some good questions and replies here.
thought i'd chip in from more of a european point of view.
SERPs on sportsbook will be tough, depending upon your market. As far as i recall the US market is very crowded, as is the UK market so trying to rank will take along time and a lot of effort. as mentioned earlier some of the exsisting sites have been around for years.
if you find a niche you will be able to rank, but that niche is likely to have smaller volumes.
Pokerprop mentioned going down the advertising route rather than the affiliate route, but i disagree. although biased as an affiliate manager, i think you have a better chance of making more money faster with profit share. You want a program that will pay you across all thier products with no monthly negative roll over.
So if your players win, you dont lose out the following month as well.
So why will you make more money with affiliate links?
simply because you only need to refer one or two big players and you'll make a lot more on profit share than you will selling advert space on CPM/monthly fees.
a few months ago we paid an affiliate over €20,000 becuase of one customer, and then again a similar ammount last month in the same situation - thier traffic however is tiny and there is no way they could have made over €35k in advertising fees!
Focus on some big events throughout the year to drive volume and make sure you can give your visitors as much info as possiable. sports punters want stats and lots of them. they also want odds, and as mentioned earlier all the sportsbooks have xml feeds you can use.
Pick your target region carefully as well, if you have the option to taget different languges then do so as there is plenty of money to be made in the growing markets across Europe.
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