The unstable nature of today’s poker economy is making many people think twice about what career path they want to pursue. Whilst I quit before all the ‘black friday’ ongoings, many are being forced to switch their means of income and turning to the online world as an alternative.

Mark is member at Poker Affiliate Listings and, similarly to me, has chosen to move into the development of websites as an alternative way to make money. Here is his story…

 

Why I Am Moving Away From Poker

Other than a tutoring job while in high school, online poker has been my only job. I am only 22, so it hasn’t been that long, but poker has supported me for over three years. I made a promise with myself that by the age of 24 I would make the majority of my income from something other than poker. That time is coming sooner than I expected.

Recently, the United States government has been cracking down on the online poker industry. After “Black Friday,” the day in April when the owners of the three largest online poker sites that served Americans were criminally indicted, the affected sites stopped serving American customers. This has left few poker rooms able to serve American players. The poker sites that remain are not of the highest quality, and there is no assurance that the remaining poker sites won’t stop serving the US market in the future. There are a number of options that would enable to me continue to play poker in one form or another, but I figure this is as good of time as any to end my dependence on the United States poker economy. I’m not quitting for good, but I haven’t played a hand since April. I only plan on playing enough in the future to remain up to date on the latest trends.

Since my poker career has enabled me to live freely and live well, I am strongly inclined to find a replacement that has similar benefits. I have decided to start building websites with the intention of this becoming my next career. The work at home lifestyle is hard to leave once you have been doing it for a while. I have gotten accustomed to waking up whenever I please, not needing to answer to anyone and working however much I please. I think that web development and online marketing might be an even better job than poker. Income in poker is directly correlated to time spent playing and nothing of value is being created. Telling a stranger that you build websites for a living will never make you look like a degenerate loser. Creating websites creates semi-passive income and value for society. If at some point in the future I decide to stop maintaining my websites, I can cash out on that value that I have created by selling my site to another webmaster. Being a webmaster is a much more varied task than specializing in one form of poker. Creating websites can involve researching and writing on any number of topics, taking pictures, writing code, graphic design, writing ad copy and a host of other tasks. In addition, building high quality websites will be a profitable venture for the foreseeable future. Playing poker for a living will only get harder as players and artificial intelligence improves. Online poker is also highly susceptible to pressures from government regulation that can negatively impact the profitability of the games, as I am seeing first hand from Black Friday.

This isn’t my first foray into web development. I made my first website when I was 12 years old. The color scheme was an assault to the senses and the entire site was devoted to information about cows. Even though this required no technical skill, as I made this with the Geocities WYSIWYG editor, it sparked my interest in building websites. Since then, I have made a variety of websites with varying motivations. I made some websites just to have a soapbox and others I made for the explicit purpose of making money. None of these were very successful.

This time around I am going to do this right. I have money saved up from poker, and have no obligations to prevent me from creating a network of successful websites. However, I can tell I have already made a few stumbles. I initially started making some websites that provided little value that couldn’t be had elsewhere on the Internet. I also have bought over thirty domains, when I really should be focusing on a few sites. My business plan is very simple. Create large websites with truly useful content and let any advertising revenue be an outgrowth of that. Currently, I am building websites in multiple niches with different goals for monetization. I figure that by trying a few different tactics I will gain a broader range of experience and be able to figure out what I am best at creating. My largest site, so far, is Online Poker for Beginners. It is only natural to leverage my poker knowledge in my new business. I am differentiating myself from the competition by combining advice based off of my own personal poker experiences with completely honest advice about poker rooms. I am ignoring the fact that less reputable skins sometimes offer higher commissions than the skins that I would personally play on. I promote rakeback (when applicable) because it is the best option for the player. The goal is to forgo some short term profits with the intent of acquiring long term goodwill from my visitors. I have yet to make a single dollar, so I know I have a long way to go, but I think that as long as I continue creating something of significant value, the money will follow.

Mark – MDM13