Starting Out With Nothing
This may come as a shock for some, but it is perfectly possible to create a successful, money-making poker website without any starting capitol. For example, Play Winning Poker is one of the most profitable poker websites around, yet I am sure that the owner has paid much (if anything) to get the site to where it is today. It just goes to show that whilst it might be nice to have some money to spend on your site when starting out, it is by no means a necessity.
Now although I say starting out with ‘nothing’, I’m assuming you can scrape together just $15 to get a domain name and some hosting for a month. Although you might want to start out without spending any money whatsoever, these are key constituents to creating a reputable website, so just scrape together this small amount at least. Trust me, it’s much better to pay $15 now to get a good www.mysite.com domain, rather than to be stuck with a dodgy looking www.freesite.yourusername.net with loads of banners for the rest of your site’s life.
So this would be my plan of action if I had to create a poker website without any starting money.
Design: $0
Content: $0
Advertising: $0
Design
Even though I have no money to get a unique website design, it’s not something that I am too bothered about. All I want is 
a decent template to build my site around, and there are loads of free and good looking templates that you can use if you do some searching around. I would more than likely get one of the templates from www.free-templates.org (preferably a blue one), unless I can find something else that catches my eye at www.oswd.org or www.freecsstemplates.com.
I have limited skill as far as using Photoshop goes, so I would try and create a simple yet effective header to try and make the site look a little more noticeable. However, at the end of the day, there would be no harm in just putting my website title at the top of the page in the header are in big bold letters.
Even though at this point I have a basic looking site, it does not phase me in the slightest. As long as I make sure I keep a decent navigation structure and try and keep the site as clean as possible, it will do just fine.
Content
Now that I’ve got my website design all sorted out, I’m going to spend the next few weeks (and probably months) writing content. I’m not going to be uploading the content to the site from the start, as I want to write a good 30 or so fundamental articles around the niche before I start to plan the navigation structure, and decide where each article is going to go. If I upload each article as I go along, I will end up with a haphazard navigation bar and the site won’t have a solid structure to it.
After writing a nice amount of articles, I will plan out the overall structure and start uploading them to the site. From here it will be easier to see areas of the site that I could develop, and so I will look to write more content and expand each section from one day to the next. If I’ve got my foundations sorted, I can comfortably write lots of content without the fear that the site will become messy and difficult to use.
Now I’m in a position to sit back and freely write lots of content around my particular niche. By setting myself targets like 50 pages, 100 pages, 150 pages and so on, I should be able to build a content rich site that could easily dominate a small to middle-sized niche over a matter of months.
Advertising
My main focus for advertising will be to get a nice amount of quality link exchanges. This is always easier said than done, but if I can create a content rich website with lots of information, it should make it a lot easier to get exchange links with some of the more authoritative sites in my niche and in the general area of poker. With these links, I’m going to be making sure that I use a good anchor text to help with my rankings in the search engines for the particular keywords I will be going after.
In addition to link exchanges, I quite like to submit a handful of articles to article directories, more specifically www.ezinearticles.com. I will look to submit 4 or 5 articles of around 500 words, with each article being written around general information about my niche. The more interesting I can make these articles the better, as the readers will be more likely to visit my link at the bottom of these articles. I wouldn’t say that this will be bringing me crazy amounts of traffic, but it is one method that I like to use to get my site off the ground.
Summary
If you are planning on starting out without investing any of your own money, just remember to not let it phase you. In my opinion, the difference in your chances of success between starting with nothing and $100 are minimal, if not non-existent in my opinion. The main factor that determines your success as a new affiliate is not the amount of money you are starting with, but your drive and determination to make the best website you can.
Some of the best poker affiliates I know started out with little or no money at all, and they are making crazy amounts of money right now. Internet marketing really isn’t a rich man’s (or woman’s) game, it’s something that is open to everyone and anyone who wants to give it a try.
Having the will to learn and drive to work hard is way more valuable than having $1000 in your back pocket to start a website with.