The Poker Affiliate Blog

Aside from ipokervip I’ve got some lower variance investments on the go and just thought I’d type my thinking out loud on some of them and see if it makes any sense. I’m not qualified at all btw so don’t act on any of this pls !

Gold – I try to order gold every month and get it from a site called UK Bullion. Basically I wire them the money and get some in the post which struck me as pretty sketchy at first. I didn’t understand why they couldn’t process a credit card but, I get it the next day and it seems to be okay. Well, I mean its gold.
On a random note don’t be fooled by the pictures – 1oz of gold is tiny, like absolutely tiny.
Anyway, buying physical gold attracted to me as opposed to buying it and keeping it in a vault somewhere because its purpose is really to consolidate wealth. The time when an investor would realise a huge return on gold would be during a time of complete financial meltdown, war or some kind of anarchy. In this, admittedly far fetched situation what good is your gold being in some bank vault or held in shares ?
For me the main point of investing / saving is survival. Profit is nice, but survival is key and gold is perfect for this. Cynics would say in this kind of scenario I’d probably be better with a gun than gold though.
Anytime when there is financial instability associated with fiat currencies gold will rise because it becomes a more attractive way to store wealth.
I guess it doesn’t yield a dividend and its value can dwindle but, at the end of the day we’re talking about a finite resource that is publicly recognised as having its price controlled by the central banks and imf in order to slow down inflation – how can we not be talking about a commodity that will ultimately rise ? and I actually can’t think of a finite resource that decreases in value over time.

http://www.garynorth.com/public/4857.cfm

This guy is pretty crazy but, I’ve got a lot of time for it – probably the sort of thing you’ll love if your into conspiracy theories.
Anyway, I think you can do a lot worse than buying a few oz’s of gold. You can’t gamble them away anyway !

High Yield Deposit Bond – This is basically one of those deals where I’ve said I’ll put £x away for 1 year and take the interest. An absolutely shit investment yielding 2.8% at HSBC. I didn’t actually mean to open the account I thought I was filling out an information form online early one morning. I like this though because the money is safe and it is a better interest rate than their flexi saver which I only use as a mechanism to make sure there is never too much on my card. I’ve heard some good things about some banks abroad and will be opening an account in Gibraltar when I go over in the near future.

Shares via ISA – I’d be dumb not to have an ISA and build it up + they’re putting the limit up to £10k a year in April. So there is an opportunity to save some serious tax free money. I do it via the motley fool share dealing service although don’t have much in there at the moment because of limits. I’ve split it over 6 or 7 shares including; BP, Scottish&Southern, Severn Trent, Texaco and some other similarly boring companies my dad suggested to me that I forget. They’re all pretty solid with 6% + in dividends and they’re all involved in providing essential resources. Severn Trent are water, Scottish & Southern are electric and so on..

That’s really about it – The saving bug only hit me recently but, I don’t want this to end and have nothing to show for it. The least I can do is give myself a springboard for any other ideas I may have outwith the industry.

I’m often worried that my investments are contradictory. An easy example is my payment. Each month I’m paid in $ (so obviously enjoying the exchange rate at the moment). Now, based on some very basic economics and probably shit reasoning I would say;
1. State of USD is representative of the world’s economical climate. If the $ is strong the economy in a global sense can’t really be doing too bad ?
2. Gold needs financial uncertainty to realise healthy gains. If fiat currency is doing well, and people have faith in the market where is the need for gold ? Even as a safety net ?

So I want $ to get stronger.. but gold to go up too. I mean there is tons of stuff like this and although my reasoning isn’t perfect I want to get a sense of direction in my investments.

Buying gold and buying £ for USD is maybe like burning money in commission. Like putting £100 on Red and £100 on black and just slowly bleeding value.

As I said the most important thing is preservation of wealth and one thing I want is to always have diversity in my savings. In UK banks money is guarenteed by the government up to £50k so an example would obviously be having seperate accounts if your savings were in excess of this – pretty obvious lol.

I guess the ultimate investment is property but, nobody is giving me a mortgage anytime soon considering I’m techincally just a student but, in the next few months when I go to Gibraltar that might all change.

Wealth is always becoming more polarised – the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer so tax havens are going to become more popular ? Its got the added benefit of establishing a legit business there too if I own property so that’s something for the future.

My favourite investments are ones I can guide and see through however. So I’m looking really forward to iPokerVIP its getting close.

Tags: Gold, Investments, iPoker News, iPokerVIP.net, Playtech, Savings, Silver

The question I get asked most is how I got into being an affiliate and how it all works. So I guess this is going to be a pretty long post.

2 years ago or so I was playing 100nl on iPoker with limited success. The pattern was I’d grind $1k up into $5k or so then bust it, get my rakeback payment and do it all again. I made a bit of money, actually bought a semi-decent car with the proceeds and I guess lived off it to an extent but, looking back on it now I was never going to crush like some of my players were. Ironically, I think I’m too money oriented and couldn’t take the swings.
I was playing with a semi-decent deal on Chili Poker – I’d say it was probably 5% under market rate for what I was raking and deifnaltey not as prompt payment wise as other deals which is a pain when you’re busto. Anyway, I was chatting to someone playing on another skin and he put me in touch with the head of the skin and the rest is history…

From there I gave the competitive offer to friends and they recieved it pretty well.

So I figured why not advertise it to a few people and earn a commission from them. It was really slow at first and I don’t really why I took it so seriously – I guess I had to do something that gave me hope of making good money early in my life (which I’ve always really wanted to do – no idea why) and this was the only thing I really had.
Before this I had an ebay business and several ventures which failed or came to an end for various reasons and this was all I really had.

I punted the offer on 2+2, networked with some decent players and again I’d say I got 1 or 2 lucky breaks. Not necessarilly in players who referred me to all their friends but, decent well respected members of the community who I could at least say I worked with and they could vouch for my professionalism, enthusiasm and reliability.

A few months down the line things were going along nicely and I really believed in the potential. At this stage I was making a little under $1k a month. I remember a night out at one of my mate’s birthdays telling a few ppl how I thought I could really make like $5k a month doing this and was met (fairly) with skepticism. I had, had so many ideas and mini-ventures I don’t blame them but, I guess one of them was going to become moderatley successful at some point.

Looking back I’m not sure if there was any real breaking point – its just a complete numbers game and as I got more customers, there were more referrals. With this came a better reputation which in turn again helped me get more players on board.
If I had to pick something that really gave my business a boost it was networking with other affiliates or recruiting players who were in a similar posistion to me as affiliates.

There are 2 kinds of deals I strike with other affiliates;
1. Players who have friends / who would like a nice side income and want to learn about becoming an affiliate
2. Established affiliates whose deals have fallen through or are in need of a better deal.

The players who are affiliates are the ones I’m proudest of really becuase they’ve gone down the same path as me and we’ve kinda learned about the business together and made some pretty decent money while at it. I can’t really remember how any of the deals ever happend but, I just kinda threw the concept out there, answered a few questions and have always tried to be there as we went along and most of them have taken to it like a duck to water. At the end of the day they’re another pair of hands and can focus on different ways to recruit players. Some of them were already well recognised names on 2+2 so got to players I couldn’t get to.

Established affiliates are satisfying to get on board however, I’m not involved in the day to day running of their business and just hand them over to the site in question. This is definatley the easiest money out there and I often question whether I deserve it. These deals just come about when I speak to other affiliates and basically compare deals and service.

Anyway, in late ’09 I was beginnng to hit 5 figure monthly earnings and to be perfectly honest I don’t think this felt as good as the excitement I experienced in the months where I was earning $1k or whatever. All I want to do is grow bigger and more robust and in an unbelievable way its really as much about becoming the best affiliate out there as it is about how much I earn.
Obviously becoming the best is a pretty broad statement but, I want to become much more robust, offer more services and hopefully become the biggest player on the iPoker network and then move onto something else.

At the end of the day I really believe players are better off with me than they are with anyone else and really want them to be successful. If they keep on winning, they’ll keep on playing and I’ll keep on earning !

The reason I’m at a slight dead end now is becuase I’ve kind of lost that magical feeling that something huge is going to happen. That’s the best thing in the world – when you’re on the brink of something amazing happening and your just working away for it. Even if online poker goes dead tommorow I will have always had this experience and journey and although pretty short its really been worth it in so many ways.

Hope this was a decent read.

Later.

I always pictured earning pretty insane amounts of money to be a lot different than it is and like a lot of young people fortunate enough to be in a similar posistion I don’t have a clue what do with it.

I have a problem letting my money sit in the bank and always want to speculate with it or make it work for me.

I guess everyone must think having a ton of money is like living the dream and it is to an extent but, I could be doing this 1/10th of the money I’m making and still be as motivated.

Its kind of weird and I guess like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet could have stopped working years ago and had no need whatsoever for that much money but, they kept on going. I guess you could say they weren’t making money work for them and weren’t earning it as a means to an end.

Money, consumes you and all I can think about is how to earn more and not how to enjoy it. Putting on stupid bets, or just buying -ev stuff (enjoyment wise – clothes I never wear and stuff I never use) just for the sake of it.

I’m going to try and calm down a lot becuase ultimatley if I’m sensible and the next 12 months go well I will never have to worry about money – in a big way again.

Just wanted to share the concept that the cliched phrase ‘money isn’t everything’ isn’t too far from the truth. I guess as poker players and degenerates we’ve got a habit of idolising money and judging success purely in terms of money and its just messed up.

People always say if I won the lottery I’d do this and that but fundamentally what difference is a new car, house, wardrobe, fancy nightclubs etc going to make to your life ? It might give you some satisfaction but, doesn’t make a fundamental difference to who your friends are and all the decent things in life.

Recently got a new car – Mercedes CLC 180 Kompressor which has less than a year old and had 11k miles on the clock from a dealership.

I got them from just under 18k to 15k which I was quite pleased with but, after the new alloys and insurance its proven to be pretty pricey – especially considering the $ was so much weaker when I bought it than it is now ! Could’ve saved myself £1k by just holding off for a month – but, I’m still happy, definatley something I’m proud of.

I was so taken by this one in particular becuase it was a manual which is pretty rare for a merc.

Here are some pics (more to come) !