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

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The first annual Poker Conference is coming closer and I for one am getting excited. From an inside perspective I have seen what is happening and what we have to look forward to. I wanted to share a few things with the PAP crew as the beaches of Cyprus are starting to call my name.

Location. How can you beat this place? Cyprus is known for being one of the most beautiful places on earth with its architecture, cuisine, beaches and night life. I always feel motivated to ‘pick up my game’ and network with others when the surroundings are so nice. Nothing kills a conference like a bad location, cramped working space and nothing to do at night. For this conference it won’t be an issue.

Having two separate tracks ensures that your time can be spent more efficiently. No longer will affiliates have to sit through payment processing and software sessions. Operators can all meet with fellow colleagues that are dealing with the same issues such as jurisdictions, licensing and the legal environment. For advanced affiliates there is even a session on taking the next step and opening your own poker skin.

This conference is all about value. We know that it costs money to go to a show and you could spend it on other things. However, if you can take a week to surround yourself with other marketers, industry experts and the programs that you work with it can give your revenues a huge boost!

For operators the benefits are twofold. One is obviously the interaction and face time with affiliates. Another are the sessions that are being designed just for them. Player conversions, legal updates and marketing strategies are all topics that rarely get discussed within the industry.

The overall goal is to create value for the attendees. We want affiliates to do more than meet their affiliate managers and sip free cocktails (we want you to do that as well). But we also want to make sure there are meaningful sessions and quality speakers that can actually help you make more money promoting online poker. The networking will be fantastic as the atmosphere opens you up to fresh ideas daily.

PokerConference.com is going to become a staple event in our industry and we going all out to make sure of it. Don’t read about the stories afterwards; be there to make your own.

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Lately, there has been a lot of talk in the poker affiliate forums amongst the members about “paid advertising”. For those not familiar with the paid advertising business model, it is very different than MGR and CPA. Paid advertising is a media buy from an online poker sites marketing department. With paid advertising, you do not share in any of the revenue of the players, nor is your compensation based upon the number of players sent.

You are paid a negotiated fixed rate as an online advertiser or webmaster, and not necessarily as an affiliate. This sounds very appealing to many webmasters, and it can be a win/win for both. A webmasters reasoning for taking a fixed rate advertising fee versus MGR or CPA can vary. Often times it can be simply because it is a more stable, predictable, and reliable form of income.

If you’re an existing poker affiliate and considering taking paid advertising, I’d like to lend a few suggestions.

1. Offering a paid advertising spot on your site should not simply be a way to take a non producing spot and monetize it! Too many webmasters do this and it is one way ticket to not getting renewals. Sure, there is some value in branding on certain sites, but most media buys are done to produce ROI and new players, just like affiliate deals. If you are selling ad space on your site, that you know from experience doesn’t produce CTR’s or new players, you are doing the room a disservice. You’re paid advertising model will crumble very quick.

2. Selling paid advertising requires you to show even more value than negotiating a higher CPA rate. Be prepared to show a potential advertiser past analytics for your entire site, including the spot they will be located. Media buyers are numbers people, and they want as much data and stats as you can give them.

3. Add value, Add value, and then add some more value - Don’t just “sell a spot”! Be professional. Have a media kit designed with all your up to date information including screen shots and all the relative data. Show everything such as traffic and SEO analytics. Give more than just an ad spot. Do some geo-targeting and have foreign language pages. You’d be amazed at how much more attractive your site becomes to media buyers. Allow your potential advertiser tons of flexibility. Remember, you are not an affiliate in this instance. You need to add value, and then you need to SELL it.

4. Don’t just guesstimate what the real estate on your site is worth. Run a few campaigns each month through your affiliate accounts and get an average of how many players you can send. If you monitor and test these each month with a few different rooms, you should have a good idea.

5. Pricing - Everyone wants to know what to charge! If you do #4, you should have a pretty good idea. Lets say your leaderboard 728×90 banner consistently sends between 3-5 RMP’s a month for the last 5 months. Now assume your average CPA is $100. It would be fair to charge $400 for this spot. And the beauty is you know this, so you can convey it to your media buyer. Trust me, this will make life much easier.

In closing, many people look at entering into paid advertising versus MGR/CPA for the wrong reasons. It’s not just easy money and a way to sell garbage real estate on your site that doesn’t produce affiliate revenue. It’s a different kind of partnership with the rooms. Ideally you are trading off affiliate revenue for fixed advertising. It’s NOT about getting fixed advertising money for spots that never earn affiliate revenue.

If you have any other questions regarding paid advertisng, don’t hesitate to contact Greg or Jeremy. Even better start a thread in the largest poker affiliate forum in the world!

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I was reading a great post today on 45n5.com about measuring the right things when it comes to your various websites. I know a few affiliates on PAP that run 10+ sites and have a hard time monitoring all the analytics that lead to their successes and failures.

Most common are the excel spreadsheets that most of us just copy and paste information on to.  We pull up our affiliate reports and then see how many clicks, RMP’s and deposits we had from each tracking link.  Hopefully everyone is using individual links for each banner/text link they are promoting if they are placing them on more than 1 portal; or even more than one location on the site. If you are then good work and it’s time to start measuring more in depth.

Deposits and revenue share are the most important numbers to each of us. However, setting goals and checking out what they were/were not reached is also vital. Setting goals is the first step to take once you have an idea how your site is performing. After that it’s time to track and chart out what’s really happening.

I suggest charting out all your sites on one sheet and then looking at the ‘vital factors’ for each domain. The post above suggests the following analytics: Unique visitors, Conversions, Subscribers, Total Site Earnings, Feed Subscribers, Indexed pages in Google and comment count (for blogs).

While some of these may not apply to your site you can start to get an idea that more is involved than just the information provided by the affiliate sites alone. Get an idea of what’s happening on your sites and how other things you are doing successfully can be applied across the board.

If you have any other ideas or metrics that could be useful please comment here and share.

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With the first ever PokerConference.com coming up in a couple months I wanted to share this story with the PAP community considering coming to Cyprus. At one of our conferences, and please feel free to ask around, you never know quite what to expect.

3:45AM Saturday October 7^th, 2007 – Greg Powell and AffiliatePrograms.com CEO Warren are in a shady Barcelona cab trying to find something to eat in the city after a long night of partying with affiliates and poker room directors. Needless to say this wasn’t proving to be too successful as our cab driver seemed to have sudden amnesia and ended up driving around in circles all night ‘finding this perfect 24 hour café.’ When we finally ended up at our hotel it was 5AM and our cab fare was €90. We jumped out and had a few words for our trusted guide; threw him €50 and said thanks for the scenic tour.

On to the hotel lobby in search of something to help soak up the bottle of Grey Goose that too often joins us for a night out. Here is where it gets interesting…

In Barcelona it’s near impossible to find something to eat anywhere before 7AM. Hell, it’s actually hard to find anything to eat at our hotel anytime of the day. The night before Darko and I waited an hour for a pizza to be delivered only to call down to Room Service and find out we were waiting because they were out of pizza. Such is service in Spain so unless we could see the food in front of us there was no point on getting our hopes us.

Side Note: Warren doesn’t like to wait on anything, so at this point if we had seen an IHOP he might have tried to just buy the restaurant and go back to the kitchen.

On the last night of any gaming conference you will see pretty much everyone from the show walking around until the sun rises in the hotel lobby. We spot the crew from Bodog and decided to see what they were doing. No surprise they were looking for something to eat as well so we rushed the doors of the hotel restaurant like an army attacking the enemy gates. After we ate it was definitely time to head to sleep as delusion was starting to set in.

Just as we were about to roll on to the rooms Warren stops me and asks, “Is that Doyle sitting over there?” Looking like I had just been released from a 12 step rehab program 2 steps too early I casually walked by to confirm. In the most indiscrete manner possible I nod to Warren and walk back over. At this point it would have been better to just shake hands to and go to bed. However, being the consummate professionals we are we decided to go over and introduce ourselves. It’s a good thing that Doyle and his wife are really cool (and 73 years old) because I am sure that I was saying the same things over and over. Warren didn’t seem to care, or he was asleep. After we had said our thanks for coming to show and started to get up Doyle went on to tell us that he loved working with his poker room and that he will be a personal advocate for getting poker legalized in the US again. His wife was also extremely cool with his leadership in that area and has stood by him throughout all his crazy times playing poker in houses, barns and the shadiest card rooms in Vegas. He truly does love the game and wants to see it grow. I never had any clue he was so passionate about the online game either! Before Doyles Room went back to accepting US players (from 38 States) Doyle was telling me that he was ready to start accepting player’s right then. This is just like his character, bold and willing to take a chance if he feels strongly about it.

Looking back in retrospect I wouldn’t have changed anything about that crazy night and morning. It was an honor to get to sit down with Doyle and just talk about poker and some of the things he’s done while becoming a poker legend. It wasn’t always glamorous but he was never in it for the fame. He loved the game, the rush of betting and winning other people’s money. He’s a great guy and I am sure will stay at the forefront of getting online poker legalized as long as he can. The next time that I am out until 7AM trying to find coffee and counting my change I’ll think about chilling with Doyle and hearing about the glory days of poker. There is a good chance that time will be this May in Cyprus.

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One of our All-In Programs has certainly “taken the cake” with their newest promotion. (no pun intended). CakePoker.com has announced their new 60/60 promotion, and it is getting the attention of every affiliate in the industry.

For a limited time, any new affiliate signing up at CakePoker.com through this special promotional link will receive 60% revenue share for their first 60 days in the program. For a room like CakePoker that has such a great conversion and retention rates, this is a great way to start in the program.

But wait……..it gets better, way better. CakePoker.com is also going to send one lucky affiliate to the infamous Playboy Mansion to play in a celebrity poker invitational and party with Hef and the girls on May 17th 2008. They have made this promotion attainable to ALL affiliates, big or small.

All you have to do is send 5 real money players between now and April 15th. Then you will recieve a tournament ticket at Cake to play in an online free roll event. The winner of this event will be joining the CakePoker team as well as Greg and I at the Playboy Mansion in May.

You can see all the official rules here. Remember thoug, you MUST sign up through the promotional link to track properly if you want to be eligible. Good Luck, and we will see one of you in the grotto this May!

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Many of our members are very familiar with the PAW Network. Being one of the founders of the PAW Network myself, I can tell you that it is a great concept and has made many affiliates lives much easier. Most of you reading this know exactly what the PAW Network is and how it operates.

If you do not, I will enlighten you quickly. The PAW Network is an integrated network that will allow you to promote many of the industries top poker affiliate programs at premium rates. Even better is that you can promote all the poker affiliate programs and simply check your stats from one backend. At the end of the month you also will receive one simple payment. For more information click here.

Today the PAW Network announced a sweetheart deal with PAP. Any new affiliate that signs up on the PAW network from following our special promotional link will receive a $125 bonus payment as soon as they send (5) qualifying players through the network.

These players must be deposit and qualify. Likewise they must be verified as non-fraudulent. As soon as this is done, a $125 bonus will be added at the end of the month to the affiliates PAW Network account.

This is a great promotion, and we encourage all of our PAP affiliates to take advantage of it. Remember though, in order to be eligible you must be tracked to this PAP promotional link.

You can also correspond directly with the staff of the PAW Network in their Exclusive PAP Forum.

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We at PAP wanted to be one of the first to congratulate our long time member and moderator on making a big step in his career as a poker affiliate.  Yesterday Graham made the announcement in the PAP forums that he has quit his full time job to pursue poker affiliate marketing as his main career.

We have known Graham for a few years now, and it has been fun watching him develop into a great affiliate marketer.  One of our goals with PAP and the community is to show every affiliate how they can make more money and also become full time affiliates within this industry.

Don’t get us wrong though, making the transition from the “real world” to a full time affiliate marketer is not an easy one.  It requires dedication and a work ethic unlike anything else out there.   The rewards however of working in this industry full time are incredible.  Please join me in congratulating and wishing the best of luck to Graham on this tremendous milestone in his future career as a full time poker affiliate.

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