How long have you been involved in the industry?

[mojo]

Great thread and interesting to see eveyones beginnings! I am going to take the lazy way out and it explains it all here. Warning..it's not very exciting except to me!

Gambling Mojo GPWA Times Interview

I have now quit my job as of Aug 1 2008. Joe and I both work at home now and I am passionate about this. I just started training my son. He is doing good after only two weeks! Here is his site Wild Card Casinos Featuring the Top Online Casinos, Great Bonuses and Promotions.

I'll have to see if Joe will come around here. He's been in the biz much much longer!

[pdjoe]

Good thread you have going here!

I started looking into it in September or October of 1998. I was working a construction job and most of the work was out of town. I would take my computer with me and play around in the hotel room....it was better then going out to the bar with the boys every night and spending what you made that day lol. At first, I would just play games and and goof around, then one day I saw an ad for Riverbelle Casino and thought to myself....how cool is that? I have been a gambler forever. After looking into the riverbelle site, I stumbled on the affiliate program link. Needless to say, I jumped right on it. I had no idea waht I was doing but still tried. I opened a free webpage with AOL, a few white label G-Fed sites and bought some ads and managed to make a few pay checks. In December of 2002 I opened PayDay Joes, still not real good at it, I plugged away and got a little better every time I worked on it. The money started to come in steady so I decided to open a forum along with people I had met at the free games I used to run, including MS Mojo and 4 other great people. It's been a great thing for me ever sinse. You get to meet and get involved woth sooooo many great people and make money too !

Thanks Dog and the rest of you here for the fun!

Joe

[Guard Dog]

Good stories Mojo & Joe! These type of stories are what inspired me to begin my work in the field. I hope other 'soon to be' affiliates will read some of these stories and understand that with a little bit of work you can easily make some good cash in this industry.

[Nandakishore]

I started the affiliate business early 2006. But my first contact with the online gaming industry goes back to around, I think, 1999-2000. Since I have been a professional software tester, someone contracted me to test a gaming site he was developing. The result of my test analysis was so disastrous that he decided to stop his project. But now I got interested in the subject. A few months later I was contacted by an acquaintance of mine to find out a casino software provider for him because he wanted to start his own casino site. He wanted to invest around $150K. So I started reading a lot about online casinos, attended several exhibitions and conferences and ended up by telling my acquaintance that my investigations have shown that starting one's own casino site is a high risk project and needs much more than $150K. In the meantime I had heard about affiliate programs and started building the Online Casino Newsroom website, early 2006. After that I contacted around 20-30 affiliate programs simultaneously because I thought they will do some due diligence before accepting me as an affiliate which will take time. But what happened? I was an affiliate with all of them within 48 hours! I was, of course, not ready to start promoting 20-30 programs immediately. As a result, my e-mail account was full of polite reminders from my Affiliate Managers to hurry up and start earning money. That's how I entered this business.


Nandakishore
Online Casino Newsroom
Online Casino Newsroom - Deutsch
Facebook Group
Link exchange welcome. PM me.

[WCD Admin]

Nandakishore did you have a little kitty as an avatar at GPWA? If so I remember you as a very sweet person.

My story is old, I started in 1995/6 or so as a casino valet, and ended up purchasing the casino town names in Colorado (got'em all but one!). Blackhawkcolorado.com was my first site. I had to sell it and all of my other sites to help pay for medical bills. We re-purchased our network about one year ago today (still paying for it!). We now have about 300 domain names, over 150 of them with websites on them. That's the short version!

[GamTrak]

I got started in 2001 and incorporated my business several years ago. It seems that I was born to be in IT as I've always worked in a job that involved a pc working on the software, hardware and technical suport and this job allows me to keep those skills up-to-date.

I'm learing to use Dreamweaver, Photoshop and Flexbuilder so I'm on at totaltraining.com alot these days so that I can create a database driven site and make my life much easier. LOL

I've been updating/redesigning for over a year. Seems like everytime I have it the way I want something in the industry changes and I have to start over, plus the fact that I want to use CSS and it's tricky to learn after working with Frontpage for eons. hehe

I have a forum with nearly 9,000 users and it's a joy to interact with my members and it's like having an extended family where you get the good with the bad.

To reward myself for working 12 hours a day I try to vacation every three months and go to as many igaming conferences as I can handle which is usually three a year.

Here is my GPWA Magazine Interview of how I got in the business.

[WagerX]

I guess I am the third Engineer to post. lol..

I graduated as a Mechanical Engineer at UF, worked for two years in Florida, and then decided to study medicine here in Costa Rica (Where I am now). It was a scary time for me because I moved to Costa Rica, did not know the language, had a new born son, and quit my stable job as an Engineer. At the time I felt I was putting it all on the line. lol..

After a year I noticed that I needed to make some extra income. I knew nothing about the online gaming industry, but I thought that the "live casino" games were the coolest thing on the planet. I didn't know too much about affiliate programs, but I did have faith that it's a great business.

Unfortunetely, I stumbled on a software company here that was willing to sell a noob (me) a license to use their software. God, at the time I thought I had it made. Aside from going to school during the day, and being on call I worked on developing the site and making the players happy ALL day long. I slept 2-3 hours per day at most for 8 months. By blind luck, the site started doing well, until the unnamed software company decided to take all of the profits. With no money coming back in, and my savings going out to players I had to close the site. I then turned it into a portal not knowing how they would perform.

By this time I was demoralized by the perceived failure of running the casino site. Actually, I didn't fail at running the site, I failed at choosing who to partner with. At the time I had a bunch of happy players who I always paid out of my own pocket, and served up excellent customer service. When I turned the site in to a portal I made the back the money I spent on the license within the following 3 months. It was a real blessing. (I hardly ever use that term ). I guess I got lucky in dealing with reputable affiliate programs after that.

So after finishing my medical studies and then the following internship I decided giving it a go full time just to see if it's something I enjoyed. Since I made that choice (2 years ago) I have not regretted it at all. The only thing I miss is being socially active.

That reminds me. I'm really glad I studied engineering. It came in handy when I met my girlfriend at a clinic. After chatting with her a while I asked her out. She gave me a hard look and told me that she doesn't date doctors. I laughed and said ".. that's great, I'm an engineer!". Just like Happy Gilmore. lol We've been seeing each other for about 8 months now. lol

That's my story.

[Engineer]

Good story, WagerX! Actually I've enjoyed reading all of the stories here (please don't feel left out if I haven't mentioned you personally).

[WagerX]

Engineer, thanks.
I also enjoyed reading the stories on how people got started with the funnest job in the world!

Cheers!

[Guard Dog]

I agree... these are some excellent stories both for pure enjoyment as well as a bit on the inspiring side. It truly is possible to make money online and we are all shining examples of that


good work everyone!