Action And Effect As A Poker Affiliate

Posted on March 28, 2008 by Greg

There Are Rarely Any Immediate Payoffs As A Poker AffiliateOne thing that you will come to realise as a poker affiliate is that there are rarely any immediate payoffs for the work that you do. For example, you could work incredibly hard on your sites for a solid month, but you may not see any changes in your income at the end of that month. However, in a few weeks or months after, you will start to reap the rewards of your efforts.

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.

Posted in General Affiliating | Leave a comment

How To Choose A Good Poker Affiliate Program

Posted on March 25, 2008 by Greg

Which Poker Room To Promote?I’m sure that when many of you look to choose a poker affiliate program to promote, your eyes quickly move to the room offering the highest CPA and MGR deals. Whilst it does make sense to choose a high paying program (because higher commission equals more money right?), it is by no means the only factor that you should base your choice around.

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.

Make Sure The Affiliate Program Ticks All The BoxesWhen 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>

Posted in General Affiliating | Leave a comment

How To Get Over Writer’s Block

Posted on March 25, 2008 by Greg

How To Get Over Writer's Block As A Poker AffiliateSeeing as a major part of being a successful poker affiliate is writing content, the last thing you want to do is get stuck by not being able to produce new articles for your site(s). The more content you can write the merrier, as the more content you have on your website the more likely it is that you will be successful.

If I’m being honest, I’m no psychologist, so I can’t really explain scientifically why writer’s block comes about or how to manipulate your mind to get over it. However, I have suffered from writer’s block on a number of occasions, and this is how I get back into the swing of writing good content regularly…

How writer’s block comes about

In my opinion, you find it more difficult to write because you are simply thinking about it too much. For example, if you decide to go bungee jumping, anyone will tell you that it’s best to just get up and jump as soon as you are ready. The longer you take to do it, the more time you will have to think about it, and therefore the less likely you are to do it. The same kind of thing applies to writing.

If you start to over-think things, you can become incredibly critical of your own writing style. I don’t know about you, but every time I used to read someone else’s story as a kid in school, I used to think “whoa, that’s so much better than mine”. Although I used to think this, the real fact of the matter was that my work was just as good or better, yet the fact that I was so critical of my work meant that I couldn’t truly appreciate it.

How to get over writer’s block

If I could tell you to stop being so critical I would, but that’s just not going to have any effect. So here’s what you need to do…

  • Open up Word (or whatever you use to write)
  • Write the title of your article
  • Ignore the fact you have writer’s block
  • Write a paragraph, regardless of how shoddy you think it is

I feel that the core problem of writer’s block is actually getting started. If you think about what you are writing in your head, it’s easier to criticize it and pull it apart, putting you off from actually writing in the first place. So push your writer’s block to the side, and just write.

When you see that first paragraph in front of you, it should help to make you realise that your work isn’t half bad at all. But if you are still not happy, just continue writing another paragraph and another. After a while you will feel compelled to finish the piece because of the fact that you have already come so far, and that’s when things will start to flow naturally once again.

Poker affiliate writer’s block

As a poker affiliate, one of the most common reasons for writer’s block is the fact that you haven’t actually been playing poker much. If you haven’t actually been playing the game, then how can you expect yourself to have a passion for what you are writing? So play some poker to remind yourself what it is all about, and those fingers should flow more freely when you decide to type.

On the flip side, I used to find it difficult to write poker strategy if I was in the middle of a bad run of cards and losing money. I used to think that if I couldn’t win money myself, then how could I teach others? The fact of the matter was that I was a winning player, but the losing streak used to make me lose my motivation to write strategy. So instead, I would write news or articles other than strategy to help compensate for the lack of strategy articles.

Summary

Although writer’s block amongst affiliates might be a little more unheard of in comparison to a novelist’s writer’s block, it’s not all that uncommon. As a poker affiliate you could be writing hundreds or thousands of words every day for your site(s), and so it’s not that difficult to let one small criticism of your work escalate into full-blown writer’s block.

Some people are more susceptible to writer’s block that others, it’s just the way things work. But the majority of regular writers will have difficulty putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboards for affiliates) at some point in their careers. So when it does come about, just remember that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and just keep writing regardless of how poor you think your work might be. It’s better to press on rather than come to a complete standstill.

If worst comes to worst, you can always outsource your content for a bit.

For more information on writing content, check out the content writing tips.

Posted in Content | Leave a comment

Make A Website To Be Proud Of

Posted on March 24, 2008 by Greg

Always Make A Website To Be Proud OfWith all the talk about building links, search engine optimization, RMPs and CPAs, it’s easy to forget what making websites is all about. Whenever you build a website, you are creating a resource for every web user to take advantage of, so that they can learn more about the information you are providing. Your site will be the one people look to when they need advice on how to play pocket Queens, or what limits will be the safest for them to play at when playing online poker and so on…

At the start, it’s exciting to think about the fact that a person on the other side of the world is visiting your site and reading through all the pages you have written. Your hard work is making a difference to someone else’s life in some way. It may not be by much, but it’s still a great feeling that someone is better off because of the information you have provided on your website. This is why it’s a great shame to forget about this as you progress as an affiliate, and let those visitors just turn into numbers, instead of being individual people looking for help.

Therefore I always try and remind myself that each number in my statistics is a person that I could have helped in some way. By doing this it gives extra value to the work I do on a daily basis, rather than just working to try and increase my earnings for the month. Of course I want to earn more money, but it makes it more worth while to do work when you know it’s going to be appreciated by someone else.

If you make a website with the intention of providing top quality content and creating the top website in your particular niche, there is no doubt that you will do well. However, if you are driven by the figures in your affiliate account rather than the experience of your visitors, you are setting yourself on the road to failure as a new affiliate.

Say for example a family member or friend asks you one day what it is you do for a living. Would you be proud to show them the site(s) that you own? At the end of the day, you are the one that is going to have to put your name to your work, so you should never aim to settle for second best.

So the next time someone asks you what it is you do for a living, how is the conversation going to go?

Friend: So what is it you do for money these days?
You: I make poker websites.
Friend: Sounds cool, can I take a look?
You: Err, yeah okay…
Friend: Oh I see… that’s nice. *In the most insincere tone of voice you’ve heard all year*

Or

Friend: So what is it you do for money these days?
You: I make poker websites.
Friend: Sounds cool, can I take a look?
You: Yeah sure…
Friend: Oh awesome. Where did you learn how to do that?
You: Well there’s this super awesome guy called Greg from newpokeraffiliate.com… etc.

The last line is optional, but you see what I mean. It’s not often that you get to impress other people with your work as an online poker affiliate, but it sure as hell is worth it when you get to show someone the result of your efforts and they are genuinely impressed.

It can be pretty cold and lonely as a poker affiliate. Even though you might be helping and entertaining hundreds or thousands of people every month with your articles, it’s not going to be often that you will get recognition and praises for your work. However, it really is one of the best feelings that you can get when you get that random email saying “thank you for your help”. It helps to bring things back into perspective once more, and remind you the true value of creating useful and informative websites.

So simply aim to make websites that you are proud to put your name to, and the success is sure to follow. In my opinion, it would make it all worth while just to receive that “thank you” every now and then, even if I wasn’t earning any money. But I’m not going to argue with the monetary bonuses that come my way!

Posted in Motivation | Leave a comment

Do You Need To Play Poker To Be A Poker Affiliate?

Posted on March 21, 2008 by Greg

Should You Have A Background In Poker Before Becoming A Poker Affiliate?The sole reason I started out as a poker affiliate was to earn some extra money to add to my poker bankroll. At the time I was quite young, and relied on playing poker as my main source of income. I was playing at relatively low stakes, making around $10 an hour, so I thought it would be pretty handy to have a few extra dollars a month to add to my bankroll and start playing for higher stakes. So that’s how I got started in the affiliate industry.

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!

Posted in General Affiliating | Leave a comment

5 Ways to Make a Good First Impression

Posted on March 21, 2008 by Greg

How To Make A Good First Impression With Your WebsiteWeb browsers will quickly jump from one page to another until they find something that catches their attention enough for them to read on. With all the half-finished and useless sites out their, people are getting used to clicking the ‘back’ button on their browser as soon as they realise that a site is not worth their time. Visitors are not as willing to give your site the benefit of the doubt if they are not immediately enticed to browse around after visiting the homepage

This means that making a good first impression is vitally important in making sure that your visitors stick around your site when they chance upon it. If you can’t make a good first impression, a lot of your traffic is just going to move on until they find another site that does. So here are my top 5 tips on how to make a good first impression with your poker website…

1) Tell them EXACTLY what your site is about

When someone visits your site, you want to make sure that they can find out exactly what your site is about within the first 5-10 seconds. So make sure you have a clear title describing the nature of your site, and have a concise but direct description to accompany it placed prominently on the homepage. The last thing you want to do is confuse your visitors, so make sure they know what they’re getting.

For example, imagine you pop to your local superstore looking for a tin of beans. As you browse the aisles, you are quickly scanning the shelves waiting for something to jump out at you. A tin with the word “beans” prominently written on it is going to catch your eye, and it’s likely to be the one you reach out to grab.

So don’t be the one that babbles about and mutters that you were a tin of beans; stand out and shout about it, let your customer know exactly what they’re getting. (Sorry about another random analogy, best I could think of at the time).

2) Catch their eye with an image

Many of the top websites have an image on their homepage highlighting what their site does, or what their site is about. Images always stand out more than plain text, so they are a great way to catch a visitor’s eye and get them interested in your site or product. Text is a great way to describe something, but passing visitors are not always prepared to do too much reading unless they are already interested in the site.

For example, rakeback.org has a simple yet effective image on the homepage highlighting exactly what their site does. I’m sure that catches a lot of people’s attention

So think about adding an eye catching image to your site to hook the loose passer by. Heck, even if you can’t think of an image design to accompany your site, a scantily clad female usually goes down well in the poker industry. Just use anything to brighten up your page and improve on just having text on the homepage.

3) Have a good layout

If your homepage is a mess, it’s not going to say anything good about the rest of your site. If you have lots of text on your homepage that has been clumped together with randomly placed images in and amongst it, there’s not much chance that a visitor is going to delve deeper into your site.

Visitors like to see well-laid out front pages so that they can quickly scan over all of the different services and information that your website provides. The more cleanly laid out your homepage is, the more opportunities you have to provide your visitor with something that interests them. A good way of doing this is to put small chunks of information in boxes, so that each different segment is clearly defined and can be scanned over quickly.

Pokerlistings is a great example of how you can effectively use boxes on your homepage.

4) Fast loading time

As already mentioned, web browsers like to quickly hop from one page to another until they find something that catches their attention. Although they may not be in any real hurry, they do not like to wait around as they scour the web. If a site is taking more than 5 seconds to load, there is a high chance that they will just cut their losses and try out another site.

It would be terribly disappointing if you had a great site, but turned away the majority of your visitors with a slow loading time. So make sure that your homepage isn’t too large, otherwise you will be missing out on some valuable traffic. Keep your image files small, and don’t add unnecessary text or images if you can help it. Keep it as quick and clean as possible.

5) Less is more – keep it simple

When you design your homepage, you obviously want to let your visitors know how great your site is and provide them with lots of useful information about it. However, the last thing you want to do is swamp your visitor with so much information that they have no idea where to look or start reading.

Try your best to give your visitors quick and easy information on a plate. If you want to have a big article highlighting what your site does, make a new page and link to it from the homepage. It will make the homepage look a lot cleaner, and it will give your visitor time to digest what you already have on the homepage. People want to put the effort in to read in their own time, so try not to force it to them.

Posted in Design | Leave a comment

10 Ways To Fail As A New Affiliate

Posted on March 20, 2008 by Greg

How To Fail As A New Poker AffiliateI’ve written an article or two on the top tips for new affiliates, so let’s give it a try from the flipside. These kinds of articles are always great fun to read and they just as fun to write as well. So here are my top 10 tips on how to fail on your journey to becoming a successful poker affiliate. Enjoy!

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.

Posted in General Affiliating | Leave a comment