Read
about the 5 tips for new poker affiliates
and the 5 best poker room affiliate programs.
Before we get to the poker affiliate
tips, we wanted to talk a second about becoming
a poker affiliate in general. The truth
is that most people who 'decide' to become
a poker affiliate never make any money.
It's a pretty competitive environment and
without a true passion for poker combined
with self motivation most poker affiliates
never get a single signup other than their
dad and maybe a cousin or two.
The initial money has been lost back in
the same poker room that paid it out and
the new signups are elusive. Interest is
quickly lost and the idea is done before
it get's started.
On the other hand, the top performing online
poker affiliates make a lot of money. Top
poker affiliates are pulling down 6 figures
a month. Yes you read correctly, per month.
This is not the norm but many poker affiliates
are making substantial incomes. If you have
a passion for poker and if you are self
motivated you can succeed as a poker affiliate.
5 Tips for Beginning
Poker Affiliates.
1 - Don't sign up for every poker
affiliate program right away - FOCUS ON
ONE OR TWO poker rooms to start out.
If we were starting
over, here are the top 3 online poker
rooms I would pick to start out with TODAY.
We would sign up for the Poker
Affiliate World Affiliate Network.
It offers HIGHER CPA's than you can get
on your own and you can promote MANY rooms
from one easy console.
Next we would sign up for the Full
Tilt Poker Affiliate Program. It's the
hottest new poker room on the market and
it is growing by leaps and bounds and if
we were going to go with MGR we would sign
up directly with Full Tilt.
Don't waste your time
signing up for every poker affiliate program
under the sun because if you promote everything
you will have no focus for your players
and it will be way to much for you to manage.
Pick a limited number and start out with
your promotion.
This will make your promotions more focused
and most importantly give you a more clear
cut direction to start promoting. New affiliates
who start out by promoting numerous rooms
with flashing banners and less than a full
paragraph of text do not get conversions
on their own, trust me, that game is long,
long gone.
Instead, focus your attention
to a smaller number of properties. Another
reason to focus your efforts is because
the more players you send to a particular
property the more likely you are to reach
a higher payment threshold. If you refer
20 real players in a month to one particular
property you are going to make substantially
more than if you send 2 players to 10 different
sites.
The 3 Best Poker
Room Affiliate Programs...
Free to join and currently accepting
new affiliates.
Before choosing your first poker room to
promote you need to answer a few key questions.
First, how do you plan to promote the poker
room? Are you going to primarly
an online promoter, by building
a website and driving traffic to that website
or are you going to promote offline?
Maybe you want to do both? You do not have
to be a webmaster to be a successful affiliate,
I know many very successful affiliates who
do primarily word of mouth promotion and
wouldn't know how to even register a domain
name, much less build a website.
If you plan to promote poker offline it
is vital that you find a poker room that
offers a sign up bonus code that you can
use to give to your friends. They can go
straight to the poker room, download the
poker software and while signing up they
stick in your bonus code. You do not have
to send them to a website where they can
click on your customized link before you
can get credit. Not all rooms offer bonus
code tracking, so you need to do a little
research.
Offline Promoters - A great
affiliate program to start with is Full
Tilt Poker . It's actually our 1st choice
for offline promoters. Yes a lot of people
already play at Party Poker but there are
still tons that do not. FullTilt allows
bonus codes and they work.
Plus you can set up private tournaments.
These are key to converting your players
to depositors. Create a private tournament,
give your players the password and personally
get them to join.
If you get enough players, you can offer
bonus money for your private tourney winner
and you can just transfer the bonus $$ from
your account to the winners!
Make a flyer, post it and hand it out. Tell
people about your tourney.
Try and make your bonus code unique to you
so people will remember it. If your nickname
is bakedpotato make that your bonus code.
Our bonus code is KICKASS, it is short,
easy and to the point. "Hey, if you
ever decide to play at XXXX Poker Room,
use bonus code kickass when you sign up.
2 - Online Promoters - Find a niche
market (offline needs a niche too, but online
it is vital!)
Look for something that no one else is doing.
There are plenty of things still available.
Maybe you have a passion for playing step
tournaments at Party Poker. Write everything
you know about how the step tournaments
work. Exactly how do the buyins work? What
kind of experiences have you had playing
at the different step levels? Write about
the best times you've found to play in the
steps and the best levels to try and buy
in at. What are some good step tournament
strategies and why? Talk about what it takes
to play in your first one. Write a blog
about your experiences.
This is a niche, there are tons of them.
Find yours and write everything you can
think about it. Some great niches are your
professional group. If you're a salesman
then get together with your network of sales
people and challenge them to an online poker
tournament. A number of sites are now offering
private poker tournaments that you can set
up free of charge and that you can invite
people in via password.
If you are doing offline promotions a great
conversation starter would be to talk about
your experiences in step tournaments, especially
someone who is leary of online poker (there
are still plenty!). Tell them about the
step tournaments and how you played in a
1 table SNG with a first place prize of
$2500. As a matter of fact, your buyin was
only $5 dollars online. Ask him if he wants
to create a play money account and watch
you play sometime. Give him your bonus code
or get him to your website first. Talk to
him via instant message while you play.
You'll have a new depositor in no time.
3 - Look for a quality program that
you trust.
When you are a poker affiliate, you must
have trust in the properties that you promote.
You rely on the poker room to accurately
track your visitors and give you credit
whenever you send a real money player. You
have to find a site that you deem trustworthy.
I think it is vital to only work with the
top quality and recogonized poker rooms.
It is always a huge plus when the affiliate
manager is an active member in forums such
as the ones found at PokerAffiliateWorld.com,
Poker Affiliate World is a great resource
for all of the major poker
affiliate programs and a very active
poker affiliate forum.
Key things to look for are accurate stats,
a quality affiliate manager and brand recogonition.
4 - Promote actively and often.
If you are an online promoter and you run
a website you have to do more than put up
banners provided by the poker rooms. Banner
farms don't work, don't waste your time.
As a matter of fact, unless you are constantly
adding content, poker room reviews themselves
will not generate sign ups. There are so
many review sites now that a site giving
a review and a bunch of banners has been
done ad nauseum. Don't waste your time if
this is your only strategy. If you have
a content driven website then you will see
conversions on your room reviews if they
are well done. Banners can be used for brand
recognition, but don't count on them for
your clicks and conversions.
If you are an offline promoter, spread the
word and spread your bonus code. A note
about bonus codes, geographic bonus codes
work well. If you attend a college, use
the name of the mascot or even better, use
a code mocking one of your rivals. We used
bonus code "GATORSSUCK" in Athens,
GA (home of the UGA Bulldogs).
Get business cards made up with your website
and pass them out often. Whenever you talk
to someone about poker give them a card.
Maybe you deal poker at a home game a few
nights a week and are constantly seeing
new players who might want to play poker,
sign up as an affiliate and get a bonus
code. create a card that says "Thanks
for Playing" and then gives them a
code to use to get extra money when they
decide to try out the step tournaments at
Party Poker.
5 - New content is key for website
success.
Unless you just have a huge marketing budget
or a domain name with a huge amount of type
in traffic then you are going to have to
count on search engines to send traffic
to your website. Search engines like websites
that offer updated, unique and new content.
The more content you add to your site that
is self generated and that shows visitors
what they were looking for the higher your
traffic will rise. The more traffic you
recieve the more people you can promote
your properties to and in return you should
see more conversions. This means one thing,
more money in your pocket.
Oh, one last quick tip, don't try and scam
the poker rooms by offering free cash to
your buddies if they sign up and make a
small deposit so you can get your one time
CPA payment. The poker rooms know what is
going on this does not work. Save your money
because you will get burned. Don't scam
the poker rooms.
You should promote
your poker room offers to poker players,
family, friends and any other potential
online poker players. Market offline and
online to see the best results. Put together
a plan and start
earning cash today!
Thanks and we'll see you at the tables!
KAP
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