was the kid in tenth grade that got in trouble for sneaking into the dog track.
I was a born gambler and Biloxi was now a gambling town.
Poker was always my big interest. You aren’t playing against the house and skill always outweighs luck. It’s the only casino game you can consistently beat, if you are the smartest player at the table. It’s a game where your status means nothing. Doctors and lawyers can sit down and get outsmarted by high school dropouts.
Poker is also a subculture in its own. Poker players understand other poker players. It doesn’t take years to bond with another poker player. Sharing a couple of bad beat stories can form an everlasting friendship.
I had decided my next online venture was going to be a combination of something I was passionate about and something that was profitable. Poker was both of those things.
My timing was perfect. It was about two years prior to the big televised poker boom, but there was an online poker revolution coming. I just felt it.
Despite the growing popularity of the game, there were very few websites dedicated to poker, at the time. My first step was to come up with a suitable domain name.
Every casino I played in often made announcements about their “live action poker games”. I was pretty psyched to find that LiveActionPoker. com was available. I snagged it and began brainstorming about what to do with it.
Even though there weren’t many dedicated poker websites, there were a couple of well-established authority sites that got a lot of visitors. I knew I had to do something to stand out and to show I was an authority in the industry.
Back then, the poker world was still small enough to where you could find a way to contact anybody, even the rising stars that were winning tournaments and writing books. That was my plan - to get together with the big dogs and gain authority by association.
This was the first time I used the “association” strategy, but certainly not the last. Throughout my career, I have gained authority in whatever niche I was working in, simply by associating myself with the rock stars of that field.
The first person I reached out to was a young Canadian who had won his first World Series of Poker bracelet a few years prior. His name was Daniel Negreanu.
Daniel agreed to do a podcast interview over the phone with me. After the interview, I talked about my plans for a chat forum and asked him if he would man a section of the forum called “Ask Daniel Negreanu”. He loved the idea.
I set up a website that had a few articles and added a forum, using some free software. Word quickly spread throughout the poker community that you could chat with Daniel Negreanu at my site. And the people came.
Years later, when Daniel was an international television celebrity, I was speaking to him on the phone. He was with Toby Maguire at a tournament in Los Angeles. When I got off the phone, I told my young son the guy I was talking to was with Spiderman. He asked who the guy was. I told him it was Daniel Negreanu. His jaw dropped and said, “You know Daniel Negreanu?” Who would have thought there would come a time when little kids would be more excited about a poker player, than a super hero?
I followed the “Ask Daniel Negreanu” move by reaching out to more poker celebrities. Linda Johnson and Lou Krieger both manned sections on the forum and I conducted many interviews with poker royalty.
As traffic increased, I had to find a way to monetize the site. Online poker was still very new, but was gaining ground fast. I decided to sign up for a few affiliate programs and place their banners on my site. Every time somebody clicked on my banner and played for real money, I would get paid a commission of what the site made from that player or a flat fee.
As the months went by, the content on the site grew immensely. Thousands of visitors would read the articles and forum posts, each week. My income was also growing. I was bringing in a few thousand dollars a month in revenue from the banners. Life was good.
Then, it wasn’t.
When I was in basic training, I couldn’t understand why it was so important to make my bed so well or align my boots perfectly. Then, one of the drill instructors explained to me that it’s all about attention to detail. He said, “Some of you will go on to be aircraft mechanics. The last thing you want to do is leave a wrench inside the engine of an F-16. Basic training is all about learning to pay attention to detail.”
I guess it didn’t take.
I woke up one morning to find Live Action Poker had been hacked. The homepage was a skull and crossbones with some Arabic writing. Tech support told me it was just a default index page that had been added to my site and all I had to do was delete that one page.
The control panel for the website was a bit confusing, but it did have a system in place where a pop-up window would appear asking if you are sure you want to do something, before it is finalized.
I stared at the window that said, “Are you sure you want to delete your entire site?” I read it twice. Then, I clicked on “Yes”.
I don’t think a millisecond went by before I said out loud, “What the fuck did I just do?”
Gone.
It was all gone. The articles, the tens of thousands of chat forum posts, the hours of writing effort put in by poker celebrities.
I called tech support.
“We’re sorry, sir. You did not opt for the backup service, so we do not have any archives of your data.”
I just put myself out of business.
After wallowing in my sorrow for about thirty minutes, I left the office and headed to the only place I knew that would make me feel better. I went to the casino to play poker.
I remember this poker game like it was yesterday. Three obnoxious tourists and four really old regulars. Whenever the games were dull or I had no desire to talk to the other players at the table, I would read a magazine and the only magazine to read in the poker room was CardPlayer Magazine. In fact, it was the only poker magazine in existence.
As I browsed through the pages, I recall thinking how poorly designed it was, how boring the articles were, and how I could do a much better job putting a magazine together.
Wait. Could I do a much better job? I didn’t know, but I immediately cashed out my chips and ran to Office Depot.
“What’s the best desktop publishing software you have?”
“We really don’t have a big selection, but you can try Microsoft Publisher.”
I bought it and rushed home to see what I could come up with.
And that’s the day I became a magazine publisher.
CHAPTER 7
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
