Best of breed is a term coined by the financial industry. It describes the top company within a given industry. As you may already know the top few percent of companies earn the majority of the money. This phenomenon accounts for why companies like Apple and Microsoft account for nearly all of the computer software market. It also explains how the richest 2% of adults in the world control over half the world’s wealth. The same principle holds true for poker affiliates. The top few poker affiliates take most of the profits. These poker affiliates are the best at marketing and get number one search rankings for top poker search keywords.  Most importantly, they have relentless work ethics and think for the long term.

The top poker affiliates are never born overnight. Successful poker affiliate marketing takes many months, even years to gain traction. The affiliate industry is tough because of its super-saturation. It seems like everyone is a poker affiliate these days - making the industry difficult to penetrate. New poker websites are opening up everyday and the trend doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon. The explosive growth in the popularity of online poker has trickled down to affiliateship. Thankfully, these new poker affiliates have little to no clue how to operate successfully.

Understanding the business of poker affiliateship is difficult for most people. They think that aesthetics, web design and generic reviews alone will make them thousands of dollars each month. This couldn’t be any farther from the truth making this reality a tough thing to swallow for most people. Even new poker affiliates with great ideas often falter when they fail to see big profits right away. The need for immediate satisfaction and gratification lead to ruin for most websites.

If you are a poker player yourself, think about the learning curve and work you had to put in just to grind out a small profit. Most people don’t start playing poker right away and crush games immediately. Instead, they often lose money in the beginning until they finally improve their skills and playing habits. The same type of "dip" occurs in poker affiliate life. You will often earn little to no money for the first year, until you learn the business.  Things like search engine optimization, keyword targeting and being relentless separate successful affiliates from failing ones.

Are you willing to work on your poker affiliate website or marketing campaign even though money isn’t coming in right away? If you can’t push yourself to do so you might as well quit now because you have no shot at making money. Working hard regardless of reward for the first year is key in building a great poker affiliate website. Seeing the bigger picture means you make small and constant strides over the long term. Then after a few years you have hundreds or thousands of poker articles and tons of content. Then you learn to target poker related keywords and get steady traffic. After you have done these things, profits are inevitable. Remember, some poker affiliates go for years making little to know money, then break through and start earning five and six figure monthly income.

Being a poker affiliate is more than writing a few sloppy articles and splashing advertisements on your website. It takes perseverance and constant work. Learn to create unique and clean looking website pages. Then learn to write keyword rich poker content on a daily basis. Finally, tweak your strategy and adapt to changing poker affiliate marketing conditions. Study your statistics and never stop striving for an edge in the affiliate industry. If you are able and willing to carry out all of the things described above, you are already ahead of 99% of the poker affiliates out there.

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Marketing The Core 3/e by Kerin, Hartley, and Rudelius

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Offline poker affiliate marketing is one of the most overlooked venues for potential player conversions. In some cases affiliates can make more money marketing offline than online. Whether out of fear, laziness or simply not knowing - few people attempt to market poker in their everyday life. If you are the type of affiliate struggling to convert players online, maybe it is time to try the live approach. With a little hard work offline marketing could give you a nice player base to get started.

Networking is not only a great way to find a job, but also a way to recruit new poker players. Many avenues of our daily social life bring us face to face with potential new poker conversions. Offline affiliate marketing doesn’t have to be about door to door solicitations.Think about all of the places you go throughout the day where you naturally interact with other people. Maybe you go to get your haircut at the local barber shop, or maybe you are a frequent drinker who likes the local sports bar. These are great places to start an offline marketing campaign.  Affiliate marketing doesn’t have to be fancy at all. It can simply be interacting with people throughout your day and dropping off a few business cards. Here are a few great places to start offline affiliate marketing.

Shopping Malls

People tend to be very open to solicitation at shopping malls. Chances are if they are already shopping, they are more open to a poker proposal. They might naturally let their guard down and listen to your poker proposal or accept your business card.

Barber Shop

Drop off a handful of business cards wherever you get your haircut. If you don’t feel up to talking to people directly, stash a few poker business cards in the front page of a magazine or leave them on a counter.

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.