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.

Let me use a completely random analogy to get this point across for you.

Let’s say you are a window cleaner, and you are paid for every window that you clean. However, you have a very acute attention to detail, which leads you to spend a lot of time going over the same windows to get them as clean as they can be. So whilst it may take 5 minutes to clean a window well, you end up spending an extra 5 minutes on each window to get them “super clean”.

Now this sounds like a great work ethic, and it is. However, the problem with this approach is that you are using up time that could be spent cleaning another window and making money, just to make an almost unnoticeable difference to a window that has already been cleaned.

The fundamental problem with this strategy is that whilst you might get the odd recommendation here and there, you are essentially throwing your energy down an empty well, without expecting an equal return on your efforts. However, if you work smarter and move on to the next window without fine tuning an already cleaned window, your efforts are going to be rewarded like they should, and the amount of money you are earning will dramatically increase.

After using that (exceptionally random) analogy, I would like to highlight one extra point. This is that I am not suggesting that putting 100% effort into a project is incorrect, nor is it wrong to work to the best of your ability in everything that you do. The key however is to only do this when the work warrants it, as a lot of the time your hours of effort may well be only making a minimal difference to your bottom line at the end of the day, and you efforts could well be best utilised elsewhere.

The perfect cliché phrase that I am going to use here is: “If it’s not broke, then don’t fix it”. If you want to make money in this industry, you have to put your effort into doing the work that makes you money. The kind of work that will make you money will vary from niche to niche, but the key idea here is that if you’re spending time touching up the smallest things that make no difference, then you are wasting you time.

I will openly admit that I am terrible for putting effort into the smallest things that make little or no difference to my earnings, but make minute things a little prettier. Whilst many will say that this is great as I want to provide the perfect experience for the user, I am not getting a great return on my efforts. However, I have come to realise over time that there is a fine line between wanting to create a great site, and wasting time being anal about the smallest things.

A great way to sort out what makes you money and what doesn’t is to create a list of things to do for the next day. After doing this, consider which tasks are the ‘money-makers’ and which are the ‘time-wasters’. From here you can contemplate whether those ‘time-wasters’ are really essential to the development of your site, and think about if it is worth doing them in favour of the ‘money-making’ tasks.

If a task is not directly or indirectly making you money, then just strike it off the list and forget about it. Whilst it might be a nice thing to do for your site, if you can’t see it making you money in some way shape or form then it is not worth doing.

If you can focus on only doing the things that make you money for a month, you should certainly see a return on your work. You may well be surprised at how much time you spend nit-picking at things that nobody cares about, yet you are unaware that what you are doing is useless in the long run. So write down your task list at the end of each day, strike off the useless projects, and start focusing on the things that are going to bring in the money.

Don’t let useless tasks get in the way of the work that brings in the money.

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.

One of the most common errors when creating a newsletter service to your visitors is to offer one thing on your site, and then send out newsletters that are unrelated to what you initially said they would be about. Basically, if you are setting up a newsletter and describing it as a ’strategy tips’ newsletter to get your visitors to sign up, you should not go about regularly emailing those subscribers with bonus offers left right and center. The people are subscribing to your newsletter with the belief that they will be receiving some useful strategy tips in the form of a newsletter to benefit their game, so make sure that you give it to them.

Many webmasters will see the newsletter as an excuse to spam the hell out of subscribers with as many bonus offers as possible, hoping to squeeze out those extra conversions every week. In my opinion this is really unfortunate, and is frankly an abuse of what the newsletter is there for.

The more you try and force your subscribers to convert with random bonus offers, the more your newsletter is just going to look like spam, and the number of subscribers will diminish along with your site’s credibility. However, if you treat your newsletter as an extension of the information on your site, then the returning visitors number and number of conversions will naturally increase.

What should you include in your newsletter?

As I have already mentioned, the content of your newsletters will be entirely dependant on the type of newsletter your are offering. If you are offering a ‘poker news newsletter’, then give your visitors interesting updates and news in the world of poker. If you are offering ‘Omaha strategy’, then give your subscribers newsletters filled with Omaha strategy and tips.

As long as you give your visitors exactly what they are expecting (and even exceed those expectations), you will have a loyal base of subscribers that look forward to seeing your newsletter in their inbox, and not considering it as another useless spam email that they regrettable signed up for in the past. Having a loyal readership should be your number one goal when creating your newsletter service, so try your best to write quality content and information that your visitors will be interested in.

Earlier in this article, I made it seem as though sending out bonus offers to your subscribers is a bad idea… this of course isn’t completely the case. If you actually own a poker bonus website and offer a ‘poker bonus’ newsletter, then it makes perfect sense to only include bonus offers in your newsletters.

However, you want to look to only ever offer quality bonus offers that your visitors will be genuinely interested in. If your readers can tell that you have their best interests at heart, then you are far more likely to get a loyal readership that are happy to take you up on your bonus offers. If you just bombard them with standard offers and try to force them into signing up with overly persuasive language, your visitors will see right through it, and your newsletter and site will lose a lot of credibility.

Remember that quality and honesty is the key to making money from your newsletters.

How to get conversions from your newsletters

After you have started to form a loyal readership for your newsletter, you can look to start monetizing your newsletter service (which is more than likely the reason you would have started a newsletter in the first place). The key to making money from your newsletters is to offer something that your readers will be genuinely interested in. Here are a few examples of ways you can monetize your newsletters

• Affiliates links to poker rooms (highlighting bonuses etc.)
• Affiliate links to poker software
• Pay per lead affiliate links

As I have highlighted throughout this article, you want to provide useful information to your subscribers… so there is no harm in offering a certain bonus in a strategy newsletter if you feel that your visitors will find it useful. It is important to remember to put your readers’ interests first, and your profits second; you are going to do a lot better by offering a good bonus with little monetary return on your part, than you would if you offered a poor bonus that would make you more money per player. If you can get your readers to respect your opinion as far as offers go, you are far more likely to get them to convert into real money players.

A great option for webmasters with poker strategy newsletters is to include links to online poker software, as these can be very effective in helping online players analyse their gaming, helping them to develop and win more money. One of the best pieces of online poker software is PokerOffice, which runs an affiliate program that offers up to $50 per purchase. This software is genuinely useful, and so it shouldn’t be too difficult to market this to your readers and get a few signups. This is just one of a number of poker programs that you affiliate for and market to your readers.

The pay per lead affiliate links are a little rarer than standard CPA or MGR deals, but there are a few available if you search around. Using this method you can get a solid amount of money if people visit certain sites through your affiliate link and fill out a form.

A few extra tips

Try not to make your newsletters too big. When people are browsing their mail, they are not in the right frame of mind to read long chunks of text. So keep them compact and interesting.

Be careful when adding images, as a lot of the time they will be blocked and prevented from appearing in many web mail websites. Focus mainly and the content, and only add images if you feel they are really necessary, and will help convey your message or help with conversions.

Relax and be yourself when you are writing your newsletters. Your newsletters will be far more entertaining if you let your persoanlity shine through, so don’t be afraid to be a little more informal than you might be with your main site. Readers are far more likely to open up future newsletters and return to your site if you can connect to them by writing a more personal style newsletter.

The “Top 10” Article

Not only are “top 10” articles some of the most eye catching articles, but it extends to anything listing the top X of anything or something along those lines. Any article with this sort of title is almost irresistible to any passing visitor, and is sure to catch their attention. For example, take a look at the article titles below. Which of these looks more interesting?

• Guide to bluffing your poker opponents
• Top 10 tips on how to bluff your opponents

Immediately your eyes are drawn to the “top 10” article, simply because it looks far more interesting. By looking at the title it suggests that the article will be in a listed format, which web users love to read. People browsing the web are always on the look out for quick and easy information, and articles containing lists and bullet points are always a fan favourite.

I’m no psychologist, so I can’t explain exactly why people are fascinated by the top 10 of one thing or another, but then again I don’t need to. If you check out some of the top social bookmarking sites like digg.com, you will often find “top 10” articles on the front page. This is because people just love to read them, and they are sure to catch people’s attention as you scan through the list of articles.

Remember, it doesn’t just stop at the “top 10” of something. It could be the top X of anything, and it will still look interesting. As long as the title suggests that the article will contain a list of top tips or an interesting list of any kind, your visitors are going to want to click on it.

Easy to write

One of the best aspects about these types of articles is that they are exceptionally easy to write. Whilst in most articles you have to make sure your information flows correctly from one paragraph to another, with an article listing the top 10 of something you don’t have the worry of making sure everything fits perfectly. All you have to do is write down one title after another giving a short explanation on each. Before you know it you’ve got to number 10 and your work is done.

This means that these articles are a great for people suffering from writer’s block. All you have to do is list a few things, write a little bit of information on each and you are done. So just give them a try, it probably won’t take you any longer than 20 minutes to write one. In addition, as well as the articles being fun to read, they are equally as enjoyable to write.

How many should you have on your site?

The more interesting articles you have on your site the better, so there is no real limit to how many “top 10” articles you can have on your site. However, you wouldn’t want to create some gimmick site with just top 10 lists of everything and anything about poker, so make sure you have to some good quality, “standard” articles to back them up.

Everyone loves to browse over these lists, but you want to provide some meaty articles that people can get their teeth into to give your site some credibility.

But at the end of the day, if you can find a good balance between the two types of articles, the more interesting information you have on your site the better. People are sure to stick around your site for a while if you have a nice number of “top 10s” to keep them occupied.

But anyways, writing quality content is always easier said than done.

What makes quality content?

In my opinion, quality content conveys the exact information that a visitor is looking for (in regards to the title of the article), whilst being as informative as possible and keeping everything concise at the same time. That means your article should have no extra padding by repeating the same things over again, or using more words than necessary to build up the word count. So if you can get your point across using one sentence, why would you want to use two?

When people are searching the web for information, they want to get is as quickly as possible without delay. So make sure you allow your articles to be long enough to convey everything you want to get across, whilst omitting all unnecessary information that you might be tempted to throw in.

Think of your content as a weapon; you want to keep it as clean as possible without weighing it down. If you can keep every part of your article concise and informative, your content will be able to fight off all of the lesser content on the same topic across the web, making your site a valuable resource to others.

You might think it a good idea to try and make your articles as long as possible to keep your visitors on the page for longer, and thus giving you more opportunity to convert them into RMPs. But in real fact that visitor is just going to find your writing style tedious, and they probably won’t be returning back to your site in the near future. However, if you’re visitors enjoy your content, they may well leave after reading the article, but they are far more likely to return and possible become a RMP.

This isn’t an excuse to write short articles, but it simple highlights how you should get straight to the point without babbling. Long articles are good, but only if each paragraph has a purpose.

Keep focused on one topic

When you get into your rhythm whilst writing, it’s easy to go off topic without knowing it. Always be sure to keep the title of your article at the forefront of your mind so that you do not end up talking about something completely unrelated. Again, visitors want quick and easy information.

If a visitor comes to your site looking for information about ‘pot odds’, they aren’t going to want to know the ins and outs of implied odds and reverse implied odds quite yet. However, if they come to your site looking for information on ‘poker mathematics’, the are more likely to be interested in having a brief introduction pot odds, as well as implied odds, reverse implied odds, expected value and so on.

Basically whenever you write an article, look at the title and think “What would I expect to find from an article with this title?” If you know what your visitors want from your content, you will be able to write much more useful and informative articles.

Use good punctuation and grammar

There’s nothing more disappointing than to find a useful article that has been plagued with bad grammar and punctuation. It almost seems as though the effort someone has gone through to type an article out has gone to waste, simply because they didn’t check through it to make sure it read well.

Always make sure that your articles read well and make good use of good punctuation and grammar. It may have the most useful information in the world, but your article is just going to look like a mess if it hasn’t been checked over, and it’s not going to say anything good about the rest of your site.

If I’m being honest, the last thing I want to do after writing a few pages of content is to go back over the whole thing to look for the mistakes. It’s much easier to be naïve and believe that the article was perfect, and throw it up on my site and just forget about it. However, if I did this I know that my site would be full of mistakes, and my number of returning visitors would be pretty low.

Summary

That’s pretty much the basics of writing good quality content, so now there’s no excuse for you to not be able to write useful content for your visitors. Keep your articles clean, concise and informative and you will be onto a winner. It’s as simple as that.

For further information on writing interesting content, check out this article… How to write content your visitors will love.

As a new poker affiliate, there will often be times where you consider whether or not the whole idea of promoting online poker rooms is really worth while. When you’re at your computer facing a serious bout of writer’s block, or having a shitty time trying to modify a section of your site, it may seem as though poker affiliating is way more hassle than it’s worth. You will think it much easier to knock it all on the head and try something else instead.

But seriously, don’t give up.

There are very few online industries that will allow you to make as much money online as poker affiliating will. By giving up you are missing out on a prime opportunity to make a very nice amount of money from month to month, and possible live a far more comfortable life than you are now. Whilst making 6 figures a year seems pretty distant to most new poker affiliates, it is by no means an unattainable target.

Waking up in the morning to see that you’ve made a few hundred dollars whilst you were sleeping is a pretty enjoyable experience… I will tell you that for free.

After you get past the breaking point, you will have a completely different approach to your affiliate business. Whilst at the start you were always wondering if you would ever see any return on your efforts, you will now be wondering how far you can push yourself, and how many figures you could be bringing in each and every month. When things start to fall into place and you start making money, making even more money on top of that gets a lot easier.

Nobody likes to work for nothing, especially if things don’t appear to be going your way. There will be set backs, and there will be disappointments. There will be missed opportunities, and there will be failures. But hey, who’s counting? It doesn’t make a difference how many times you fail; all that matter is that you have that one break through project.

All the greatest Internet entrepreneurs have had their failures; some have even had some pretty monumental ones. But at the end of the day, nobody cares. Nothing is stopping you from trying again, and from every failure you set yourself up to do even better with your next project. Even if things do not work out as you have planned, you will still have learnt a few tricks and picked up some valuable experience. As hard to believe as it is, the experience you gain will often make up for the fact that your project was a failure.

Sometimes as a poker affiliate, things will go seriously wrong. You may lose a week’s or a month’s worth of work, but on the grand scale of things this isn’t too much of a big deal. Don’t get me wrong, you will be uber-pissed off if something like that happens, but it’s how you deal with it that counts. You can really let it get to you, and just forget about trying again. However, if you’re the sort of person to just let it go and start again, you are the sort of person that is hella likely to be making a boat load of money online at some point in the future.

As the old saying goes… its not the falling down that matters, it’s the way you pick yourself back up that counts. It may well be a little cliché, but it couldn’t be more accurate as far as poker affiliating is concerned. If you can bounce back from all of your set-backs, eventually you are going to hit on something that will be a great success. It’s just the way things work.

You have to realise that not everything you touch is going to turn to gold as you’re learning the business, but the one thing that does work out for you is more than going to make up for all the other projects that didn’t work out how you planned.

So as I was saying… don’t give up. Giving up is by far the easiest option; but it’s not going to make you any money at the end of the day. If can continue to work through the worst of it, your success is going to be just around the corner.

Keep plugging away.

One of the worst mindsets you can be in as a webmaster is where you do little work, yet still expect things to ‘just happen’. You can check your stats religiously waiting for ‘the change’, but if you’re not feeding fuel into the fire then you will be whittling away the hours waiting for something that just isn’t going to take place. This why you need to keep a clear head, and get focused with your work.

This is how I keep myself focused…

I always have a list of things to do

This for me is the most important thing that helps keep me focused and helps me to get down to work. If I don’t have anything in front of me reminding me about work that needs to be done, I’m pretty much lost. If all my work plans are stored up in my head, they just become too overwhelming, and I just end up falling into the downward spiral of stat-checking instead.

It may sound pretty daunting to always be faced with a never ending list of tasks, but I always see a dollar sign attached to each piece of work that I am faced with. This helps to remind me that the more I get done, the more money I will be making in the near future. Whilst some things will not directly affect my earnings, as long as I am developing my sites in some way I can be sure that it will be contributing the final figures in my monthly payments.

I avoid all distractions

• I never have MSN/Yahoo/Skype or any IM programs on
• I rarely have any music playing in the background

I will admit that I keep my web browser running, as this normally helps contribute to research, or for when I intend to have a quick break. But I’m pretty strict with this, and I don’t spend too much time browsing around pointless stuff that just leads to further procrastination. Of course this is assuming that I do not need to browser to do work, for example if I’m writing content in Word, designing in Photoshop or modifying my sites in Dreamweaver.

The more distractions you have whilst you work, the more opportunities you have available to you to prevent you from being focused on the work at hand. So make sure you set yourself up to be as productive as possible when you sit down at your desk.

>The fewer distractions you have, the more focused you are.
>The more focused you become, the harder you will work.
>The harder you work, the more money you will be making.

It’s a simple series of events, but it is one that works perfectly well.

I set myself goals

If I’m being honest, I never used to set myself goals in the past. Setting goals always used to sound like one of those things that ‘other people’ did to try and help themselves get more motivated, probably ending in little to no success. However, I realised that setting yourself goals can have a powerful effect on the way you approach your work.

If you set yourself realistic goals, you have something to shoot for each time you get down to work. This helps to drive you to get things done, as it is a great feeling to achieve your goals and cross them off the list. You will be surprised at how good it feels to complete your own personal goals, no matter how small they may be.

Without goals in front of you, your overall work ethic is a little more lax and you no longer push yourself to achieve more than you would be able to if you had something to aim for. So never underestimate to power of setting yourself goals.

Just make sure to set your goals as follows:

• Set your goals around how much work you can get done, rather than based on results.
• Set goals over short periods of time; they are much easier to stick to and complete.
• Set attainable goals so that you do not overly stress yourself.

If you follow all of these rules, your work will be incredibly focused and your productivity will be at an all time high. So stop reading, and start making some money.