What’s in this eBook For You?

We used a real life example in this Ebook, one of our most recent campaigns was targeting “Double or Nothing” Terms, Keywords, and players! So this book will teach you how to identify a niche, plan your attack, build a mailing list, and make the coin! It doesn’t matter if you are a new, a struggling Affiliate, or a seasoned veteran there is something in this Ebook for everyone.

Give us your feeback!

We want to ask each and every affiliate that reads this ebook to give us your feedback! The Affiliate market is ever changing and in constant motion! We are already working on “Part 2″ of our Ebook series, so check back soon!

The Good

• Poker overall has went worldwide, and the EU Market and Asian Market are hot
• Player Rewards and Affiliate Margins for the most part have stayed high
• As the market matures, poor quality sites have less of an impact
• The US is seriously looking at legalizing Online Poker, of course it will be taxed and rooms like Stars and tilt may have issues getting licensed. But still a positive step.
• Several countries have passed regulations for online gaming. Depending on who you ask, this can be good, bad or, very ugly. But it is progress, as in order for the market to stabilize long term, we need regulation.

The Bad

• Some Rooms **cough**-Full Tilt-cough**** Have all but eliminated their affiliate programs on the Rakeback Side, and they reduced their CPA’s and added more fees to their revshare plans.
• Shady Rooms – We are still seeing new rooms open up, steal money form players and affiliates, and close down or get “absorbed” by bigger rooms. Aced Poker is a good example of this, although the guys are Carbon did a decent job of merging everything, some big affiliates were stiffed 200k+ in commissions.
• Bodog continues to attack rakeback and calls out other rooms to do the same. The irony here is that Bodog does little poker, and Rakeback affiliates sent a majority of the true poker players. As a long time PAL member said “Bodog trying to tell any room how to run their poker program is, shall we say silly” – the lesson here is; Be sure you are setting a good example at what you are doing before scrutinizing anyone else.

The ugly

• The UB/AP Scandal Part 2 – Once again UB/AP had to be called out in public to fix a serious security issue, it just makes you shake your head honestly. If not for their cheating and silliness, they would easily be a great room to promote.
• Cake Poker tracking issues. going on two years now, Cake Poker admits to having a serious issues with tracking players using Firefox. I’m sure they have other issues, but this is an issue I can confirm straight from the Cake Poker Employees. Why don’t they fix it? The answer is obvious
• Cake Poker Again!! Cake apparently has the same issue that UB/AP has with players being able to snag info about hole cards. Although this was brought up on two of the biggest Poker Forums in the world, Cake hasn’t bothered to respond.
  

Ok so that’s a quick recap of good, bad, and ugly issues within the poker world. The bottom line is 2010 has been a roller coaster of a year for poker. Like any market, there is always issues, changes, and stuff that just won’t sit well with everyone. The key to surviving thriving in any business, is the ability to not only adapt to changes, but to anticipate them. You have to stay one step ahead at all times, or else you will constantly playing catch up with your competition.

What YOU can do to Succeed

As you can see above, Poker Affiliate business is all over the map. some good, some bad, etc. One of the most asked questions we get is “Where do you see the market in 1-5 years” or “What Should I be doing to prepare”. So here is a few simple things you MUST be considering to ensure the long term survival of your business.

1. Predict the future (good one huh) I’m serious though, you need to be looking ahead and make some educated guesses to predict the next evolution of the Poker Market. Where do you see the US market in a year? or 5 years? you must be planning ahead!

2. Are you stuck in a niche? If you are dominating a nice niche within Poker, that’s great! But will that niche be profitable forever? One thing we all know about the Internet, what;s hot today, could be forgotten tomorrow. There are new opportunities everyday to jump into a new niche, so be on the look out for the next hot thing.

3. Is your site as good as it could be? If I had a dime every time I heard "I have quality content, why aren’t I making money?" – After the now famous google "Mayday" update, I know a ton of webmasters that took it on the chin. For years we have been able to essentially game google with some decent content, and of course some backlinks. Google has been working for years on finding a way to eliminate or at least reduce the impact of paid links and low quality links. Mayday was the first step it seems. So to continue to compete you will need to keep your site fresh, content updates, and pay serious attention to the quality of your website.

4. Are all your eggs in one basket? Are you targeting a global market? Even if you have some pages translated on your website, I predict you need to take that a step further in the near future. I’m going to expand on this idea in another article, but I’m 100% sure that within the next couple years, some translated copy on your website will not be enough to compete within “Local Search” areas. Also, does more than 50% of your income come from one program?

5. Ask yourself this; What if ALL Poker Rooms shit down their affiliate programs tomorrow? Would you be ready? What would you do?

So there you have it, hopefully this article will get us all to do some serious thinking. As for the main topic of "where do I see our industry" – I have no doubt that there will always be some type of poker affiliate program to promote. Regardless of what some companies think (Full Tilt, bodog) Affiliate can make and break a company. Maybe nto completely, but we have the power to influence the market. The issue is, many times we fail to use that power.

Of course there will be changes, the recent Online Gaming Bill HR 2267 passing the house could very well mark the start of regulated gaming in the US. What that actually means is anyone’s guess. Maybe it means we will be restricted to promoting the “licensed Rooms” in the US, but who knows for sure. But these are questions we need to consider and be prepared for.

I’m confident that be continuing to build a quality portal, provide the visitor with what they want, and continuing to look ahead to the future are the key’s to staying profitable in this industry. So do yourself a favor and look towards the future.

I want to hear what everyone else thinks, so please leave your comment and opinions in the comments section below. Also, we are always looking for quality Poker Affiliate and SEO related articles, so if you have something you would like published, contact us at support@onlinepokerseo.com

They say (never figured out who they is) that you need 7 points of contact to make a potential client feel at ease. Personally I think that is old school marketing gibberish, as I see first time sales all the time. If it takes you 7 visits to make a sale or conversion, then you are doing something seriously wrong!! Every visit is an opportunity, like a real life person walking into a store. They walked into the store because something interested them, so once they are they you need to convince them you have something they need. This is basic biz 101 stuff.. Nothing ground breaking I know, yet so many people fail in this respect. So the question you need to ask yourself is; Do visitors have a reason to come back??? And no things like “OMG I have the best content”, does not qualify your site as “sticky” and more than likely will not result in return traffic. So I ask again, what reason to people have to come back to your site, or even better, what specifically are you doing for your visitor to make them come back???

What Email Company do I use?

Over the past 3 years, I’ve tried all the most popular Email Marketing Companies, and by a LONG WAY, Aweber is the best. For less than $20 a month, a ton of easy to use templates, and forms, and you can get 30 days free! So give Aweber a shot if you are serious about starting your list.

I’ll even make you a promise, if you have not made back your $20 in the first 2 month, shoot me a message and I’ll refund your money personally! Also, check out the “Free Test Drive” Aweber is offering, simply signup on the right side  —->>>>>>>>

Email Marketing

This all leads me to the age old practice of “Email Marketing” In my opinion, email marketing is the most mis-understood and most seriously underused tool of the Poker Affiliate! Most people when they hear the term Email Marketing they instantly think “SPAM!!!” While we all battle email spam, when we talk about Email Marketing, I’m only referring to Permission based email marketing, or opt-in email lists. Truthfully, this is the best type and most effective. I’ve been involved with email marketing from both sides of it. Like many other webmasters, I’ve blasted emails out to a list of 500k people (sorry if you were one of them lol) and the open rate, CT rate, and conversion rate were beyond horrible! Of course I hear the great tale of email spamming marketing guru’s on how great it can be, but really that’s not how I like to do things, mainly because its not efficient or effective.

Anyway, I could beat a dead horse on email spam, etc but this post is really about using all the tools the interweb gods have given us, especially Opt-in Email Marketing. Over the past couple years I dare say my team and I have become very knowledgeable at leveraging our Email Lists, and using them to generate revenue, and addition traffic. Of course there has been a lot of trial and error, some good campaigns and some bad campaigns. Just like everything else, I’ve failed and failed until I’ve succeeded. Luckily, my flops have given me some valuable tips and advice I can share with you!

Top Email Marketing Tips

#1 – You Better Have Something To Offer

etting someone’s email on the internet i snow harder than getting someone’s SSN in real life. Nobody wants to be spammed, and people have a healthy fear of viruses, adware, etc. So in order for you to get their email address, you must tempt them with something. It will not be enough to say something like “Stay updated in the latest poker bonuses, subscribe now!” or “Get the latest news and updates” – This doesn’t work because you are offering something they can get simply by looking at your site, or doing a nano second of searching on google. Since we all mainly deal in poker, let;s list some example of poker related things you can offer that has tangible value and will get you the prizes email addy.

An Ebook

Ebooks do very well, as long as its a subject people care about. We run a nice campaign which offers a “Double or Nothing” Ebook to visitors. This isn’t a 5 page ebook either, we put some time into it and its is about 30 pages of real info, with example, etc. So maybe you can try and offer an Ebook for “Beating 6max Games” or “A Guide to Profitable Table Selection” – Almost doesn’t matter the subject as long as its somehting someone needs. Use your Analytics to find a subject, and start writing.

#2 - Have a Professional Looking Email template

This make a big difference, you need to be promoting your brand to your email list and you don’t want someone to signup, only to unsubscribe because you send them a spammy looking email. All major Email Management sites like Vertical Response and Aweber make it very easy to either upload and quickly create a custom email template. It literally takes 10 minutes to make a nice template with your logo, so don’t cut corners.

#3 – Setup Follow-up Emails

Again this is another no brainier, when you setup your initial “auto responses” be sure and schedule at least 2 more follow up emails. Do not schedule then back to back, give them a few days to read your ebook, or look over your email. Then follow up with a Part 2 or maybe a quick note thanking them for subscribing to your list, and ask them for serious feedback. you will be amazed at the response you get when you ask someone their opinion! Everyone loves to feel important, and this is a great way to established a connection with your subscriber.

#4 – Personalize your email

Again, sites like Aweber allow for custom fields which allow you to add a personal touch to your emails. Having a subject line which has the recipients name like “Randy, did you see our new 6max Poker Guide?” – the personalized touch does wonders for your open rate and eventually Click through Ratio. Getting your customer to open the email is only half the battle, once inside you have to get them to click something! But it all starts with the opening! so be sure and personalize your emails.

#5 – Don’t Forget Your Call To Action

Just like your website, your email must have a strong Call to action or “CTA” – You need to be specific and easy to understand in your email. If you are pushing an Ebook about 6 max games, let your subscribers know that they are missing;

Only Poker.com has the sickest 6max Poker Games in the world! So they need to “Click Here To Signup Now!!!”

Of course you need to add some more reason to justify your recommendation, but remember YOU are the 6max expert, so they are already listening and reading your ebook and newsletter. Of course this is a generic example only, but if you have read this far, you are savvy enough to figure that out.

So, there we have it. 5 simple email marketing tips for poker affiliates. Do not be one of the many poker affiliates that are either not using, or using email marketing incorrectly. Having a legit email list will pay for itself a thousand times over. I can honestly say that I have never sent out an email to one of my lists and not made at elast 1 sale.

Finally, I want to leave you with some stats I ran across today.

Email marketing service provider MailerMailer released its tenth Email Marketing Metrics Report and it contains some valuable information about recent open rate trends (based on industry and list size) which will prove immensely valuable to online marketers.

Interesting findings in the report include:

- Overall unique open rate has decreased to 11.2% over the past year
- Open and click rates are the highest on Sundays
- Subject lines of 35 characters or less tend to receive 52% higher open rates
- Bounce rates can drop below 1% as mailing frequency increases
- Personalized messages get about 7% higher open rates
- 75.8% of total opens are expected in the first 24 hours

“Email marketing is a great business tool because of the ability to track your success,” say CEO Raj Khera. “This report gives professionals the information they need to gauge performance and determine what improvements will lead to better performing email campaigns.”

Although buying and building links can definitely help your ranking efforts, you have to make sure you go about it the right way, or you could potentially drop in the rankings or trigger a penalty for having an unnatural back-link profile. This article is going to explain how to appear natural while building links unnaturally.

What Does a Natural Back-Link Profile Look Like?

Think about it – if you were a totally white hat site that never did any link building, what would your back link profile look like? Would the majority of the links be the anchor text “online poker sites” pointing at your homepage? Probably not…

For example, let’s think about Wikipedia.org, which has a very natural back-link profile. The majority of their back-links are either going to point at individual subpages with anchor text like “Wikipedia’s online poker page” or are going to point at the homepage with anchor text like “Wikipedia” or “Wikipedia.org”.

To appear natural, you should implement that anchor text strategy into your link building efforts. You should still get some links with your target keywords in the anchor text, but you should also throw in some links with anchor text like “MyPokerSite.org” pointing at your homepage or “MyPokerSite.org’s Poker Reviews” pointing at your review hub page.

These “natural” links will help dilute the number of “unnatural” links like “my keyword” anchor text pointing at your homepage and will help your ranking efforts across the board.

Other Ways to Look Natural While Building Links

· Avoid buying links from sites that openly offer paid text links. This could get you in trouble if your site is flagged for a manual review. Think about a Google technician reviewing your back-link profile and finding your link on a page that says, “want your text link here? Visit our advertising page now.” No good at all…

· Be careful with sitewides. Sitewide links in general appear a little unnatural because most white-hat webmasters would rather link to a resource in the content of a page instead of on their template. If you are buying a sitewide link, I’d recommend trending towards anchor text like “MyPokerSite.com” or something along those lines, as a sitewide link with anchor text such as “best poker bonuses” appears very unnatural and could get you in trouble.

· Try to find “virgin” link resources. If your entire link building campaign revolves around buying the same links as your competitors you could get yourself in trouble as some of the sites may already have lost their PR-passing ability or be flagged as link-selling websites. By finding “virgin” link resources that your competitors haven’t found yet you are more likely to receive PR and trust from the link.

· Hit up your subpages. A link profile that consists of 95% of the links pointing at the homepage of a website will appear unnatural, especially if the site is 100+ pages (as it should clearly be acquiring links to other pages, too). I like to have my profile have 50%-70% of the links pointing at my homepage with the remainder pointing at various subpages.

· If you have a “resource” page, add actual resources. Most webmasters use their “resources” page just to add link exchanges, but you should also add other links that aren’t reciprocal to appear a little more natural to Google.

Now if you are like me, you hate “long and boring” work and unless I’m super interested in a subject or a task, I find myself getting distracted and losing motivation which for people in our business means a wasted day. So for me to really get into something, I have to make it fun and exciting. Of course I don’t wake up and jump out of bed and scream “YES! Today is research day!” But to do anything the right way, you have to put 100% into it. So to keep everything in perspective, remember that Keyword Research and exploring possible new markets in the key to keeping your business fresh and generating revenue.

Why You MUST Find New Keywords

Have you ever searched around the net and found competing websites inside your niche that obviously have not been touched in years? If you are doing any type of competitive analysis then the answer is yes. Why do you think this is? Why would a webmaster take the time and spend the money to develop a website only to abandon it and leave it live?

The answer is usually simple, they got a great idea for a website, they were really excited, and probably spent a ton of time and money trying to bring their vision to life. They probably ran into the major problem most webmasters do, they didn’t make money! These sites didn’t make money most likely because they only did what I like to call “surface research” which means they checked out the best known websites within their niche, tried to copy their main targeted KW’s, failed, and quit.

See if you have heard this before, or better yet see if you have thought this before. “All the big money making KW’s will cost too much to compete for” – People are usually referring to keywords like “Online Poker” – “Poker Room Bonus Code” – “Poker Room Rakeback” (Replace Poker Room with PokerStars, Party, etc). So yeah in some sense I agree, some of these easy surface keywords are super competitive and will take a lot of time, and some money to compete for. That doesn’t mean its impossible or not worth trying even for new and smaller webmasters. It just means it will be more work and take longer, and there are much easier things to rank for you just have to find them.

4 Tools To Help Find Profitable Keywords

Now first off I will say that my way is not the only way, but its a way that works well for me and always ends up either helping me #1 find new keywords to attacks #2 provides me with other benifits even if I fall short of my original goal. So like I said its “win win” for me.

Since we mainly work in the gambling niche we are going to focus on that for now. We will also discuss two major variables in this methods, one for webmasters with existing websites already getting traffic, and one for new webmasters that need to get visitors. Also here are some essential tools I use for starting gambling Keyword research:

Google Insights – This tool is just seriously awesome and allows you to research KW search volume world wide from 2004 – present day. You can also drill down and review search volume in a specific country. So imagine being able to instantly look for high volume search terms on a country specific basis. It’s almost too good to be true, and best of all its 100% free! It also has an option so you can export this data to a spreadsheet, run comparisons, etc. Just awesome.

Google Trends – This site is another free google tool which is very under used by webmasters. By using Google Insights you can find keywords which people actually search for, and with the google trends tool you can easily monitor selected terms to see how its trending. It is important to remember that in the 2010 SERPS the rankings and trends are in constant flux. What was a hot term in 2009, might be next to useless in 2010. So the whole “live” search thing swings both ways. So watching trends and finding profitable gaming keywords is all the more essential for your business.

Woopra -I’m a huge fan of Woopra Analytics. This is a great new analytics program which gives webmaster “live” stats through a desktop program. It also keeps logs and allows you to drill down as far as you want. The big advantage I love about this program, is I can check it during the day and instantly see KW’s for the day I probably would miss in GA. Of course it has some of the same data as GA, but the format just makes it much more easier.

Google Analytics – I don’t think I need to go too deep into what this program does, if you haven’t heard of this program, then you probably need to stop and find some less advanced articles on general web marketing. Not trying to be rude, but you are not ready for this info.

Targetting New Keywords

Ok, so we have covered what you need to do to find potential keywords to target and attack. So now the time has come to put these potentially profitable keywords to the test. There is a number of options you can choose to target these new KW’s, and they all work fine. Some better than others, but again its all about the process and what works bets for you and keeps you interested and excited about research. Here are a few things I do to test out these new found potential moneymakers.

1. Generate new content targeting the new Keywords – This of course is the easiest and quickest way to go after these new phrases. Writing content can be done quickly and for little or no cost. If you have stumbled on some KW phrases with little competition, and good search volume, then yo could see quick results and perhaps you have found a gold mine. I usually try and come up with 5 articles surrounding a new KW, using some variables of the phrases and testing out different angles for the content. So all in all this is an easy way to target the KW’s

2. Attacking Keywords – I use the phrase “attacking” because that is the way I feel about it. If you think you have found a potential gold mine in KW’s or KW’s that are soon to be trending up, then you need to be ready to scale up the targeting of your new found phrases. after I have completed my research then I’m usually confident that the KW’s will be good either for traffic or targeted conversions. So I don’t stop at generating some new content, I start looking for Exact Match Keyword Domain to expand on the keywords. I generally find one good exact match domain and generate 10 pages or so of content, all surrounding the keywords on the subject. If you have not tried this before you will be super amazed at how easy it is to write 10 pages on targeted content. The additional advantages of building keyword mini sites like this are numerous!

1. Having Exact Match or even close match KW domains allows you to quickly rank for these phrases quickly and cheaply

2. By generating pages of content, you are almost guaranteed to find tons of “long tail”s keywords you would have never thought to look for

3. After you put some work into the mini sites, in addition to the obvious advantages listed above, you now have a new websites which can be used for additional tests and the sites can be used for selective linking as well.

Final Notes:

I want to make it clear that building mini sites is not the only way to find long tail phrases and discover new keywords. I’m always amazed at the amount of webmasters I see that seem to take a one sided approach to keyword discovery. Do not limit yourself to adding content to your main site, or building mini websites. You can do BOTH and I recommend doing both. But mini sites should be used selectively and used for expanding your large authority website. If you have a 10 page mini site on Cake Poker, then you should soon have at least 10 pages of targeted content on your main website. That just makes sense doesn’t it??

If you are looking for some domains, make sure you are not paying full price for domains, hosting, etc. The folks at Godaddy were nice enough to give me some custom Coupon Codes for 2010. Please use this link – Godaddy Discount – And one of the special coupon codes below for a discount.

• IAPt3 = 10% off
  IAPtfif1 = 15% off $75
  IAPtft1 = $5 off $30
  IAPtdom1 = $7.49 .com
  IAPth1 = 20% off hosting

Most SEO’s and Media Companies do agree that about 80% of the world uses Google.com to search for various items. While that 80% dominates the visits on most websites, we would be foolish to ignore the remaining 20%. Recently I’ve received several requests asking me who they should approach doing SEO for Bing/Yahoo. So I wanted to take a minute and show you where I start. Of course no search engines tells us what their most important ranking factors are, so we have to do some research to make some educated guesses.

Since Google is so well known and is the #1 engine webmaster optimize for, we have all been given some easy info we can use for SEO’ing for BigG – But so far you will not find a ton of info on Bing/Yahoo/Ask, etc – Again for this article, we are going to discuss Bing.

Simple Research

Anytime I’m curious about something, it drives me nuts until I can find some info that satisfies me, in this case I figured the easiest way to try and find some clue is to run some simple side by side quarries. Now I’m doing this Google Vs Bing research as I write this, so its possible nothing useful comes out of this, but it will give you a great starting point to do your own research!

Research Info

For our first test we will pick a simple keyword relating to poker, so let’s try “Poker Bonus“. For this test I’m using a nice Firefox plugin call “SEOquake” which provides a wealth of website info which pulls up automatically when you load a website. You can turn this plugin off with one click, so you only use it when you want too. Also, I’m going to use the website Google Vs Bing to give me some quick side by side results as shown below.

Now as you can see, the term Poker Bonus pulls up the top 10 results for Google and Bing. For this phrase we see Google has Poker Listings Ranked #1 and Bing has Poker Junkie Ranked #1. Now the big question is WHY? What does Google see that bing doesn’t? And vice Versa? In a Perfect World Bing and Google would show similar results (if you were the webmaster), but most of the time this isn’t the case. So now we can to dig down and see what the differences are between the two.

Using my SEO Quake v FireFox Plugin I’m going to pull the site data that is relevant. In this case we will look at:

• Age of Site/Page
• Linkbacks from Google and Yahoo
• Directory Listings
• Traffic
• Page Rank
• Keyword Density
• Meta Data

Poker Listings Data

Poker Junkie Data

Comparison Breakdown

Ok now that we have some small data to go by, lets see what sticks out.

Age of Domains – Ok right off I notice that “Poker Junkie” has been live over 1 year longer than Poker Listings. That may mean something.

Indexed Pages – PokerListings has man man y more indexed pages. So maybe it has much more content, or they are better at deep linking and getting pages crawled. This could be a key factor and means at some point we need to look at: The code of both sites, and the structure/navigation of both sites.

BackLinks – In terms of backlinks, PokerListings is killing PokerJunkie when it comes to amount of Backlinks, no real surprise there as PokerListings is the link whores of the world. Still you have to ask yourself how much that is factored in, because Poker Junkie is still #2 in Google with a fraction of the backlinks. Poker Listing has a hell of a lot more in content anchor specific links going for them.

Keyword Density – Both are a little over 7%, which seems about right. Both pages read well and the density seems natural.

Meta Data: Every time I do these comparisons the top Google sites always seem to implement the meta keywords, yet they don’t use them to determine rankings anymore, right? I’d keep using them anyway, what’s the harm.

Dig Deeper Into your Analysis

The things listed above are good starting points to find the relationships the search engines have with websites. This process needs to be thorough and much more in depth. This type of side by side analysis needs to be performed on multiple sites before your data should be considered valid. In this case we pick a very high volume keyword which returned results of two major authority websites. So it is recommend that you repeat this process for various large and small volume keywords before making conclusions. Simply put, you need to see more data from other results. One test does not make a good SEO analysis.

Anyway, I hope this articles answers some questions for everyone, this is exactly how I do analysis for SE’s and various ranking issues I am curious about. This is a long and tedious process but it will pay dividends in the long run.

• Poorly Targeted Content/Traffic
• Website Usability
• Poor Calls To Action

So lets take these one at a time, and I’m going to use some example so I’m betting I’ll get some hate mail after this is posted. But ya know, I don’t care

Content/Traffic Not Converting

As mentioned above, many websites have content and traffic, but make $0. There could be several reasons for this, so let’s review the most common.

The content is bringing in the wrong type of traffic. As a webmaster you must know your target audience and target content and CTA’s to those visitors. Not all Poker Sites are the same, not all poker sites convert the same, and finally not all poker players are the same. A good example is a webmaster building a Poker Strategy websites and ranking for terms like: SNG Basics, MTT Strategy, Three Betting Strategy, or Poker Starting hands. While these are all great terms and terms that will bring you traffic they do not convert near as well as more targeted content to players that are looking for a new room to signup at. Again, it comes down to knowing your traffic, knowing what traffic has the highest chance of conversion,  and giving your traffic what they want.

Quiz: What Search Term Will Convert Better?

a) Sit and Go Strategy Tips

b) “any room” Review

c) “any room” Deposit Bonus

I think the answer is obvious. Now just to be clear, all those search terms can get you a new signup, but the probability is highest with a direct targeted search from a player ready to find a new room, signup bonus, etc. So it is very important you are targeting terms that convert well and not just the easiest terms to rank for. The difference between ranking for PokerStars Review and PokerStars Bonus Code is at least a couple million dollars a year.

Website Usability/Calls To Action

The navigation of your website is a key competent to your marketing strategy because you can put everything you need on the homepage. So its crucial you have a clearly defined path to your sub-pages which usually our the money pages. When you break it down the whole object of our webistes in the poker business is simple:

1. Get Interest (in our case this means visitors)

2. Sell Them on a Product

3. Get them to buy the product

It can really be that simple. As hard as it is for some Poker Affiliates, we are not Poker Players anymore, we are Salesman! YOU are a SALESMAN! No shit, yes I know its a bad feeling but we are. Our job is to get people to look at what we are selling, and sell them on the product by any means needed. We spoke int he last article about “Calls To Action“ and this is where it is essential. If you have traffic, you should be making money. If you are not making money, you are being a bad salesman!

Here is a few things you need to look at if you have traffic but are not converting players:

1. Where is the traffic from?

2. What kw’s are driving my traffic?

3. Are these the best KW’s for what I’m selling?

4. Is my Site Easy To Understand?

5. Is it easy for an idiot to find my money pages?

6. Are my money/product pages easy to understand?

7. Do I have VERY defined CTA’s? IE Do user know what they are supposed to do?

Ok, so far we have posted mainly general SEO/SEM type info that is mainly useful for new affiliates of a year or less. After several requests I’ve put together a few tips and ideas that if you follow through on, will give you a great ROI. Some of these ideas will cost some money which needs to be viewed as an investment, others will just cost you some time doing research and trial and error. If you are serious about extending your reach in the online market, then you must be willing to commit time and money.

Quick note: I’ve been in Poker Affiliate for 5 years now, my first year and a half I just blew money, wasted time, and failed over and over again. So if you are going through something similar, then do not give up! Just by the fact you are reading this website, you must be serious about changing your direction. So stick to it, and we are always open to questions and requests for specific articles.

Webmaster Scenario #1 – Not Converting Traffic

You have a decent sized poker or casino websites, you are getting decent traffic, maybe getting a few signups but you still are not seeing the big money yet.

I have been in this exact spot, and I’m pretty sure most webmasters have as well. My head hurt trying to figure out how to get “over the hump” and start doing some serious numbers somewhere, somehow. I didn’t want to quit! You website needs some new goals and a new direction. What you have been doing isn’t getting it done all the way. Here are a few things you can do to get your website moving forward and making money.

#1 – Test Test Test – One area where I think all of us struggle is “Calls To Action” or “CTA’s” – These are the things that make our visitors click on a link or banner, so they go to a poker or casino, sign-up, and make us money. I’d say 99% of the webmasters and affiliates I know do not have a marketing degree. So naturally we do not have the insight we need to create a sales page that converts traffic. Now I suppose we could go back to college and take Web Marketing 101, but honestly I doubt that would do much good.

The Internet ages very fast, it never sleeps and everyday users get more savvy then they were a month ago. User are trained to be paranoid, not click links from sites they haven’t heard of. So assuming you have a website that looks professional and trustworthy, then the nest thing we need to figure out is our Calls to action.

Testing CTA’s is pretty easy, but must be tracked on a daily basis. In the early days of the net, banners with flashy test worked well and was all the rage. Now days people can block banners and flash easily and user will never know you have images or banners on your site. My sites have very few if any banners, they just do not seem to work well for converting players, so I use them as a way to convey messages more than anything.

Since our main goal is to get users to click to a poker room or casino (which usually embeds a 30 day tracking cookie) then your text links must have some type of Calls to action as their anchor text. Depending on the niche, I suggest you start of by trying to figure exactly what the goal of your visitor might be. I do a lot of rakeback poker sites, so some of my best converting anchor text links are:

Text Link Calls To Action

• Click To get Rakeback
• Click Here To Get Cake Poker Rakeback
• Get Rakeback Now – This one works great as a button
• Click To Get Your $500 Bonus Now
• Click For More Info Now!
• Download and Play Now!
  

Notice a couple things about the above CTA’s –

#1 – I’m telling the visitor exactly what I want them to do

#2 – I’m giving them an incentive to do what I want them to do

Also, keep in mind these can be text links or buttons with text. I’ve found they both convert about the same, so it just depends on your preference and making sure it seems to fit within the content. Now granted, there is nothing groundbreaking about the CTA’s above, but they are simple and effective.

One of the most common mistakes I see on websites is CTA’s that are too in your face or ones that are too subtle. Just because when you mention “PokerStars” in an article and it is a hyperlink, doesn’t mean anyone knows WHY they should click on it. You have to tell your visitor what they should do, and more importantly WHY they should do it.

Webmaster Scenario #2 – Hitting the wall

In this situation, you are pretty much in the same spot as in the first scenario but you have a little more money to invest. Your site is getting traffic, some signups, and some decent income. Basically you are making enough money to see the potential, and want a bigger piece of the billion dollar pie that is online gaming!

Now hopefully you have been investing some of your income into the site, and that is exactly what you need to be doing. Buying extra content, some press releases, blog reviews, ad space, etc. This is good ways for you to gain a foot hold in the market. I’m not saying you need to spend $1000 a month on these things, honestly you could write for links, write all your own content, do link trades with friends, etc. But just like any business, becoming profitable quickly plants the seeds to be profitable long term. For example maybe you make poker videos, in that case maybe you try some new games or new software or something. Either way you need to be investing in your business no matter what.

So, no matter what market you are in, I suggest that you consider having parts or even all of your main website translated into other languages so you can engage other parts of the web. Even if your traffic is 100% US (or w/e your native tongue is) then you need to ask yourself; Is my traffic 100% US because nobody in the EU or Asia is interested in what my website is about? Or is it because I am not giving myself exposure in these markets?

Usually the answer is the latter. You cannot expect people in Sweden to care about your website if you are not giving them something in their language to check out. Now without getting deep into Geo targeting and such, it is very easy for anyone to get some professional translations and add them to your website. I generally start with my home page and my review or money pages because that gives me the quickest ROI. Of course there is a risk that maybe you find that nobody in w/e country cares about the latest and greatest Full Tilt Poker Review or the Best Full Tilt Poker Bonus, but even if your new translated pages doesn’t turn you into a super affiliates overnight, I can promise you will start to see some new long-tail searches hitting your analytics. From there you need to expand on your content just like you do any other phrases you are stumbling upon.

By expanding your reach into new and potentially fast growing markets, you have taken another step in adding real value to your website. Having a global presence is essential in the web, and you could easily see huge increases in traffic from not just google.com but google.se, de, nl, es etc – So you are actually getting into new google data centers which as you can imagine is nothing but a good thing.

These are two good tips that took me years to figure out, I thought I knew everything and the lack of money coming in told me different.

Now, let’s go make some money!

Today I wanted to write my thoughts on a question I see asked over and over again on the PAL Forums, and while reading a recent thread asking “How much Can I make as an Affiliate and the inevitable follow up question of “How long will it take for me to make money? Now for a new Poker Affiliate or even just a regular affiliate these are hard questions to answer. I think a couple years ago I would have said: “You can make what you put into it” and “It will take 6-12 months to make money”. However I asked my self this question today, and after some soul searching and giving this some serious thought, I think those answers are misleading. Let’s take these questions one at a time and chat about them.

How much money can I make being a poker affiliate?

On the surface these question seems simple and members usually give a canned response of “work hard and you will make as much as you want” or some silliness like that. Is that really the truth though? Let’s dissect this question for a minute. I do agree that if an affiliate works hard on their website, they have the potential to make an unlimited amount of money. But will simply working hard and adding content, a pretty design, getting some links make you the money? Of course these are all things we hear preached endlessly.

• Content is king
• Get Quality Linkbacks
• Know your niche
• Learn the basics of SEO

These are the 4 most common things I hear as advice for webmasters. Again this is good advice IF it is applied properly. The big problem is most webmasters can try and follow that path and still end up with a nice website, with lots of quality content, with some very nice linkbacks, and STILL not make enough money to pay for hosting. Now let’s go over some reasons why most poker affiliates and webmasters in general fail to make money even though they do what appears to be all the right things.

Content is King

Alright we have all heard this a billions times and we know what it means. Websites need to be more than banners and links to poker rooms. This is not the 1990′s and having a banner farm doesn’t work anymore (if it ever did) As webmasters we must provide visitors with quality content on a variety of subjects related to our niche. Affiliate site sin general need to become a resource to stand the test of time because the internet is littered with half finished or half assed websites that are of little to no value to 99% of the visitors.

Why you fail: So instead of randomly throwing up content you have seen on other poker sites, do some research or hopefully if you know your niche you will have a good idea of what visitors want to see. Try and do something better than other websites are doing. If they are doing articles explaining the GAP concept, then you do a article with a video. Take it up a notch and be something better.

Get Backlinks

This is probably the most mis-understood concept in the industry IMO. Ww rank well in the major search engines for competitive terms, you do need some links pointing towards your website. What you do not need to 1000 shitty links form porn sites, irrelevant websites, or banners farms pointing to you. I will take 1 quality link over 100 mediocre link any day and twice on Sunday. .

Why you fail: Lean in here and listen to me now, ’cause I’m only sayin’ his once: You do not have to have a ton of links to be competitive. Believe it or not, good content will get you some natural links eventually, and there is a million other poker webmasters out there that will do a LE with you. Just be logical when deciding what links you want coming to your website

Know your niche

This one should be simple, if you know about poker then you have some experience in that aspect. I see too many people try and do things they fail to understand. So don’t be that guy! Be responsible and know what you are getting into. Pretty simple eh?

Why You Fail: Once again, you either know what you are doing or you don’t. If your building a website about African Birds, then man you better know about Africa and what birds they have their. Know what I mean?

Basic SEO/SEM

This is a big one, not because you have to be some nerdy super genius to understand SEO or SEM, but because most people refuse, flat out refuse to get their butts in gear and actually try and learn SEO basic and Marketing basics. If you are going to do a job, then you should learn ever aspect of that job and not just the “fun stuff”. SEO is not Rocket science, there is some extra advantages that comes with experience and testing, but there is no super secret methods to get you to #1 in google in 3 days. It just doesn’t work that way.

Why you fail: I see this all the time and it reminds me of my first year of trying to be an affiliate. Webmasters try and be like the commercials they see and not an actual website. The content tends to be all the same; room reviews, strategy articles, a list of bonus codes, player profiles, and maybe some poker news thrown in. Now how is that any better than a million other websites? Websites with the same type content, same title tags, same approach. I know you are thinking; We that’s how these big websites are doing it, so it can’t be wrong. While it may not be wrong, what is special about YOUR website? What do you do better than Poker Listings? What sets you apart? 99% of the time the answer is a simple, nothing!

So instead of doing what everyone else is doing, you must try and fine something to add to the mix. Maybe you can offers your players some videos on strategy, maybe you tackle some event focused content or maybe you just try out some new things and see if it works. The point is that you must set your website apart from the million other poker affiliate websites to have any chance of making serious money. Remember we are in the marketing business, not the affiliate business

How long does it take to make money being a poker affiliate?

This is a common question and I think a couple of years ago I would agree with everyone else and say “6-12 months is how long”, but really I think that time can be much shorter than that. I agree if you are a new webmaster that it may take 6-12 months to learn how to get traffic, and convert that traffic into real money players. But as you grow as an affiliate and a marketer, you learn what works and what does not. I recently started a new project with a decent domain, nothing super special and within the first month I was getting traffic and conversions from this website.

That is the most recent example, and I could name plenty more. The point is that there is no set time it takes to make a website profitable. We also must consider the implications of google’s new “Personalized search” which really needs a post all its own. Also I should point out that once you get more experience as a webmaster and an affiliate marketer, you avoid hundreds of the little mistakes new affiliates make so that does play a role on ROI timeline.

The Twilight website and craze has been a welcome addition to my web portfolio. About a year ago, I started a Twilight news and gossip site for my wife and family to play with. I set up a wordpress template, and let the ladies go to work. As my wife was adding content, I began to monetize the website with a variety of products including adsense, ebay, affiliate products, and an email subscriber list.

Things start to pick up, but other projects take precedence

After just a few short months, the site was getting good traffic. Some days it was getting 2-3k visitors. At this point, the site was doing well, generating a little bit of money each day without a lot of effort. Unfortunately, it ended up taking a back seat to some other projects. My main niche is the gaming niche, and I had a lot of gaming opportunities that needed attention just as the Twilight site was becoming established. My Twilight site began to fall out of favor a bit, but it continued to churn out a few dollars per day in commissions, with no attention being paid.

Besides generating a little bit of cash, I was also collecting a few email addresses per day. Back when I created the site, I had quickly set up an aweber lightbox form. The form was capturing a few leads per day. Even though the campaign was only capturing a few leads per day, the people that signed up were very responsive to any updates we were sending them. Each time I sent out a letter to the subscribers, a good percentage of them opened the email, and clicked on links that were embedded in the email. This consistently resulted in a few sales, as well as increased activity on the main site via linked articles.

Twilight: New Moon approaches

A few weeks before the second installment in the Twilight series was released, organic traffic began to increase on the site. I had my programmer install a new template that was more optimized for Adsense and the other banner ads on the site. This resulted in a 4x increase in adsense revenue per visitor, and a small increase in affiliate sales thru banners.

At this point, 1-3 people per week were signing up for my email newsletter per day. Being the lucky guy that I am, I had been approached a month prior by an old friend of mine in the gaming industry, Greg. Greg is working on his own sites right now, Airbender Gear and Steelers Gear, but he had not yet started those sites and was looking for something to do. He had just finished setting up an email capture campaign for me on one of my poker strategy sites and the campaign has been doing really well. I figured it would be a good idea to have him look at the Twilight site to see if he could jumpstart that email campaign. After looking through aweber for a few minutes, he wrote to me on skype saying that he “just wet himself”. I would soon find out why.

Start with a split test

The first thing Greg did was implement a split test. Originally, I had set up a quick lightbox (one of those fade-in popup thingies) with just a quick message and a signup form to enter name and email. That popup box converted at <.5%. In other words, for every 200 unique visits to TwilightGear, only 1 person entered their email. Greg looked at that and thought it was very low. The email campaign that he set up for my poker site was converting at nearly 25%, so we both thought there was room for improvement in the Twilight email campaign. (Side Note: The Poker email campaign converts so well because I targeted it at people who were looking for specific strategy information. I gathered some information that a lot of the people were looking for, and made it into an Ebook, which is used as an incentive for signing up to for the email newsletter. With the twilight site, we are running the campaign without incentive for now, which produces a lower conversion rate.)

We knew that it was possible to increase conversion rate, even for a less targeted campaign like the Twilight campaign. So I had Greg set up a split test. He made 4 different forms, and we let them run for about a week. One form was the original one, one was a slightly modded version of the original, one had a picture of Taylor Lautner, and one had a picture of Robert Pattinson. Every time a unique visitor landed at Twilightgear.net, it triggered a rotation of one version of these forms (This is super easy to set up in Aweber).

Results of the Split Test

After about 100k unique visitors, we had a clear winner. For whatever reason, unexplainable by us, the Robert Pattinson form converted 4x better than all the other ones. The other 3 forms In the split test maintained a <.5% conversion rate, while the Robert Pattinson form converted at 2%. We ended the split test, and let the RP form run 100% of the time.

Timely Implementation

Finding a higher-converting email signup form was something I’m glad I did, when I did. As Twilight: New Moon approached, TwilightGear’s traffic increased by nearly 10x. There were days where I was getting 30k uniques. I had to upgrade my server just to keep up with demand. The implementation of the new email signup form allowed me to take full advantage of the high traffic. The first day that I implemented the new form, over 100 people submitted their email address into my form. Even though the traffic has dwindled a bit over the past few weeks, and will probably continue to dwindle, I’m still seeing 20-30 people per day submitting their email address.

ScreenShots

Weekly New Subscribers

Weekly New Subscribers

Weekly Subscriber Growth

Weekly Subscriber Growth

Total Subscribers before Split Test (Oct 08 – Nov 09: 140) : 140

Total Subscribers after Split Test (4 weeks) : 1005

Subscriber Increase % from Nov 09 thru Dec 09: 718%

Lessons to Learn

If you have a site that is related to a big event, do some optimization and take advantage of the anticipated increase in traffic. For me, a new twilight movie means huge increases in traffic. I did some optimization before New Moon came out which resulted in big increases in my short term and long term bottom line. This can be applied to all sorts of industries besides movies. If you have a site about an NFL team, do some optimization testing before the NFL draft, before the season starts, or before the playoffs start if the team will make the playoffs. If you have a site about tournament poker, do something related to the WSOP before it starts.

Split testing is very important. The most important word in the previous sentence is TEST. Like I said before, I had no idea that a Robert Pattinson form would perform better than a Taylor Lautner form. The only way to find this out, is to test. When people say stuff like “the key to internet marketing is to not give up”, this is what they are talking about. You won’t succeed every time you try something, but you will find something that works if you keep trying to make something work. Almost every traffic source has a combination of things that can be made to work with it.

What’s next?

I am writing a follow-up article based on the next step in optimizing this email list. The percentage of people who enter their email address into the signup form, then opt-in (confirm by clicking on link in email) is hovering around ~40% for the Twilight list. The poker strategy list opts in at more than double that rate; nearly 90%. What’s the difference between the two lists? The poker strategy list offers an incentive for joining; a poker strategy guide. The next step for the optimizing the Twilight list is to offer an incentive for joining. I’m not exactly sure what that incentive will be, but I’ll think of something, and then I’ll let you know how it goes J

Split testing and optimization based on data analysis is easy with Aweber.   There are tons of tutorials, and you can be up and running with a great autoresponder in minutes.  Go to Aweber.com and see what they can do for you.  If you have any questions about this campaign, ask in the comments below and we’ll get back to you!

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