This article was originally posted on Pennsylvania Advantage. Posts and pages from that site have been relocated to US Casino Advantage. Additional archived posts may be found here.
Helping others has always been a passion of mine. As young as elementary school, I happily helped classmates with schoolwork and projects. In high school, I volunteered with a friend to help the local elementary school students learn to read. Then, in college, I tutored groups of my peers in math courses. Graduating with an economics degree in the midst of a recession, with the banking sector merging, pushed me into other career paths.
I looked for ways to help my community. This led to a job at the local humane society. Impassioned, I moved toward training dogs, or more accurately, their people. It was rewarding working with families, helping their dogs stay in a happy, healthy environment. A surprising benefit was seeing families become closer as they worked together towards a common goal: helping the family dog.
At the same time, to support my child and others, I volunteered in the classroom. A weekly visit had me helping students gain basic computer skills in the school computer lab.
Our road to Las Vegas
An opportunity for John in the online gambling industry took us across the country. Unfortunately, this left me with few career opportunities. Luckily, John’s position supported the ability for me to spend time with our children. So, I worked with youth organizations that teach the importance of community service.
With the growth of online poker and the suggestion of an employer, we moved to Las Vegas in 2010. Then, April 15, 2011, known as Black Friday in the poker world, put an end to those plans and his employment. Not ones to quit in the face of adversity, we made alternative plans.
I became a Las Vegas teacher
As our kids got older, I went back to school. With my passion for helping others and mathematics, I became a secondary math teacher. During this time, I never stopped volunteering, I helped my child and classmates improve their reading skills, and enhance their math and logic abilities. Again, I tutored other students while completing my own studies.
Teaching is amazing! The paperwork and politics are not. However, almost five years of this work environment eventually led to my autism diagnosis.
Vegas Advantage became a full-time adventure
With a pandemic in full swing, I joined John on his journey to make Vegas Advantage more. My passion to help people never stopped. For years I watched him uncovering scandals in the industry, always fighting for the players. Helping players with the Las Vegas Table Game Survey gave me the passion to increase the advantage brand.
I loved the idea of bringing our Las Vegas Survey to other markets. Inspired to help players who enjoy gambling find the best value, we made a plan to expand Vegas Advantage into something greater. The plan was to provide people with high-quality content about casinos in other markets. We would tap into the expanding mobile sports betting market and affiliate programs to support this plan. The ultimate goal was never to push people into gambling online for profit. It was that affiliate programs would help support our work through those who were interested in these product offerings. But this would not be our future.
Regulated operators did not acknowledge our existence
We knew we needed to spend money to expand our network. So, after a successful trip to Colorado, we decided to visit 66 East Coast casinos in 15 days. We managed to visit 58 casinos. Sharing property information and real-life trip reports, gave us a solid start. Our sites would grow, but the regulated operators wouldn’t work with us. A hotel affiliate program even stole from us.
To add to the frustration, we must regularly defend our work from plagiarists, and not just from small sites. Fremont Street Experience, a government-funded tourism entity, and now Catena Media, have plagiarized our work. It is baffling to me that a tourism group did not want to work with a local media group but sent writers to copy our information. Our goal is the same: to improve the tourist experience in Las Vegas. We offered writing services to Catena Media days before their writers plagiarized our stories without attribution.
Content theft hurts the entire industry
My brain works differently than others, but I struggle to see why affiliate marketing partners are stealing from each other. It does not benefit the industry, or more importantly, the player, for larger companies to steal the voices of other websites. During my brief window in corporate America, I had a manager who emphasized the importance of healthy competition. A lack of competition makes a company complacent and forget why it is in business to start: to fulfill the needs of consumers.
Affiliate greed exacerbates problem gambling
We never lost sight of our mission: to provide quality content to help gamblers make more informed decisions. Those in the gaming industry working toward a profit and not the interests of the players are adding to responsible gambling issues, as much as they may try to claim otherwise.
