Interview With John McLeod, Card Game Enthusiast And Internet Business Expert

 

We recently caught up with a friend of ours to see how he was doing with his hobby/website on card games (www.pagat.com). What he shared with us was quite an elaborate and encouraging story that we wanted to take the time to share with you. His inspiring tale reinforces what we’ve been saying on our site for quite some time – you can turn your hobby or interest into an internet business. This is John’s story:

John decided one day that he needed a place to put all this information so it was available to everyone, and he didn’t have to keep cluttering up his spare room with stuff. The year was 1995, and the internet was still in a fledgling, but John saw the potential, and began loading all of his playing card information onto web pages, and then assembled those pages into a website. He really had no interest at the time other than making his storehouse of knowledge available to the public. His site was not professionally built or highly polished, didn’t have many graphics or flashy banners, just good, solid information that was out there for everyone to take advantage of.

John McLeod, the owner of www.pagat.com

He didn’t do much to promote his site. He registered on a couple of search engines, included his website address in all of his email correspondence, and had his email address at the bottom of every page on the website, but nothing beyond that. John continued to pour his spare time into his passion and hobby, adding to and updating the site every chance he got with new information. At the time, his was one of the few sites available with such a comprehensive collection of card-game information.

Over time, the email traffic started rolling in. Most of it was spam of course, but every once-in-a-while he would come across an email offer from someone who wanted to pay to advertise on his site. He would follow up on the opportunities every chance he got, but working full time and maintaining an active web site didn’t leave him much time for anything else. He was able to take advantage of some of the offers, but couldn’t really devote the time to research them like he wanted to.

After about five years, working on his web site was taking at least as much time and effort as his day job. When he was offered a redundancy package with a modest pension, he therefore accepted it in order to work on the website full time.

Fortunately it was around the time that John left his job that the fashion for online gambling in general and the poker craze in particular began to take off. John’s website, ranking highly in Google for the term ‘card games’ was in a strong position to take advantage of this. After a year or two the site was generating more income than he had
previously earned from his day job. This has continued for seven years and shows no signs of slowing down.

John’s tale was so fascinating to us that we wanted to share his thoughts with you, so we asked him if we could interview him for our site and readers, and he agreed. Below is a brief interview with John McLeod, card-game enthusiast, now internet professional.


John, what gave you the idea to start a card game website, and when did you launch it?
I actually started the site in 1995, but I had been collecting information about card games for at least 25 years before that. I had a collection of books from various countries and a large quantity of notebooks and papers containing rules of many games I had learned. At the time I was active in the newsgroup rec.games.playing-card [Ed. Note: rec.games.playing-card is not a website. It is a newsgroup for information-sharing on card games and similar topics], and it became clear that we needed a place to store information and answer FAQ about the rules of card games. When I found out about the worldwide web it occurred to me that a web page was the perfect place to display the rules of one card game. And the format of a web site was ideal to create an encyclopedia of web pages that could be modified and added at any time – far more flexible and adaptable than a book.

How many similar websites were there on the internet at the time?
There were probably a few dozen sites with rules of card games, but mostly covering only one game or a handful of the author’s favorite games. I think mine was the first serious attempt to produce a comprehensive encyclopaedia of card game rules.

When you started the website, did you expect to make a lot of money at it?
No. My only intention was to store the information I had collected in a more convenient and accessible form, and to make it available to my friends and other people who might be interested in the subject. It was purely a hobby.

How soon after launch did your website start to bring in money?
I had to go back and check. It was sooner than I remembered. The site started in July 1995. In May 1996, I was approached by an advertising broker who wanted to sell banner space on my site. I set up an account with him. I received my first income in March 1997.

What steps did you take to promote your site?
I submitted it to the search engines – I think Yahoo and AltaVista were the main ones at that time – so that it would be listed. I included the URL in my e-mail signature so that people could find it if they were interested. I posted a message to rec.games.playing-cards each time there was a major update. Nothing else that I remember.

When did it finally occur to you that you were running a business and not just a hobbyist website?
Having my email address on every web page got the emails rolling, eventually close to 200 a day. I was approached by a couple of ad agencies, and over several years, by some individuals and companies that wanted to place ads. That got some revenue coming in for me. At the time, I was doing mostly article-writing and background research in the evenings for my site, and working full time during the day. Between those two activities, I didn’t have much time to sit down and sort through my email to determine what was spam and what might be a legitimate business offer. And even when I did, I didn’t have the time to research it, follow-up on a potential deal, or talk to advertisers individually.

This went on for over five years, and as interest in the site grew it took up a steadily increasing amount of time. So when I was offered a redundancy package with enough money to support myself at a modest level, I quit my job to devote all my time to my hobby. I wasn’t looking to get rich doing this, I just wanted to be comfortable and do what I wanted to do for a living.

What I discovered though was that when I finally got a chance to really follow up on the business offers and deal directly with advertisers, things started to take off. One-to-one deals with people in the gaming industry took more time and effort to arrange, but were generally far more profitable than using an ad network. It also happened that, coincidentally, the on-line gambling industry was taking off about the same time, which brought a lot of visitors and advertising dollars to the site.

To answer your original question, this has never been a business. To me, it’s still a hobby. It’s important to keep that perspective. Even now, when I get lured into thinking this is business, I find myself tempted to make some bad decisions.

How soon did you become No 1 on Google?
I don’t know. Google did not exist when I first started. When Google came about, I checked a couple of times using the keyword “card games”, and I was not number 1. After that, I just stopped checking and forgot about it.

Google continuously changes the way they assess valuable websites by reworking their algorithms. Has your website position on Google ever changed?
It depends what term you search for. I have the impression that it moves around all the time. For example if you search today for “canasta” I find that I am at the top, above Wikipedia, but if you search for “rummy” I am second, after Wikipedia. It fluctuates between Wikipedia and my site, although I’m not competing with Wikipedia. I would link to them if I thought it was needed for my website.

Have you ever done any SEO for your website?
Not really. I have put keywords and titles in my pages and tried to make the navigation of my site straightforward, but that is more to help readers than to help search engines. My job is to provide useful information, set it out clearly and make it easy to access. If my site is any good, it is Google’s job to list it in the appropriate places. It is not my job to try to influence Google directly, and my impression is that trying to do so would ultimately be counterproductive.

What suggestions do you have for beginners that would help them achieve your level of success?
I’m not sure if the way I did things then would work nowadays. If Wikipedia had existed when I started, I might well have become involved in that rather than making my own site. But for what it’s worth – based on what I did – here are some suggestions:

  1. Don’t give up the day job. For the first 7 years I built my web site in evenings and on weekends. It was not until around 2004 that it started generating enough revenue to live on. That was primarily due to the sudden interest in online poker, and it was pure luck that things turned out that way.
  2. Write about what you know and like. The web is for sharing knowledge.
  3. Focus on creating something useful. Don’t try to impress people. People use the web to get information, not to admire the cleverness of web designers. Just present your material honestly, clearly and in straightforward manner.
  4. Work on making a site that people will want to use. Your satisfaction will come from feedback from people you have helped by giving them the information they needed, and ultimately from being recognized as an expert in your field.
  5. So far as possible, treat other people working in the same or related fields as collaborators rather than competitors
  6. Always be true to your principles. It’s very easy to get swept up in the idea of making a quick buck, and there are plenty of people out there who will try and convince you to do that. But in the long run, you’re site and your credibility be ruined, and everything you’ve worked to build is gone in an instant. Remember why you started your site, and always make decisions based on you beliefs. Everything else will take care of itself.

John, thank you for spending some time with us today answering questions and sharing your inspiring story. We’re sure that you will be an inspiration to many others, just as you have been to us. Congratulations on your success, and we wish you continued success in your endeavors. Thanks again.

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