This may sound strange to some people; but I have always been fascinated with casinos, slot machine games and any form of gambling. This is strange because I am not a gambler in the traditional sense. Of course being an entrepreneur is considered by some a form of gambling, but to base a business move strictly on luck is just something I was never comfortable doing.
My brothers, however were gamblers in the traditional sense… so it was not difficult to convince them into going on a trip to Las Vegas in January of 1998. It was a Bare Bones trip, we went with very little money. Luckily, Las Vegas was still very cheap then. We got by on four for $1 hot dogs and cheap buffets. Even though we were all under 25, we still were able to rent a car somehow and see the city of Las Vegas. It was such a fun trip, it was one of the only times the three of us spent time together as brothers, where it was just us.
Anyway, the slot machines, the noise they make and all of the hubbub of the casinos just really really inspired and motivated me. I’m still not exactly sure why, but it does.
I had just started dabbling in affiliate marketing in the late 90’s when we went on this trip. I promoted casinos. This was back in the wild wild west days of the internet.. I would mass email offers to completely random people.. It was amazingly effective. I had several computers that did nothing but drop links in chat rooms and emails.. I started off with PPC (pay per click) offers and then went on to getting a straight commission for every person I referred.
It was very lucrative and I was very young. There were hiccups and problems of course. At the time I was using DSL and I would get nasty letters from time to time complaining about how I was using the service. So I would stop for several weeks then start again.
It wasn’t long that I started reinvesting my profits into buying domain names. This was right around the time when cyber squatting became illegal. I made the mistake of registering a domain that had the words “Caesars Palace”. I would then add “Las vegas” or “LV” followed by a dot com, because they were more valuable.
It wasn’t long before I received a certified letter from Ceasars Palace attorneys threatening me if I didn’t relinquish the domain. I was scared shitless to say the least. I did exactly what they said and ceased all of my affiliate marketing activities for quite awhile. Luckily, I had not quit my jobs yet, because I knew the money I was making would not last forever. I had several jobs in the late 90’s early 2k’s and it was difficult to keep going when I knew the opportunities that were out there. So I continued to study and was determined to figure how to make it work.
The lesson for you- be VERY careful when registering a domain with a trademark in it. You also need to be careful about even ranking in the search engines for a trademark… I’ve had those problems as well and it is not fun.. I have stories to tell about that as well..
The betting (gambling) niche has changed a lot over the decades. I don’t promote gambling offers per se any longer… But I do promote CPA (cost per action) sweepstakes offers and build slot machine apps monetized with ads only.
If you’d like to learn more about this niche, I did a podcast on it awhile back.. you can listen to it below. If you’d like to learn more about how to build a legit business online, you can visit my Digipire Facebook Page or sign up to my email list.
