Advice needed

[cantrill4]

Hi guys,

I am a new member to the forum but a long time reader. I've been contemplating a while now to create a website and become a gambling affiliate and have now decided the time is right. I want to start off by saying that I know this is not a get rich quick scheme and requires a LOT of hard work, dedication and patience. I know that it could take up to a year and beyond before I start seeing any results. This does not bother me as nothing worth having comes easy and I am also going to have a lot of fun with this - I enjoy gambling and I enjoy sports!

I want to create a sports/gambling website, mainly writing articles about football (or soccer if you're that way inclined) but some other sports from time to time. I consider myself fairly knowledgeable about football and I love to discuss and analyse it. I am therefore confident I can write good quality articles and content for my website that people will enjoy. I will be talking key talking points within the sport along with current events and of course previewing the upcoming games and give my thoughts on the betting for these games.

I am leaning towards Wordpress as a platform for this initially but I have a few questions. Does anyone or has anyone use Wordpress? Is this a good platform to use? Do bookmakers marketing banners appear nicely on Wordpress and are they easy and straight forward enough to display? I will be going for the free version of Wordpress initially, how important is it to upgrade and get my own domain name? Equally, how important is the name? Please excuse the many questions but I would be extremely grateful and appreciative of any information that you may want to share with me.

Many thanks.

[Mattbar]

Wordpress is a great way to start although I certainly would invest in a good domain name right away. There are some great worldpress themes available for free or for a small fee.

[MJM]

Everything Matt said plus I'd add to really consider specializing or defining a niche within your interests (football). If just generically writing about football you will be up against very stiff competition, but if you are able to bring something unique to the table you will have a much greater chance of success.

ive been struggling myself with getting any real traction with event coverage and need to follow my own advice.

[IGT Partners]

my 2 cents:
- wordpress is fine (the easiest to learn/manage), be sure to use a reliable hosting provider
- you need unique/quality content
- you need unique website concept (competition is very high in the industry), or you have to focus on a small niche


Good luck man!

[cantrill4]

Thank you for your replies. Some great advice which I'll definitely take on board. Now to crack on with the site....see you in a couple months!

[BBCasinos]

Good luck with the website
And yes, use wordpress to start with. Keep an eye on updates and security. And use a few easy plugins to build your 1.0 website. From there you will learn and use and grow your business.
Dedication is the most important thing when starting up in a competitive business like this

[Aidan90]

Definitely use wordpress. I'd recommend starting straight away with a domain and your own hosting rather than using the free option and transferring over later. It's something that's going to have to be done at some point so best to start off with it and not have to go through the hassle of transferring.

[Former Member 14]

1. Get your own domain
2. Avoid cheap hosting
3. Be creative and try to stand out from other sites

Agree with everyone elses input. All the best

[cantrill4]

Thanks for the replies, I really do appreciate it.

Quick question, what is your experience with mailing lists? Are they a good idea or not? I want to be able to capture email addresses which will then give me the option of emailing my affiliate marketing. Obviously there would be a point to the email and not just a shameless advert. Could this yield results or not?

[Aidan90]

Mailing lists are a great idea in my opinion.

An email list is one of the few things in this industry that we can own completely. Our websites can get penalized and drop out the rankings and our social media accounts can be suspended but you can always fall back on an email list.

[cantrill4]

Last couple of questions (I promise!)

I am looking at www(dot)123-reg(dot)co(dot)uk as a host and going for their business+ package. Is this a decent host, any horror stories that I should know about?

Also, do I need to register my company at companies house straight away?

[pinman]

Last couple of questions (I promise!)

I am looking at www(dot)123-reg(dot)co(dot)uk as a host and going for their business+ package. Is this a decent host, any horror stories that I should know about?

Also, do I need to register my company at companies house straight away?

Definitely go for Wordpress. You can grab yourself a free PDF Wordpress manual from http://easywpguide.com/ too - which will help give you some background on its capabilities too.

Personally, I'd steer clear of 123-reg as when I was with them I found their support terrible!

[cantrill4]

Just a quick update....

Currently building my site and having lots of fun. Wordpress is great!

Reading lots of helpful and informative articles about SEO and now currently writing reviews for sportsbooks as well as a couple of blog posts to go live once the site is up and running. Doing this at a time when the UK football season is coming to an end is great as I don't feel like I'm missing out on content opportunities.

[chaumi]

Understandably you may not want to do this...

But the sooner you can post up a link to the site (even though it may not really be ready to display yet) the sooner you'll get some comments on whether you're heading in the right direction. Might save you some grief/lost time.

[cantrill4]

Understandably you may not want to do this...

But the sooner you can post up a link to the site (even though it may not really be ready to display yet) the sooner you'll get some comments on whether you're heading in the right direction. Might save you some grief/lost time.

Hi Chaumi,

I will post up a link as soon as I am fairly happy with it. At the moment, I'm not happy with the design but I am new to all of this and learning each day. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks I will be in a position where I can ask everyone for their opinions and input.

This is an extremely 'noob' question BUT....how do I create a page that is only accessible through a direct link? i.e not on the tool bar or menu bar? I want to create a separate page for each bookmaker review but I want it to only be reached through a link rather than a 'page' on the menu. Apologies if this question isn't clear.

[chaumi]

You probably have the menu set to add new high level pages automatically. Each page will have its own URL that you can reach directly or via a link (whether it's on the menu or not)...but when you're building the new page it's getting added to the menu.

I'm guessing. But if you go to appearance-menus it will show you the pages you have on the menu and allow you to delete/remove any you don't want

[cantrill4]

You probably have the menu set to add new high level pages automatically. Each page will have its own URL that you can reach directly or via a link (whether it's on the menu or not)...but when you're building the new page it's getting added to the menu.

I'm guessing. But if you go to appearance-menus it will show you the pages you have on the menu and allow you to delete/remove any you don't want

Told you it was a noob question

Thanks for the help, appreciate it.

[Former Member 14]

cantrill4, I can highly recommend VidaHost (UK based) https://www.vidahost.com/

[casino7com]

I also recommend WordPress.
And the importance of proprietary domain and high speed server dedicated to WP etc.
In addition, I think that it is good to make it a site compatible with SSL.

[DaftDog]

Have you tried WordPress Beginner? They have some great videos on how to use WP correctly, and it's free.
http://videos.wpbeginner.com/