The Patreon memberships are open again. We will operate business as usual and keep a close eye on everything. It is Vegas Advantage’s main source of income. Additionally, as player advocates, we strive to help everyone get the most out of their Las Vegas vacations.
We made a few changes to help secure the information. Thank you to all Vegas Advantage members who help make this all possible. If you see someone else using our work without attribution, please let us know.
Our Las Vegas Blackjack and Table Game Survey is available as part of a subscription service. You can support Vegas Advantage by signing up for a monthly or annual membership. Survey pages are updated several times per month with new data from casino visits.
Vegas Advantage subscriptions are available through Patreon starting at $5 per month. Sign up now for an annual membership and receive a discount of almost 2 months free!
If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER.
Vegas Advantage received ridiculous legal threats
As Vegas Advantage members and our social media followers know, we temporarily closed our Patreon newsletter to new sign-ups. Someone joined it and became a threatening nuisance. We later received a blustery letter from a Las Vegas lawyer claiming we would be sued for “well in excess of $500,000” if we did not comply with their demands.
Vegas Advantage did not comply and we moved on with our lives, including reopening memberships. That letter was the last we heard from them.
Other dumb legal threats we have received over the years include people who:
- Claim they own the Vegas Advantage trademark or another version of the domain and we must pay them to license it,
- Claim to own the copyright on pictures on our site we created and demand payment or they will sue us and have our websites taken offline, and
- Rip our site off and then claim we stole their content, demanding payment.
We also get the usual online scams. Con artists seem to think we have more money than brains.
We don’t engage with most of these grifters, which usually makes them go away. However, some get very aggressive demanding thousands of dollars, threatening to ruin us in one way or another if we do not comply. It is an unfortunate part of owning a popular website.
Even with all that, Vegas Advantage is still a blessing
It seems that some people think we are getting rich off Vegas Advantage, which is a part-time mom-and-pop operation. While we would love to do it full-time, the site only makes hobby money. We both have other jobs. We have resisted the temptation to sell it to casino sites because it brings so much positivity to our lives.
Vegas Advantage improved our marriage in ways nothing else ever has. Working together helped us learn more about each other and how to better manage our autism, which we discovered in our adult years. The 21st-anniversary casino record only tells part of the story of how we have bonded thanks to Vegas Advantage and our other sites.
In 2020, Kristina left teaching. We bet big on ourselves. The pandemic drastically affected our business plan. We lost a year. In 2021, we visited 58 casinos in the Midwest and along the East Coast. We flew into Cincinnati and drove in a circle to Atlantic City and back.
We built 10 websites related to this trip hoping to get into the regulated online gambling industry. After all our hard work and investment, it became obvious none of those companies wanted to work with us. Most of our pitches went ignored.
It was not because of the quality of our content. Many of the same companies that showed no interest in partnerships paid other people to (sometimes inaccurately) copy our work, often shortly after we pitched them. Here is one example:
We finally concluded that operators do not want to work with small businesses. The affiliate companies are mostly European, and it seems most employees are, too. We were blocked from participating in an industry I fought to create. However, one company that does not want to work with us pumped and dumped a domain after a link scheme and it caused Vegas Advantage to get scraped and republished. The offending website stole our identities.
This caused us tremendous stress. We could not monetize our years of hard work or get our investment back but other people were making money by stealing from us while our identities and entire website got stolen. Our strong marriage helped us get through those tough times.
While Kristina took a part-time job at the library, I partnered with Onlineunitedstatescasinos.com. They are great people to work with. In 2018, I left that website to start Vegas Advantage. Many of the same employees are still there. This leaves enough time for our websites. It is a perfect balance.
Huge improvement in our communication skills
Another huge benefit Vegas Advantage added to our lives is the improvement in our communication skills. Years ago, we often struggled to talk to others, especially in groups. The Vegas Advantage brand has grown so much that we have been interviewed by mainstream media and industry podcasts. Every interview teaches us more communication skills and increases our confidence. We feel most of those communication issues are behind us.
Approach us like adults
We never understand why people come at us so aggressively. We are laid back and see no need for conflict. The only times we speak out are when our content gets stolen and contacting the site fails to resolve it, unethical content that sites refuse to fix that hurts players, or when we get dumb legal threats.
It is never too late to work things out. We don’t always need to agree to respect someone’s position and shake hands at the end.
Threatening to file a frivolous lawsuit against us because you did not get your way is the worst angle to take. It is much better to ask if we can have a call or talk over coffee or a beer. We guarantee to make a good-faith effort to resolve whatever the problem is.
