Poker, People, and Pageviews: Navigating SEO Turbulence with Robbie Strazynski

[Music] [Music] I'm John Wright and you're listening to AffiliateBI, the business intelligence and affiliate marketing podcast brought to you by Snapchat. Welcome to the AffiliateBI podcast. Today we're chatting with Robbie Strasinski, who's the founder of cardplayer cardplayer cardplayer lifestyle.com. And today we're going to do a different type of episode. We're going to talk about what Google's been doing to Robbie's site the last little while. It's one of many sites that have struggled a bit and we want to I want to share some insights of what

I've learned in the last two years of talking with a lot of affiliate marketing experts, SEO pros and we wanted to see what can we do to get not Robbie site just back in where it belongs but let's al also take it to the next level because I actually believe that the new world of affiliate marketing is you're not just going to stay at the same level.

You're either going a level down or a level up. So we are going to do a level up. Robbie, welcome to the show. Thanks, Josh. Good to see you. Always good to chat with you. We've known each other for a good many years, and I appreciate you inviting me on the show. Thank you. Yeah. So, we don't have an agenda, so you can ask anything you want other than what is business intelligence.

It's a good question for me. Basically, I my answer to that was like they're just using data to make smarter decisions. Um, so I've actually wrote down a note here of ideas that I collect and this one's recent. So, I interviewed a guy named Louie Grenier who wrote the book Stand the F Out somewhere around here and it's a brilliant marketing book. And when I was recording him, I started asking him lots of questions like, "What do you think affiliate sites should do?" And one of

the things that stood out was he's, you know what, a lot of people don't survey their users. And when you think about an affiliate site, I try to do that a little bit with our with what we do as a SAS company, but we're not always great at that. So, I think we could always do more of it. But when I think about it from the affiliate perspective, like we never did that when we ran our BTOC affiliate sites.

So I just wanted to pass it back to you. What do you think about that idea in terms of trying to understand like what it is your users want? They maybe are they asking for something they want more of? What do you think about this idea of doing some type of survey? I think that I mean my site cardplayer lifestyle.com it's very specifically focused on poker and within gaming.

I have always thought and kind of is true like by by default it's the most humanly engaging of the verticals in gaming. You know what I mean? You don't have media too much media coverage of people pulling a slot machine lover or hitting a button. Whereas poker tournaments taking place all over the world. You've got superstars who are attending these tournaments and interviews and all that kind of stuff.

So there's an a lot of content that almost naturally gets created around poker that wouldn't have to force the round peg into the square hole or the square peg into the round hole for other verticals. So the fact that that's the case lends itself to whoever is creating that content beyond doing it to tick any sort of boxes for whatever you're aiming to do or whatever you're passionate about.

you know that there's going to be an audience interested in that kind of stuff. So, it behooves you to be in touch with that audience and to make yourself accessible to that audience. Thing I did many years ago, it just again it was a natural thing. It wasn't a strategic, oh, I really should do that. It just it makes sense. Got to start a newsletter. And I've been doing it for years and years, once or twice a month.

Nothing too crazy, nothing too spammy. And it's not such a huge list, but every single person has opted in and they want to hear from me. They want to see what's new at Card Player Lifestyle. And every single it's not AI generated or anything. It's always me taking the hours, whatever it is to put that newsletter together and always starting out with a personal note. Not just even what's going on with the site, but sometimes even what's going on with me at home.

And I think what's so great and that's my part, right? I do what I can do and inevitably I'll always get at least a handful of responses even if it's just great newsletter or sometimes they have a question or something like that. It's the most natural conduit and the fact is that's the push marketing that you do to your tribe. No matter how big, how small, those are your biggest fans of your brand.

Can that be extrapolated to casino to sports book? Possibly. I'm not an expert in it, but I think that's the blueprint. Okay. So, I just mentioned the idea about doing a survey to try to like get to know your users a bit better. But here's something that I think be another idea, which is not just that same type of survey, but a different one. One that says, what is the state of poker today?

Because I know that you know that. And uh and basically, it's what are the questions we want to ask not just the pros, but the casual player. What do they think about poker? So, I think if you were to do something like that, you might be able to, if you can get that survey into the hands of a lot of legit people. If you publish, the results are going to attract a lot of things.

They're going to get you a lot of links. They're going to get you a lot of mentions. Sometimes those mentions are constant of referring like referrals where it's, oh, Robbie from Card Player Lifestyle said this about how many people play online versus land-based or do they actually crypto poker sites versus regulated, you know, or even like other random stats. Do you play card games? You know, what is the correlation between poker players that go outside and bet on sports and all those things which to me

is probably high, but we don't know the answers, right? And at least whatever my sample size might be, it's legitimate data. Even if it's you can say it's a small sample size. These are real people who are engaging with you and I got to tip my hat. Part of why I'm nodding my head beyond, oh, that sounds like a good suggestion. I remember it was done at some point by a different brand on a small scale.

Hat tip to poker.org. an excellent site. Love all the people there. I remember they sent out some sort of a would you like to take this questionnaire and you people are always happy to participate in that sort of thing and you can always incentivize them with I don't know get a free dinner somewhere or an Amazon gift card. So great idea. Love it. And now it's just okay what questions do I ask?

What do we want to know the answers to? Yeah, it clearly would have to be different. So if they're doing that year after year and they're asking the same questions, then I think what you want to do is you want to take that to a different level or kind of pivot to do the same questions when they already got that covered. That's not going to be helpful.

I think it was a one-off. I'm just thinking of the one poker example that that I specifically remember. Yeah. Yeah. And then if we want to get lazy with AI, you just ask chatt what should I ask? Sometimes he comes up with pretty good answers, but I think the survey could be cool because you might be able to get some sponsored participants from that. Oh, how do you mean like this survey is sponsored by or what do you mean by then?

The survey and the results. So, let's say you're going to publish the results. It could be a blog post or it could be a PDF. And it could be a PDF as a page on your site where in order to access the survey, you need to fill out this form. This form is name, email, phone number, and whatever else you want to ask. So, if you're start starting to build your database, we have to think of your site as digital assets.

So the number of followers you have like all these are like they're all check boxes of the digital asset collection. So by getting this as a separate type of database you're capturing a different audience. It's not the same as someone who's signing up to the newsletter and saying hey I'm here. They're like no I'm here very specifically for this this year insights. And then of course if a brand like 888 or poker stores wants to jump along, you can basically create a sponsor spot where it's

it's a mixture of where's affiliate marketing in this survey as well as where's the sponsor part which is it's becoming a pretty important part now of the affiliate ecosystem today. Mhm. Okay, cool. Yeah, sounds good. You know what I love that this is recorded because I get to watch this back and rather than just what did he say? Like these are pearls of wisdom that you know like a good book.

It's not like a Gisham page turner and you forget it. You got to go over this is a guide. I like it. Thank you. And if you want, I can download the transcript and then you can put that in touchd and you may give me the whole report and you got it all. Cool. Very nice. Yeah. All right. So, where else should we pivot? Yeah. Do you think there's a possibility that you could get any type of subscription revenue?

Does that make sense? Or do you think that's more subscription would be more like a poker school type of thing? Or what are the subscription products in the poker space? That's interesting. One thing I in a way I've always prided myself that what is my product on my site? It's my content and I've always given that away for free. And I do think that there is space like very specific very niche for some content to be firewalled by guest you got to subscribe to it hat

to poker industry pro. They're excellent at that. And those are like those are the numbers guys. Those are the data guys. They're always they know how to survey everything. They're really good. More specific to your question, I don't know. I'd have to give that a thought because I feel like I don't want to necessarily hide anything from my audience. Sometimes I'll build it up because something's coming.

Like those who have opted into the newsletter, they get a little bit more behind the scenes. I don't I will clarify this also for the audience. It's just me. It's a one-man business. I don't have employees. There's some freelancers I work with from time to time and they're great. as one individual there's only I have a certain capacity. So beyond what I'm already doing I don't know that I have additional capacity to create next level content specifically for that audience that would that would that would

subscribe. Even if I did I'm not certain that they'd be willing to pay for it. And this may be a little bit controversial because anything that's good enough someone will be willing to pay for. But I do think that think a couple steps back. The world at large is doing a lot of this subscription stuff. Anyone looks at their credit card bill, you've got your Netflix and your Spotify and all these things, there may be a little bit of subscription fatigue.

So unless you have a super strong brand that people in your niche are really into and you really got your tribe of, yeah, I want to know more. I want to be the first. I want to see what he's not publishing. I don't know if that's necessarily the route for you. I think I could get there like having 15 years of website presence, people know the site, people know me, the brand, etc.

I don't think I'm there at the moment, but perhaps a suggestion for the future as it's always just good to diversify potential revenue channels. So, this is one I've certainly never tapped yet, but there might be an opening there within a specific niche of the types of things that I cover. something maybe to do with the live events that I'm starting to that I've started hosting etc.

Yeah, it's just food for thought. Like I what I would do in your position is maybe it's worth just doing a bit of research going what are the poker newsletters out there? Not just okay, you don't want to go, okay, let me get 2,000 different newsletters. There might be that many, but try to get see if you can find a hundred and find which ones actually might have anything paid.

And if they are paid, then go, what is it behind it's paid? If it's meant for a p pro poker community, that's fine because we know in the sports betting space there's a lot of tips or services. Food for thought is if you're getting anything that has to do with players, first party data actually is stacking the value of your business. So if you were to do an exit and someone wanted to acquire card player lifestyle, they're not just looking for the emails.

Like the more first-party data you have, that's actually your digital asset. So just to give you an example, there are different types of feedback tools from affiliate programs. So if you actually add more affiliate marketing to give you an example, some of these sites like you must be familiar with rakeback. Some of them actually have the feedback mechanisms that go if you send the player, they'll actually give you the revenue report.

Now, for other programs that have dynamic variables, this is probably going to be a little technical, but the way it works is you're able to generate a unique click ID. Now, if you have all these players coming in one at a time, you can actually send them a unique ID that's unique just to them. So, what happens is when that player actually deposits, you have their deposit and revenue activity.

That means you can then say, "Hey, hey, Jason, I just noticed that you haven't been playing at Party Poker, but we have a really good deal at Poker Stars." Like, when you have that data, you basically become like the VIP player. Like, you're now like the concierge for all of your players. Other than sending the players and just relying on the operators to do all the work, you you now have the ability to actually affect the retention.

And if they don't retain them, you have the ability to send that same player to the next spot. uh first party data is going to be valuable. However you get it, it doesn't matter. But with subscriptions, you're basically getting deeper data. You're basically saying, look, if you're going to do a subscription and pay $29 a month, there's the name, there's the address, there's the email, and you might even get their phone number with it.

That's the way you say it is. That's reminding me of before I went solo and independent. I remember working for a company in the gaming eye gaming space and they were I believe they called them like a super affiliate or something like that and they had a number of different casino sites and I was brought into among other things assist with the I don't know what it's called like a cycle of emails that get sent out every few days build that out and one of the

thing pardon it's like a email trip or like the customer journey or I don't know something like that I don't know the exact buzz word cadence buzzwords Yeah, something like that. And I remember specifically they were like, "Okay, so like the fourth email or whatever it is, the third email, if we haven't heard from them, we want to offer them something different. Clearly, they're not interested in this site of ours, but this one is different.

We offer a different suite of games, more of a focus on, I don't know, video poker instead of slots games or something like that." will not it's not necessarily trying to get more money out of them, but it's trying to peique their interest because they're clearly interested still in the casino vertical, but not what this site offers. And what you're saying hits that mark of, okay, you're not finding this operator, brand, training site, whatever it may be.

Interesting. You might want to try this. Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah. Pivoting a little bit to the side, what does your social media presence look like in terms of your own personal accounts? Because people are brands just as much as they can be associated with yours which is card player lifestyle. You yourself are a brand. So do you have a lot of followers on like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn for example?

So the I decided again because of my I'm just being one person in limited capacity and frankly I don't know I'm 43 I'm not in my 20s. I don't necessarily need to go. It would be great ideally if I could also be there and there I can't be everywhere at once. So I said, I know what my personal capacity is. So I've chosen Twitter X, Facebook, and LinkedIn as my three platforms that I said, okay, I'm going to do these, but I'm going to do them

well. Just to go ahead and be on a platform for the sake of being there, you're not doing what you know you're supposed to be doing. I don't know. It's always relative, but I'd like to think that the following is pretty decent. Over 7,000 followers on X on Facebook. I don't know exactly because it's just my personal profile where I share personal stuff as well. But I know that beyond my whatever x,000 2,000 friends, there's also people who follow.

It's very interesting actually. And I for sure know that this comes from what I do in poker. If I get a friend request from someone, I'm like, I've never I don't know who this is. It's not family. It's not friends from here in Israel where I live or anything. They must have seen my poker work. Now, I'm not always going to accept it as a friend, but okay, they're a follower.

they can see that sort of a thing. That's on Facebook. And what I also do, frankly, to just get further out is groups. There's a lot of like poker groups. And I don't just push out look like here's the next article, here's the next article. I do engage genuinely. People seeing me commenting and asking questions and it it is interesting. I love poker. So about whatever someone else posts, oh okay, he's a real person and when he will post something, we'll engage with him.

Let's see what else he is doing. So that happens. And LinkedIn is a different platform. I put stuff there that I wouldn't put on my other platforms, more businessoriented, a little bit more behind the scenes. I don't know my exact count, but I know it's 500 plus of connection. And at least when I put something out recently that certainly seemed to resonate beyond poker, you beyond the gaming industry together with a video oped article that I wrote, it got a good amount of attention and I

think it even got your attention. Not invisible. invisible. At least we remember now. No links in the posts unless it's in the comments. Yes. In the guest. Yes. But are you doing a lot of video content as well on those three channels? Not as much as I should. It's the kind of thing of I know old habits die hard thing. And I don't I'm a little bit of a perfectionist.

Just being honest as well. If I'm putting it out there, I want it to be perfect. He's a little behind the scenes. That video that you saw, I took five or six takes of it because I don't know how to do video editing. I don't know how to do displays and the Chiron. I don't know how to do that stuff and not pay. I don't know. And I know I could learn.

It's just there's a lot to juggle when you're a oneman show. So, could I do more? Yes. Should I do more? Yes. Will I do more? Yes. But it's just difficult to pivot out of juggling all the plates I'm currently juggling again to kind of focus on it and do it well. So, it it does need to be an additional spice added into the recipe, but that's where I'm currently at.

Yeah, I would say definitely spend a bit more time thinking about video because the younger generation, the way they use the concept of search and discovering is it's not just I think video is like two parts of search. One is random discovery. I'm just scrolling Instagram and then boom, something I'm probably interested in will show up. The second part is actually Tik Tok's been well known for this.

It's you want to look for like best poker sites or best restaurants in a city. It's like people are looking for the video version of that. Yeah. And what I've heard from a lot of people non-stop for two years straight from almost all the SEO guests I talked to, it's like video content is just dominating everything. It dominates their conversions. Sometimes it just punches through. Sometimes they even tell me that they've got a video that gets like a hundred views, but they're like, I got two

sales out of those 100 views. You don't see what's behind the scenes. Yeah. I I'll also say one other thing like you're as you're saying it it's making me think one of the obstacles that the reason I haven't done it I want it to be great. There is a subniche of vloggers in the poker sphere and they're excellent. all the video editing skills. They'll go to a casino and record their poker session, talk about it, talk in depth strategy, and I'm like, I'm not that.

But I could take like all the stuff that I do have going for me, 15 years of media experience, knowing that I am the brand, etc. And even if it's not poker vlog, even if it's not thousands of views, but if it's consistently in the upper high hundreds, that's still something. That's still again part of the tribe. So not I it's still worthwhile to pursue that. I agree with you and even my own not in my 20s, but I'll also scroll a lot of video.

I know how much screen time I watch even without a TV in my house. Yeah. And just food for thought, I think you're right that you don't want to copy what other people are doing. So I think it's really good to have a video identity if you're going to go down the video rabbit hole. And something that I've thought about from my own personal experience, I'm going, okay, how do I share this experience where it might actually benefit you quite a bit?

I think there's actually not enough discussion in the poker industry itself. Like there the players actually have a very strong interest in what happens behind the scenes. When people hear the story about the poker stars founder, people they really dig into that because yeah, for quite some time that was like a mystery. Who is this person? It's like we know why. But when you think about what's happening in the poker tech space, like I do know some of these people that are building software that some

of them are cryptofocused. I think if you actually capture that audience, your videos might have a duality. You will capture the B2B side which actually has a positive spin-off to be who are the software providers like even BET might actually want to be a sponsor of you guys because they know that eventually their products are eventually going to trickle down to the players and at the same time I think the players once they understand like why do developers and the builders and these entrepreneurs why are

they building something different or what's around the corner? I think people are always wanting that. And I think if you were to produce this content, you'd get the casual poker player and you would definitely get the pro. You definitely get like Phil Ivy's attention and Dan on the Grand News where they're think about it this way. These guys are wanting to always be on the poker business side.

Okay? So they if they want to be on the poker business side, it's like they probably know some of the people there, but if you're the one who's being the curator of that content, you're going to c capture that attention. And I will put the rink over there just for anyone's big poker fan out there. I don't know. That's the A+. That's the Mount Rushmore guys. One level below that of a solid pros and millionaire bracelet winners.

I'll take them too. Even if the A+es have bigger fish that they're at the Yeah. At the end of the day, some of those players, they still have bank rolls and they have personality and they've got everything. So there's definitely another layer of the business, which is like the investment space. Funny, we're just talking about that where we're doing a fundraising round. So if there there is big money happening behind the scenes and when you start learning about what is actually transpiring or who are the

actual the poker not poker affiliate startups as well as the poker operator startups or the poker software startups. It's like that content you could cover all day long. Yeah. And again that's just the kind of thing like my wheels are spinning as we're talking about this. It's always good to have these sorts of conversations. conversations. I'm almost like realizing as you're saying it, you know, that grand extension into video of what I already amite is not first and foremost a video site and I don't think

it's going to be one. It's a written content site. But I can't help but think that that article, that oped that I published, I do believe that the fact that I recorded a video and put that video out there with, "Hey guys, I did this article that really gave it a boost. It's probably one of my top three articles visited this year. And I can't know for sure, but I'm reasonably certain that the fact that I also did a two-minute and obviously it was real and

passionate, etc. I don't know if I could do it every time, but at least once in a while to add a little, hey guys, we just published this article, even if it's not me, but some one of the writers that adds something to authenticity and what the brand is about and maybe catches those new eyeballs. So, that's a really good idea. that's and frankly relatively easy to to execute on.

Okay, let's zero in on content because I've got a few notes here. So, it's what I think the new Google and social media today in terms of the world of search is. I think if you're just publishing content that's already been talked about previously, it it's stale because anyone can produce it. AI is producing all the time and you don't really want something where AI is just basically recycling your knowledge and basically giving it as an AI overview where the user doesn't click.

You're like building a brand. So I think content needs to do a couple different things. One is when you start going on the media side when you do these interviews and podcast you start capturing knowledge that's not really out there. So when you start to convert that the video recorded stuff into trans transcriptions, you basically are producing content that's not been produced anywhere that shows up in the AI overviews and that's what other websites will start to reference.

The second part which is what I mentioned before about the survey Google's like super hungry for unique data and insights and the second you have it is you're now relevant. You're now relevant for Google. You're no longer just another content site. I think your content needs to kind of level up in I'm going to say maybe three angles. One is when you do the interviews, you're generating that content.

The second I think is if you think about trying to build like a product where the survey where you're getting unique data, okay, that's great. If you can if you build another app or something, I'm not saying let's distract you on the side with another project, but if you build something where it's I think you did a note poker note app, imagine if you just published the data behind it.

Was it successful or was it okay? as you start doing these experiments, you come up with data. The entire industry in Google is hungry for unique data sets. If you can find ways of getting data, you will get there. And then the third is when I look at sites that have success that are actually they're pushing through. They're not flatlining. They're still going up while other sites are going down.

I'm going to use an example of an affiliate that was just acquired recently by Northstar Network. I think it's called Bajoko. B Oj Ko.com. They do amazing content. I'm surprised that people don't copy them all day long because I think they're just trying to push the envelope of like new ideas. So, one example I I saw of an article they did was they covered the last 20 to 25 years of M&A transactions in i gaming.

I think it was in the affiliate space. That has my attention because you know what I am. It's like this is important for me. Any any gambling affiliate, they're going to that's going to be interesting. Now, is this interesting for players? The answer is on paper it no, but what when it gets attention it doesn't matter because think about it from another point of view. When other people are mentioning this or someone mentions that in Reddit and a random player who's a casino player first, not

the industry side, they read it, you've got their attention. You now got their links. Poka's building a brand. When you start asking Google questions, it's like sometimes your answers actually become part of the knowledge base and you also have a link there as a citation saying who's the source behind this. When you do this, it's like taking journalism to a better level. It's this is what we should have been aspiring to.

Now, in the past, Google's been rewarding us or they've been training us in a bad way. They've been training us to write like ordinary content. Sure, all the sites that actually did the highle journalism type of content, they were always rewarded. Now it seems like they're the only ones being rewarded and they're the ones like laughing going, "Ha, this is even more amazing because we're getting more of the traffic while other people are suffering." Yeah, agreed on all counts.

And I can tell you again one little thing that I've always done and I will continue maintaining just about the uniqueness of it and not being like everyone else. I'll almost never just regurgitate a press release. And my god, like 15 years of receiving press releases to my emails and I understand their purpose and I know it's important. I'm not going to crap all over the PR field.

I understand its importance. But what I will say is I'm I'm never going to just regurgitate it because no matter what, however good I do, there are the bigger players in the market, the poker news, the poker.org, who will always get the clicks first, even if I'm first to publish or whatever or instantly. So I always if I'm going to publish anything about it, I look at the press release.

I'll read it. I was like, is there some sort of a unique angle here where I'll get the PR's purpose across of okay, we'll tell my audience about it, but in a very different kind of way or a different aspect of it. And that I believe again is something that humans my audience appreciates. And hopefully as you say, Google and the search functionalities online. Yeah. Let's pivot back to podcasting because you told me that you've done podcasting for what like 10 years or how many podcasts

were you managing? I did. So I was I never managed anything. I was always in the content side. I still can't edit an audio file. Four podcasts that I either hosted or co-hosted over a period of almost a day. Okay. Because me and food never my own though. Yeah. Never the there was never a card player lifestyle podcast. It was always for other brands and just as a means of d two reasons no three I loved it was diversifying a little bit getting paid for other

work that I was doing and frankly because I know that I wasn't doing my own multimedia stuff it was a way for me to get either my voice or my face or both out there in the poker sphere with the different brands which has helped your personal brand so even if the shove if you needed a poker or eye gaming job tomorrow it's like you've got like the best profile for it.

I hope that I don't need that job, but I do hope that if I did, you're correct. It's very kind. It'd be paying well, but let's think more in the positive future of, you know, what you could do. So, what what's stopping you from doing another podcast? Is it more the production side or what do you think? 100%. That's exactly what it is. I even remember have this actually led to doing a podcast primarily during the COVID era and I was thinking, oh, it's a good

time to get into audio, video, that sort of a thing. And I have a couple of buddies who kind of saw I did another one of those vulnerable LinkedIn post of I want to do something but I don't have what I the skills required and they're like we have a recording studio. So we came up with this idea for a roundt podcast. Still no one's it hasn't been replicated yet of just multiple guests at the same time but it was like catching lightning in a bot.

like we ended it because all of a sudden world got busy again and it wasn't that people were available across seven different time zones at the same time. So for co it was a great kind of turnkey thing that the three of us worked on together. Back to your question more specifically yeah it is the production aspect but there is one other wrinkle again it's like the podcast space in poker is flooded.

I certainly think that as the brand owner or content producer, there's a lot of positives, but there's I don't believe any sort of money. And not that I need to chase every single penny or anything, but if I'm going to do it, it's not okay, I'm going to produce 6, 10, 20 episodes. I know I'm going to want to do this for at least two years, absolute minimum of doing something like that and getting all those other boxes ticked.

And then maybe money comes, maybe money doesn't. But you need to be unique and I'm not a expert in poker strategy. There's lots of different niches with I posted four of them myself and we cover different sorts of niches and subtopics. So I would need to come upon a unique idea and you're like okay that's interesting and I will also say there's all just TV used to be okay these longunning series there's also room for a limited series.

So if there like you have the what's the F1 the drive to succeed I forget what it was called thing on Netflix or whatever it was but it's a limited series X number of episodes that it specifically covers this one thing and then okay you move on to the next project there's room for that if I come upon it then we'll see if I could find some production help.

Yeah, I think it'd be worth looking into because let's pretend like this is a possibility like as your site goes up and down, especially when it can start growing. This at the end of the day, this is a digital asset. I think if you have the digital assets that the bigger companies are looking for, I can tell you without a doubt, the podcast and the video work is something they are all doing.

I've seen it where sites have been acquired and it's like one of the first things they've done was they literally started building a studio. Now, you don't need a natural studio. verbal chatting and ways to follow. Yeah, it's not a big deal. But it's I think what you can get out of it is you get link building, you get followers. Again, followers is a really strong metric because I think the thing that when you when everyone's relying on Google, if you have Google where the user

comes to the site and they click on a link and they disappear or they bought something and then they're gone, you've not captured them. Like the only thing that you've done as a capturing is if it's the second or third time they've done it, at least they're going to remember the name of the logo. But if they have a chance to forget it, then that's not good.

So all the other channels, they actually start adding up. So when you've got your 7,000 followers on X, that's an asset checkbox. If you can actually get it on Spotify, we never know when Spotify, the article itself is actually going to rank for a piece of content. And what's beautiful about when we do this is I throw up our recordings on YouTube. It's like I now have a chance to rank on YouTube.

We're slowly collecting a follower base there. It's digital assets. Basically, if I were to say, "Okay, let's pretend I was going to acquire your site. What are the things that I would do in the order for going, "Okay, we're now going to crank the value and just step on the gas." Probably we'd do that mostly because it's I've learned how to do this. I see the value in it.

And my job is paying attention to what other sites are doing, especially the biggest companies. Just to give you a couple examples, there's like Better Collective. They're super huge into digital media covers.com. They also got their own podcast station. Obviously, they're sports. So sports is media and just look at the poker space. It's revived with a lot of these. I forgot all the names of the shows, but the shows I think are bringing a buzz to it.

100%. Yeah. Game of gold and then there's the big game on tour. Yeah. They came back into production. Yeah. But maybe if you want I can give you a quick tutorial about how I put together this podcast and I do it in uh I think I can do it in record time. the tools that are now available today, they've just become so so much easier and very soon I'm probably gonna actually offload this to a virtual system.

But it's never been easier. If I show you my entire setup, you'd be like, "You're kidding me." But yeah, back to other people, they spend hours putting together their show. I can put this together if I really need to say, "Okay, I need this out because I'm super busy. If I want, I can get this done in 20 minutes." That's incredible. Wow. Okay. Interesting. So, it's all about kind of the organization, having a structure, the right tools.

I use dscript, I use cap cut. It's just it's too easy. And then we're we are recording on reream.io. That's doing the heavy lifting. I just like record, save the file, put it over to dcript. I basically use studio sound to clean it. I take out the ums and a's, which that's going to now be deleted. And then yeah, it's just And then what I do is I take a one minute insight.

I'm like, what is the thing that we talked about that was really cool? If I can't figure that out, I actually just download the transcript, put in chat chatbt. I say, "Give me the top three insights that I could record that's going to be a minute long." And then it just gives me the answer. And then I go find it and do the script. Highlight it, right click, new composition, download.

I take that on the Cap Cut, drop, and then export. I'm done. It's so funny like the way you're describing it. It's Yeah, it does sound really simple. I think one of my I hope I don't have too many but one of my Achilles has always been a little bit of fear of the new of technology that sort of a thing but it's the kind of thing of if and when once you do finally get over that hump then sure it's easy it's road like like

driving so hopefully I'll manage to get over that fear all right I'm going to throw you on the spot and pass it back to you what would you ask me what questions are on your mind anything else I can help with I don't have a particular question but perhaps you can reflect on something I would like to share with the audience of like when I like you we've been in touch all the time for years everything but this specific episode came about after you saw something

that I wrote and made a video and I want to give a little bit of the context for that I feel like I was taking a very big risk by putting it out there because I'm not telling the world hey Robbiey's ship is sinking I did put group myself again I was saying like we we talk in the card player lifestyle things I need to work on, but I do think that there's algorithmic chaos that's causing stormy seas for a lot of people.

So, I was able to latch on to that, but nonetheless put the word out and that could potentially backfire and I was worried about that. And I even asked my wife and I was like, do should I go through with this? and she's a year ago I would have told you no but it's been a year and a half and you've been fighting this and yeah I think it's okay to put out I don't want lack of a better phrase a distress signal but because it's

coming from a very authentic place of hey I've been trying and so that's the context of that and I want to just say someone once told me a good friend of mine Lee Davey credit to him he's Robbie there is strength in vulnerability and since putting that message out there very authentic very message. The feedback has been universally without any exception, supportive and encouraging and positive. Folks such as yourself have reached out to me, whether it's public comments of, "Yeah, you tell them like they they've

been afraid to say it themselves," or offering, "Hey, you want to put on the show? I'll give you a little coaching." Or, "Hey, Robbie, you've done a lot for the poker community. This is my expertise. let me take care of a couple things for you if you don't mind me looking under the hood. Amazing things that I never would have thought. You don't even realize how big your network is sometimes.

Again, it's a unique set of circumstances, but I'll just encourage folks of don't be afraid to be vulnerable if there's something very real and authentic there because there really is strength and good things could potentially happen. So, that's not a question, not directly. Me having said that, you know, from your position is, have you seen this sort of thing happen before and any reflections on that? My person perfect example is I get to ask dumb questions all the time to my guests who are like way

better at SEO and in some cases marketing in just different angles. My skills and experience they gain when I'm not afraid to ask those questions. So, if I didn't ask those, it's I can't I would be horrified knowing what I know now that if I didn't ask those dumb questions and didn't get out there. One, I'm creating content for other people, but look, I don't know everything.

I know a lot, but my job is to, if I've got this opportunity to ask some of the best people in SEO and marketing, I'm taking advantage of this for me. Think about it. It's Phil Ivy. You could go on what are those sites? I forget the name of it where it's like Cameo. You can pay him for his time and he'll say something or you can go on other ones where you can actually pay for their consulting.

Like they actually have words, you've got like a I'm forgetting the name of that site as well. can actually do that. But I've actually been on both sites where it's one where I paid and another one where it's like that same person. It's like I have on the podcast. I'm like, this is a free-for-all. I'm asking for me first, audience second, which is still audience first. And it's I feel like wow.

I'm like, if this was a one-on-one in private, I would have been paying $1,000 for these recordings, right? Yeah. Definitely. I agree with that. I've long held that like the dumbest questions are the ones you don't ask. Yeah, it's it don't be afraid to look dumb or whatever it may be because you'll always gain something from it. And I'll also further say having hosted podcasts for 10 years.

Again, this was never the strategy. This was never the goal. A byproduct, it's a networking superpower. the number of people that you meet along the way, whatever it is that they do, and if it's in the same industry, the industry is small enough that you never know if that person you interviewed or spoke with X years ago is now in a position with a company that you want to work with and there's your in right there.

It's really great to speak with people, especially folks like us who work from our home offices. Also good to have some company. Yeah. And then speaking of dumb and tough questions, I'm going to pass back one more time. What do you see of the future of affiliate marketing as it intersects with business intelligence? So that's interesting. Now that now that I know what business intelligence is, you were kindly to I don't know if I know either.

know either. So there was I'll hearken back to something that I remember you the first time it happened. There was almost like a conflict of interest, so to speak. I was still an employee and I have a degree in English linguistics. I'm a storyteller. I love poker. That's just I'm more artistic, right? The scientific side, the flip side of that coin is the SEO, the data driven, all that other kind of stuff.

And for a long time, I always felt that and to a degree there, there just is a natural conflict between the two. I'm still of the belief that it has to originate whatever the content may be, the messaging may be, it has to originate from the artistic side, from the creative, from the expressive. I I cannot subscribe and maybe this is swimming against the current. I can't subscribe to Okay, let's cram for this test by examining what are the keywords that people are looking for and

then go ahead and create content around that. Now that could work, but for me as like the artist that whatever leftrain or rightrain sort of person, it's always okay, what am I interested in? We can gauge maybe through Twitter, what is the community talking about? But if I'm not interested in it, it's not going to be great content. I have to be personally vested in the curiosity of what do I want to find out?

What do I want to tell the audience? What's behind the scenes? Once you have that, then yes, that there's that marriage that works. utilize the data, the SEO, collect that data, but about something you're passionate about. So, what's the future of it? I hope it follows that pattern. And then, frankly, just that scientific side is getting better and better. The AI, the chat, PPTs, all that stuff that you can use to help you make it faster, more sharp.

But that human element, that creativity, that artistry, I hope it always leads the way. And then it can be supplemented complemented by the the BI, right? The BI side of the which just to summarize that when you have good data or interesting data, you can start telling more stories. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Awesome. Robbie, I've got more notes and things that we could talk about, but we've got lots of chance to chat oneonone.

So, always here to help. Want to just pass it back. How can people get get a hold of you? Thanks. Thanks for having me on, and I hope anyone who tuned into this gained something out of it. I appreciate the opportunity to get coached and then speak this through because it's gotten my wheels spinning and I will one message is if someone offers you to be on a podcast, grab that opportunity.

Always make it happen. Never ever say no. Ever. You can find me at cardplayer life on X on Twitter and just look for my name. It's spelled at the bottom there. Robbie Strazinski. I'm on Facebook and on LinkedIn as well. Yeah, I can say the name. I just I'm not always good always good at Thanks a lot, Jud. All right. Thank you. Thank you for tuning in to the AffiliateBI podcast.

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