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Affiliate Interview Series: Jason Schmuch - jschmuch
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Age: 26
Hometown: Corona, California
Currently residing in: Hesperia, California
Favorite food: Mexican
One book everyone must read: One of a Kind: The Rise and Fall of Stuey "The Kid" Ungar, The World's Greatest Poker Player, by Nolan Dalla and Peter Alson
Sites: onlinepokerads.net, onlinepokerads.org, toprakebackoffers.com
What did you do before becoming an affiliate, and what first drew you to the industry?
Well, I’ve had quite a few odd jobs throughout my life like office jobs, customer service, logistics, construction, blah blah blah – nothing too interesting there. As for what drew me to the industry, as a player I was looking around all the different poker rooms online and I kept seeing the affiliate program links at the footer of all the pages and just clicked one out of curiosity. Since I loved poker and already knew a lot about it I figured why not try it out, I can do that, and it looked like easy money at the time. Obviously I now know that it takes a lot more work than I thought.
What do you like about the industry?
Being able to work from home is one of the top reasons I like the industry. I’ve always been into poker, too, so doing something I like rather than having a job I hate makes my life a lot less stressful. Also it’s good to be able to work at my own pace rather than having to cram everything into an eight-hour workday, even though the hours are much longer.
What don’t you like about the industry?
There’s not much that I dislike about the affiliate industry but a lot of programs starting to change their commission terms lately is really starting to **** me off. Over the past couple months I’ve taken a bit of a hit because of this. I wish I were able to drop these programs but they’re still the ones brining me the most income so there’s not really much I feel that I can do about it right now other than complain, which I know is not going to get me anywhere anyway.
What surprised you most about the industry?
One thing I’ve been pretty surprised about is how nice and helpful the affiliate community can be even though we’re really all competitors. It’s one of the only industries I’ve seen this generosity in.
Your three sites are all dedicated exclusively to poker. Why did you decide to be “poker-centric”? Which site earns you the most? Any plans to launch another site? If so, will it also be a poker site?
Well, I just decided to stick with what I know and I really don’t know much about sports betting or casino games other than home football pools or playing Blackjack and Craps in a live casino. Plus, it’s probably good to know what you’re talking about when writing strategy articles and such.
As for which site earns the most, I basically run onlinepokerads.net and onlinepokerads.org as one site with onlinepokerads.org being the forum. Don’t ask me why I didn’t just use a subdomain. I haven’t really bothered with any tracking between the two yet so I can’t tell you which of those is earning more. I’ve been wanting to go set up new trackers but haven’t found the time to do it yet. Toprakebackoffers.com was only launched in mid-January of this year so it still needs time to grow, and it’s also a rakeback site so it’s not earning nearly as much as the other two.
I’ve been thinking of launching a few new sites but haven’t really put any work into it other than buying domains. When I find the time I am definitely going to be launching a few more, though. Like I said above, I think I’m just going to stick with what I know: poker. I thought about launching a casino site a while back but since I’ve never used any of the online casinos it was a bit overwhelming from the get-go, so I gave up on it pretty quickly. I do get casino players at the poker rooms that offer it occasionally, though.
You’ve been in the business about four years now and posted last fall that due to losing your “day job,” you were going to work harder to increase your monthly conversions. How did you tackle this issue, and how is it going so far? And what was your “day job”? Do you miss it? Ever want to go back to doing something similar?
Basically from when I first started in the industry and up until about six months before that post my portfolio consisted of one free site that I never updated or anything. It was basically a ten-page banner farm that I got a lot of my poker buddies to go sign up at and they’re all active players so I was able to make a few hundred dollars a month on it but nothing more than that. I’ve since gotten rid of that site, taken things more seriously and made actual portals. Since then I went from a few hundred a month to a few thousand and I’m happy with that for now.
The last job that I had was sitting in an office and ordering heavy equipment parts – basically just faxing stock orders and going through online parts catalogs for special orders. It was a union job so the pay was pretty good, but it was boring and I really don’t miss it. If I had to I guess I wouldn’t really mind going back, but it’s not something that I’d want to do.
What prompted you to join the GPWA, and how has being a member helped you?
I stumbled on it through a seal on another affiliate’s site and started scanning through the public forums and saw that you guys have a lot of useful information so I decided to join. The GPWA has helped me with basically everything to do with the industry. It’s great to be able to share ideas and get feedback from other webmasters, stay in contact with my affiliate managers and get all the news and promotion updates from them. Seeing what all the other webmasters are doing has also been a good incentive for me to better my own sites.
How do your family and friends feel about how you make your living?
I don’t think that my family actually even knows what it is I do and friends just want to know how they can do it, too. My girlfriend thinks that sitting in front of the computer for so long is making me lazy, LOL.
Time management is one of the biggest issues facing affiliates. What time management tips can you offer your fellow webmasters?
I’m probably the worst person you could ask about time management when it comes to being a webmaster. I still code everything by hand, don’t use any CMS and still often have to reference some of the code as I go. The only thing I do is get up early to make sure I can get everything done for the day.
One thing that is definitely true about most affiliates is their e-mail inboxes are always full. How long do you give yourself for responding to e-mail? And what e-mail management tips can you offer?
I go through all my inboxes about twenty times a day and respond to anything important as soon as I open it. There are always things that can wait a day or two, though. The only tip I can give is if you keep up on it, it won’t seem like so much work. I used to only check them two or three times a day and let everything pile up until I had to sit there for three hours just to go through e-mails. It just seems easier and less frustrating to me to take the 15 to 20 minutes several times a day instead of three hours all at once.
How do you manage your “to do” lists? Do you use any special software to help you out?
I’m not much for “to do” lists. I’ve got a pretty good memory and just take things day to day, so no software needed.
If you were able to sit down to dinner with any five people, living or dead, who would they be, and why?
Dimebag Darrell (guitarist of Pantera), Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon and Johnny Cash. I just think it would be cool as hell to party with these guys, and they were all great artists. I’m pretty sure we’d be doing a lot more drinking than eating, though.
When you need to get as far away from work as possible, where do you go?
I like to go camping and fishing and I go as much as possible. Lately it’s only been one yearly trip up to Northern California for a week, although I sure wish I could go more often. I used to play a lot of online poker to get away from work but now it just feels like more work. I try to go to the casino and play whenever I can, though.
You live in Southern California, right? When it comes to college sports, are you a USC guy, or a UCLA guy?
Yeah, I live in Southern California but I’m not much into college sports, but if I had to pick a college team it would definitely be USC. When it comes to football I’m more of an NFL fan and my team is the Chargers.
If you had to pick five keys to success as an affiliate, what would they be, and why?
1. Update your content as often as possible. You’ll get better search engine rankings and your visitors will be more likely to return to your site if they see something fresh on it every time they visit.
2. Stay up to date on all the promotions for whatever you are promoting and be sure to post it on your site. If someone sees a promotion on another Web site and not yours for the same poker room/casino they’ll think they’re getting a better deal even if they would have gotten the same deal from you but you just didn’t tell them.
3. Stay in contact with your affiliate managers and other webmasters. This will make it easier to stay up to date on promotions, give you new ideas for content, etc
4. Offer extra incentives other than what the poker room or casino is offering. Even if it’s just a little extra in the beginning you’ll be surprised how far it can go.
5. Learn SEO and try to stick with your SEO strategy even if you don’t see results right away.
What’s your favorite movie?
I like “Scarface” or just about any old gangster flick; there’s too many for me to start listing them.
If you were starring in a movie, who would you want to play your romantic interest?
Well, I think I have to say my girlfriend because she is probably going to read this sometime.
If you were “stuck” in a city due to travel restrictions, would you be the person who did everything humanly possible to get back home? Or would you be the person who took some time to go exploring and smell the flowers?
I’d want to go exploring. I spend enough time at home as it is.
What are three things that nobody knows about you?
Well, I’m pretty much an open book so I guess if you wanted to know something about me you’d just have to ask.
