But what if you’re a new affiliate? You feel pretty much stuck in a hole with a limited amount of money to play with, and any money that you do invest in your project is going to mean a lot to you. So what’s your game plan right now? The biggest problem is the fear of throwing money into something that you are not entirely sure is going to work, so what do you do?

Money isn’t everything

Your best plan of action is to limit the amount of money that you spend on your site when you are starting out. You do not need to buy flashy designs or advertising, all you need to do is write lots of good quality content, work on your SEO and get people to link to you. Fortunately, all of these essentials are completely free, so there is no need to fork out any money just yet. Your main goal is to rinse and repeat the method of – content – SEO – links – until your site starts to get a foothold in the Google rankings.

I know of a number of affiliates that started with literally nothing, but are now making ridiculous amounts of money. When it comes to being successful, it’s you drive to do well and work ethic that helps you to create a money-making site, not how much money you have in your wallet. The great thing about Internet Marketing and being a poker affiliate is that anyone can do it, regardless of how much money you have. So there’s no point in trying to use the excuse of ‘not having enough capitol’ for not being able to create a profitable site. It isn’t going to wash with me, and you are not doing yourself any favours.

Using CPA to get an initial boost

In the CPA vs Rev Share article, I highlighted how rev share is best for profits over the long run. But what if you want the money now? One of the most attractive features about a CPA deal is that it is like an instant reward on your efforts, whereas MGR (rev share) is like a gradual build up over time, that can take a long time before the full potential is reached. So if you are a new affiliate, a CPA deal can be a lifesaver.

When you start getting your first CPAs through, the main idea is to save it and reinvest it wisely back into the development of your site. It can be incredibly tempting to take it to the poker tables or withdraw it and go to town with it, but if you are a serious affiliate you should be looking to reinvest the money so that you will be earning double what you have earned the next month. So keep focused and look forward to future goals rather than thinking about what you have in your hands right now.

Investing in a design

When you do have a little money spare to push into your poker affiliating venture, you will be best off investing it in a unique website design. I know that I always say how design is not important, but when it comes to making your first investment into your site, getting a solid website design is the safest option to start out with. In addition, a revamp of your site can do wonders to spike your motivation levels, and so it may well do more than just give your visitors something a little prettier to look at.

If you don’t have the money spare however, I wouldn’t fret about getting your first unique design. Just keep plugging away and wait until you build up enough revenue from your site so that you can reinvest it in the future. Give it time and it will come.

Overview

Essentially, the main point of this article is to highlight that you do not need money to be successful as you are starting out, but if you do need a little boost, the CPA deal is your best option. In my opinion, if the thought of not having enough money is really dragging you down, I think that you are just looking for excuses to not work hard enough to reach your goals. I’m not trying to be harsh, but it’s just the reality of it all.

Fancy designs and advertising are just bonuses when you have the money at hand, but they do not make up the core of a good poker site. Sure, things will be easier in the future when you have more money, but that is because you will also have more knowledge and confidence to back it up. But for now, you just need to keep plugging away and reminding yourself that the light is at the end of the tunnel, but only if you make the effort to get there.

The main thing you have to ask yourself when implementing geotargeting is; what would people from different countries want to see when they visit my site? It’s not always easy to stir up great ideas about what you could deliver to people from differing countries, so here are 3 solid techniques to help you to make full use of the possibilities of geotargeting.

1) Only advertise banners to rooms visitors can play at

This is probably the most common use of geotargeting on poker websites, and it is a very effective way to make full use of your advertising spots.

There is no use in displaying a Titan Poker banner to US customers, as it is not possible for them to sign up and play there, and so a perfectly good banner spot is going to go to waste. However, if you geotarget that spot so that US visitors see a PokerStars banner and non-US visitors see the Titan banner, you are offering a viable option for all the visitors that see the banner.

Imagine if your site gets 50% US traffic, and 50% non-US traffic. In addition, a banner at the top of your site gets about 5 conversions a month, yet it only displays a room that is not available to non-US citizens. By simply showing a US room to your US visitors, you are maximizing the potential of that banner space, and should in theory be doubling the number of RMPs you get through that space alone.

2) Show a currency that is familiar to the visitor

If you have a random image of a pile of cash on one of your main converting pages, how about geotargeting that image so that you show a pile of cash in each visitor’s home currency? For example, if your visitor is from the UK, show them coins or notes in GBP. If they’re from a European country, show them money in EUR.

It may seem like a small detail, but seeing a familiar currency is going to make your visitors feel far more comfortable about signing up to online poker, as just showing dollars all the time can make online poker seem like a distant thing that “only Americans” would do. In addition, money in your own currency is far more eye catching than money in another country’s currency, so it will go a long way in turning heads and keeping visitors interested in your page and what you have to say.

A lot of the time with poker players, gaining trust is key to acquiring those extra RMPs that would normally be too apprehensive to sign up and play. As I have said, it may be a small detail, but it is a collection of these small details that help to push you further ahead of the competition in the long run.

3) Use banners in different languages

Juts as a familiar currency is going to spark more interest, a familiar language is going to do just the same, if not more to catch their attention. Whereas a standard banner may normally be overlooked, a banner in a visitor’s home language will be far more likely to make them read on to find out more, and so you will have just upped your chances to get an RMP that would have otherwise moved on elsewhere.

As a tip, it is a good idea to link each targeted banner to the respective language on the poker room’s landing page, otherwise the visitor may well quickly lose interest in the room. It will then be obvious that the banner was just a quick-fix to get their attention, rather than a genuine option for them to play at a room in a more familiar language. All it takes is a little effort on your part, and then that banner spot can go on converting visitors for months and years to come.

It may again only help with a handful of conversions, but it is these small edges that build up over time, and can work wonders in conjunction with other fine details when it comes to converting visitors. In this age of poker affiliating, you really need to try and squeeze out as many conversions from each area of your site to maximize your earnings from month to month.

Overview

These 3 tips are the main ones that come to mind when I think about geotargeting poker websites. However, this really is just the tip of the iceberg, and there are numerous ways in which you can customize your site to make your visitor’s experience that little bit more enjoyable.

The more comfortable you can make your visitors, the more likely it is that you are going to be able to gain their trust and turn them into a RMP. Just think outside the box, and see how many ideas you can come up with to tailor your site to each visitor’s geographical position.

I am confident that at least 90% of webmasters are neglecting to utilize geo-targeting, and by doing so they are missing out on prime opportunities to make money from their sites. So take on board what you are about to read, and seriously think about implementing geo-targeting on your own site.

What Is Geo-targeting?

Geo-targeting is where you tailor your ads or content to different people depending on which country they are visiting your site from. For example, you could geo-target a certain banner space so that visitors from the US see one banner, whilst visitors from any other country than the US will see a different banner.

Similarly, you can take this one step further and geo-target the ad so that visitors from each major country like US, UK, Germany, France, Sweden, Australia, Canada and so on will see their own unique banner. Essentially, you can use geo-targeting to show certain content or images based on which country your visitor is coming from.

Why Geo-target?

Geo-targeting is incredibly useful, especially so if you own a poker website. For example, lets say that you have a nice banner ad on your homepage that does moderately well for click throughs and conversions, but the banner is for a poker room that does not accept US players. The site itself receives around 200 visitors a day, with around 50% of those coming from the US. Can you see the problem here?

Showing a banner ad to US visitors for a room that does not accept US players is beyond pointless. That banner is being wasted on 100 or so visitors that will be unable to play at the poker room you are advertising to them. By geotargeting that banner spot instead, you could show US room banners to visitors from the US, whilst showing your non-US room to visitors outside of the US. It really is such a simple idea, yet so many people neglect to geo-target their ads, and by doing so they are missing out on prime opportunities to increase their earnings from their site.

Another reason to geo-target is that you can show more appealing banners to visitors from different countries. As you may already know, banner ad click throughs can be pretty low, as the majority of visitors to your site will have banner blindness, and so will completely ignore any flashy banners that you throw out in front of them.This is normally because most of the time these banners are offering something generic that visitors will not be particularly interested in.

However, if there is a promotion taking place specifically for UK players, you can throw in a specific UK targeted banner and show it to visitors to the UK only. By doing this you can catch their attention with a targeted banner, whilst having the standard banner running for non-UK visitors to help with normal conversions.

In addition to this, you can also catch visitors’ attention by displaying banners in their own language. If you can throw up a banner in a certain country’s own language, or have that country’s flag displayed somewhere in a banner, it is a hell of a lot more likely that it will catch their attention. Consequently, whereas your 200 German visitors a month may have been overlooking your standard sidebar banner, you will be able to catch their attention with an attractive targeted banner in German and squeeze out an extra 5 or so sign-ups that you would have originally missed out on.

How To Geo-target

Geo-targeting isn’t nearly as hard as you might think, as the hard work of figuring out where each visitor is coming from is done for you. The way to geo-target is to upload a simple yet powerful script to your site that allows you to configure banners in an easy to use interface, and then implement those banner configurations in the desired areas on your site. It may sound a little confusing at first, but for those that have used wordpress before, it’s a little like that in a way (but easier).

• MySimpleAds
• OpenX

The best geotargeting script that I have found is MySimpleAds, which is both easy to install and use. The script comes with a $32 price tag, which is incredibly cheap in my opinion seeing as the script may well pay for itself a few times over in the first day through the extra conversions you will receive. So there’s no need to fear that you will be throwing your money down the drain with this script.

I’m not going to go into much detail about how it all works, but as I’ve already said, it provides you with a simple interface to create geo-targeted banners to implement on your site. In addition, you can track the clicks on your banners to analyse which promotions are working the best, so that you can optimize your ads and get as many conversions as possible.

Another highly recommended script you can use for geotargeting is OpenX. This script is free and favoured by many webmasters, so is well worth checking out. In fact, I would say that more people use OpenX that MySimpleAds, but I really enjoy using MySimpleAds for its simplicity. Both of these are quality scripts, but if you’re looking for ease of use, then it’s not a bad idea to shell out $32 for MySimpleAds. Either way, you can’t go wrong with any of these scripts.

Dominating your niche is essentially where you become the number one site in the niche; having the site that people refer to for information on a certain subject. By having this quality information, your site should be able to pick up back-links, and in turn become far more visible than others sites within your niche, making your site the best within its field. For example, lets say you start up website based on poker mathematics.

There may be a number of other sites out there dedicated to mathematics and poker, and so to become the number one site within that niche you have to become the authority on your particular subject more than the other sites.

However, this is always easier said than done.

Types of niche

As you might expect, some niches are going to be more difficult to dominate than others. For example the ‘bonus code’ niche is heavily saturated with sites looking to go one better than one another, and so you would really need quite a lot of resources and man-power to keep afloat in that niche, let alone dominate it.

On the other hand, much more specific and less competitive niches will be much easier to dominate, and so it will take less work to get to the top. In fact, if you are entering a completely new niche, you should become the number one authority after launching your site, as there will be no other sites around to rival you.

In my opinion, any small to middle-sized niches can be dominated by a single webmaster. Some of the bigger niches could even be dominated by one webmaster alone, but it takes a lot of hard work and dedication to own an authority site with minimal man-power. However, that’s not to say that small or middle-sized niches can be dominated easily, as they will also require a solid amount of effort and focus. But simply put, if you can knuckle down and work to the best of your ability, dominating a niche is by no means an impossible task.

How to dominate your niche

The key to dominating your niche is… quality content (surprise surprise).

(I was actually planning on putting a nice bulleted list here of the things that you need to do to dominate your niche, but I couldn’t think of anything as important as good quality content is.)

The best sites within any niche always have top quality content that is both informative and helpful to the visitor. More importantly, this information is as accurate as possible and be correct to the best of the writer’s knowledge.

If you were to create a site with little content and poor information, you can never expect to have a site that will dominate its niche. However, if you create a site with key information and tips on a particular area of poker, with unique information that similar sites do not offer, you stand a much better chance of becoming the ‘go-to site’ in your niche. It’s not always easy to continuously write fresh and informative information for your site, but it is something that you will have to get used to if you want to create a site that will blow other portals out of the water.

You should try and think of your site as a machine, where every piece of content you add is another addition to make it work better and faster (doing whatever job it does). With each piece of content you add, you want it to work with the site to the best of its ability, making it much more useful and efficient. It may seem like a crazy way to think, but if you can keep this idea of your site being like a machine, it really will help to make each piece of content as useful as possible, and allow you to create a Titan when it comes to creating an informative portal.

Keeping one step ahead

Another key point when you look to dominate your niche is to always stay one step ahead of your competitors. If you can offer something that your competitor’s sites cannot, then visitors will be more interested in visiting your site than others’. This means that if you intend on simply looking at other sites within your niche for the latest information, and merging together everything you can find to try and create the number one site, it just isn’t going to work out too well.

There is no harm in using extra information here and there for help, but if you are relying solely on others to guide you with the content on your site, you are just going to end up creating another run of the mill type of site. So use your initiative to keep you ahead of the game.

The way to keep ahead of your competitors is to put yourself in your visitor’s shoes, and think about what you would be interesting in reading/using when you visit your site. Make sure to keep an open mind, and try and think outside of the box as much as you can. If you think up enough ideas, there should be a number that you can take advantage of and implement on your site to help you get your nose out infront of your rivals.

Overview

You don’t have to always dominate your niche to make money, but it sure helps you to maximize the potential of your site. If you can manage it, it is always better to get to the top of the tree and pick all the best apples, rather than sit at the bottom and pick up the left overs. Knowing what you have to do to dominate your niche isn’t hard… its the actual work that is the tricky part. However, if you have the determination and drive, having the best site within your niche is usually going to be perfectly attainable.

If you have been playing for a while, or you are familiar with the world of online poker, you will know that rakeback is made available to players at certain poker sites. There are many poker websites out there offering all of the standard links and bonuses to poker rooms to make money, and there are also a number of rakeback sites out there offering rakeback to players instead of the standard bonuses.

Without going into too much detail for those that do not know, rakeback is where players are able to get a percentage of their rake back if they sign up through certain affiliate websites, rather than through other affiliates or by directly signing up for the site.

Therefore this makes it attractive for players that know about rakeback to only ever sign up through a rakeback affiliate site wherever possible, instead of missing out on the opportunity to get some of their money back.

So now am I already hearing most of you saying: “Why would I want to set up a new poker website and not offer rakeback then?”

The problems

1) Firstly, players that sign up for rakeback are getting their money from your affiliate earnings. Say for example you are getting a standard 35% commission from a poker room, and offer 30% rakeback to your players who sign up to that poker room. You will only be receiving a total of 5% of the money that your rakeback players generate, because the other 30% will be going back to them.

2) Secondly, you get the best commission and rakeback deals by sending lots of players to poker rooms in the first place. If you are a new affiliate, the affiliate programs have no reason to give you better rakeback and commission, so you will be stuck with a low rakeback rate to offer your visitors.

So because these rakeback visitors are knowledgeable, they will know you are offering a low rakeback deal, and look for some other rakeback site offering something better. Rakeback players are very educated poker players, and so they will always search around for the best deals.

3) Thirdly, poker rakeback is an incredibly competitive market, with big websites investing lots of money and working hard to make sure they are at the top of the search engines for all of the best rakeback terms. Rakeback affiliates are so competitive that it would even be difficult to rank for many of the smaller terms that could bring in visitors to your site looking for rakeback.

Because of these problems, it means that as a new affiliate you will be working very hard and competing against other big affiliates just for a small slice of affiliate income. So anyone with a bit of common sense will tell you that it’s not going to be worth your while to put all your effort into trying to make money as a rakeback affiliate. Not as a new affiliate anyway.

So what should you do?

Just stick to promoting online poker rooms normally.

Just because a number of poker players know about rakeback, it doesn’t mean that they all do. There are still thousands upon thousands of players out there that are completely unaware about rakeback, and you have the opportunity to snap them up through your poker website offering the standard bonuses the poker rooms offer. There is no need to concern yourself with rakeback as a new affiliate.

There is also a large amount of money to be made offering standard bonuses, so don’t feel as though you are missing out by not offering rakeback. If you are still not convinced, take a look at www.everypoker.com. That site makes more money in one month than most people make in a year, so don’t think that there is no money to be made by becoming a standard affiliate. The overwhelming number of poker players are still unaware that rakeback is available.

Even if you are still afraid to miss out, there are a number of poker rooms that do not offer rakeback whatsoever. So if you affiliate for these rooms, the rakeback players will not have any reason to not sign up to the room through your site if you are not a rakeback affiliate, because they would not be able to get rakeback for the room anyway.

Rooms like Chili Poker, Titan Poker, Chan Poker and many more do not offer rakeback, so give them a try out.

Summary

As a new poker affiliate, you should sign up to affiliate programs normally, and leave rakeback alone. It is a far too competitive market to try and make money in, and it’s more likely that you will fail if you are just starting out. Maybe in the future when you are a more educated poker affiliate you could try making a rakeback website, but as a new affiliate you should stick with the tried and tested method that is more likely to make you money.

Poker Affiliate Programs>

For many, this is enough to drive them away from internet marketing because there are no instant rewards. Nobody likes to work hard for nothing in return; so many new poker affiliates will simply pack it all in before they even give themselves a fighting chance to make money. However, the affiliates that look toward the future rewards rather than the immediate results of their efforts are the ones that survive, and they are usually the ones that end up making a sizeable amount of money.

This situation is especially true at the breaking point for poker affiliates, where you can go for months without seeing any real income. This is normally due to the lack of traffic from being in the Google sandbox, and so there is no traffic to try and convert into real money players. But this is something that all poker affiliates have to go through, and it helps to weed out the dedicated affiliates from the make-money-quick affiliates.

So right from the start as a poker affiliate, you will learn how there is always going to be a time lapse between the work you do for your sites, and the rewards for the work you have been doing. But why is there this period of time to separate the work and the earnings as a poker affiliate?

Getting a site to make more money

Let’s say for example we own a nice poker portal that contains poker strategy and poker rooms reviews (It’s a little typical, but let’s just carry on anyway). Luckily we are out of the sandbox, but we still have an emerging site that does not currently receive high volumes of traffic. So our main goal is to try and help this site make more money for us, which is pretty much what all poker affiliates are looking to do.

Anyways, the best way to help increase the earnings for our site is to get more traffic coming to it. Now we know that one of the best ways to increase traffic is to add lots of content and work on SEO to help with the rankings of our site and its newest articles. So a month is going to be dedicated to writing quality poker articles and SEO-ing them to bring in the traffic.

However, we are already finding out where a delay can pop in between our current work and potential earnings…

• The time we spend writing articles
• The time it takes learning good SEO

On top of this, there are the two biggest influences in the time between action and effect as a poker affiliate after we have uploaded the articles to our site…

• The time it takes for article to get indexed
• The time it takes for those articles to start ranking well

With writing content and SEO, you have complete control over how long it will take you to get the job done. As an experienced affiliate the job can be done even quicker if you already know a lot about SEO and have other people writing for you. But although we can affect the way our articles get indexed and rank, it is a little more out of our hands as far as time scale is concerned.

It is in Google’s hands to decide how well our articles are ranked, and we have to work on building links and general SEO to give them the best chance of reaching the top of the results pages. However, this is where the long wait comes in, as we are building links and waiting for Google to decide where and when our articles will be ranked. This period can easily take weeks or months, and it is the main factor that contributes to the time it takes for you to get paid of for your hard work.

Summary

As a poker affiliate, you really have to prepare for the fact that you will rarely get instantly paid off for the hard work to put into developing your sites. It’s not nice to not know whether or not you’re doing the right thing as far as SEO and other things go, but the majority of the time you will usually be working for the benefit of your site. So don’t lose faith in your work.

Many affiliates will turn to becoming content writers for others, as it offers an immediate one-time payoff for your efforts. However, it will be much more beneficial in the long run to post your work onto your own site, as that article will remain there permanently, bringing in traffic for the life of your site, and also bringing in those real money players. Poker webmasters stand to make a lot more money than content writers.

The choice is yours, but it’s always better to think about the long run, rather than the present when it comes to working on your sites.

There are a number of other incredibly important affiliate program factors to think about, including:

• Conversion rates
• Reliability
• Support

Conversion rates – A room can offer you the highest CPA or MGR deal in the world, but it’s not going to be any use if the room can’t turn the people you send to the room into real money players.

CPA vs. MGR>

Reliability – You want to make sure a room that is trustworthy. You will be losing out on a lot of money if an affiliate program isn’t tracking every player you send, even if they are offering you $200+ per player. On NewPokerAffiliate I only review rooms that I fully trust to track every player I send.

Support – A good support team is vital. It’s great to know that there is someone on the affiliate program that is happy to work with you to make your site a success. A good support team will help you set up tournaments and private promotions to help you bring in those real money players from month to month. There’s nothing worse than having a support team that ignores your emails.

When you choose a poker room to promote, you want to make sure that they incorporate all of the key factors above, which can be found in our poker affiliate program reviews. However, be sure to not let high commission rates mask over areas that are lacking in the affiliate program. You may be setting yourself up for bigger problems down the line.

Have you ever played on any racing or fighting games? Remember how the best fighters or cars were usually the ones with great all-round ability, and not just specialised in one field? Same thing applies to choosing your affiliate program; go for the great all-rounder, and not the one that’s going to let you down later on down the road.

(Okay, enough with that analogy)

Play at the poker room itself

One of the best ways to choose a good affiliate program is to actually play at the poker room itself before signing up. If you play at the tables for the while and like what you see, then there is a good chance that people you send to the room will feel the same way. Remember that people you send to the room are just like you, so send them somewhere that they will like.

Ask yourself the following questions about the room whilst playing…

Do I like the graphics?
Does the software run smoothly?
Is the actual gameplay any good?
Are the tables enjoyable to play at?
Is there good customer support?
Do I feel comfortable enough to make a deposit?

If you can give the room a good score across the board, then it’s likely to be a room that is well worth promoting. Give the other affiliate program vitals a check over (commission, support etc.) to make sure everything looks good, and you will have found yourself a great poker affiliate program to promote. So start sending them some players.

Summary

There are a lot of great poker affiliate programs out there, but there are also a few that aren’t so great. On NewPokerAffiliate I have given my honest opinions on the affiliate programs on this site, and I’ve only reviewed the ones that are worth taking a look at.

If you simply choose the affiliate programs that I have rated the highest, then you definitely won’t be going too far wrong. However, it’s always nice to form your own opinions, and give the affiliate programs and rooms a try out before you commit to fully promoting a certain affiliate program.

Poker Affiliate Program Reviews>

When I first ventured in poker affiliate forums and got in contact with other affiliates, I started to realise that a large number of affiliates didn’t actually play poker much at all, and if they did, they weren’t very good players. It still surprises me today that there are a number of very successful poker affiliates that are fairly unfamiliar with the game of poker. I always expected poker webmasters to be top players and poker enthusiasts, but this isn’t the case.

But anyways, back to the question at hand… Do you need to play poker to be a poker affiliate?

The short answer is evidently no, but it certainly does help.

If you are a profitable poker player, you have a number of tools at your disposal. Firstly, you are able to write strategy articles based on your knowledge of the game. If you are a winning player, you must have some winning tactics and advice that you could share with others on your website. Therefore you already have a wide range of articles that you could produce right from the start, without the worry of having to pay others to write strategy for you.

Secondly, as a poker player you are able to relate to others that also play poker, and understand what is important from a player’s perspective. Therefore you should be able to deliver content in such a manner that will interest your readers, and you can write reviews on poker rooms, analysing what you think is important in a good online poker room.

However, if you are not too familiar with the game of online poker or live poker, it does not rule you out of being able to become a solid affiliate. There is no reason why you can’t download a number of poker rooms yourself and write some good in-depth reviews after playing at them for a while. Similarly, you can report on news stories that you come across and write content on the latest developments in the world of poker.

A great option for someone new to the world of poker is to start a blog or something similar about your journey to becoming a better poker player. As long as you can write articles based around the topic of poker, there is no reason why you can’t become a poker affiliate. You shouldn’t let the fact that you are new to poker hold you back; there are still a wealth of topics that you can talk about on your website or blog. It isn’t all just poker strategy you know!

In my opinion, you do not have to be an avid poker player to start up your own poker website. However, it is always useful to have a passion for what you are writing about, as it will make your life as a poker affiliate seem like less of a job, and more of an enjoyable experience. Either way, it’s always good to play poker as an affiliate to remind yourself what promoting poker is all about. Plus it’s a great excuse to spend some time procrastinating!

1) Don’t waste time working

Making money as an online poker affiliate requires no effort at all. Just throw up a quick 5 page website (maybe 10 if you’re feeling fruity) and wait for that money to roll in. There’s no need to spend too much time writing content or working to develop your site, take it easy.

2) Avoid advice from others

You’re the only person that knows what is best for you site and business, so don’t let other people’s comments throw you off track. They may be a lot more experienced than you, but at the end of the day you’re the only person that you should be listening to.

3) Avoid affiliate sites / forums

There’s probably not a lot that you can read that you do not already know, so there’s no need to waste your time looking for more information. If there’s anything you need to learn, I’m sure you could figure it out by yourself after a while. Forums and affiliate sites are for the clueless wasters.

4) Design is everything

When you’re creating your site, make sure to spend as much time as you can tweaking and developing your website design. Visitors are only interested in the design of your site, so make sure you get everything perfectly designed before you even consider adding any content.

5) ‘Borrow’ other people’s designs and content

You can always pay for a website design or work to create your own content, but why waste all that money and effort? There is already a wealth of information and websites out there, so take your pick and choose what you think will work best for your site. I’m sure the other webmasters won’t mind.

6) Browse stats / forums / blogs instead of working

Sure, you can write some quality content, but why not browse around the web looking for more gems of information (if you do decide to visit these places of course)? Just because you’ve already spent an hour or so checking out the big forums and blogs as well as going through your stats with a fine nit comb, it doesn’t mean you should give up there.

If you keep on checking, I’m sure you will come across a post or particular statistic that will turn your affiliating career around. So don’t pass up on the opportunity by getting bogged down writing content and developing your site.

7) Don’t spell-check; just throw it up there quickly!

After writing your latest article, don’t delay by proof reading; just upload it to your site. You probably haven’t made any mistakes anyway, you’ve been writing for years now so you’ve got used to writing perfect articles every time. Even if you have made a mistake, I’m sure your visitors won’t notice. So just write and upload; proof reading is for wasters.

8) The more banners the merrier

Affiliate programs are offering their banners for free to use on your site, so why not take full advantage? Most of these banners are pretty big and flashy, so they are sure to get your visitors’ attention. The more you have, the greater the chance you will have of getting a conversion. You can also try and mix it up a little by having lots of different banners for different rooms. That’s a winning combination for sure.

9) Spam Spam Spam

Traffic at the start can be pretty slow, so you’re going to need to spread the word about your new site with some serious spamming. Hit those forums and start adding in cheeky links, as well as throwing your links into comments, and where ever else you can post a link to your site. You could do some SEO, but that takes some effort. Spamming is where it’s at these days.

10) Not working? Maybe it’s time to call it a day

If you’re site doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere, then maybe poker affiliating is not for you. After all, you gave it a try with one site, what are the chances of ever making a successful one now? It’s better to knock it on the head now, rather than have another attempt. You might have more skills this time around, but it’s going to be more fun to watch the TV instead.

So there we go, those are my top tips to failing as a new poker affiliate. Hopefully if you follow them closely enough, you will be on the express route to bombing out of the online poker affiliate industry.

From the start I have always tried to be as flexible as possible, trying to learn as much as I can without having to rely on others. However, I quickly learned that it’s good to be humble and admit to myself if I needed the help of others. I wouldn’t say I’m a great all rounder, far from it in-fact, but at the same time there is not much that phases me. I’m happy with my ability at the moment, but I’m always looking to brush up on my skills here and there.

Anyway, that’s enough on the background information. I’m going to list what I feel are some of the top skills that can be used in website creation, and give myself a rating out of 10 for each. Hopefully this will be as interesting for me as it is for you!

Designing 6.5/10
When it comes to working with Photoshop, there is not a lot that I can’t do. I can manipulate images however I like, and create a few basic but interesting images. I created the images to accompany each of these articles (look in top-right hand corner), which although they are not fantastic, I quite like them and I certainly saved myself a bit of money by making them myself.

I rated myself 6.5 because I’m not too great at creating images from scratch. I can alter and change things ‘til the cows come home, but I can’t create images from my head. So I wouldn’t be able to make any solid website designs or logos. This is why I always outsource my design work for website designs/headers/logos.

Content writing 8.5/10
I would have liked to have put 9/10, but I’m guessing that would have been quite big headed of me. I like to think that I can communicate pretty well, which is something I try hard to perfect when writing articles and content. I’m fairly confident that my spelling and grammar is good (thanks spellcheck), although I can always manage to find the odd mistake when proof reading.

I very rarely outsource my content, because I am pretty happy to write on any subject in the world of poker. I’ve been playing poker for years so I know good strategy, but I’m pretty clueless when it comes to Omaha and Stud. The only thing that usually stops me from writing for myself if laziness, so I try to avoid outsourcing my work as best as I can. I usually feel as though I’m wasting money by paying someone to do work that I should ideally have done myself.

Search engine optimization 7/10
I’d like to think that I know all the key aspects of SEO, and I can optimize my pages with all the right tags and such to give them the best chance to rank well in the search engines. There are a load of aspects of SEO that have been drilled into me since browsing around the web, so I probably do a lot of SEO without really realising it.

There is definitely a lot of SEO work that I do not know about, so I always try and learn more about it whenever I can. I think 7/10 is a pretty fair estimate, although there are probably a whole load of SEO experts out there that would heavily disagree with me by looking at this site alone. One thing is for sure though; I have no intentions of outsourcing SEO work. It’s just so expensive, and most of the information is already out there on the web. All I have to do is go and learn it, and then implement it for myself.

HTML Coding 7/10
When I was younger I actually taught myself quite a bit of HTML (Yeah, I was one of those kids). Since I’ve started to work a lot more with websites in programs like Dreamweaver, I’ve managed to improve my ability to work with HTML.

However, quite like my ability with designing, I can work with HTML but not really create with it. If you asked me to create a website by just writing in HTML in notepad, I would definitely struggle. I can understand HTML, but I’m by no means fluent, so hence the 7/10. I’m not really too bothered though, as I’m happy enough to use Dreamweaver wherever necessary.

Basic coding I will do myself, but anything advanced and I’m looking elsewhere.

CSS Coding 4/10
For some reason this is something I have never fully got to grips with. I have learnt bits and bobs as I’ve gone along, but I haven’t fully taken the time to get it nailed once and for all. It’s definitely due to laziness on my part, because CSS is pretty easy to understand. I’m in no hurry to learn it properly at the moment, but I’m sure in the future I will have a better understanding.

I would probably look for help if I needed any large amount of CSS coded for me.

PHP Coding 1/10
I think I spent an hour learning the very basics of this, so don’t ask me to try and code anything or even decipher parts of PHP. I would love to be able to code PHP, but at the moment it is something that I have to get someone else to do for me every time.

Other Coding (Javascript, Perl, Ajax) 0/10
No idea, don’t ask me. Unless I’m getting something for free off hotscripts.com with an easy to use guide, I’m lost. I’m so clueless I probably wouldn’t even know if I needed it or not, but I’m doing fine so far so not too many complaints or plans to learn anything new.

So there we go. This is where I feel my ability is currently at in each of the skills listed above. Hopefully these will have been taken up a few notches by the time you are reading this, but this is where I stand at the moment. For those interested, I started out trying to create websites about 14 months ago, so about a year and a bit ago.

It has mainly come from trial and error by the way, it’s not often I will read through guides or books. Although reading through guides would have more than likely sped up the learning process.