How would you approach French market ?

[Sebastien]

PAW Folks,

Poker is booming in France. Do some of you know what affiliate programs are available and converting well, or have any experience sending frenchies to poker rooms ?

I'm currently starting a couple of websites for the USA market as some of you know. Someome mentioned that I should get in the french affiliate marketing space. Since I speak this beautiful language (lol), I could write some good poker room reviews.

I would think that google.fr is far less saturated by affiliate sites ranked for keywords like "best online poker sites". So would you just start a blog with poker room reviews and SEO optimize it all the way up to the eiffel tower?

Do you think that the market is too small in France relative to the US for it to be worth my time ?

Please advise,

Thanks.

[Graham]

Think about it this way... you have like 5000 affiliates targetting USA and 100 targetting france. Which seems like the better choice?

*Note these numbers are completely random

[Sebastien]

Good point. Honestly, I was going to do the site anyways, I was just looking for a little motivation to get started. hehe.

Thanks.

[BootyCraze]

I would play safe and go with partypoker. We can compare french swear words if im am wrong.

Oh, back to the USA? Fulltilt or pokerstars

[Jeremy]

You may want to look at Everest as well, French players can play there in their native language right in the client.

[mftpg]

Give Titan go via Europartners... this site is literrally full of French players - in the early stages of tournaments at least (!)

Omaha poker seems popular among the French players too.

Europartners via my sub-link: http://adv.europartners.com/index.php?mftpg

and without sub link: www.europartners.com

Cheers, Mark

[Asger]

I'm about to enter the French market as well - mainly with sportsbetting though.. I know there's a LOT of legal issues right now, but laws are changing as we speak as they'll have to live up to EU legislation. Besides this, I really don't know much about the legal aspects of the market..

Anyone who knows more..?

I'm specifically concerned if I'm able to use a wonderful .fr domain I have, or if I should go for a .com to avoid any unnecessary problems..

To answer the question of the post, I believe there's a lot to gain from the French market - especially in the future! And competition is far less than for instance Denmark, which (despite only 5 mil. people) makes good money for 5-10 .dk affiliates.

Asger

[ThePokerBank]

I don't see why not, I'm not sure what the French market is like, but it should be easier to rank for poker terms certainly.

Originally Posted by Sebastien

So would you just start a blog with poker room reviews

Why a blog? In my opinion this would be a complete misuse of a blogging platform, and it is a pretty common misuse that I see across the forums regulalrly.

Blogs are not the answer to everything, as a simple static html site would work much better in this instance. If you are using a blog to list a set number of poker room reviews, you are going to be compromising on navigation. Half the reviews will get buried on sub pages, which really isn't ideal when you want them on full view from the homepage.

Blogs are great, but only under the right circumstances.

[Sebastien]

ThePokerBank,

You know what I'm saying though right ? I just meant a website based on a CMS system like wordpress.

I would never use the blog template right out of the box. I use custom designs with naviguation bars that look very professional.

When people look at the site, they would never guess it is a blog. A cutomized blog can look better than a website in some cases.

I like creating websites on top of blogging plateform because of CMS and the fact that blogs are SEO friendly.

Hope this makes sense.

-- Sebastien

[ThePokerBank]

Yeah sure that's perfectly fine, it was just a minor rant. I think a CMS like wordpress can work great if used correctly. It's just a shame to see a number of sites going down the blog style route when they would be far better off with a static homepage.