I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I. DO. NOT. MAKE. MONEY. PLAYING. SLOTS. Sure, I’ve won some HUGE jackpots before (like this one, and this one, and this one), but since I started playing, I’ve lost way more money than I’ll ever win. Everybody does, unless you win one jackpot and then quit forever, which…nobody does. So then, how can I possibly afford to spend (and lose) so much money playing slots as a hobby? Well, I’ve done very well with a number of businesses. I’ve touched on these a little bit before, but since so many of you are so curious, let’s dive deeper into several of them:
One of my first major successes – and probably the one I’m most known for – is the bulk email business I used to run many years ago. Now, you’ve gotta remember – I really just stumbled into this field. My background previously was in restaurants, and this area was the Wild West until spam came along. But, at its peak, we were sending over one billion emails per day, and you better believe we were getting paid for each and every single one. I went from being almost broke at the time to making a massive amount of money super quickly. Here too, I was able to learn so much about how online marketing works, and how people react to different buying triggers. But then came the new laws, and with them, lawsuits from individuals and attorneys general.
Similarly, a few years later, I stumbled into the ringtone business, which was about to BOOM. Like bulk email, the ringtone field had no rules yet. In my peak year, we did $108 million in sales and we were on the Forbes Top 500 fastest growing businesses in the world! But again, new laws came into effect quickly, and again, we were sued.
Fortunately, during this time, I was still deep into the restaurant business. These kept me going when things got tough. At one point, I had four different outlets of my ‘Great Scott’ eateries, plus two ‘Colorado Sports Café’ bars. (This this 2004 article covers my early years quite well, if you want to know even more.) Even now, I’m still involved in a popular sports bar, as well as an adult entertainment business that does very well.
But today, I’m mostly focused on affiliate marketing, website domains, and real estate. The first two are actually quite similar. The term ‘affiliate marketing’ sounds intimidating at first, but it’s really pretty simple: We take products, and basically broker them to people who can generate the leads. So, let’s say someone has lucky dice to sell. They’ll come to us and say, “these dice sell for $19.99, and for every order you get us, we’ll pay you a $5.00 commission.” Great! So then, we promote the dice using a unique link and get a cut from all the orders. We do it well, and it pays us well.
And like I said, my domain portfolio works in a similar way – here’s one example: I own www.Broncos.com. So, when the Broncos win the playoffs (as they did a few years ago), my website, www.Broncos.com is directly linked to the official Broncos store, where people buy licensed merchandise – and I get a percentage of what they buy. And it’s the same thing for all the other URLs I own, like www.GarageSales.com, www.Hockey.com, www.Text.com, www.Airline.com, www.IceHockey.com, and countless others too.
And that brings us to real estate. It might sound different from everything else I’ve mentioned above, but it really isn’t: Like domains, I also have a large portfolio of primely located physical properties, some of which I’ve owned for more than 30 years now. I mostly focus on commercial properties, but I still own a few rental houses too – rent is rent, after all.
Now, I don’t want you to think that everything I touch turns to gold! While I’ve done well in many different fields, I’ve also had my share of failures, too. In recent years, I’ve been involved in failed marijuana grow opportunities, and day-trading also failed me for a very long time. Although...even more recently, I’ve jumped back into day trading, and it’s gone really well since March. So, if you like my $1,000-per-spin videos from March and June, be on the lookout for some $5,000-per-spin videos (hopefully) coming soon, if my success continues, and especially if I hit that magic number of 1,500 patrons on my Patreon page!
Through all this, I’ve certainly learned a few things, too: When you can afford to (and even if you can’t, sometimes), overpay your people, and offer a strong bonus plan to make them part of the success of the business. Having a solid management team is crucial, and a happy employee is a loyal, hard-working employee. Also, this recent COVID-19 situation has reinforced something that I already knew, but it’s even clearer now: Sometimes, you have to just roll with the punches, and it’s very important to have money saved for a rainy day. I realize that this is just impossible for many people, but that’s what you should always be gunning for before you make a new investment.
With that said, I truly hope all of you are able to find work that you enjoy – that makes you some serious money – and also affords you the luxury of being able to spend on frivolous things that will never repay you financially, like, well, slots! Isn’t that why you’re here in the first place?