Has the amount of time you spend on your affiliate sites changed in the past year?

[MichaelCorfman]

Originally Posted by TheGooner

The same.

But then I've been doing it since 1999 - so we're not in a rapid growth phase.


I spend almost ZERO time, on links, SEO or any of that sort of stuff now.

Content continues to be created - and an eye is cast over the various industry components. Content is king.

Pretty similiar here in some ways, but different in others.

The CasinoCity.com website was launched in the fall of 1995, so I could say we've been doing it for 12 1/2 years now, but it wasn't until around eleven years ago that we started selling advertising to online gaming sites.

Personally, my time has not changed much in the past two years (there are only so many hours in a day and my wife will say I spend more of them working than I should and not enough of them relaxing, not buying my argument that work is relaxing), although the way I have spent my time has switched around some in that time since we have new and different projects we are working on. For example, two years ago was a little before we acquired the GPWA, and that has changed how I have spent some of my time. And the facebook work we are doing right now is a new direction. And we have other projects in the work that we hope will result in significant growth over the medium term.

As a company we have about the same staff as a year ago, although there is a somewhat heavier focus on online gaming today than a year ago.

And I agree content is King. But so is the infrastructure used to maintain and present the content. We spend as much doing development work on systems to maintain and present our content as we do on the content itself.

And we don't spend any time on links, and very little time on SEO, although we do structure the systems we build to do well in those areas (I just checked and CasinoCity.com came up as the first search result in google for the term "casinos" and the fourth search result in google for the term "casino").

Michael

[TheGooner]

Originally Posted by MichaelCorfman

And I agree content is King. But so is the infrastructure used to maintain and present the content. We spend as much doing development work on systems to maintain and present our content as we do on the content itself.

Hey Michael thanks you the heads up on activities at a place as established as Casino City.


I've noticed that Casino City is very pro-active in exploring new markets and coming up with new ideas and displays. Very impressed with some of the ideas you're exploring - and you just need 1 hity in 5 to make it pay its way.

I come from a technical programming background, financial systems, ATMs, EFTPOS, VISA and Mastercard authorisation links, device handlers for petrol pumps etc and so I know how to code at a secure industrial level.

But internet is different - very weird and floppy - and a bit too graphical for my skills. I've learnt enough Javascript and PHP to be dangerous to myself, and I've slowly migrated from a pure HTML environment to mostly generated content for the sports sections. It's all coded by hand - because I like to understand whats happening.

The casino / poker sections are pure HTML made with a cheap WYSIWYG piece of software that allows my partner to produce what she likes quickly without really needing to know any technical skills at all. This suits her graphical skills much better than hand coding PHP/HTML.

But I would estimate our weekly time as :
80% content
10% paying bills, chasing invoices, negotiating new deals, paying TAX
5% team direction meetings
5% playing with PHP ..

I agree that when we create new pages or tweak old ones then we will re-examine the contents with a SEO hat on - but it's all the basics really, keywords, meta tags, h1/h2 headings, labeling images etc.

But mostly it's content, content, content, and managing the finances ...

[Doolally]

Originally Posted by TheGooner

10% paying bills, chasing invoices, negotiating new deals, paying TAX

The worst 10%.

Especially the last bit.

[graham]

I recently went full time so I spend a lot more time working on my sites... just wish it was more

[CityGuard]

Originally Posted by graham

I recently went full time so I spend a lot more time working on my sites... just wish it was more

Congratulations Graham -- switching to be a full-time affiliate is a big milestone!

[aksana]

Originally Posted by TheGooner

The same.

I spend almost ZERO time, on links, SEO or any of that sort of stuff now.

Content continues to be created - and an eye is cast over the various industry components. Content is king.

I agree with you, TheGooner, now I also spend almost zero time on links, SEO and etc. I see the most important thing is to update your site almost every day with new content. And now I'm spending more time on my content.

Some of you know that I became a full-time webmaster a year ago, so now I have more time than a year ago but I started the repairing of my apartment, and it takes a lot of times: to control workers, to choose and order materials, new furniture and etc, so sometimes it makes me crazy, but in spite of that I'm trying to spend a lot of time on my site, more than a year ago, I think at least 20% more time.

[Nandakishore]

Originally Posted by aksana

I agree with you, TheGooner, now I also spend almost zero time on links, SEO and etc. I see the most important thing is to update your site almost every day with new content. And now I'm spending more time on my content.

But I don't think it is quite correct to say that you spend zero time on SEO, because when you write your content, you must be spending some time in bothering about the right keywords, keywords density and stuff like that which does take some time.

In fact, it would be interesting to start a poll asking what percentage of the content writing time is spent in creating SEO-related meta-information.

[aksana]

Originally Posted by Nandakishore

But I don't think it is quite correct to say that you spend zero time on SEO, because when you write your content, you must be spending some time in bothering about the right keywords, keywords density and stuff like that which does take some time.

Almost zero time Maybe, 1% of my time or less I spend on keywords and meta tags.