Welcome to PaulCherry.com.au, I am Paul Cherry. I started working in the online industry in early 2000 for a company then known as Toast.com. I responded to a advertisement in the local paper for a position as a “Search Engine Updater”. When I started, I actually joined a small group of developers who became the foundation of a brilliant SEO team.

The direction of that business evolved and it soon became known as DarkBlueSea (ASX: DBS). Within DBS I served many roles. I became manager of the SEO/traffic team and worked on various products including the beginning of DarkBlue.com (an affiliate network) and Fabulous.com (a domain name registrar and parking solution). There are close to 1 million names in total parked with Fabulous.com, half of which are owned by DBS. That’s right, DarkBlueSea has one of the largest domain name portfolios in the World, with over 550,000 registered to the company itself.

I left DarkBlueSea in 2005 to pursue another interest of mine, poker. I began working on Poker.com as a webmaster/SEO, where my only job was to keep the site at number 1 for the term “poker”. After several years, as internet businesses do, the direction changed. Poker.com became more than just an affiliate portal, we had a shot at building and running our own poker software client.

At Poker.com I helped design the software, became tournament director and then managed the affiliate team. We had a considerably small team (for a poker room) and I performed many tasks from software concepts through to marketing campaigns. I traveled to several industry events representing the poker room and even to the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas with some of our best players.

October 2006, all hell broke loose with the online gaming industry as the US House of Representatives passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act by slipping it in to the SAFE Port Act. The World’s biggest poker room, PartyPoker.com, lost 60% of its share value overnight.

The Poker.com software became CarbonPoker.com and continues to accept US players, while other poker rooms closed their doors to the USA. The owners of the company who I like, got out, and I soon followed. Poker.com became a poker information portal once again. CarbonPoker.com (and the software management company) has created a new poker network called Merge Gaming.

Early 2007, I began working for Boomerang.com.au (Australia) Pty Ltd. Boomerang is an Australian owned and operated web publishing company based in Brisbane. I am currently employed as the Business Development Manager and am involved in domain management, affiliate advertising and the company’s web development programs.

I am starting this blog quite late in my “online career” however I believe it to be a necessary platform for my future endeavours and also my current rants about the industries I am involved in.

Over the coming weeks, and in to the future, I will write my thoughts about (mostly Australian) affiliate programs, domaining, SEO/SEM and anything else in between. Welcome to PaulCherry.com.au.