbar Page Rank updated on December 30th 2009

Toolbar Page Rank updated on October 30th 2009

Toolbar Page Rank updated on June 25^th 2009

Toolbar Page Rank updated on May 27th 2009

Toolbar Page Rank updated on April 1st 2009

Toolbar Page Rank updated on December 31st 2008

Toolbar Page Rank updated on September 26th 2008

Toolbar Page Rank updated on July 25th 2008

Toolbar Page Rank updated on April 30th 2008

As you can see from the above data sometimes the interval between updates can be up to 4 months although normally it is indeed around 3 months. So why do so many webmaster get so upset and agitated when the page rank update is overdue? Should we really care?

Well the trouble is many webmasters make their living by simply selling links on sites with page rank. They use the interval between updates to manipulate the page rank values of their sites, simply to cash in once the page rank values have been updated. A delay in the Google Page Rank export results in the Page Rank sellers having to wait to cash in on their new Page Rank values.

In simple terms Google has created a monster which they can’t control, until in my opinion Page Rank is either not visible or scrapped.

A  UK National Gamers Survey Report revealed British gamblers spent 280 million playing online casual games in 2009. Similar studies carried out in other countries revealed that French players spent 220 million and Germans 440 million over the same period. There are an estimated 13.3 million Brits playing on various game portals plus 170 million was spent on mobile games in 2009.

Deutsche bank claims online gaming market penetration is expected to reach 9 percent by 2012, with global online gaming having recorded growth of 23 percent since 2001. Also of great importance is that home broadband users are expected to reach 750m by 2012 (up from 481m in 2008), coupled with rising online gaming regulation across the world, these forecasts look very achievable.

Of course affiliate forums have a range of members that range from those that are starting out in the industry to those at the highest level. Forums also contain some members who simply have gained respect from past history although they may no longer be making a cent. I would also say that affiliate forums contain a range of advice that can range from extremely poor to superb. This is of course the nature of all forums.  In general I’m not one to give out trust to anybody simply because someone may tell me that a certain member has credibility. Remember the Blonde Poker scam story?

I believe too many new affiliates latch on to advice that is posted in forums. In many cases giving the advice far more credibility then it deserves. I believe we all . at least to some degree have “sheep” mentality built in to our genes. We almost have to fight the urge to jump in with the crowd. For instance, if a well known forum guru posts that a certain technique works well, then a percentage of the members of that forum will instantly give the technique 100% credibility. It simply has to be true because the guru said so. The same of course can also be said for any technique that is stated to be a waste of time.

Perhaps a good example is the myth that banners are poor in regards to generating clicks. I know of many affiliates who no longer use banners as they now only use text call to actions. Why would they use banners when the forum gurus have said many times that banners simply don’t convert? The “don’t use banners” advice is in general,  too sweeping a statement. I have had great success using custom banners which have helped me increases conversions by well over 120%. Even a very well known site that was purchased by Poker Stars recently, was renowned for using standard banners to great effect. The same of course can be said for other techniques that have either been dismissed or “pumped up” on affiliate forums.

Don’t be a sheep! Take time out to test different techniques on your sites so you start to work on actual results rather than hearsay. Affiliate forums can be a great resource, of that there is no doubt. Simply don’t believe everything you read!