So, with Cheltenham literally around the corner, I decided that it was probably time I got off my butt and got myself a piece of the giant racing pie.  I thought about just having a ton of coverage on one of my existing betting sites, but then decided that I might as well give it a proper go by making a dedicated racing site which you can see below (feedback is always welcome in the comments):

The site will, of course, cover all of the major festivals not just Cheltenham. But Cheltenham is the first one to pop up after the idea for the site was conceived. So, with a little help from some awesome writers, we came up with a plan to give Cheltenham a good old go.

The coverage on the site starts with an overview which summarises the whole of the festival. The content is set out in a hierarchical fashion and links through into previews of each of the days:

1. Day 1: Champion Day
2. Day 2: Ladies Day
3. Day 3: St Particks Thursday
4. Day 4: Gold Cup Day

Each day then drills down even further into individual race previews such as the Champion Hurdle. We talked about covering every race, but that seemed a little excessive and instead settled on covering all of the feature races, of which there are 12.

I found that one of the hardest bits about covering a horse racing festival is that the information changes right up to when the horses leave the gate – runners drop out, jockeys eat a few too many cakes at lunch and every now and again someone will spot a 100-1 shot that looks like it will go like horse poo off a shovel.

So when do you put the content up – you want it up early enough that it can get indexed and ranking in time, but not so early that all of the information is going to be horrendously out of date by the time the horses line up.

In the end we went for a compromise – with initial ‘preview’ articles being put up relatively early and then edited a day or so before the race. It makes for a lot of work, but fingers crossed it’ll pay off.

For the first time in my life I’m actually quite excited about Cheltenham – I may even have to have a couple of flutters myself!

So with an hour or two to spare (whilst the wife was doing her hair) I had a quick search for an appropriate wordpress theme, bought a domain and popped up this little puppy: http://www.gamblingsiteshowcase.com/

Essentially it’s meant as a showcase of gambling portals – so you can see what’s out there, get a little inspiration, and promote your site at the same time. I’m currently accepting submissions from affiliates who contribute to the community somehow – so if you have over 100 posts on GPWA or PAL, or who contribute in some other useful way, get in touch and we’ll look at adding your site.

Once the showcase is established (probably at the end of July 2012), the conditions for getting in will change – so if you want a site listed get on it now.

I should also point out that the showcase is edited for quality purposes, so not all sites will be accepted.

For those of you who are curious, the showcase uses the free Snapshot theme from Woo Themes with only minor modifications (code-butchering) to the theme.

Press Release Sites That Accept Gambling Websites

So you’ve decided to submit a release and have your credit card in hand – where do you go? Unfortunately a lot of the larger press release agencies don’t accept submissions which relate to online gambling, even if they accept press releases for offline gambling. For example I enquired at PR Web about a couple of sites and was told that I could submit a release for LondonCasinos.org.uk as it only deals with brick and mortar casinos, whilst UKCasinoGuide.com, which has far more content relating to offline gambling, would not be allowed as it also deals with online gambling.

The best option we’ve found to date is 24-7pressrelease.com who not only offer gambling-related press releases, but who are also one of the cheapest. Their basic package is $49 and permits the inclusion of links with custom anchor text – although in the light of the recent google updates I feel it wiser to stick to generic anchor text whenever the link is overtly paid.

For $89 you also receive distribution to the 24-7 Press Release network of sites (duplicate content anyone?) plus a guarantee that your press release will hit the front page of their site and next day submission.

In the long run I’ve seen similar results from both packages, but the $89 version just gets you there a bit quicker – mainly due to the front page display and next day release. You can see a full comparison of the different packages on the 24-7 Press Release website.

Another option used to be PR Fire, although recently their press releases do not seem to contain active links. I shot off a couple of emails asking about it, but never heard back.

Note: This article contains affiliate links to various websites. However this has not affected my recommendations in any way and I would give the same advice in person or on the forums.

Note: As the majority of my sites target the UK, I’m specifically talking about UK web hosting companies in this article. I’ll do separate articles for other countries as I expand into other territories.

Best Web Hosting

Out of all the UK based hosting companies I’ve used to date, there are only two who have consistently impressed me with their service, support and prices:

Vidahost

These guys have some of the best support I’ve ever seen, and it’s damn fast. In fact if I were to email them now, they would reply before I’ve even finished the post. What’s more is that you get a real response that actually answers your question rather than a ‘cut and paste’ email that’s vaguely related.

I have also never had any downtime on any of my hosting accounts that I have with them, and the sites are fast – I host bettingsitesonline.org.uk with them if you’re after an idea of speed. Also bear in mind that the site is quite resource hungry.

The pricing is incredibly cheap considering the service you get – shared hosting starts at £17.99 a year for the basic package and all packages (except the most basic one) you can get 3 years for the price of two by pre-paying.

If you use the coupon code ‘baldidiot’ you can also get an extra 10% discount. Click here to visit the Vidahost website.

Xilo

Xilo were recommended to me by another affiliate right around the time I was getting ready to launch a new site that had some pretty greedy requirements (ukcasinoguide.com) and I harassed support with questions about ioncube loaders and memory, all of which were answered quickly and in full the first time.

Site speed is fast (they also host this blog) and I am yet to have any downtime to date.

One minor annoyance is that if you use installation to install wordpress on your site, it adds an annoying ‘powered by Xilo’ in the footer, but you can easily get rid of this by editing the default.php file in your wordpress root folder.

The pricing is also very reasonable – shared hosting is £24.99 a year and cloud hosting is available from £9.99 a month, both of which come with a free domain and all of the usual gubbins. Click here to visit the Xilo website.

Best Registrars For Domains

It’s fairly common to get a free domain when you sign up for hosting, but if you’re buying lots of domains either for speculation or to use in the future (this baldidiot has hundreds sitting around) then it’s a good idea to find a decent registrar that offers competitive pricing and features such as free domain forwarding – don’t assume this comes as standard, one web host I used wanted an extra £9.99 a year on top of the registration fee just to forward a domain variant to a site they were already hosting.

I have two different recommendations depending on the type of TLD you’re registering. Both have pretty much the same features, so it comes down to price:

Godaddy – For gTLDs

First off I want to say that I’m only recommending godaddy for domains and not for hosting – I have only hosted with them once and it was a disaster.

But for domains they are excellent. Pricing is low (.com’s are just £5.29) and come with free forwarding etc.. If you purchase or transfer multiple domains (more than 5) in one go you can get free domain privacy, but be warned that this is only for the initial registration period – once it renews you’ll be charged for the privacy (£6.19 a year).

One of the most useful features is the ease in which you can transfer domains between godaddy accounts – meaning selling or buying domains (either privately or through the marketplace) is incredibly simple.

Godaddy are also used to people having large domain portfolios and offer tools such as bulk transfers and bulk purchasing to make your life a little easier.

The marketplace is also a good place to pick up domains for a cheap price – I grabbed findabookie.com for £8, bargain!

Tempted? Click here to visit the Godaddy website.

123-Reg – For .uk ccTLDs

Godaddy are my number one choice for generic TLD’s, but for anything with a .uk in it you should head on over to 123-reg  where pricing for a .co.uk is just £3.49 a year (versus godaddy’s £6.49 a year).

Just like godaddy, 123-reg offer free domain forwarding and have one of the simplest domain control panels I’ve used and changing name servers takes about 30 seconds.

Click here to visit the 123-reg website.

On April 24th one of my sites was beaten up by a penguin – resulting in a 60% drop in traffic and a minor addiction to checking my analytics data on my iPhone. Thankfully, this compulsion led to me spotting the fact that I’d been hacked relatively early on – thus allowing for a quick resolution.

Or so I thought…

Included in my hosting account was a ‘premium backup’ service that allowed you to roll back the site to any point in the past month. However, upon logging in to my cPanel and fumbling around for a while I discovered that the backup service I was supposed to have wasn’t there.

After waiting hours for tech support to email back and say “we’ll look into it”, I thought “sod this, I’m restoring from my own backups”. Thanks to my paranoia I have multiple back ups in multiple locations – we even have a fireproof & waterproof safe in the flat which is used to store backups, as well as my laptop when it’s not being used.

An hour later the site was back up and running, my stress levels had returned to normal and I had an idea for a blog post – so here are a few (paranoid) tips to help protect your online livelihood from disaster.

1. Keep Your CMS Up To Date

Are your websites using the latest versions of WordPress or Joomla? If not, you’re leaving yourself vulnerable to attack by hackers. Always make sure your CMS and any plug ins you use are up to date. There’s an air of mild hypocrisy on this tip as I was using an out-of-date Joomla installation – which probably opened the door for the hackers. Don’t let the same thing happen to you.

2. Distribute Your Risk

If you have more than one site it is advisable to spread them between multiple hosting accounts and providers. Having all of your sites on the same account could be disastrous if your primarily account is compromised or the server goes down.

3. Keep Up To Date Backups

Never rely on your host for backups – even if they offer a premium backup service. Make your own backups and keep them in a safe place.

There are a number of tools to make backing up incredibly easy. For example: if you installed your CMS using installatron you can also use it to create a manual backup of the site.

For Joomla users I cannot recommend Akeeba Backup enough – it’s free and incredibly easy to use. There is also a pro version available for a small fee which lets you schedule routine backups and even automatically transfer them to an online storage locker.

4. Test Your Backup System

Do your backups work? Have a go at installing one locally or on a another server. As well as knowing that everything is in working order, you’ll also have an idea of how to restore the site if the worst does happen.

5. Use A Monitoring Service

If something happens to your site you need to know about it as soon as possible. Uptime Robot offer a free monitoring service that will tell you if your site is down for any reason.

6. Sign Up For Google Webmaster Tools

If Google finds something iffy going on with your site, you’ll receive a message in your webmaster tools account – so make sure you have one. They’ll also attempt to email the webmaster of the site using a plethora of common emails (eg: info@ webmaster@ contact@) – so at the very least make sure you check your emails for each site.

1. I Used To Have Long Hair

In my earlier teenage years I used to have very long (girly) hair. I eventually did a 180 and shaved it all off and it has remained that way ever since. At this point, with a receding hairline and thinning patches, it may not be by choice for much longer..

Note: In the absence of any actual photos of myself with long hair (it was over a decade ago), here’s a drunken photo of me in a wig.

2. Why I Go By ‘Baldidiot’

The name ‘baldidiot’ comes from my live poker days when I used to drink beer and play like a bit of a tit in the hope of tilting other players at the table. One player got so frustrated he called me a ‘baldidiot’ before generously donating the rest of his chips to the table. It made me laugh so I started using it as an online pseudonym.

3. I Used To Play With Highly Infections Diseases

I have a masters degree in Immunology, but I got out of science pretty sharpish after realising how tedius it was. For anyone who is curious, my thesis was on Anthrax (the disease, not the band).

4. I Bagged Me A Hotty

In 2010, my wife and I were married on the beach in California, after which I promptly dragged her away from her sunny homeland to come and live with me in London.

Note: Photo below is of our wedding day – it’s from the back as I haven’t asked my wife if I can put pictures of her up.

5. No Cheese, Please

The mere though of cheese makes me retch! And before anyone says it, pizza is actually very tasty without cheese (just load up on the meat, sauce and chillis).

6. I Have Attempted To Be Sporty

I have run the ‘Snowdonia Marathon’ (slowly) and foolishly once agreed to participate in the ‘Tough Guy’. Despite this, I still somehow manage to have a bit of a belly – which the wife loves to point out any time I go near the biscuit tin.

Note: As you might be able to tell from the mud and look of exhaustion, this is before after the race.

7. Affiliate Marketer, Spy or Bum?

Only my closest friends really know what I do for a living – I get the impression everybody else assumes I’m involved in some kind of pyramid scheme. Except my dad, who thinks I’m his personal IT support department.

8. I Like To Drink Beer In Other Countries

The wife and I don’t like to sit still for too long and in the past we have avoided doing any work by trekking in the Himalayas, getting served by monkeys in a Japanese bar and driving across the US in a convertable mustang (LA – NY). I once also spent 2 months in Ghana odd-jobbing at a local school.

9. I Suck At Sport

I am terrible at all forms of sport – so much so that the last time I was asked to play on a 5-a-side football team, I only manage to score once in all the games I played… and it was in the wrong goal.

10. And Finally…

My attention span is comparable to that of an easily distracted kitten. This post, come to think of it, is likely just a means of procrastinating.