Poker conversions on generic male traffic?

[Scooby]

After being on the edges of the poker industry for a while, I am finally making the first tentative steps into the affiliate industry.

After reading up about everything, I am fully aware that it will be a big learning curb and a long time before I actually start making any worth while money, but hey, I'm looking at it as a hobby and I'll just see where it takes me.

While I have been thinking about different poker niches to focus my website on, I have come up with a great idea for a football website. It's something that no other site is doing and a niche that I'm very excited about.

Based on the strength of the concept I’m confident that I can drive a huge amount of traffic to the site and importantly get them to return regularly.

However I have two problems:

1) Someone more experienced copying me, and doing it better with a bigger budget.

2) How best to monitise it? The traffic won't be ending up on my site from searching poker terms so I know my conversation rates for real money players will be low, but how low? Should I forget about putting poker banners on the site and look at something different altogether?

I as a complete novice I would appreciate any advice.

[Ridge]

That's a tough one, it will be pretty hard to get decent conversions for a site unrelated to poker/gaming I would think. Now maybe if you went the sports betting route that might be better. Seems more logical to me.

I would not be concerned with people copying you, even if they do you just need to put more work into it.

As far as being outspent, that can be an issue, but some of the best affiliates to not need a 5 figure budget to do well, and you don't either. Be original, that's something you cannot buy.

[J S]

It depends on what people finding your site are searching for or might be interested in. If it is not poker related then I wouldn't put my focus on poker affiliate programs (although I would also test some offers and see if it earned).

There are affiliate offers out there for almost anything and everything now, so just figure out what people coming to your site might find interesting and promote it to them. Test, track and tweak it. I wouldn't focus on poker but wouldn't totally exclude it either.

I know that didn't really answer your question about a conversion rate... i'd bet it would be really low for unrelated traffic unless you have a very unique value proposition to them and market it very effectively.

[Scooby]

Thanks for your advice.

Sportsbetting seems very obvious now you've mentioned it! It's just that I have been so focused on poker because it's what I'm most interested in.

Although I'm guessing even with sports betting banners I'm never going to earn good money as my traffic won't be targeted enough. Should i just give up with the football idea (however good i think it is) and focus on finding a poker niche?