Editor's Note: This is part III of III in my introduction story. Check out part I here.

Even though I was back with essentially the same day-to-day duties as before, I had lost a lot of my authority in helping carve out a direction and getting new ideas and enhancements implemented. Looking back on it now, my job was essentially to keep BW as it was. It was a bit more complicated than that, but that was it in a nutshell.

In January of 2007, the industry suffered another blow when the Neteller founders were arrested when entering the USA. Neteller quickly left the USA market and froze funds belonging to USA players (some months later, players received their money back). Other e-wallets such as ePassporte filled the gap for awhile -- until they shut down the following year -- but it was never the same. Deposit difficulties, withdrawal delays and other issues would become the norm for USA players post-UIGEA.

This really hurt BonusWhores -- A LOT. Now, not only were bonuses becoming more difficult to clear (the ones from 2003 were so easy a monkey could be profitable clearing them), but now a huge percentage of our players couldn’t deposit easily, not to mention the players who bought into the fear of all the sites leaving the USA market or fighting off their grandmother telling them that they heard on the news that their favorite game was now illegal. Sigh

As a stakeholder in the success of BonusWhores and somebody that cared about its legacy, I felt rakeback had to be part of the offerings at the site if it was to continue to be successful. BonusWhores had previously been THE go-to spot for anything bonuses (and usually the best ones). Now players -- especially those from the USA – were having trouble depositing, or increasingly not wanting to bother, were going to increasingly find rakeback as the most desirable way to receive rewards, especially for winning players who would essentially never have to deposit again once their initial deposit was made.

Rakeback had been around for a few years by this point. PAS’s own Chris had started RakeTracker way back in 2004. Jek even experimented with a rakeback focused site of his own, RakeReturns, although the site was gradually phased out as administrative duties started to become too much (can anybody say Poker Affiliate Solutions? ), plus BonusWhores had been doing quite well as a bonus-focused site up until UIGEA.

Now I can’t blame management, whom I very much respect personally, entirely for being so late to the rakeback game at BW, primarily because they had other properties that were rakeback-focused. Very likely they received many of the players that would have signed up for rakeback through BW had we offered rakeback after Neteller left the market in 2007. Still, it was probably the biggest blow to BW.

Two and half years after UIGEA, in early 2009, BonusWhores management decided to add rakeback for USA-centered rooms such at Full Tilt and Ultimate Bet. This was probably too little, too late, though, as the previous BW users perhaps had become used to finding their rakeback deals elsewhere. Also by this time, many players still bonus whoring from site to site were going to kickback or bankroll-centered sites, where players received cash in addition to the regular bonuses that the sites were offering – many of which were very easy to clear. It was a double whammy for a site that once attracted players to the site through awesome bonuses and incentives. As far as I go, I wasn’t perfect either, by any stretch, but I was still proud of my contribution to the site under new ownership, which was mostly maintaining and adding content.

In early 2010, I was told that BonusWhores would be moving in a different direction and would be less content-focused (or at least not as heavily maintained). They would eventually change their name to PokerBonuses and would focus more on SEO and design. In kind of a weird coincidence, my second child was about to be born, this time a son (my first child had been born one month before leaving BonusWhores the first time). I decided to again spend some time with my family while I took a couple months off.

I was again a bit upset that my time at BonusWhores was finally ending, but my fear this time was more about not having a job -- especially one that I still enjoyed -- and what to do next, than being associated with BW, since we had long passed the glory days of what I now referred to as "the Jek-era." I probably got too comfortable at BW and the fear of the unknown bothered me a bit. I had probably worn out my welcome at this point and basically everything in my head told me it was probably a good time to move on.

Enter Pokeraddict and Poker Affiliate Solutions. I first met Pokeraddict at an affiliate convention in late 2005. He knew Jek from his days working as a prop at Absolute Poker in the early 2000s. They then got to know each other a bit better through business dealings (RakeReturns was advertised on PA’s site- RakeRebateReview). In 2006, as BW was expanding, Pokeraddict joined the company and relocated. Since then, I have really got to know Pokeraddict well and I consider him a great friend. Like Jek, he is somehow who I respect greatly and have learned a lot from.

He informed me that Poker Affiliate Solutions was going through a bit of a transition/expansion and that my experience and skills could likely be applied to PAS. I met with management and decided that working remotely for Poker Affiliate Solutions would be great next step for me. It seemed that despite being similar in many ways to my previous industry experience, that joining a completely new organization with all new properties would be a nice change of pace.

So here I am, very happy to be a part of the team at Poker Affiliate Solutions. Everybody here is great and very competent at what they do. I can honestly say that if I owned this company that I see nobody here that I wouldn’t want working for me.

We recently had a company meeting in July and I was even more impressed with the staff. They are the most consistently competent people I have ever worked with in the industry, or anywhere else for that matter. They put a strong emphasis on ethics, transparency, accountability, and employee input top to bottom, with the latter being very surprising to me for an organization of its size.

I keep telling people that it is amazing how this industry has changed and how crazy it is to see online affiliate companies that I have been apart of go from 2 or 3 people in a basement to a well balanced, diversified company – and that is very much what Poker Affiliate Solutions is. With mergers and acquisitions an increasingly common occurrence and USA regulation seemingly around the corner, the next five years are going to be damn interesting. I look forward to being a part of it all.