Poker Affiliate BlogPoker Affiliate Blog, courtesy of Jeremy Enke and Greg Powell, experts in Poker Affiliate Marketing.

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Cross Marketing is a practice used by many savvy marketers to maximize their profit per customer. It is used by internet marketers often times when they have either diversified traffic or similarly related products. Online poker affiliates have several options to diversify their income due to the demographic of people visiting their sites. Often times due to related keywords and natural searches visitors are interested in various ‘products’ and offers on an affiliate portal.

We have chosen what we feel are the most similar related offers that appeal to poker players or those searching for online poker information. The dedicated ‘cross-marketing’ section on the Forums is a place to discuss these offerings and how to best integrate them into your sites.

We have chosen one representative from each marketing vertical that best delivers those products and ensures that their affiliates will be taken care of in a professional manner.

Chat more about Cross Marketing at on the Forums here

Casino

Promoting online casinos is often synonymous with online poker. Many major poker rooms realized the cross marketing potential from the early going and built casino game applications into the poker clients themselves. Adding a casino to your poker portals allows you to catch the blackjack, roulette and slot players that come to your site searching for online gambling in general.

Bingo

In the last quarter of 2007 there were as many searches in the UK for ‘online bingo’ as there was ‘online poker.’ This year many analysts predict that bingo will become the most popular form of online gambling in Europe. Bingo rooms are thought by many avid gamblers to have ‘looser’ slots than traditional online casinos. Adding a bingo section to any gaming portal is a nice way to collect new depositing players, especially from the female demographic not as focused on poker alone.

Spades

Spades is an old card game with quite a bit of new interest. Players that love the game are now starting to play online and deposit to play for real money. Since Spades can be played in teams many players enjoy having a partner that can share the wagers and winnings with them. A lot of poker players enjoy other card games and like to take a break from poker. Having a real money game is a great way for you to profit off a popular game that was previously ‘just for fun.’

Backgammon

It’s no secret that Backgammon and Poker players are much alike. Many professional poker players have been playing Backgammon for years and even are known to wager on games. In countries like Israel and Lebanon backgammon is more popular than poker. Recently professional Gus Hansen was a commentator at the World Backgammon Championships. Incorporating a backgammon section to your poker sites is a logical fit as many of the players are the same.

Check out Hansen commenting on the popularity of Backgammon in this video.

Mixed Martial Arts (MMA)

No other sport has grown in popularity over the past 3 years faster than MMA. With a world-wide audience that has a fascination with extreme fighting there is reason to believe that boxing is now playing second hand to MMA.  Previously boxing was the largest betting sector in this genre but not anymore. Many online sportsbooks and land based casinos are listing wagering lines for MMA fights and people everywhere are betting. Poker players are known for wagering on sporting events and MMA is no exception. There are a few poker sites now doing internal cross promotion to take advantage of the popularity of MMA.

Currency Exchange

Foreign Exchange (currency or Forex or FX) market is much like the stock market, currency trading takes into consideration that money can be made by knowing which currency is gaining value on its weaker counterparts. Foreign Currency exchange is the world’s largest financial market and is used by banks, corporations and even governments. Many individuals trade the currencies multiple times a day much like ‘day traders’ on the stock market. Based on the individual, affiliates can make a large amount of money by referring those interested in currency exchange. Many poker players look to play in the strongest currency at the time to maximize their winnings. These individuals often spend time researching the currency market and would be inclined to make trades in the market.

This is a very untapped and profitable revenue stream for affiliates.

Rummy

Gin Rummy is another very popular card game that is growing online. Several real money rooms have opened up in the past few years and those players who love the game are now wagering on it. Several variations of rummy can be played online including: kalooki, Oklahoma Gin and traditional rummy. Players can also play in a partnership format as well. Many poker players also play other card games for real money. Gin Rummy is one of the most popular card games they play. With few affiliates in the market and the demand for cash games increasing there is a lot of money that can be made cross promoting Rummy on your site.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Over the past few months there have been several threads in our poker affiliate forums regarding link building. Most internet marketers and affiliates realize that link building is one of the keys to gaining a top spot in the search engine results. Keep in mind that search engines consider inbound links a “vote” for the quality and usefulness of a Web page. The more votes your website has, the more visible it will be to the major search engines. As many affiliates know, the vast majority of website traffic comes directly from the three major search engines, Google, Yahoo! and MSN.

Link building can be a difficult and time-consuming process, but there are ways that you can outsource the process and generate more links than you could on your own. Some large websites actually hire staff members to focus on link building campaigns, but you can develop high-quality links on your own using a few great strategies.

In the poker affiliate market, you are going to have to do more than exchanging PM’s and emails with a few other webmasters for link exchanges if you want to climb to the top of the SERPS. The following tactics are just a few of the major link baiting tactics you should try to promote your site and increase your search engine rankings.

Syndicate Free Articles

Article marketing has emerged as a very powerful and effective link building tool. How does this link baiting technique work? By creating unique articles and allowing other websites and blogs to republish them, you can guarantee that your links appear on a diverse range of sites. Some of these sites will even republish your article with your backlinks and anchor text. Nonetheless they will always allow you to include a link back to your website at the bottom of each article. Not only will these promotional tools increase your inbound links and search rank; they will also draw in new readers who follow your links directly.

Start a Blog

Blogs are one of the hottest SEO tools used by affiliates and internet marketers today. A blog allows you to publish new content easily and connect directly with your audience. In addition, blogs can be syndicated via RSS feeds and distributed all across the Internet. There are a number of free blogging services available including Blogger and Word Press, which makes this link building technique fast, easy, and very cost effective.

Create a Viral Promotion

Viral marketing is one of the best ways to build word-of-mouth buzz and inspire other websites to link to your site. Videos, contests, and giveaways are just a few examples of potential viral marketing techniques. Once you have created your promotional item, make it easy for users to share it with other online users. Include an “Email to a Friend” link along with quick links to social websites such as del.icio.us, Furl, and Digg.

Write a Press Release

Press releases are a great way to quickly reach out to new readers, get the attention of search engines, and distribute your links to media sources all over the web. An effective press release announces a new product or service that is exciting and relevant to readers. Always be sure to include your complete contact information as well as a link to your website.

There are several different press release services out there, and with many, you can upgrade your release to include backlinks with anchor text.

Quality link building is the most effective way to shoot to the top of the SERPS with a new website. Traditional linking strategies include paid links and link exchanges, but outsourcing your link building can dramatically increase the number of links you receive. Plus you can get penalized for including to many “bought links” into your strategy if Google catches on to it. Article distribution, blogs and press releases are just a few of the top techniques for develop new links, but always be on the lookout for new and creative link building ideas.

To learn more about Poker Affiliate SEO, you can visit our Search Engine Optimization area in the forums and discuss with other poker affiliates.

Popularity: 12% [?]

The key to building a successful website is to generate lots of search engine traffic. Getting noticed by the major search engines takes more than simply submitting your site—you need to create content that will be indexed by search engines, rank high in search results and lead to increased affiliate sales.

Well-written content that is 100 percent original and optimized for search is the best way to achieve these goals. Search engine optimization (SEO) often seems intimidating to beginners, but following just a few simple rules can lead to high-performing pages. Before you invest in copywriting and new content for your site, consider some of the following top tips for search optimization and contextual marketing.

Fundamentals of Effective Contextual Marketing

1. Be Original

Original content is fundamental to search optimization. Search engines and online users have a voracious appetite for anything new, unique and original. Instead of rehashing the content offered by your competitors, try looking for innovative ideas.

Is there a dearth of information on a particular subject? Your goal is to make your website an authoritative resource on you target topic, so always be on the lookout for brand new content ideas.

2. Focus on Target Keywords

Once you have decided which topics you will cover, you need to select the keywords you will target in your search engine optimization strategy. In order to build website traffic, you need to target the keywords for which your potential readers are searching. Start by creating a list of search terms that you think are most relevant to your audience.

How do you use these keywords? Start by selecting one keyword or keyword phrase for each page. By focusing on only one keyword, search engines will be more likely to notice your page.

3. Be Brief, Clear, and Direct

Copywriting for contextual marketing requires special considerations and techniques. First and foremost, you should always strive to create copy that is as brief as possible. While Web pages can theoretically be as long as you want them to be, long pages result in a bad user experience and poor search results. Keep your content clear and direct, providing readers exactly what they need to know without excessive verbiage.

4. Provide Useful Information

The success of your contextual marketing also depends on the usefulness of your Web content. By providing informative content that readers need, other websites will take note of you website and provide links to your content. These incoming links play a vital role in determining your rank in search engine results.

5. Format Your Content to Enhance SEO

Once your content is created, you need to format it to enhance your SEO efforts. Well-formatted text utilizes short paragraphs, subheadings, bulleted lists and bolded key terms. Web pages that are formatted properly are easy to read and perform far better in search results.

In order to built a successful affiliate website, you need to invest your efforts in contextual marketing. By providing original and informative content, targeting keywords and learning search engine optimization techniques, you can achieve top search engine results.

Popularity: 10% [?]

We are launching a new contest that is going to award one member with $100 cold hard cash each month . All you have to do is comment in the blog, it’s really that easy!

Feel free to share your thoughts or comments (both good and bad) about any of the posts here. Posting a comment is very simple, and for webmasters it will also give you a free backlink.

Likewise if you are an RSS Subscriber to our blog and win, we will pay you $150! Easy money, get to work.

Good Luck!

Popularity: 13% [?]

We have an awesome guest post by Chris from Poker Affiliate Solutions with his take on how to chose the right affiliate program to promote.

Choosing poker sites to promote is one of the most important parts of being a poker affiliate.  Below are three factors to take into account.

Your Target Market

It sounds simple enough – if your target market is US, don’t market a room that doesn’t allow US players.  But other factors are far more subtle.  For instance, if your target market is newer to poker, you may be able to sell features like graphics, and may not be able to sell rooms where you need to jump through seven hoops to make a deposit.

Therefore, your first step should be to define your target market. Gone are the days when all an affiliate has to do is target “poker players.” That is too broad of a category.  For example, if you are a content based affiliate obtaining sign-ups through search engine traffic, experienced poker players shouldn’t be your target market. Why? Because poker players all know about rakeback and the significance of signing-up through an affiliate.

‘Know thy customer’ is a mantra of selling.  It is no different in being a poker affiliate.

Competition

If you are trying to get traffic using specific search terms, know where the competition is.  Know how competitive a given search term is.  If “Full Tilt Bonus Code” is a term you want to target, know how difficult it will be to obtain positioning.  Because there may be a case where you feel the same amount of effort SEOing “Cake Bonus Code” will bring more dollars to you.  In that case, promote Cake, not Full Tilt.

If you want to be a rakeback affiliate, know where new rakeback players come from, and what other affiliates you will find at the point of intersection.  You can certainly compete with behemoths like RaketheRake or Raketracker, but not without an angle.  Study your target market and study your competition.

Compensation

This is often the factor that new poker affiliates look to first.  Don’t.  It’s third on this list for a reason.  If you can drive traffic to a poker site via your website or marketing efforts, the money will follow.  Don’t be too concerned about actual dollars in the very beginning.  For example, if you can drive three times the traffic to a $60 CPA than you can to a $100, you go with the lesser payout because it makes more money.  Additionally, showing results to a poker room will always up your pay rates and opens the door for future negotiations.

As important as picking a program is, promoting multiple poker rooms is the best course of action.  The more diversity you have in your offerings, the better your affiliate business will be.  It will allow you to weather changes in the industry, changes in individual room compensation plans, and shifts in interest of your target market.

Poker Affiliate Solutions saw the complications poker affiliates have in promoting multiple poker rooms.  The creatives and statistics needed are scattered across the web.  Poker Affiliate Solutions brings them all into one place, allowing easy management of your poker affiliate business. 

Popularity: 14% [?]

As poker affiliates we often times chose to add a new room based on 2 simple criteria. One is which programs are offering us the highest CPA / Revenue Share and converts decently. Another is who is giving away the highest deposit bonus to new players. It’s a valid argument that when choosing to play at a new room a player looks to see who on the network is giving away the most. Most new players don’t even realize that it’s more important to see how quickly the bonus is released than the actually percentage given. Not many people deposit more than $200 to start with, so the really large bonuses aren’t really that important. None the less players love them and affiliates like pushing them.

What should also be promoted on the site is the network, or independent promotions that room is running for new AND existing players. Events and qualifiers such as the WSOP, EPT and tickets to Playboy Mansion to name a few are all great promotions and calls to action. Players know that there is a bonus waiting for them upon their first deposit. They have seen the offers everywhere and know how the system works. However, what will get them to click through your links and make a deposit is that signing up through you allows them extra things like qualifier tickets and chances to play in bigger games.

New Marketing Idea: Start promoting a programs deposit bonus along with a special event every time you add a new room. Make players think that they need to sign up through you to get a special offer that they can’t from another site.

Ask you affiliate manager to give your players something special when they first sign up or make a deposit. This isn’t just a pointless freeroll, but rather a way for you to increase conversions and for them to boost deposits!
For more special offers check out the Promotions Page on PAP.

Popularity: 20% [?]

PAP Members, we have some exciting news regarding the 2008 Poker Conference and the ASOP that is being planned with it!

The official qualifying events for the Poker Conference ASOP have now been announced. Don’t forget, this years winner will win an exclusive $12,000 WSOP Package on top of the already coveted ASOP diamond bracelet. Here is the official freeroll schedule. Thanks again to our sponsors AffiliateClub.com & EverestPoker.net.

The tournament schedule and passwords

Qualifying Tournaments at Poker Kings

1. All tournaments will take place on Poker Kings - Download the poker software from here. www.pokerkings.com

2. Register as a player and then click on the “MULTI TOURNEY” tab and then the “PRIVATE” tab underneath that.

3. Register for the tournament - All tournaments are open for registration 24 hours before the tournament start time. Passwords are below:

Tournament #1
Official Tournament Name: “ASOP Freeroll1”
Start Date: April 16th, 2008

Start Time: 20:00 GMT
Password: Register at asop.com to recieve this
Top 5 Qualify for a seat in the ASOP in Cyprus

Tournament #2
Official Tournament Name: “ASOP Freeroll 2″
Start Date: April 20th, 2008
Start Time: 19:00 GMT
Password: Register at asop.com to recieve this
Top 5 Qualify for a seat in the ASOP in Cyprus

Tournament #3
Official Tournament Name: “ASOP Freeroll 3″
Start Date: April 24th, 2008
Start Time: 19:00 GMT
Password: Register at asop.com to recieve this
Top 5 Qualify for a seat in the ASOP in Cyprus

Tournament #4
Official Tournament Name: “ASOP Freeroll 4″
Start Date: May 7th, 2008
Start Time: 20:00 GMT
Password: Register at asop.com to recieve this
Top 5 Qualify for a seat in the ASOP in Cyprus

Qualifying Tournaments at Everest Poker:

1. All tournaments will take place on www.everestpoker.net - so US affiliates can play as well - Download the poker software from here. www.everestpoker.net

2. Register as a player.

3. Register for the tournament - All tournaments are open for registration 24 hours before the tournament start time. Passwords are below:

Tournament #1 (Tournament moved due to technical issue - Date TBC)
Official Tournament Name: “ASOP Freeroll”
Start Date: April 14th, 2008
Start Time: 19:00 GMT
Password: Register at asop.com to recieve this
Top 5 Qualify for a seat in the ASOP in Cyprus

Tournament #2
Official Tournament Name: “ASOP Freeroll 2″
Start Date: April 19th. 2008
Start Time: 21:00 GMT
Password: Register at asop.com to recieve this
Top 5 Qualify for a seat in the ASOP in Cyprus

Tournament #3
Official Tournament Name: “ASOP Freeroll 3″
Start Date: April 23rd, 2008
Start Time: 20:00 GMT
Password: Register at asop.com to recieve this
Top 5 Qualify for a seat in the ASOP in Cyprus

Tournament #4
Official Tournament Name: “ASOP Freeroll 4″
Start Date: April 30th, 2008
Start Time: 19:00 GMT
Password: Register at asop.com to recieve this
Top 5 Qualify for a seat in the ASOP in Cyprus

Tournament #5
Official Tournament Name: “ASOP Freeroll 5″
Start Date: May 10th, 2008
Start Time: 21:00 GMT
Password: Register at asop.com to recieve this
Top 5 Qualify for a seat in the ASOP in Cyprus

Popularity: 19% [?]