How has PAP helped you become a better affiliate - Win your room

[Andy Poker.Vg]

yo all this forum has done for me is made me a target for spam from AM's, shitty sites selling links to there pr1 pages and people trying to write me poker site reviews for $12 ...

haha j/k.

Anyways, I cant be bothered to write alot. But this really is a good forum. I've made a few good contacts / friends already. Hopefully more to come in the latter half of the year.

[Graham]

Originally Posted by Greg

Aweswome stuff so far from Kevin and Ryan. I hope there are going to be some more posts. I'm looking forward to the meet up for sure now. Jeremy and I will have to make sure to provide a mini Hugh Hefner suite in his room. For those who can remember 2006 CAC Vegas (Graham and others) just picture my demolished MGM Grand suite

LOL..that was a good time! I briefly mention it in my entry, so I'll post it up:

How PAP has made me a better affiliate.... errr life…

My journey into the poker affiliate world started just over 3 years ago. At the time I didn’t even know what an affiliate was. All I knew was that there was a way to make money referring a person to poker sites that was better than the standard “refer-a-friend” program.

My friend and I began our search to find out how this was possible and started looking at the affiliate pages of different major poker sites. Some of the terms that kept coming up were CPA and MGR. Since we had no clue what these acronyms were, we did what any other computer savvy person would do, we turned to Google. After a simple search of “CPA vs. Revshare” we stumbled across this post.

We were amazed. This site had a ton of info, and could help us learn everything we needed to know to become poker affiliates. We created a really basic site, where we planned to give away a portion of our commissions in the form of products (books, poker chip sets, etc.) to players in exchange for their signup.

This didn’t last long, because for one it took our site over a month to get listed in google, and we were wondering where all the traffic was. (thinking it would just come rolling in). I posted on PAW that I NEEDED HELP, which is when I got some of the best advice I have ever received from another PAW member, offyourface. His advice really helped me take the blinders off and make some drastic improvements to my site. Without some of his amazing suggestions I probably would not be where I am today and much of the advice I received in that thread is still on the site today. I started adding tons of content and all my free time was spent working on the site. My friend was starting to lose interest because the site still was not making money, so we made a deal and I bought the whole site from him.

Then came one of the biggest turning points in my site’s history. Just over a year ago I had the opportunity to attend the Casino Affiliate Convention in Las Vegas. I won the trip package from a contest run by the Poker.com affiliate program. Basically, I had to redesign my site in a way to give better exposure to Poker.com. There were many entries, but my site was selected as the winner. They gave me the money to pay for my flight and hotel, and being the deal savvy person that I am, I got my trip for around $800 (staying at the Hard Rock one night, and Bally’s (kinda ghetto) the other. With the remainder of the money I invested in my site (bear in mind, my site was making peanuts and this was more money then it had ever made). In Vegas I met and hung out with some amazing people. Most of the time Brandon Berndt (now affiliate manager at Chan Poker) let me tag along with him and introduced me to many people, but I also got to hang out with Jeremy Enke, Kyle Healey, Greg Powell, Justin Goff along with many other great people that I still talk to all the time. These guys were and still are some of the best in the industry and I formed some great relationships from that trip with all of them. Whether we were at the Stinky Fish Poker (the site that never made it) party to destroying the room service tab in Greg Powell’s room at the MGM hotel I had a great time in Vegas and still remember it like it was yesterday.
I took home a lot of ideas from Vegas and (when I recovered from all the partying) I started to go really hard and work on my site. I invested the money mentioned previously in a new design from my homeboys at Alance and also bought some advertising space on a few sites. I continued to read up on SEO and studied other sites to see what they were doing well, then implemented these strategies into my own site.
While all this was going on, I was still working a full-time job for IBM Canada. I was working rotating night and day shifts of 12 hours (7-7). Every spare moment I had I was working on my sites, which often meant several occasions where I would go to work after only sleeping 2 hours, or in some cases not at all. I was determined to succeed and live the “affiliate dream” after being constantly motivated by some of the major players on PAP who were doing this for a living.

In March of 2008, this dream became a reality as my site was finally making enough money where I no longer needed my full time job. On the 5th of March I walked into my manager’s office and told him that I would be leaving the company. I had escaped the corporate shackles and was now free to do what I wanted, when I wanted and know that none of this would have been possible without PAP, the relationships I made through the site, and the knowledge I picked up reading the forums.

Since leaving my job, I couldn’t be happier. In my last few months at IBM I was always depressed and dreaded going in to work. Now, I wake up when I want (though I am constantly trying to get up earlier), have the ability to work where I want (I spend most of my days working from Starbucks, and don’t have to report to anyone but myself (which is surprisingly worse than any boss I have ever had).

Thank you PAP for everything as I couldn’t have done it without ALL of you!

[NathanPAP]

Man, these stories are great. As a relatively new staff member here at PAP, it's really encouraging to hear how you guys have been directly helped by this forum. Keep 'em coming!

[Marcelo]

This is not much of a submission to the contest, it's more like an appreciation post.

This is my 500th post. I want to thank this community for helping me out since the beginning. I have made many friends around the world and hope to make a lot more in the future.

I have learned so much in these two years that I can now mentor new affiliates and see them grow and profit on the business. I can also post relevant answers to some questions, which is great.

I learned SEO, webdesign, marketing, wordpress design, video edition and even a little about poker. I have improved my English skills (I hope) and became a better translator. Also, I beat Johnny Chan once in an affiliate tournament

Special thanks to Jeremy, for answering the questions on my stupid first e-mail and being helpful since, and Graham, for helping out and giving some great suggestions in my beginning (he was actually a sort of beginner too at the time).

Many others helped me since, asking nothing in return, like Cathy, Cheryle, Randy, Beanie, Greg, Nick, Brandon, Mark, Matti (I am pretty sure I am forgetting people here, so sorry if you feel small right now )

So I hope to be around for the 1K posts mark, and I hope I can be able to attend one of the future conferences to meet you guys and girls face to face.

[kaus]

Ok so I thought I would add one since we are all so thankful and yes its a chick post so enjoy

How has PAP made me a better affiliate...

Well for starters I had no background with affiliate marketing before PAP, nor did I know anything about HTML, building websites or even what the poker affiliate industry really was. I had this ingenious idea to create a free forum, slap up a dozen banners and call it a day. That was what I thought a poker affiliate was and how I was going to make thousands of dollars. You can view my masterpiece here and at one point in time I was so damn proud of that site lol

I have been a member here for nearly two years and in that time have learned an abundance of skills that I never thought possible. If you would have asked me five years ago what I would be doing now it would defiantly not have been this. I didn’t even know what HTML was until I came to PAP and was so amazed when I learned what source code was and seen that the internet wasn’t just a bunch of pretty pictures.

Over the last two years of being a member at PAP I have met some of the most incredible people and many of whom I owe everything I am doing now to. Graham and I were joking around the one day about my large number of posts and yes 2,000+ is quite a bit but those 2,000+ posts have a large number of questions and answers in them that have helped me grow where I am today. Because of them and the support that I received from PAP members, I am now capable of creating my own websites, being able to spot errors within my code or others, optimizing, creating a site that earns money. and one that I am damn proud of.

There are many people who I am thankful for but one in particular has made such significant impact on my life and I am grateful for everything he has taught me. I have doors which have opened for me because of him and quite a few of the other senior members here. Some may not realize this but I have not completed high school. I am about 8 credits shy of that and ended up quitting because I was expecting a bundle of joy at 18. We have struggled, worked really shitty jobs, endless amounts of overtime and now I feel its behind us. I am now able to take care of my family, all 5 of us on my own if the need is there which is an incredible feeling to be able to do.

Seriously I could go on forever and although I am not personally where I would like to be, or where I feel I need to be, I have come a long way from the person who joined a couple of years ago. If I was to some up in one word what PAP has given me it would be “Opportunity”

And for that I will always be grateful to everyone here so thank you

[mypokercorner]

I’ll jump in too, just because I can.

I was playing poker with friends regularly and one day I woke up and decided to build a poker site about Texas Holdem strategy. This was going to be a fun hobby and I also thought I could throw up a couple of banners here and there, and make a little cash. My goal was to try and introduce new players to the game of poker, to try and give advice to those who were already playing so that they could become better players, and to finance my own poker bankroll. So two years ago, I created my first site, xxhttp://www.mypokercorner.com. (I have 4 sites now, with MPC being my primary with the most traffic)

Back then, I wasn’t an affiliate, I was a poker player. I didn’t know squat about internet marketing, building traffic, etc. I just figured that if I had a great website, everyone would link to me. After months and months of hard work and no results worth mentioning, I realized that I was clueless and needed some help.

At that point, my website “hobby” was taking up more and more of my time, and I wanted to get something out of it. It wasn’t as fun anymore. Who wants to work for free right? So I found PAW on google, and joined the forum.

Over the last year and half or so, I made so many contacts, learned so many concepts, like SEO, and changed my attitude about how to go about this successfully. I didn’t want to be a poker player with a hobby, I wanted to be a businesman. I made some deals with many PAP members (buying content, reviews, links, trading links, selling links, etc). Every single penny I ever made from selling links to members of this community, I gave back to them by purchasing services I needed. I’ve never invested a dime out of my pocket on my websites. That was one of my goals. I wanted to make money out of nothing. And I did! Well… a just little bit. But I see improvements over time and as long as there is progress, and as long as I’m having fun doing this, I’m gonna keep doing it no matter what. Freedom 45 baby! That’s my goal.

One day I PMed Graham and I said “Look man, I suck at this. Can you help me out?”. He was kind enough to offer assistance. We spend a good hour talking on MSN going over my sites. He pointed out a bunch of things he felt I could improve, and gave me links to some valuable information. I can’t thank him enough for his kindness, because what did he get in return? Nothing. What he got was a fan who periodically PMs him to pick his brain. And every time, he’s always happy and willing to help out.

I’ve had similar experiences with other PAP members, who offered advice and comments to help me be better at this, namely Lady Holdem and NewPokerGirl. The willingness to help each other out is truly the strength of this community.

So what did I get out of PAP so far? Simple: I knew I sucked at this before coming here, but wasn’t sure why. Today, I still suck, but I at least now I know why! lol

More importantly, now I have a plan. I know what needs to be done, and I'm gonna get there.

[poker69]

Nice entries everyone ... it was awesome reading the stories, pretty inspiring.

[newjabber]

Yes great reading, post of the week for sure thumbs up keep them coming

[Graham]

I guess nobody wins? I thought the winner was going to be posted on Friday?

[Jeremy]

It was going to be announced then, but I got lazy and took off early. We'll announce it live on the radio tomorrow night. Maybe we'll give both packages for these posts. Too many good ones!