What I Do on the Internet While Waiting for Pocket Aces

After the Online Gaming/Poker Hiatus (I refuse to call it permanent or a ban or illegal since the game itself is not) snuck through as a 'Midnight Rider' on the Port Security Bill my bonus chasing career abruptly ended. Like I have said before since then I have concentrated on one table at a time and just becoming a better poker player overall. So far it is working out just fine. But what do I do while waiting on those Pocket Rockets besides playing Fantasy Baseball? I used to blindly surf the net just bouncing all over the place or analyzing my play with PokerTracker. But the Bonus Chasing angle shooter in me took over. I looked around and found sites/programs to help kill the time and pad the old bank account by just doing what I would be doing anyway.

First, I started a blog. Mainly just to vent the anger over bad beats and all in bingo players. Soon I found out that writing about poker is tougher than playing poker. You have to be careful with hand analysis since you can put your foot in your mouth really quickly and you can unknowingly give away your secrets. Be careful quoting odds, outs and ROI% since those are just statitistics and there is always someone ready to shred your poor math skills. So I settled on just writing about what I see and feel while on the felt. It seems to be working out just fine. My readership has tripled since the New Year began.

Second, I wanted to expand my traffic and potential readership beyond the Poker forum crowd. They all read these things anyway and already have accounts at all of the major sites. Preaching to the choir. I wanted to expand beyond these regulars and try to attract new players to the game. So I picked out two traffic exchange sites to help bump my traffic and pick up new readers:
Blog Explosion- Offers some fun games to win credits and most of the Blogs are really good reads.
Blog Soldiers- While it does not offer games the traffic exchange rate is better and the blogs load faster.

Then to get exposure outside of the poker community and work on my writing skills I joined:
Associated Content- Allows you to submit articles for review and occassionally they will buy your work. I have published 4 articles and have been paid for 2.
Mylot- Is alot like Myspace but for adults/seniors and with a really cool twist. The more you write and the higher your writing is rated you actually start getting paid. It is only a few pennies here or there but it does add up quick. Especially if you are already a frequent forum poster anyway.
Payperpost- Now this is a great opportunity to submit your work to sites who have offered to pay for postings on your blog. They have writing contests and this is the highest bang for your buck if your writing is accepted.

Diversification, my fourth step was to start a few more blogs in order to diversify and better organize my random ramblings. I have a Personal, Humor, Picture, Gadgets and of course a Poker blog so I can keep my focus on the topics. In order to keep a good flow on each blog I cleaned up all of the advertising and reduced the whiz bang stuff to a minimum. I hope this keeps the reader focused on the content. Sometimes poorly selected and placed advertising can do much more damage to your blog than the few pennies you might make are worth. A good solid base of regular readers is a blogs best friend so don't tick them off with a porn pop-up ad. Stick to Adsense, Amazon or just one or two products from CJ.

Page Rank, my Fifth Step. I created Blog Rolls and Z-lists on each blog. Using some of the really cool tools from Blogrolling and Technorati you can build and keep relavent and updated link backs quickly and painlessly. I am just now starting to show up on Google/Yahoo/MSN searches primarily because of the url name I bought. Page Rank will take some time to build and maintain but it is the key to transitioning from amatuer blog to an income generating website.

Finally, for when I just can not find anything to write about or am distracted by other things there are the Pay to Surf sites like:
TIB
Weekly Lottery
Hits4pay
All of these are sites that pay you to surf or read emails. The secret is you really don't have to read them. Just click the confirm buttons and continue to do what you were doing.

Overall my new plan for the Grind seems to be working. My readership has slowly but surely picked up, Amazon clicks are happening, my articles are being bought and my first check from Google should arrive next week. Not to mention the one Poker sign up I got that is single handedly trying to drive me into a new tax bracket. Not bad for doing what I would be doing anyway while waiting for those Pocket Aces.