It’s October 2008, I’m about to turn 26 and I’m unemployed. When I went to university I had absolutely no idea what to do with my life and ended up leaving with a pretty worthless degree in politics. I worked a string of part-time jobs after leaving, but had no clue what I wanted to do career-wise.
At that time, I was writing a sports betting blog with a bunch of like-minded friends from uni. I was also about to start a job with William Hill as a level 1 cashier, earning slightly above the minimum wage at the time. But right now, I’m sat in Dublin having a pint with an old friend from university. A group of us have travelled over for the Irish Poker Open, which doubled up as a 21st birthday party for another old mate of mine. I won’t mention what happened with him and the gold-coloured thong.
I don’t remember exactly what we were talking about. It must have been something to do with my lack of career direction. Cammy had been living in London working with Betfair for the past couple of years, but had just moved to Ireland to work for Full Tilt Poker. He asked me why I hadn’t been writing for money. I didn’t know what he was talking about.
Advice
He told me that loads of people in the gambling industry were looking for content writers. They would even pay me reasonably well to do it, apparently. I just had to ask.
I didn’t really know where to begin, but I took that advice back to Blighty and had a look around. There were no platforms like Upwork or Fiverr back then, but I took to randomly searching things in Google. By chance I stumbled across a few internet forums, such as Digital Point, and landed a small job.
My first ever writing gig was preparing 300 word Premier League match reviews, for which I would receive the princely sum of $5 each. I loved that job, it was like getting paid to participate in my hobby. Soon after, I ended up stumbling onto a long-term partnership with an affiliate site. I worked part-time for those guys for around four years.
Rounders Palace, as it was then, later rebranded to BetPal.com and I really enjoyed working for them. I would provide casino, sports betting and poker content in return for good beer money, topping up my meagre income from William Hill. In parallel, I was building my own little career in the gambling industry. After I my promotion to Head of Online for EDITEC in 2014, I had to turn the writing in. It was just too much. I was constantly exhausted, mentally.
I was at a crossroads and I chose to focus on my career with EDITEC. With hindsight, I greatly regret that decision.
Today
Fast forward to August 2021. I’m now done with full-time, stressful jobs in the gambling industry. I’ve thrown it all in to return to being paid to pursue my hobby. Naturally, most of what I write about is still related to sports, betting and gambling, for they are my main interests after all. So I successfully bid on a sports betting project on Upwork and it turns out to be for BetPal.com, who are now under new ownership.
In addition to writing weekly football content for BetPal, I also reconnected with the chap I used to write for when he co-owned the site, before they sold it on. I’m now giving him a helping hand curating the content on Casino.zone, his latest venture. I had a lot of fun reviewing Play’n GO’s ZZ Top slot last week, what a banging soundtrack that game has!
Full Circle
Where am I going with this? I don’t really know, I just find it amusing how I’ve come full circle and wanted to scribble something down. A simple conversation over a pint with a mate led to me realising what I should be doing with my life. I started out on that path, the right one, but became distracted by climbing the corporate ladder. That’s just what you are supposed to do, isn’t it?
Only now do I realise I’ve been living life wrong for many years. Perhaps if I’d stuck to the content creation, I could have spent the last few years writing from the beach. Not to worry though, I got there in the end. And in fairness, I had an amazing time of it, travelling around Africa and Southeast Asia for work, meeting some amazing people.
Now I just try to remember that I’m lucky enough to live in a place where other people go on holiday and I’m working for myself, doing what I love. And it all started on a lad’s weekend away, between trips to the bar and Abrakebabra.
Cheers Cammy, I think I owe you a pint.