We reached the end of 2009 in Part #2 of my Planet Corp history – things were looking good, though SNG Planet was looking scruffy. In 2010, firing Erika was a hard decision, though it turned out to be a great one!

The thing is, partners in love rarely work together successfully. We definitely had some compatibility… Erika is excellent at Photoshop, Dreamweaver and technical stuff, while I am good at content and having ideas (for example the fish-o-meter idea came to me one day on the tram to work!) but literally have no idea how computers work (I will not even FTP anything myself, let alone try and design or code it!!). 

By Feb of 2010 we spent more time in the office fighting each other than fighting together for the sites and I had enough. Erika was a little confused when I said one day that enough was enough… and not to come in with me any more. In hindsight it was a brilliant move, we get on better than ever now and Erika does the company admin and HR side while I get on with the sites. Funny, in my previous role ‘letting people go’ was a necessary (though not pleasant) part of management - I’ll admit that the decision to remove Erika from our day-to-day operations was actually more difficult than the times I had to make announcements to whole departments that their jobs were being outsourced… hey, it worked out great in the end!

We employed a Hungarian speaker Laszlo to replace Erika, Laszlo also speaks Russian and Slovak… yeah, that multiple-language thing again… Corina left us, returning to Romania – leaving us with the current 3 in the office (Anna, Laszlo and I) and Erika as backup. 

2010 has been an odd year so far, so many of the projects which I anticipated being huge successes kind of went nowhere. A casino site gets virtually no visitors, a different take on the bonus portal idea was just too damn ugly in the end and we are now converting to Wordpress with a new look, a Russian blog which we had high hopes for is having trouble with getting visitors… at the same time many of the mini-sites and existing properties have been very successful and this site continues to lead the way.

Some of the larger poker operators have put the squeeze on our (and everyone in the industry) finances in 2010 for sure. I actually feel pretty happy to have grown my income with the mix of recession, Tilt and Stars squeezes and those big investments in projects which have not yet produced returns. 

A great test for me came along late spring 2010, I was headhunted for a job almost identical to the one I did before for a blue chip, with what is the Hungarian equivalent of a comfortable 6-figure salary. I turned it down flat – and even turned down their improved offer to entice me to go for it… my belief in the Planet Corp and my future as an entrepreneur is just too strong, though Erika did start to look at what kind of house we could get for the money from selling the sites + that big salary!! 

We now have another new design for SNG Planet, which I handed editorial responsibility to Anna for. This is actually version 5 (will try and find a pictorial history at some point!!), and also a new course ‘the $16 Per Hour Blueprint’ which is going great in terms of subscribers and feedback. If anything the content is getting better and better too, at least I’d like to think so. 

… so we come to the present day and the strategy being executed right now. 

Well, I’m not going to disclose everything. Firstly, the external environment is looking very positive from my perspective… I have a lot of potential in projects which have not got going yet in terms of their potential including Casino, Bingo and Poker sites – with some focus we can get these producing soon.  There is legislation in the US which could open the revenue floodgates at any time, hopefully in 2011 latest. I have effective sales funnels in place and even more in plan / action which are really gaining traction + mailing lists in 5-figures which I have been careful to build a positive relationships with (its simple folks, give people valuable information, free). I have traffic which seems largely immune to the algo changes of the big G and is made up of some genuinely loyal visitors too… and I have sites good enough that people link to them all the time.

Right now we are going through a period of updating the current network, detailed testing and adding revenue streams to each site as we go though. There are new sites in plan, though these will have to wait a month or two for their time. 

Even though I love being a gambling affiliate I do not want to be doing the same thing for ever… there will be a point, and it may well be sooner rather than later, where I will look for a buyer for my network of sites. I have big big plans for the future, massive ideas outside of gambling as well as some more inside the industry, selling up will enable me to unlock them!! 

Anyway, hope you have enjoyed my history, was certainly enjoyable to write it all down! 

GL at the tables, Mark