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On the 27th of March, 2010, I received an email from a guy named Billy Murphy, who basically just wanted to say that he really liked ViperChill and the content I was posting. Three days later I was at a friends house and he got to talking about some of the membership sites he uses for training. Since he’s a professional poker player the site in question was indeed a poker site, named BlueFirePoker. The name sounded very familiar, and after a quick check on my phone, I realised it was the site Billy owned.
Fast-forward to two weeks ago, and Billy let me in on some of the sites details, and also let me know about a new site he’s starting up. I jumped at the chance to ask him some questions, but with his claim of making $100,000 in one week, I was slightly worried the interview wouldn’t be good enough to post. After all, I assumed a huge amount of money must have been spent in order for that to happen, and it’s not exactly something all ViperChill readers can replicate. How wrong I was.
I like to see myself as someone who thinks a little outside of the box, but some of Billy’s answers really had me scribbling down notes and ideas for my own projects. This is a long interview, but I don’t think you’re going to read anything better in the IM space today. This man is very, very smart. You’ll see..
The first thing I guess everyone will want to know is, how did you get so much traffic to a new website, so quickly? How can other people try to achieve similar results?
Great question. In short, value.
The number one thing people fail to realize is you don’t need a lot of internet marketing gimmicks if you truly offer a great product or service. The goal with BlueFirePoker has always been to offer the highest quality poker training videos on the market. We launched with a very small team of pros, but each pro was an extremely good player, and extremely good coach. So, people knew who they were when we launched, and knew they could learn a lot from them.
There was no pre-launch marketing, there were no affiliates, no email lists, no PPC campaigns… nothing.
I spent $0 on marketing, and our first day we received 8,853 hits (and the launch didn’t happen until later in the morning, so this was probably only the first 12-13 hours or so).
How?
We offered more value than anything else that was out there. So, the value of the product worked as its own marketing. People spread the word like crazy because they knew it was something that could help them, and help others.
These are players that you can’t get access to for one on one coaching. They either won’t do it because they spend most of their time playing, or it’s too expensive for players. The players can get coaching by watching videos from our players for a sign up fee ($100), and $30/month. If they were trying to get one on one coaching, it might cost them several hundred dollars per hour, if not over $1,000/hr depending on the player.
For a poker player looking to make more money, paying the substantially lower price for videos is a no brainer. That’s why the product basically markets itself. Because it’s the craziest value ever. Learn from some of the best poker players in the world, for $30/month.
So as soon as the launch happened, people started talking about it. I went out of my way to not say anything about what we were doing before the launch, and asked all of our pros to do the same. This goes against all the internet marketing rules, and I’m not sure if it was optimal. However, because no one heard about it, I think it caused some excitement in the poker community the day of, that might not have happened to the same affect if everyone already knew it was coming out. I think sometimes pre-marketing can take some things away from a launch. By the time it launches, the excitement people had could have died down quite a bit. Sometimes products people were interested in finally come out, and you have to re-sell them to get them excited about it. When we launched, it was more like, “Wait, what!? Holy shit these guys are training people to play!???” Followed by a massive amount of signups.
Besides the word of mouth marketing, a lot of my focus was on viral marketing. One of the things that helped us a lot was a challenge I proposed to President Obama shortly after launch. There was a lot of politics/debate going on about whether poker should be regulated, or whether it should be outlawed. The main argument was around whether poker was a game of luck, or a game of skill.
Amazingly there’s a lot of people who don’t understand that poker is a huge skill game. There’s plenty of short term luck in poker, but in the long run, the good players win the money. The only people who think it’s luck are the people who lose, and don’t understand why they’re losing.
I wanted to help bring attention to the situation. So I offered the President $1,000,000 to play against one of our pros. If he could beat them, the money would go to any charity he wanted. If he lost, he owed us $1. I also extended the offer to any member of Congress. The goal being, to show that it was obviously a game of skill. If not, people would have gladly accepted a 50/50 chance at a million bucks. I got a couple calls from representatives of people in Congress about the possibility of setting up a match, but ultimately nothing happened. I didn’t expect it to, because they were never going to beat our pros.
Fox News aired the story, and that really helped give us a lot of buzz…
After that, everyone was talking about us again. It helped to create a second wave of publicity for us. We had just launched. and now all of the sudden we were on national news, fighting to bring attention to issues that if addressed, could help the poker community a lot. The community really got behind us and saw we were going to be making a lot of noise in the industry.
Because people were enjoying the service so much, all of the marketing kept compounding. It’d be substantially different if we were offering a mediocre product and I was generating publicity just to try and get some quick traffic to the site. That wasn’t the case, so the immediate benefits I’d bring in from viral marketing, also brought a lot of long term benefits. All of the people using the service who heard about us through the promotion, realized the service was good and they kept spreading the word.
Why aren’t others achieving the same results?
Here’s how I would launch a business if I wanted to be like most internet marketers:
Step 1: Offer a shitty product
Step 2: Spam the shit out of everyone I know
Step 3: Contact other spammers to see if they will spam the shit out of everyone they know too so we can both make more money
Step 4: Work on sales pages, PPC, and other shit that is irrelevant long term if you have a shitty product
Step 5: Launch, capture as many sales as possible
Step 6: Watch the traffic die, and close the business down
Step 7: Find a new shitty product to promote, and repeat
Here is how I launch a product:
Step 1: Figure out a way to create ridiculous value in whatever space I’m going into, and offer that
Step 2: Launch, and get people talking about how great your product is
Step 3: Launch viral marketing campaign to continue the growth of your reach, which also multiples the word of mouth marketing
The difference is, my ‘step 1′ might take months. BlueFirePoker actually took probably closer to a year to launch. The first few months I was putting together a team of pros I wanted to have on board. Then, getting our website done took 9 months (yes, seriously… be wary of companies despite their ratings on Elance 
).
Someone else’s ‘step 1′ might take 5 minutes. That’s where the difference comes in. They’re focusing on the wrong variables of what’s going to make their business succeed. They’re actually working on the exact opposite of what they should be working on. They spend all of their time convincing people they need to buy their shit, rather than creating a product that no one would need convincing to buy.
So, in much shorter words… put out shit that’s so good people have to buy it. Let people do most of your marketing for you. Then accelerate everything with viral marketing.
Some people assume it’s just luck. It’s not just BlueFirePoker I’ve done this with. For a recent example, I’m using the same approach with Forever Jobless and have gone from ‘guy no one knew’ to extremely fast blog growth with over 500 subscribers in just over a week. It’s not an accident.
If you put all your time around creating something nothing else on the market can match, that IS your marketing. It’s going to be almost all the marketing you need.
Were you a poker fan before launching the site or were you well versed in marketing and decided to enter the poker niche?
I played poker professionally for 3-4 years before I decided to start the poker business. I was tired of playing poker, and wanted a new challenge. That was my first internet business but I had done other small businesses/investments before. I had studied business/marketing for years, and had always been very entrepreneurial minded, but had never done an online business.
$100,000 for your first week is obviously a fantastic result. How did earnings continue to play out? Is the income from the website stable or does it fluctuate a lot…
That was our biggest week ever. We’ve had some other spikes after some of the viral marketing promotions I’ve done, but that was by far our biggest week. Earnings have been good. It’s unlike a lot of the ‘internet marketer’ businesses where they have a big launch, make a bunch of money and then sales fall off a cliff. We’ve had consistent sales the whole time we’ve been in business. I don’t think we’ll ever have a week like we did that first week again though. Overall it’s been relatively stable, although in the last year or two it’s declined because the whole poker economy is in a pretty crappy state right now.
How are the laws regarding the restrictions of US players online affecting your business?
A lot. Basically, a lot of the sites that served US players have stopped allowing US players to play, or have shut down. So, it’s much harder for a lot of people to be able to play. Therefore, a lot of people who were playing poker a lot have moved on to other things, and don’t have the need for poker training anymore.
We cater to a lot of professional poker players, or semi-pro players, so a lot of our subscribers who lived in the US have either moved on to a different line of work, or moved out of the country.
Roughly 1/3rd of our members were from the US, so we took a big hit once the government started getting involved.
How much money did you invest to get the site up and running to its current state?
I put $16,000 into the initial website. I hired a company from India, so if the site had been built here the same way it would have been about 3-4x as much. Although looking back, obviously the opportunity cost of taking so long to launch was a substantial amount of money lost.
I think you can get it built for much cheaper with all the different out of the box solutions out there now. They started working on it in 2008, and there weren’t as many good options. There were some, but they either didn’t have it how I wanted it, or I didn’t know of them.
Which countries do the majority of your user base come from?
We get a huge mix from all over. US is still the number 1 traffic source for us by a large margin even with all of the hurdles for US players.
To give you an idea of how diversified our traffic is: 23 different countries account for at least 1% of our traffic.
The UK, Canada, Germany and France are some of the big ones besides the US.
We talked a few years ago when a friend – who I’ve personally witness make close to $1m from online poker – said your website was the best resource for training videos. The field for membership sites are extremely competitive, especially in poker, so how did you help differentiate your site from the competition?
Quality over quantity. There were a lot of poker training sites out in 2009. There wasn’t one of them specializing in very high quality content. The sites were signing well known players, and would barely have them release any videos. So, their members would sign up to watch these guys, and rarely get to see any of their content. It was easy to see that who people were signing up for, and what the sites were delivering were two totally different things.
Wherever you have people complaining about something, it probably means there’s a gap somewhere in the market. The gap was quality.
I wanted to specialize when we started out, so I put together a very small team of 5-6 pros, who only played one form of poker — cash games. The guys were all extremely high quality players and teachers in their games, and I knew if we launched with the team we had, we would instantly have by far the best cash game training team out of any of the competitors on the market.
I was less focused on having our guys put out a massive amount of videos, and more on them putting out incredibly helpful videos.
So, while our competitors often had 30-50 pros, sometimes more, we only had 5 for a long time, and focused on just making sure our content was better than anyone else.
People wanted extremely high quality videos, and weren’t getting them to the degree they wanted. So, we offered it.
As time went on, we expanded towards other games such as multi-table tournaments, and sit and go’s, which are single table tournaments. We’ve tried to offer the highest quality content in whichever games we’ve expanded to.
That’s been the main way we’ve differentiated from the rest of the market. Quality.
What is one thing most aspiring entrepreneurs are doing wrong that is holding them back?
They view risk incorrectly. They make all of their decisions based on trying not to lose – which is often the suboptimal strategy if your goal is to win. For example, instead of creating a monster business that will help them achieve their goals, they try to create little mini sites so they don’t risk anything.
If they have big goals, they guarantee themselves NOT to hit their goals, because they’re so emotionally caught up in not taking risks. The “risks” are actually less risky for them but because of the emotional response most people have to decision making, they often fail to realize this. Their emotions tell them to fear the downside, as opposed to listening to their logic which would tell them to also factor in the upside.
If they take the “risk” and succeed, they can accomplish a big goal. If they don’t, they may avoid “risk” in their mind, but they also avoid any chance of real success. Avoiding a road that could lead to success, just to avoid risk, is how most people make their decisions.
That’s a lot riskier in my opinion.
You’ve just launched a blog — http://foreverjobless.com/ — how did that come about? Do you have plans to enter other industries with membership sites based on the success you’ve had?
I wouldn’t mind doing a membership site again at some point. I like the membership model, because if done right it can be extremely good for your business, and your customers. For your customers, they don’t have to keep looking for new things that they want/need each month, they’ll already have it. For you and your business, you don’t have to re-sell people each month. They’re already there, and already paying you every month, so sales stay very consistent each month as long as your offering is good. It’s also substantially more passive than other businesses, assuming you’re doing it right.
There’s one niche in particular I’ve thought a lot about going into for a membership site, but haven’t gotten inspired enough to make the time commitment it would take yet.
In the long term, I will probably get involved in another membership site, because I like the model. There are definitely a lot of markets that have unfulfilled needs, that a membership site would work perfect for right now. They’re either not being offered, or they’re being offered, but offering a low quality product. If someone reading this wants to fill one of these markets, just spend a crazy amount of time doing whatever you have to do to put out the best service or product that could possibly be offered. If you do that, it will make it very hard for you to not be successful.
We are actually in the process of experimenting with a subscription-based business with one of our e-commerce stores. We just ran a little test the other day to see if there was interest, and we had some people sign up. So, we’ll do a beta launch and see how it goes. If it’s something we think we can grow into something a lot bigger, we’ll put more of our focus around that than the one-off sale side of the business for that store.
I’ve got my plate pretty full though. Along with BlueFirePoker, I also run a large number of niche e-commerce stores, along with now blogging at Forever Jobless. Right now I’d like to dedicate a decent amount of time to Forever Jobless. I’m really passionate about it.
As to the first part of the question, I started Forever Jobless because I felt there was a huge need in the ‘make money’ blog space –The fact that almost none of the ‘make money’ bloggers know how to make money — That’s a pretty glaring hole in the market.
Most people who know how to make money, don’t blog. Most people who blog, don’t know how to make money.
There’s a few exceptions, but for the most part, people are just regurgitating what they read. Then, they’re selling products to people. The only people that buy from them are people who aren’t aware they’re not learning from someone who knows how to make money. So, all of the people who don’t know any better are learning from people who don’t know how to make money, and then the process is being repeated. Those people are then starting up blogs, regurgitating what they’ve heard, and selling that information. So, there’s just a bunch of people out there who don’t know how to make money making a living teaching people how to make money. Pretty mind boggling.
ViperChill and Forever Jobless might be the only blogs in the ‘make money’ space without a bunch of banners all over the site trying to sell shit.
Why?
We don’t need to make a dime on the blogs to make a living. Most bloggers do.
That’s the flaw in the market.
There’s obviously nothing wrong with people selling things on their blogs. However, a lot of them NEED people to buy their shit to survive. That’s a flawed model if they’re teaching people how to make money, and if people don’t buy the stuff on their blog, they’re broke.
My motivations are different than most ‘make money’ bloggers. I enjoy helping people learn how to make money. It’s extremely fulfilling to have someone say that you’ve had some influence in helping them succeed. So far that’s been limited to a small number of people. I’d like to change that. Also, I’m doing it because I enjoy meeting other entrepreneurs, and it’s probably one of the most efficient ways to meet a huge number of entrepreneurs in a short amount of time. If people see the things you’re doing, and think it’s interesting, they’ll reach out. Without sharing what we’re doing, a lot of those people would never know who we are, and we’d never connect with them.
A lot of people are providing products or services because they want to make money off of them, not because they’re offering something of value. That’s where most people get things confused. Don’t go into blogging, or business, or anything else unless you plan to add value for people. If the reason you’re getting into something is just to try and make money, you’re doing it wrong. If instead, you’re getting into something because you think it can add value to people, you don’t have to worry about trying to make money with it, it will come because it’s something people need/want.
You didn’t launch OptinSkin because you heard other people were making money with plug ins and you wanted to too. You did it because you saw a gap in the market where you could add value. As a result of you adding a ton of value to the market, I’m sure that a lot of people bought it, and it brought you a good amount of money. I use OptiSkin on ForeverJobless.
Why?
Because it adds value to something I’m doing.
That’s how successful entrepreneurs go about things. They focus on what other people want, not what they want. Funny thing is when you focus on what other people want, you get what you want too.
Making money is an easy game if you do it the right way.
I just wanted to personally thank Billy for the awesome value he provided here, and have no doubt he’ll be sharing a lot more of it on his new site, Forever Jobless. I’m sure he’ll be checking out the comments here so feel free to ask some questions if you have any, and I hope you enjoyed the post!
P.S. No more 3 month gaps in posting. The next one is on Thursday 
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I love stories like this, thanks Glen!
I thought the Fox news stuff was genius. Thanks Chris!
Appreciate the comment
Yes indeed, and that coverage must have boomed the website along.
I do quite a bit of SEO and inbound marketing in the casino industry, so it’s always interesting to see that people are still pushing the industry in the digital landscape without too much concern around all the laws and legalities that are fluctuating at such a pace.
Definitely didn’t hurt Chris
Fwiw, there’s no legalities around the training of poker at all.
Wow. That was really an awesome story.
I guess they have used their mind to just played it big.
When i read the title, I thought they did it with PPC but they have done a great work.
Thank you for these kinds of awesome stories.
good to see you back!
Good to be back, Jo!
Next post is on Thursday in case you missed the P.S.
This is the way to do it ! Awesome and as you said making money is an easy game if you do it the right way.
Seen your Bloody pics of jeans and bed sheet- what happened?
Hope you are doing good.
Hah. Crashed my bike…had to get a few stitches in hospital. Nothing too seriously thankfully.
Thanks for checking in! Still have some scarring, but no pain
We missed your posts, but you came with a post that shock us
I was waiting for your posts Glen.
Please publish more and more
Regards,
Ahmed Safwan
Thursday
Thanks for staying connected!
I hope to see you post more and more.
I am eager to see what is in your brian.
Thanks glen for this great post
Totally agree – everything starts with a kick-ass product. Being a marketer I’d never say you don’t need to market your products – but it makes it a thousands time easier when it is something that truly adds value.
I’m sure you (Glen) agree with your OptinSkin launch, for example
I’m not sure I should say this publicly, but probably the best feature of OptinSkin (at least in terms of getting more sales) was the optional ‘powered by’ OptinSkin link. We basically made it ridiculously easy for every customer to promote the product and make money for themselves. While, of course, getting all of the functionality that they purchased it for in the first place.
Similar to what Billy is saying, it was basically about creating something good that people will talk about anyway. But then adding to that by giving them a benefit for talking about it.
But you knew that already
Thanks for the comment Wilco. Nice to see my family is still around
Agreed Wilco — definitely still have to market if you want the greatest results possible. It just makes it 100x easier
Welcome back Glen!
This article is great (who doesn’t love case studies) – comes back to that core tenant of “get a GREAT product and the marketing does itself.” Obviously Billy did a lot more than just create a great product, but wow, the results speak for themselves.
Loved his comments on risk too; it is spot on with how 99% of the population behave.
Thanks Gorn. Good to be back!
Thanks Gorn!
Yes, you’re right – I definitely do more than focus on the product. After I figure out a way to make something that would be hard for the market to compete with, that’s when I change my main focus to marketing. If you can combine great value with great marketing, it’s nearly impossible not to be successful in whatever niche you want to be in. Those are the ONLY two things I focus on.
Wow.. I run a poker website and i read all your posts with high attention..
I will never have thought that you will come with an interview like this..
Blue Fire is maybe the best in the poker training industry and i really enjoyed the prospective that the owner has..
But its like you saying that “Content is King” !!!
And there is no substitute for this…
Glad you liked it, PG!
Really appreciate the kind words PG!
I like people like that: the ones who don’t need to follow systems, but can make them up as they go along. Always look for new and unique ideas to better the business.
It’s pretty funny. I actually came across Billy on Twitter a few weeks ago. I had no idea of his story until reading it here, and no idea it was him until I seen foreverjobless was his. Be interesting to see what type of stuff he puts out.
Cheers
Hah, that’s funny.
I’m sure it’ll be good if it’s anything like his last post
Thanks for stopping by, Jamie!
Jamie, ya, it’s always irrelevant what other people are doing. It’s always “what is the most optimal”. I’m not saying don’t learn from others, you should. But only follow the advice of people who know 100% what they’re talking about. Even when you do, you should be thinking of more optimal ways to do them. Both for the sake of improving on the idea, and because when you teach yourself to think like this, you only improve in your creative thinking, and it gets easier and easier.
Thanks Jamie, I’ll try not to disappoint with the stuff I have coming out.
Not a mention of Phil Galfond leaving Bluefire Poker which was your USP in the poker training market.
Do you not feel that him leaving had an adverse affect on the Bluefire poker signups?
4 of our initial players were big names in the poker community, and major contributors to the site when we launched. All of them have moved on to other things, and it’s been hard to replace guys like that. Jason Senti, a guy who final tabled the WSOP Main Event, DrGiggy, and Samoleus all had pretty big followings, so obviously it’s more beneficial to have big names on the site, than not to have them. All of these guys had their own cult followings.
You can’t replace any one person, but if you have a business that focuses on providing insane value, then your business doesn’t depend on names, as much as it does the value of your service, which we’re always improving.
We’ve made some major signings in the last year, and continue to look for pros that will help improve the value we offer our members.
I think this is the core point from that interview:
“Someone else’s ‘step 1′ might take 5 minutes. That’s where the difference comes in. They’re focusing on the wrong variables of what’s going to make their business succeed. They’re actually working on the exact opposite of what they should be working on. They spend all of their time convincing people they need to buy their shit, rather than creating a product that no one would need convincing to buy.”
As Billy said, it took him 9 months to create the product. I think that’s a totally different mindset than what most IM guru’s teach you. Their focus is on the launch – not the product itself. I wonder how many people/newbies have the skillset to build a best in class product in their market. It’s not like throwing together a bunch of s**t and then getting everyone to spam their list.
Great interview. I’ll be adding Billy’s blog to my RSS feeder. Along with this, that’s really the only two I read in the make money space.
Thanks Kieran — ya that does seem to be the focus in the IM space. It’s always about the launch, and never about the product. There’s always a big debate whether marketing or the product is more important. Well, it’s funny- if the product sucks, it IS all about marketing to be able to sell the thing. If the product is good, it doesn’t have to be all about marketing, although marketing is still insanely important imo.
Really nice and interesting story Glen, It was a long time since your last post. Membership sites are thing to consider right now in any niche. Can’t wait for Thursday, welcome back
Thanks James!
James, just make sure to go after membership sites only if they make sense for the niche. I see people sometimes trying to force membership sites with certain services/products when there might not be the right value there month after month, and what happens is people drop off.
This guy is truely genius
And glad that I can read another post of yours
Hah, friend of yours?
Thanks!
He is now!
Haha, thanks Robert!
Wow..there is always something new when I came to your blog. So, the point is we really have to offer something that people really need if we want to make money online (effortless)
You got it
I wouldn’t say it’s effortless, but moreso that a ton of effort comes on the front end, rather than the backend. So, the backend will seem effortless because all of the work you’ve put in already allows it to be that way.
People will say- “you’re lucky you have a business you don’t have to work on” if you have relatively passive businesses. They never see the huge grind on the front end and assume you just clicked some buttons and money now falls into your account.
Wow hope they bring poker back – government screwed us on that one! Thanks for the story Glen
Hah, I know some readers here will have mixed emotions on that. A number of my poker playing friends moved to IM in the last 24 months.
Poker isn’t “gone”, it’s just substantially harder to play. Many of the sites right now that allow US players are sites I probably wouldn’t trust long term. It’s not illegal to play poker, it’s illegal for US banks to fund the rooms that offer the games.
One of the best blogposts / interviews I have read online – thank you very much.
It highlihgts many of the mistakes I have been making.
Thanks Brian,
Glad you think so
Brian, thanks for the kind words man! Glad to hear it helped.
Hey Glen,
So glad to see you back and rocking again
.
Super Fantastic interview, mate.
Thanks Devesh
Good to see you’re still going strong
What medium did you use to get the word to obama?
You paid to get on fox news?
You have a contact?
You paid for a proper press release?
What exactly?
1. Well, Fox News would have been where he would have heard about it if he did.
2. No, news outlets are looking for stories. We gave them a story that was good- so they aired it. Think of it like this- if you give them a story that will save them time in having to come up with a story themselves, you’re helping them do their job. They want to find interesting stories to talk about. So, I offered it. Same concept- value. That’s why they wanted to air it. It was an interesting story, and it saved them time in their job from having to go dig up a story somewhere else.
3. I sent out hundreds and hundreds of emails with press releases, none of which got very far. I got introduced through email to a person at Fox News. I did not know them before that. I had other stories that I thought were better that weren’t picked up. A later one was aired on ESPN radio though.
4. What’s a “proper press release”? Like PR Web you mean? My goal was to get media attention for the business. If things are done in a “proper” way, I don’t know that it’s most efficient since everyone else is doing the same thing. I can’t remember if I sent it out on the wires or not, but if so, we didn’t get any traction from that.
One thing is obvious here – when you provide high value for less, you will get lot of satisfied clients who will also pay more for subsequent premium items from you.
Thanks Glen for posting this. I tried checking you on twitter (sent you a tweet from suxes2005) but didn’t get a reply. i was worried glad to know you’re fine.
Remember your tweet where you made a funny tweet about coming back alive or not?
Thanks for this… it’s a re-read and re-read one. Can’t finish it all at once and get the whole picture and advice of the game.
Sheyi
I can kind-of remember
Thanks for checking in!
Sheyi,
I wanted to mention one point you made- “when you provide high value for less” – it’s not about providing high value for less. When you create higher value than anything else out there, price actually becomes less relevant, so you wouldn’t want to charge less. BlueFirePoker is the most expensive training site, but it doesn’t matter because of the value. So, if you’re going to spend time making something extremely valuable, you don’t need to compete on price.
There is just one piece in the puzzle i’m missing…
When you create a members site, when or how are you paying
To your “experts”??
And maybe I skipped it (through iphone), but what exactly was he selling?
Video course? Some type of a guide/Ebook??
Great post
Would love Glen and Billy’s feedback on this observation by Terry. Reason being that these elements really help us understand the building blocks of this model Billy has created. Ok the answers may be considered by the old skool (protectionist attitude) as ‘insider secrets’ but I don’t think these puzzle pieces would necessarily damage bluefires reputation or give the competition an advantage. How and how much did it take to get the initial top players onboard and why haven’t they stuck around? Are the ‘new breed’ that are now featured & providing content doing so to raise their own status, or simply brought on or churned to keep things fresh? Is the relationship with the original crew still sweet – or did things just not work out? Poker may fit Billy’s membership model particularly well as his clients are probably strongly motivated to get closer to their proteges and really understand the mind/attitude/persona/etc of the players who are doing well and making money. Has it also been successful because the game and the online medium lends itself well to this niche – perhaps unlike ‘learning to swim’. Though I’m sure someone has an online course for this!
Sorry for long reply. Kudos for opening up Billy, and Glen you know we love your engagement!
Pros are paid per video. Some of the early ones got some revenue share and/or shares.
It’s a video tutorial site- the pros screens are recorded and members can see their cards, and they mic up and explain their thought processes.
Billy & Glen have a great point, in that most people telling you how to make money have never started/run businesses before. They can only survive by appearing to offer some valuable content, and then monetising. What I’ve learn’t most from Glen is that you have got to build some trust before you even think about offering people a product or service. I reckon the most successful people in this genre can do it for nothing if they choose. I don’t think a blog should be about selling stuff, more of an introduction come business card for other stuff you do.
I’ve ran successful businesses all my life, but I’d never even thought about blogging myself until I heard what Glen was doing. Given how many sites are out there, I’ve come across less then five that I’d pay attention to, and Viper-chill is one of them. Thanks
I was on the fence about blogging for years. It does tend to act like a business card. It’s much easier for people to see your thoughts/ideas. There’s nothing wrong with selling at all, IF it’s a valuable product. But ya, most people’s pure intention in blogging is money from it. There’s way more money to be made in other things than blogging.
I was finally pushed over the fence to blog by attending a small conference run by Tim Ferriss, where he made a lot of great points as to why it made sense to do it.
I’m about the same Paul — about 5 blogs I read.
Excellent post Glen (as always)! A lot of great information contained here. Membership sites are the way to go. I’ve been saying that for years. Also, I went over to his forever jobless blog and it’s off to a great start. Anyway, good to see a new post from you, it’s been a while.
Definitely a lot of benefits from running a membership site if done the right way. My advice on membership sites- DON’T run them the way that’s taught in most ‘membership site’ courses. The few I’ve seen are very wrong and have flawed logic. If you follow the basic advice from this post, and can fill a need for someone that a membership would make sense for, you can do well with it.
Thanks for the comment about my blog!
Great post. Interesting interview.
I think poker industry will always be popular, the companies just have to show some nice freebies and discounts then you will have the audience.
Companies have less need to give out freebies and discounts if they offer a great product or service. We have rarely offered freebies or discounts.
The ones that compete on price, are the ones with mediocre services. They have to compete on price to have a chance.
We’re the most expensive training option, and have never had a problem getting customers.
When I was reading this post, Seth Godin (and his “creating something remarkable”) immediately came to the mind.
Hey, that brings me an idea. : ) Time to rock and make it into reality. : )
Good luck with it Mike! If you follow the basic steps, I’m sure you’ll do well with it. Don’t take shortcuts on the important parts, and don’t spend much time on all the rest of the stuff people get caught up in.
No, actually, man. Thanks for writing it out how your mind process goes when you are coming up with an idea : ).
You got it Mike.
Great to have you back, Glen — posting that is. For me, the one thing I take from this interview is that avoiding the road that could lead to success (risk), just means avoiding any chance that exists of real success. I think that’s quite profound. I am always looking forward to reading Viperchill posts and this is yet another useful post. Awesome interviewing. Thanks for the candid responses, Billy-Murphy.
Great takeaway David. If you can learn to avoid acting on the initial emotional responses that tell you to avoid fear, you’ll notice decisions become a lot more clear because you’ll be making them strictly on whether it’s +EV or not. Then, you’ll be setting yourself up for success much easier.
Awesome post, Glen. Really a reminder about what comes first.
Thanks!
Conveniently left out that the only reason anyone was interested in the site was that he had the best player in the world as lead instructor? That is the ONLY reason is succeeded. Nothing to do with the quality of anyone else…people signed up on Day 1 because they wanted to see Galfond’s videos, and for no other reason.
so?
thats still value…
“That is the ONLY reason is succeeded”
I’m guessing you mean he succeeded. Either way. Sure, it has nothing to do with:
$16,000 investment.
Having the viral idea to get on fox news.
9 months to put a site together.
A clear, clear knowledge of what it takes to be successful online.
Finding a gap in a market and taking advantage of it.
etc etc.
Sigh
A lot of people tend to look at 1 variable, and assume that was THE reason something succeeded. It’s the same for every business I’ve ever been involved in. “oh, that’s why you were successful”, as if one thing by itself have made any of my business ventures successful.
We had 4 big name players who started with us initially, who have all moved on to other things. If your theory was correct, that 1 player, or even 4 players were the only reason BlueFirePoker was successful, than the business would be shut down right now, seeing as none of those 4 players make videos for us anymore, and haven’t for close to a year.
The flaw with thinking any business, or blog, or anything else is dependent on 1 variable, is a lazy way to look at it.
There are easily 100+ variables that have had a major impact on the business. The players who’ve made videos for us is definitely a major variable.
Instead of assuming the business is only successful because of the players(which we’ve proved is not the case since none of the original video makers make videos for us anymore), you could be asking questions to help yourself understand the variables that you seem to be missing.
It’s funny, people have said the same thing to me about my e-commerce store business. “Oh, the only reason you’re doing well is because you’re finding stores so cheap.” Instead of learning more and finding out how to do it, they assume it’s 1 variable, and they just assume it’s all luck other than that.
I can assure you it’s not luck, and it sounds like you’re not understanding a huge amount of variables that go into successful businesses.
This post is around 4,000 words, and easily could have been 40,000 words if I described every detail of every edge I find and push in all aspects of a business.
There’s much more than 1 variable in anything that’s successful.
Great post, Glen!
I always have to learn something from your posts…
Thanks Erik
Great article! Having an idea for new online endeavors, it’s all enthusiasm at first . Knowing how to take it easy and see what gaps you can fill, while realizing that the idea can wait a while before being polished, is something not many of us can do. However, it seems like that’s the only way to success. “Make a product that people have to buy”- I like the sound of that.
It’s funny how I start putting things together now, five months after my site went life. And tell you what: having to adjust your approach in terms of providing quality and value in the middle of the game can be as much fun, as it can be hard work. But still…
Now I’m thinking about making a new site out of a new idea, new concept that I’m having, and this interview helped quite a bit. So thanks a lot I guess.
Since I have few blogs on my RSS reader, I was surprised that the notifications from Viperchill suddenly stopped. Thanks god there is again something good to read in the IM space. We are waiting for Thursday Glen
Hey Slavko,
I can relate to you about changing focus mid-way into a site. The focus of ViperChill, for example, has changed more times than I can count. Somehow things always seem to work out eventually
They really arrange by themselves. And I love it when that happens. However, they only do so if we are in constant movement. Though I would like to be able to push a solid idea that has been well elaborated before it goes live. Either way, I guess adaptation is the key, since you say that Viperchill underwent series of changes, and we can all see how that turned out.
The interesting part about adaptation is that it can make new ideas emerge.
Kaizen. Or rather an indirect way of practicing Kaizen by focusing on giving value (what people want).
Cool to hear that this helped with a new idea. Good luck with the new venture Slavko!
This is a great post Glen! I especially liked the part about it taking him 9 months, but still succeeding because he took the time to make a great product.
I’ve been a little frustrated that it’s taken me 6 months to finally finish my site. Even though I had to learn to program, and coded it myself at the same time. But I guess it takes time to create something great!
Impressive that you learned to program. I’ve always wanted to learn more myself (just know web design ‘languages’ — if you can call them that).
Good luck with the site!
Terrell,
Don’t spend too much time doing things like programming. Spend the majority of you time on the aspects of the business that make money. You can’t hire out that skill set. However, you can hire out programmers.
If you’re bootstrapping, there’s other ways to get it done. Make sure you’re not focusing too much time on things that don’t make you substantially more money than if someone else was doing them.
Very interesting interview!
One question that immediately springs to mind – “How do you go about approaching and ‘signing up’ professionals to be the driving force / unique selling point behind your product / membership site?”
Also, if I may be so bold, would you be able to give us an idea of your revenue split (in general terms) with your professionals and/or how you went about negotiating terms with them?
Thanks!
Yay Adam! THIS is the meat I’m sure we’d all love to know just an outline of. Fascinating stuff.
I asked. Emails, PMs, etc… Some guys I asked said “yes”, some said “no”.
I found this interview through a link of Billy’s and I just want to highlight his main message of the post(create value and everything else follows) with an example from my own first “real” website.
It’s focused on a niche that previously was filled with a lot of content that didn’t so much help people as just showed off to people. I saw an opportunity to combine two of my main passions into one uniquely positioned kind of content and started a youtube channel/website.
The driving thought behind each piece of content I produced was “will this be valuable to the reader/viewer?”
And in so doing the site got 67,328 visitors in its first full month of being up, earning over $2,200 from adsense/youtube revenue alone. The money was just a nice little bonus, as my primary monetization strategy is to create a membership site focused on solving the needs of this specific niche. So reading this post was very interesting as it is essentially like reading the strategy for my own website. Interesting synchronicity.
Great job Jack.
Perfect example of how following these basic rules make everything else fall into place.
It’s especially easier since your competition I’m sure is doing things the opposite way, leaving value/quality as the untapped part of the market, which is strange, but often the case with most markets.
Man, that was a good interview!
Simple really. But such an overlooked objective.
Nice one!
Glad you liked it, Loren.
Good to see you over here as usual!
Loren, ya, a lot of times the hardest things to understand as to why a business isn’t working, are actually just really simple concepts that no one spends any time thinking about.
Hi Glen,
Great stuff here! I’m in the process of putting up a membership site that is a very specific niche. It’s for a high end training career that has a wide open market right now and projected into the future. I have an expert in this field who I partnered up with but I think I’m still missing an element that could really make this membership site top notch. Do you know if Billy Murphy takes on 3rd party projects or would you be able to point me in the right direction for a little hand holding to get this site launched correctly? Thanks again for your awesome content and way of presenting it!
Hey Nick,
What is it you’re missing? Should be as easy as just filling that hole since you already know what’s missing. Sounds simple, but really should be that simple. It’s hard work, but non-complicated work.
I don’t really take on consulting jobs. I’ve got my plate pretty full with my e-commerce stores company, BlueFirePoker and now Forever Jobless.
I’ve looked into investing and/or advising a few companies, but usually only companies that are pretty far along/profitable.
If you have a specific question, just post it in the comments and I’ll do my best to help.
Glen, you’ve been missed bro, congrats on all your recent success.
I thoroughly enjoyed this interview Glen and Billy. Hope to see more case studies like this.
I’d also like to highlight this passage:
“If they have big goals, they guarantee themselves NOT to hit their goals, because they’re so emotionally caught up in not taking risks. The “risks” are actually less risky for them but because of the emotional response most people have to decision making, they often fail to realize this. Their emotions tell them to fear the downside, as opposed to listening to their logic which would tell them to also factor in the upside.
If they take the “risk” and succeed, they can accomplish a big goal. If they don’t, they may avoid “risk” in their mind, but they also avoid any chance of real success. Avoiding a road that could lead to success, just to avoid risk, is how most people make their decisions.”
Perhaps one of the most paradigm-shifting passages I’ve ever read online. Billy doesn’t hold any punches. And I won’t even mention that well-thought out section on people making money teaching people how to make money who teach people how to make money.
Classic.
Billy, assuming you see this, I do have two questions…
First is there any way to “test” the viability of a membership site idea or do you just do your market research, find the gap and trust your gut?
And secondly, how do you best determine what kind of content your market might prefer in a membership site (i.e. text, audio, video)?
Glen, you’re free to answer as well.
Cheers,
Thanks for the kind words Ron. Really glad you got that takeaway, thats a tough one for a lot of people.
1. I didn’t test it, because there were already people doing it, and I did research and knew I could do it better. Both from compiling a better team of pros, and better marketing, as well as differentiating by going the quality route since that was the gap.
2. Well, for poker it helps to see the cards while hearing the advice. It’s as if you’re looking over their shoulder and they’re telling you why they’re playing their hands the way they are. If you couldn’t see their cards, I think it’s not as good.
If you don’t know what they want, ask them. However, sometimes you should give them what they need, as well as what they want. Sometimes they are different. It’s your job to find the need.
I appreciate the advice Billy. Thanks for responding.
Great post glen, and billy
glen I’m coming to Thailand at the end of the month, you still there? James
Thanks James!
Hit the Full Moon Party while you’re there!
When I accessed the inbox of my email today and saw the name Glen, I was happy. I knew I had something special and rewarding to read.
My comment, and a Bible verse: (sorry non-Christians)
But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added.
Matthew 6:33
As was said, adding value people and the money is due!
Is ViperChill the kingdom?
These stories give me the energy to do some projects.. Nice post as normal!
First, thanks a lot to Glen for having me on ViperChill. I offered to share a lot of details with Glen, specifically because ViperChill is one of the few blogs I’ve ever read. So it’s awesome to be featured here on ViperChill, and to talk more in depth about some of the things I’ve done/I’m doing.
I’ll do my best to respond in the comments.(if I’m slow, I’m probably not ignoring you, just a busy week) Like Glen, one of my main goals is to help you guys, so if there’s something that is confusing in what I wrote, or that you’re curious about having me explain more in depth, let me know and I’ll do my best to help.
Thanks a lot for the kind words so far. Means a lot to me that people are getting value from it.
I really enjoy reading of success stories like this and look for ways I can emulate some of their procedures as an affiliate. Obviously one can only cherry pick what could be relevant and there is so much valuable content in this post (as always) that I need to read it over a few times to take it all in.
Many thanks again for what is essentially a top class lesson.
Regards
Russ
Russ, why as an affiliate? It’s actually harder to do a lot of what I talked about as an affiliate, since there’s less control, less differentiation, and you’re depending a lot on others to make certain things happen.
How come Day 1 has 25% returning visitors?
Paul, I assume it’s because some people came back multiple times on the first day, so after their first visit I they’re counted as a returning visitor.
” Most people who know how to make money, don’t blog. Most people who blog, don’t know how to make money.”
Billy you have summed up the make money blogging niche bang on.People who does not have even sold a product online, are starting their own make money blogs in hopes to earn some money.
Ya, it’s a major flaw in the industry for sure Yash. Glad you liked that quote!
Glen, glad you are OK, geez.
A great post; will be checking out Billy’s site.
On this end setting up an idea on a much smaller scale, but it has value (crossing fingers). I have a service that helps small businesses capture leads then build and retain their customer base.
Really want to help entrepreneurs and smaller businesses stay in the game; they are the backbone of my country.
Cheers and many thanks,
Kimberly
Hey Kimberly,
For a service/product like that, it has to massively differentiate itself from everything else doing that out there. You need to have literally 10x the value of other things like it for it to take off. So many people are doing things like that. What is it that’s going to make yours different? Why should someone sign up for you, and not even consider someone else. These are questions you need to confidently be able to answer.
Do something way outside the box if you want to succeed in that niche.
If you tell people of your service, they should instantly be wiling to pay for what you’re offering, or you should go back to the drawing board.
Hope this helps.
Thanks Glen, Looking forward to your next post on thursday.
Glad to see we wont have to wait long for the next update.
Love Viperchill’s minimal website design.
Finally a new post on VC. Great as always. It’s hard to find a better recommendation for a new quality blog than here. Looking forward to checking Forever Jobless and congratulations on the poker site. I’m not a player at all but I’m actually thinking about joining the site. It looks really interesting. I remember searching for good books on chess and poker once but I found nothing special. I should have looked for those online instead of the bookstore.
Thanks Michal! For poker books- it depends what game you like- if you have a specific one in mind I can try to recommend one.
I’m interested in Step #2.. How do you get your customers to talk about it.
I’ve got the great product, I’ve got the members, but growth has stalled because I can’t get any interaction from the facebook page from my customers… and I don’t want to ‘spam the crap out of them’.. How do you actually get your fans talking about your product? I’ve tried contests, free upgrades, etc and no one even responds.
They talk about it because they like it so much. They will talk about something if it’s substantially different to anything else out there.
If you have a great product, that doesn’t mean they will talk about it. If your product is 5% better than your competitor, no one is going to rave about it. You have to be substantially better.
Your growth hasn’t stalled because Facebook fans don’t interact with you. That’s one place on the interwebz dude. However, if you have a lot of FB fans, and none of them are telling you how great your product is, it probably means it isn’t. It doesn’t matter how great you think it is, only how great other people think it is.
I’ve had a lot of people ask me to invest in their businesses and they always tell me that it’s AMAZING and better than anything out there. Then with a 10 minute google search I can find a bunch of stuff that’s pretty much the same. Maybe it is better than the other ones that are just like it, but not substantially enough to where it’s going to matter. It’s a huge difference.
If no one is even responding to you when you are offering them free stuff from your product that you say is “great”, then it’s not really great.
Don’t take that the wrong way either. It’s an opportunity. Figure out why they don’t think it’s great. Then fix it. Then scale. I think maybe you’re trying to scale at the wrong point.
Another great post! I’ve really enjoyed all of Billy’s insights since I came across his blog a few weeks back.
I’ve been trying to break into this “online marketing” world but get frustrated with what I’ve been seeing / “learning”. Much like Billy alluded to in this interview, it gets annoying reading other blogs or watching webinars that teach some weird revolving wheel money making schemes…
Such as webinars that show you how to make money by making webinars teaching other people how to make money with webinars… LOL
Makes me question myself and my own ideas and whether I’m really built for this weasel type of online market. Good to know there’s people like Billy out there who are trying real things and succeeding. Giving me inspiration!
Glad to hear you’re getting some inspiration from it Vega!
Don’t question whether you’re built for the market. Just keep grinding- just make sure you’re grinding on the right things, and you’ll do fine in the long term.
Great article Glen!
Loved this “They spend all of their time convincing people they need to buy their shit, rather than creating a product that no one would need convincing to buy.
So, in much shorter words… put out shit that’s so good people have to buy it. Let people do most of your marketing for you. Then accelerate everything with viral marketing.”
haha so true tho..
I ditched the quantity articles for more quality articles very quickly after reading your blog. So much easier and also more fun to make something valuable for your readers
Glad you liked Ralph! Definitely more fun that way – you’re right.
Ah, poker, one of my favourites. We didn’t find out if Billy had to invest in paying the poker players for the videos?
By the way, if you hired my company do design that site I’m sure we could have done it on time and within budget. Hiring geeks from India isn’t the best way to get a site set up… sorry you found that out the hard way Billy:)
Yes, paying pros costs money! We have around 20 now since we offer many more games.
Ya, I’ve learned a lot about developers with the number of web projects I’ve done now. Definitely learned some things the hard way, you’re right.
But- I’d rather learn the hard way, than to not learn at all.
I think a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs wait until they know “everything” which is never going to happen, so they stay on the sidelines forever.
Great story/interview! And I’m looking forward to your post on Thursday. We missed you around here.
Thanks Ray!
I’ve missed ViperChill updates myself.
Hi Billy,
You just said that you recommend building a product/service for a long enough time for you to build a great product before launching it for the first time. But from what I’ve read in Eric Ries’ best-seller “Lean Startup” (founder of IMVU) and Ash Maurya’s “Running Lean”, they recommend launching a first version called “minimum viable product” and making money off of it as soon as possible, and continue building the product by enhancing the first version with the feedback (learning) you get from clients.
In my mind, waiting 9 months to see if something will work or not, seems riskier and less efficient, than building an ‘minimum viable product’ of it and start testing its validity as early as possible, and using that feedback for creating that perfect ’1.0′ version.
Using a minimum viable product + early release seems to make a lot of sense, because its building a product based on client feedback as soon as possible. Would you advise against that? Or what do you mean by ‘launching a product until its perfect’?
I’ve never read those books but putting up an MVP is fine in a lot of cases. It wouldn’t have been great in this case, because my edge was going to be how much better the site was than the competition- so launching a crappy version of a great product wasn’t the route I wanted to go. Could I have- sure. Are their pros to doing it that way- sure. Are there cons- yes.
Again, I did not purposely wait 9 months- that was a hard lesson learned. It should have been up in 2-3 months. If someone had given me the option of launching a MVP immediately or launching in 9 months, I would obviously pick the immediate option However, another thing to consider is that the pros had to make a bunch of videos to backlog, so that it wouldn’t have been wise to launch immediately. So, I would still attempt to launch within 3 months if I were to do it again, rather than throwing up something right away.
Keep in mind- I didn’t have to test it like most people who recommend doing a MVP recommend. I had already done my due diligence on a market that was already there.
Billy, awesome feedback – I’m a big believer in the MVP but can see how in this case it wasn’t really relevant because you were NOT validating an ‘idea’ – but how did you determine the ‘framework’ for the content that you were creating in these videos with the pro players? And what was the relationship like – was there a buy in, a profit share, and who controlled what the playing field was like in order to launch and get things done taking into account costs and any success benchmarks? I imagine poker players at that level are pretty independent, don’t have a lot of free time and want something back quickly!
Thanks, Jon
The pros were given a lot of flexibility in terms of what they created. I want our pros to create what they’re best at, and what they enjoy teaching- since it will end up being better content that way.
Glen, you were right – this was a terrific interview with LOTS of great strategies for doing the right things. Thank you so much for publishing this. Quality beats out crap any day!
Glad you got something out of the strategies Viki!
Wow, Billy is a smart guy. Great content as usual.
Mark
Thanks Mark!
Just like the Government, always throwing a wrench into things. Way To Go Bill! Looking forward to more on Forever Jobless!
Thanks Anthony! Ya, they definitely know how to mess things up don’t they!
Hi Glen,
Now see, this post is what I call killer content. It doesn’t matter that they come once in a while, who can crank up these quality posts every single day anyway?
Great value Glen, from a fellow South African, I can’t wait to read the next one!
On-point, inspirational post. I need to brainstorm on viral video ideas. Meantime, my site paidwritehq.com is all about quality pay for quality content. High-caliber posts keep readers coming back. Bloggers and writers owe their readers high-quality articles. I’m busier than ever with proofreading and editing assignments, but writers who take this extra step always provide more value to their fans and are rewarded with higher sales and customer loyalty.
Take care,
Rose Smith
paidwritehq.com
Thanks Rose!
Ya, the beauty of a niche like content writing, is that there isn’t much competition in terms of standing out/marketing. If you try some things out and get it right, you can create a huge brand in that space pretty easily.
Great job, both of you. Couple technical questions for you, Billy.
1. Given what you know now about launching a membership site, would you still build it on the same software stack you built BFP on?
2. Did you launch BFP w/all of the technical details you’ve currently got in-place i.e. video downloads in multiple formats, user accounts, comments, forums, the chip system, etc.?
I signed up for an account after reading this post and it looks like the software you’ve built BFP on is well thought-out. I’m trying to better understand what you used, why you used it, and what you’d use now if you were doing another membership site in another niche from the ground up.
Thanks!
Brian, I’m not a tech guy so I don’t know much from that angle.
1. Haven’t looked at what’s on the market since the last upgrade to the site was years ago.
2. We didn’t have all the video formats when we first launched, or the chip system.
Again, I don’t know the tech stuff, so wish I could be more helpful there. The main focus was to have something built that was very scalable, and did what I wanted on the backend.
My focus is on how to make money. The other parts I just ask a lot of questions and hire people to do the rest. It’s a bad use of my time if I get too involved in the technical stuff. As long as it has what I need to allow me to do what I want that can help me scale it/make money with it, I let other people do what they’re good at.
Kick-Ass product &viral marketing…. I love this kinda stuff. Inviting The President & Congress members was totally insane.. .. Awesome case study…
Thanks Towid! Glad you enjoyed it.
Hi,
I replied to this post via email and thanks to Glen for replying back to that email.
I have to say that this is one of the best posts I have read for a while, this is what I wish I could do but still have not figured out how too yet.
I run a humble non-spammy wine blog that I hope drives wine sales and gives people a hint on if they want a particular bottle of wine or not. I am now moving in a slightly different direction where I am starting to provide my readers with hints on how to get the best bang for buck with their wine and food purchases.
I am hoping this translates into more eyeballs and google adsense clicks, I find it hard to convert views to clicks.
I am still trying to find a way forward with a ripper unique market filler idea. This is where I struggling.. Creativity seems to be a failing of mine, when I do come up with an idea it seems as though someone has just beaten me to the punch!
Anyway, i digress!
It was very refreshing to read of someone who is making money without the usual guff that ends up being hollow general information that confuses instead of helps.
After reading this I have signed up to Billy’s new blog and look forward to seeing value he provides people like me.
Thankyou Glen and Billy!
Ken,
It’s not just about not having a spammy site, it’s about having a hugely valuable product or service. If you have a way higher than normal quality business, you don’t have to worry about adsense clicks to your blog, nor would you want to.
Why?
Because let’s just pretend it’s a relatively efficient market for adsense in your space — well, then people in that space should be willing to pay you higher than market to be associated with what you’re doing. Also, then you start getting more and more traffic where it may make sense to create your own business of some sort rather than just handing it off to other people’s products, which is usually a higher pay scale than being an affiliate.
The more and more you practice your creativity, the better you’ll be at it. Trust me! It is a practicable skill set.
Thanks for the nice words, hope this helps you some!
Wow, i’m one of the german guys that joined Bluefire on day one.
Always read about a Billy in the Forums there but never knew who that guy is. Till i found forever jobless this week – couldn’t believe you are the Billy from the Bluefire forum three years ago. I’m really fascinated from your story. Please keep up the interesting work.
Also seems that viperchill is worth a visit, too:-) Great Job.
Greetings from europe guys
Toby, thanks for being one of the early BlueFirePoker supporters!
Ya, I always stayed behind the scenes, definitely a big change talking about what I do.
Excellent post and story, so great to have a new VC post…
I keep coming back and looking. roll on Thursday 
.
Anyway what an excellent story and I totally agree with Billy about delivering quality services. A product that is of high quality and offers more than the competitors will sell itself and out flank and out rank everyone else.
Cheers
Andi
Thanks Andi!
Great advice, especially about risk taking. Thanks for sharing!
Thomas
Thanks Thomas! Glad you liked the “risk” part.
Ahoi Glen,
aweseome Interview! Such insights are “gold worthy”!
Thanks a lot!
Vladislav
Hey Glen,
I love this story. Actually the first paragraph of this article summarizes the main point of the whole inteview very well.
It was the most valuable thing I’ve learned from this post which is if you do something great,
people will come to you. And no, I didn’t learn it from Billy Murphy’s story, I learned this from your meeting story with Billy Murphy that he sent an email to you for appreciating your quality sharings on ViperChill which caught his attention, that’s a great story!
I look forward to your next post =)
Merve
Exactly- ViperChill stood out a lot to me as I was looking for blogs to read, because it was one of the ONLY ones offering quality content. It’s no accident as to why Glen grew to 25k+ subscribers, while other people putting out quantity are much smaller. People spread the word about Glen’s content, and no one talks about the other stuff. The quantity stuff has no reason to exist.
very cool. I just wish I could go back to 2008 and create my own poker site now
Truly incredible what Billy accomplished, and he’s right that putting out crap like most internet marketers is pointless, and it will be a constant struggle. Put out a product that adds tremendous value and people will buy it and do the marketing for you without even knowing it (word of mouth).
Ryan, it wasn’t about the timing that BlueFirePoker got into the market. We were actually one of the last poker training sites in the game. Most of our competitors had launched years earlier.
This was a good post in general, but i have to admit it left me frustrated. I have read many like it recently (eg the advice to write epic shit), and i am always left with the feeling we are still not being told something. Billy, you claim that you spent zero on marketing, had no ppc, no list, nothing, and yet somehow managed to get a ton of signups straight out of the gate. I checked out your blog, and it has a ton of comments already. I absolutley agree that you need to spend time putting together an awesome product, because if you do *when people find it* they will talk about it. But how do you get people to find out about in the first place? You must have done *something* to get people to your poker site and blog in a big enough way that you got enough word of mouth to get any momentum.
Interviews like this one is a start. Keep in mind- marketing is VERY important. However, the value of your product or service is more important. After the value is there, then you can spend time marketing. So, if I do an interview, people will go check out my blog, and the content will be high quality. Then, they will subscribe and/or comment. If it was low quality, they would just leave.
The marketing that I do isn’t rocket science, it’s just combined with high quality content, which is a rare combination. Most people choose the no-value + marketing combo.
Good post guys, glad your back glen. Loving your case studies, also are not doing any more podcasts?
As for bill nice business venture, but sorry to break your Bulls but your comments look self posted organised strategy.
I don’t know what a “self posted organized strategy” is?
Simply awesome.
I have been following ForeverJobless blog since it started, and I must admit it is showing signs of becoming one of the best out there.
Thanks Regev! That’s the plan.
Amazing details. I could definitely use an attractive concept like that for jump starting my blog’s traffic.
What are some ideas you’re thinking Sable?
Glen and Billy,
You guys are awesome. Reading this has me re-thinking how to launch my first big membership site. I’m going to look for ways to pour even more value into it. Thanks guys.
Thanks Eric! Would love to hear how it goes, keep us posted.
Thanks Glen
Like the post nice to see poker getting some recognition. That being said its pretty hard for someone starting up with something to get poker pros such as Phil Galfond to endorse the site, not at all trying to take anything away from your achievements , but I am sure it would not be that hard to make a Golf site that makes a lot of money if you tiger woods backing it up for example.
It seems like you are still checking in now and then and commenting though so I’ll go for a question, do you have any tips\comments on getting into the poker industry now? I used to be playing poker semi-professionaly for 1-2 years a while back, but will probably not go into it again now that its going pretty bad. I am hoping the U.S will start legalizing it soon though and that we will potentially see a second poker boom, being that I am in IM now and poker can be a tremendously profitable market and I have some knowledge in there I will probably look to make some sort of product around this if it looks like it will take off. So I guess my questions would be do you think we will potentially see a second poker boom if things get legalized and whatnot in the U.S, and do you have any tips for someone trying to start out in the poker business?
Will there be a second boom? Maybe a little- from the player’s side, not as much as they might be expecting. From a business side- there will be plenty of opportunity.
Tips to start a poker business is too broad of a question to give you a good answer. Without more specifics, I’d say the same thing the Q + A covered, which is to offer more value in whatever space you’re offering it.
This is very good. Too many people just rush onto the Internet to try and make something happen because it really is quick, easy and cheap as compared to a traditional business.
However all e-entrepreneurs would be wise to do what this man did and ask the question how can I really add value and address the needs of my target market because just look at his results!
Wow, this story just blows my mind. The idea of calling out the president was a great move.
This story shows, it pays of to offer real value to people. Great job
This is excellent. As someone who reviews tons of blogs about blogging I can tell you for a fact you’re 100% correct. Even blogs that get TONS of traffic aren’t making very much money it’s a shame.
You’re right though.
It’s starting to get like the real estate investing “guru’s” out there just a bunch of clowns selling books and tapes.
This is a smart business model. It is built on the assumption of giving something much more valuable than the price you pay for it, and obviously, in a niche like poker sites, where everything is about money, a good product is sold in no time.
Great advise,
Thanks
100k not bad …i love it when people look at the title like this and they think people got lucky…the guy is just a genius, the marketing strategy, which he developed is sensational