A poker affiliate is somebody who refers individuals to a poker site in return for monetary compensation. Each player that makes a deposit into a poker site and plays will generate rake. This fee called rake is taken out of each hand based on the size of the pot. Although it amounts to usually no more than a few dollars, over the course of thousands of hands it can add up fast. Rake has allowed online poker sites to become extremely prosperous. More players at the site equals more hands played and consequently more rake generated. It is easy to see why online poker sites are so concerned about attracting new players. Take advantage of player referrals by becoming an online affiliate today!

An affiliate can use a variety of techniques to attract players. The most common form of attracting players is through tracking links. Each affiliate is provided with a unique link to refer potential players. The link directs prospective players to the desired poker site and installs a “cookie” on the user’s computer. The affiliate is given credit for a player signup if that person deposits money on the site and plays a certain amount of hands. The affiliate link provided should look something like this:

http://www.fulltiltpoker.com?key=MDAwMDMwMjgwMDAwNzJGQTAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDA-&sa=1

The second widely used method of attracting online poker players is through the use of bonus codes. These codes allow players to market with catchy poker phrases or identifying words. When prospective players enter the bonus code provided affiliates are given credit for a signup. Furthermore, bonus codes usually provide lucrative deposit bonuses and rakeback offers. Bonus codes are unique to each affiliate, but usually look something like this:

Use the bonus code “PSONLINE” for a 100% deposit bonus and monthly rakeback!

Although you could get by as an affiliate without a website, your potential signup total could be limited by the amount of people you know. As an offline affiliate you could simply pass on your bonus code by word of mouth to friends or create business cards with your information on it. Mail campaigns are possible as long as they are opt in mailing lists and not spam promotions. Mailings created through spam are not tolerated by most poker sites. CD distribution is another way to promote poker offline since users can download poker software directly on their computer with the bonus code included. All of these things can aid in capturing poker players. However, online promotion and advertising are much more successful methods of attracting new players. Online affiliates need to keep a few critical things in mind when building an online website.

Content is King

As with any online website, content is the most important aspect of building an online presence. The popular saying, “quality is more important that quantity” holds true for website content as well. More importantly, the content should be educational and target specific keywords for search engine placement. Your site should reflect a library of content with ads placed sparingly throughout the site. People don’t want to be sold to poker sites. Instead they want to be offered compelling reasons for playing online and a selection of places to play at. The way content and advertisements are presented on websites has everything to do with conversion rates.

Target Top Poker Rooms

Instead of signing up for every affiliate card room on the internet, target your favorite sites. Try to stay with the top card rooms out there. Full Tilt poker is arguably the top poker site on the internet and is a great starting point. The popular poker rooms have much better conversion rates than the small time startup rooms. Focusing on a few poker rooms in the beginning goes along with the quality being better than quantity argument. As you master the promotion of two or three rooms you can branch off into other more lucrative programs.

Build a Community

Social networking has exploded on the internet over the past couple of years. With the arrival of myspace and facebook, people have grown accustomed toPoker community affilate a sense of community and belonging. Take advantage of this trend and try to get visitors to return to your site. Forums, chat rooms and comment boxes are all great ways to build a poker network. Repeat visitors help attract new visitors and give a website the image of being popular. Visitor traffic reaches a tipping point and builds popularity via blogger links.

Find a Niche

The poker room “review” and “rakeback” sites have been overdone to say the least. Thousands of these type of sites exist on the web, seemingly everywhere you look. Although it is never a bad idea to offer site reviews and rakeback these topics shouldn’t be the focus of your site. Try to find a unique focus for the site. If you play micro-limits or are an expert sit and go player these topics could be appealing to a more specific audience. Unless you intend on spending a lot of money up front to build your site, you will have to rely on superior content to drive traffic. The top 1% of online poker sites make over 90% of the total revenue. Finding that unique focus could give you the edge you need to grab some of the revenue pie.

Identify Your Audience

As mentioned in the niche section, targeting a unique audience could give you an edge in attracting viewer-ship. Again stay away from banner farms, room review sites and the like. These have already been done several times over. A few basic questions could be asked of yourself in trying to target a unique audience. Before doing any type of ad placement on your site, a unique readership must be identified.

* Are you targeting cash game players or tourney players?
* Will you create articles for new players or experts?
* What service can you provide to your audience?
* What age of player will you target?
* What country do you aim to pinpoint?

Sponsor Contests & Freerolls

If you have the time and money sponsorships are a great way to attract people. People new to poker who are skeptical of depositing their own hard earned money will be very interested in a freeroll or contest. Sponsor a tournament or create an affiliate contest with a monetary prize or player transfer. Everyone loves a giveaway on the internet. Doing so will keep visitors checking back often for future contests and promotions.

Affiliate marketing is a difficult proposition for new players in the market. As mentioned earlier, the top players make a vast majority of affiliate revenue. This is usually the result of great search engine placement and heavy back linking. These advantages come through a solid foundation of quality content over the long term. A little bit of work on your poker website each day is much better than infrequent article posting or activity. Readers like being engaged on a daily basis. Fresh and exciting content is key to any affiliate website. Build your poker web presence one day at a time and focus on quality writing with targeted keywords for search engine placement. Most of all engage your readers and build a sense of community.

Finding a unique area or niche in the poker world is key to success. The major poker related themes touched on below have already been done several times over. Penetrating and competing against established veteran websites is financially and physically taxing. Although reinventing the wheel is usually not a good idea, focusing your startup poker site on a particular aspect of poker is a great idea. Not only will it make you unique, but it will also give you a great entry point into the online poker website environment. Since most website traffic comes from search, hammering unique keywords and poker ideas will get you higher rankings from search spiders. Better rankings correlates to increased website traffic and higher profitability. Below are some of the major poker related themes that have already been done several times over. These website ideas are somewhat generic and have been done over. However, modifying or uniting a few of these ideas to suit your interests could create a quality foundation for your new poker website.

Review Sites - everypoker.com
Websites focused on reviewing online poker rooms are by far the most prevalent type of poker website. These sites are nearly all the same and are massed in the thousands on the internet. Not only are they commonplace, but they also are very hard to compete against. Review sites have been around since the beginning of poker affiliate-ships. Most veteran review sites are created for nothing other than poker profitability - the owners have no vested interest in truly promoting quality poker rooms, only the most profitable ones.

Forum Sites - pokerforums.org - deuceace.com
Social interaction is one desire of many poker website developers. This is easily achieved by online forums and message boards. Unfortunately, these types of websites are extremely hard to startup. The growth in forum membership for the vast marjory of sites is at a snails pace. Often paid posters are necessary to get the forum started. After a solid base has formed in your forum new members are easily recruited - until then be prepared for months of inactivity.

Rakeback Sites - rakeback.com - raketherake.com
Although extremely popular the concept of rakeback is no longer new. Rakeback as been around for years and the majority of players have a rakeback account. This makes the rakeback market very mature and in-penetrable. Starting a rakeback site may be one of the hardest ideas to successfully execute. Moreover, rakeback sites are domain name intensive - hence all of the domains using the word rakeback are taken.

Tracking Sites - sharkscope.com
Having a tracking website like sharkscope is very labor intensive. Hiring the programmers and design artists to code and create your tracking site will make it financially intensive. Again, this market is highly saturated with almost all of the tracking niches covered.

News Sites - pokernews.com - cardplayer.com
Being up to date and building a trustworthy image is a hard obstacle to overcome in building a poker news website. Furthermore, these websites require a lot of news content to rank high in search engines. This mean you will have to hire a team of poker news reporter to update your site on a daily basis. Most established poker news sites already have magazines and podcasts - making competition in this market nearly impossible.

Blog Sites - pokerbloggs.com - pokerelmo.blogspot.com/
Sharing your personal poker experiences is one of the few competitive areas of poker website development. With increased popularity of social networking, the personal side of poker life is powerful. A good blog could have a lot of readers if the authors have exciting and fresh content to share on a daily or hourly basis. The key aspect of blogs is posting incredible content each day. The temptation exists in updating infrequently, resulting in the loss of viewership. Never get a sub-domain in your blog like the one listed above. Always reserve your own domain name and get a content management system like wordpress if you decide to go this route.

Educational Sites - internettexasholdem.com - twoplustwo.com
One of the best educational sites on the internet is twoplustwo.com - created by authors with several book publications it is considered a main source of authority on the game of poker. Establishing this kind of street credit is next to impossible. Without major endorsements or public book publications this avenue of poker website development is impossible.

Ranking Sites - pocketfives.com
Ranking sites require software programming and partnerships with online poker rooms for poker feeds. Creating a player ranking system is another problem in itself. A lot of the poker sites have deals with existing ranking sites, making this space difficult to enter. Sites like pocketfives also have critical mass with dedicated viewers. This is why creating myspace and facebook like websites is nearly impossible.

Software Sites - holdemindicator - calculatem.com
The main issue with this type of site is the initial investment into the software. Talk also exists of poker rooms banning partner poker programs to level the playing field - making this a financially dangerous area to try and enter. Program uniqueness would be difficult as well since existing partner programs are sophisticated enough.

Affiliate Sites - pokeraffiliateship.com
This is a surprisingly overlooked area in the poker world. A few major affiliate resources currently exists which promote joining poker affiliate programs. These sites make tier 2 revenue by referring affiliates instead of players. This seems like a great concept, except for the fact that only a handful of poker sites offer tiered revenue sharing.

Bonus Sites - pokerbonuses.com
Bonus code sites fall into the category of reviews most of the time. Bonus codes are no longer a benefit in the poker world. Every site offers affiliates the same bonus advertising. Bonus codes are becoming very generic (they all give you the same bonus). These sites are often very boring and again have generic information. Since every poker site offers its affiliate similar bonus programs, their is nothing proprietary or unique about bonuses.

Going beyond the traditional ideas for poker website is key to your success. Find an undiscovered or under developed poker concept and make it your own. Focus on the content and less on stunning graphics or web designs. Content is king and creating exciting content will win over viewers more than any design will in the long run. Like the game of poker, web development should be viewed as a long term proposition. Poker websites are successful because of skill, dedication and perseverance - not luck. As the popular saying goes, "success is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration." Work a little each day creating your online poker website. Exciting poker website innovation is when great ideas and long term execution come together.

Ultimate Bet is endorsed by well known professional, Phil Helmuth. After a recent super-user scandal was announced in 2008, Ultimate Bet has been diligently working to restore its brand with intensive damage control. A lot of mystery still revolves around the brand in its partnership with Absolute Poker. The site took a major hit in traffic after the scandal surfaced, but has since then stabilized. Ultimate Bet will depend on its affiliates heavily going forward.

Phil Helmuth is the backbone of the Ultimate Bet brand. His illustrious history with the World Series of Poker has saved the Ultimate Bet brand from extermination. Ultimate Bet has both CPA and PRP structured programs for affiliates to choose from.