PAW going to Vbulletin and other changes

[Jeremy]

I am going to be very blunt here in this post which I assume most of you appreciate. Likewise any feedback is appreciated either positive or negative.

Over the last 6 months PAW has continued growing and in most people's eyes this site and forum is seen as the market leader. With that said there IS competition out there and others hope to cannabalize PAW and grow their own poker afiliate community. So be it, competition is good for the market and I welcome it. I think the great people and attitudes here at PAW trump any other gambling webmaster forum out there.

In any business every day is a learning experience and I continue learning new things every morning I show up to my office. My long term goal for PAW is to be hosting our own get togethers in a year or so and to continue doing new and innovative things for all the poker affiliates out there. I also never want members to feel that the sponsored programs are something they are not. Our sponsors pay to be in front of you and to capture your business which is why I encourage you all to support them. There are also going to be some changes in the sponsored programs and participation, but those are internal changes.

For the record there is not some make believe process at PAW on who is good enough to be a sponsor. Furthermore if a program is doing questionable things we will take it up directy with them before we issue press releases on why they were removed from PAW. As professional webmasters it is your responsibilty to take in information you read on forums and come to your own conclusion.

You guys have always heard me say since day 1 that this is OUR site, and I want to keep it that way.

Now here are some of the things that I need help on. Number 1 and most important is a few SEO items. Make no doubt about it we do well in the SERPS for tons of random poker affiliate terms. I have never really done that much hard core SEO on PAW which is something I will be doing in the coming weeks. This site is loaded with content both in the forums and on the main site which yields us hundreds of SE's hits per day which is great. BUT, PAW needs to rank higher for terms such as "Poker Affiliate Programs". With that said if you have been helped by me personally or this site in your affiliate career, help us out and give us a quality backlink. You can buy me a beer, you can buy me a lapdance, but I cannot express how cool it would be and this is the Ultimate thank-you from the members.

Furthermore I want this to be a resource for poker affiliates versus just a place to come and chat (which is actually a resource in itself) but if there are things that you want to see here, let me know. I have no problem spending money if it helps the overall community.

Site Design - I feel the homepage has gotten a bit stale and I am having a new interace designed that will liven this place up a bit. I really want to focus more on providing relevant information such as news, special offers, and articles to the community. I feel it would be beneficial and convert better for the sponsors if they had the opportunity to offer up special promo's just to PAW members, wouldn't you agree?

Newsletter- I am going to be sending out a bi-weekly newsletter with relevant poker affiliate information that will help all of your businesses grow. If you can't handle getting an email every two weeks from the industries leading affiliate community then you should get out of the business all together, it will not be spam.

Likewise, especially after this past weekend I feel that InvisionBoard is not the board that this site needs to be on moving forward. After using Vbulletin for 3 or 4 other sites, there is no question that it is the best software out there for an online community.

Sorry to be so long winded. Any feedback you have on the above comments either here or to my email jeremy AT pokerafiliatworld.com would be appreciated.


Jeremy

[Nick0r]

All I can say is you should have listened to me and gone for vbulletin when you first started PAW

[Holis]

I suggested it too nick

[checkingout]

My suggestion is to condense back the number of topics, it seemed to be a more lively, helpful, and informative community with just a few active topics rather then many inactive topics. Having seperate topics for sponsor programs who do not have anybody responding makes no sense to me. Most members do not read specific program boards unless they have a question and moving those topics to those "appropriate" boards makes little sense if no one from that program answers. I think it leaves people frustrated without need. All my opinion but it seems before the expansion, there was a lot more talk and dialogue amongst members. This is a great site and hopefully the move goes well.

[Nick0r]

True. Rule #1 of starting a forum is a small amount of moderately active categories are MUCH better than lots of empty ones.

[Jeremy]

True on the amount of forums. Actually all the top level forums do get posted in as you can see, it's the sponsored forums that don't get much action. At the same time however I think we have to give our sponsors an open forum to correspond with affiliates which makes it nessecary. In regards to inactive AM's........... h34r:, we are going to be working on that.

Perhaps if we do go to a new board we can find a way so that it doesn't seem so cluttered. Thanks for the feedback so far.

[corpfan1]

I also think the "STICKY" threads should become main topics. No one uses the sticky threads anymore...and it is a shame because they are truly the best topics.

Just MHO.

[hoursurfing]

The lack of feedback is the biggest problem in the sponsored section for me. I think the site is great either way and would never completely switch over to another poker affiliate forum. To make the site more search engine friendly I would have Bobi put a title box in the CMS script so you can change the title of the pages without messing with the url's. I personally would like to see Pacific on the sponsored list. Hopefully the switch will be good because I felt empty for the day the site was down.

Later

[GregK]

If you're going VB, I want an Arcade!

will school you boys in Ms. Pacman & Asteroids lol

[CasinoMack]

All I can say is, bout time -vb3.