The other day, my buddy “Kevin: who is a successful young poker affiliate made a post at PAL where he shared his latest project of building a simple and well planned out poker affiliate site. The new site is Best Poker Site – Now, on any given day I would guess there are 100 new poker portals going up around the world. Hell, it maybe as many as a 1000 a day or more, who knows. What I do know is that 99% of them will never make money, and be abandoned within the first few months.

There are some simple reasons for this:

1. Poor planning or no planning

2. No understanding of their market

3. This is not a get rich quick scheme, and once most people realize that, they move on

Kevin being a savvy marketer with a few good revenue generating websites already knows this and has past experience he has learned from. The new site is a very simple looking, very clean code, and is easy to navigate. I asked Kevin before I made this post if it would be ok to post this stuff. I think his reasoning and strategy are a great example of approaching a new website the RIGHT way. Here is a few part of what he has to say:

One of the over looked things when building a poker website is planning it out before. I have had a lot of times when I get excited about a site and just rush into creating it without planning things out. When planning out sites I often think of keywords I want to target, the link structure I will use, and on page SEO plans (anything I am missing?). For this particular site I have planned to make it more of a static site, where after the initial launch content will rarely be added (will be updating the content often though).

And, as you can see with what he wrote above and below, he actually has a plan which saves time and help you focus on what you are doing. All too often people want a time to be a buffet of information and the end results is they have a mediocre site that is not focused.

Here is some more of Kevin’s Plan:

I decided I want to target the keyword “best poker site” for the homepage and create inner pages that are more specific (such as best real money poker site, best horse poker site, etc). I also wanted to create multiple pages on what I think is the best poker site – Full Tilt Poker. I am going to start off with four basics articles about Full Tilt and then expand as I feel needed. So far I have a page about Full Tilt WSOP qualifiers, depositing, withdrawals and their bonus. I then wanted a section for different poker bonuses for two different reasons, SEO and conversions. It would be nice to rank for a couple of the terms I am targeting with the bonus pages and it also might draw some visitors attention. So I wrote down 5 different poker bonuses to promote. I also planned to cross promote a little bit with casino, sportsbook and bingo with their a separate article for each. This was mainly because I might be able to rank for terms such as “best bingo site”, and it is worth a shot.

Now, I thought showing people this post will be specially helpful for new affiliates and even some more experinced struggling affiliates. Having a plan and executing is the difference between a website that makes money, and one that doesn’t. It does not take a $1000 design, super special promotional offers, or a premium domain to be a good money making website. One thing you do have to have is a solid plan and the determination to follow it through.

So, before you buy your next “hot” domain and start dreaming of it being the next poker listings, get a piece of paper and challenge yourself to write out a plan from start to finish. Define your goals, keywords, niche, SEO strategy, content strategy, etc. Give yourself a blueprint for your new site. If you cannot do this, then focus on what you have and don;t try and avoid your mistakes by throwing up another failed poker affiliate site.