Anyone know what's involved in starting an Affiliate Business?

[12AX7]

The thought has crossed my mind that being an affiliate may be more lucrative than playing. Especially with my EV. LOL!

Anyone know what it takes to get one rolling?

To me the end goal is the same for poker or affiliating...

To earn an income without the confines of the normal 9-5 BS.

So one's as good as the other to me. Or more correctly, whichever is more effective at earning income (for me personally, some folks may earn more at the game. Hard to tell.)

[rt1]

its no get rich scheme. you will work much more than 9-5, but at the same time you work for youself, so the payoff is great.

check out www.affiliateev.com (http://www.affiliateev.com) ... we help get affiliates setup.


first thing to think about is how can you bring in players. do you have access to people who player poker or are interested in poker.

post any questions you may here...

Advertise in the right places (like here)

Treat your customers as well as possible.

Be prepared to put in some hard work, especially at first. Also the market is now at the piint where you are almost required to get help from another affiliate (like AffiliateEV here) to get your foot in the door. Getting 20% from a room (or even 25%, which is the going rate to offer a player) just isnt going to be sufficient unless you have a large group of players ready to sign up.

[B00T]

Your avatar looks pootastic the way it comes through. It looks almost as bad as your Red Sox. Oh, double OH! /images/graemlins/cool.gif

yeah, i know. im porbably better off with no avatar /images/graemlins/smile.gif

i will be at the next TWO games. thats right, there will be a game 4 /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[12AX7]

Hi RT1,
Yes, I do have some questions for the board on this.

First, "Why would I need a third party?" I emailed an online cardroom a few months back and they pretty much just wanted to check out my website for approval before letting me start.

I had no website.

My plan was to try and use Google Adwords, until I found out they changed thier rules on who's Adwords get displayed to limit it to the highest bidder for the particular adwords if they referenced the same target website.

So I asked the cardroom, "In view of this, can you provide affiliates with unique 'landing sites'?"

I never got a response.

You see, I'm not really interested in "content creation" and creating a georgeous website. Prior to the Adword rule changes it looked like I could essentially buy traffic.

With the current rules it looks like I have to make and intermediate website (and thus back to content creation) and then get the viewer to click yet a second time. Seems counter productive.

I mentioned this to Google... that is, that they were clobbering the little guy with this rule. The didn't give a rats tail. LOL!

So I guess the Second Question is, "Is anyone successfully using Adwords to garner sufficient traffic to be profitable?"

Lastly, "Everyone seems to say you will work lots of hours, doing what?"

I thought the point of web marketing was to build once, profit many?

Or are we just saying that initial website build / traffic generation is time consuming? (Which was why Adwords interested me in the first place. As stated earlier, creating a poker website was not the goal.)

""Lastly, "Everyone seems to say you will work lots of hours, doing what?"

I thought the point of web marketing was to build once, profit many?""


If it were that easy don't you think everyone would do it? You have to make payments(not all sites make them for you, answer tons of e-mails, keep up with what everyone else is doing, competition is tough because a new affiliate doesn't get the same rate as affiliates with 1000's of players and you need a large customer base to make money with the small margins and know how to get players when 10 other affiliates offer the same rake back.

With information out there like RRR and 2+2 the player is much more educated than they were say 2 years ago when there were less affiliates and less info available. Now you need to treat customers right and hope they drive others to your site as referrals etc.

[rt1]

First, "Why would I need a third party?" I emailed an online cardroom a few months back and they pretty much just wanted to check out my website for approval before letting me start.


Thrid party? If you are talking about AffiliateEV? If so because they will help you get players and offer better %s than the site. There is no point in giving these two things up, as they are what matters most to building a good affiliate program.

I had no website.

Make one.

You see, I'm not really interested in "content creation" and creating a georgeous website. Prior to the Adword rule changes it looked like I could essentially buy traffic.

You will never be able to 'buy' enough traffic. You need to put work into this if you want it to work. You need to create a website with enough info/promotions to get players under you.

So I guess the Second Question is, "Is anyone successfully using Adwords to garner sufficient traffic to be profitable?"

I do not know of any affiliates using this program. I am not sure they allow gambling.

[12AX7]

Hi MustbeBlufin,
Thanks for the reality check. /images/graemlins/laugh.gif

I was seriously hoping a Google Adwords approach would reduce some of that by allowing you to get rewarded for click throughs that "convert" (to customers that is).

Is that a generally failing approach?

I see what you mean about percentages. Sounds a bit like the deal of being a Stock Broker where you commission percentage goes up as your volume goes up.

But I'm still curious... Can/does the Adwords approach work at all? And, why the need to be in an existing affiliate's downline? (Not that that's a bad thing. Might be nice to be shown the ropes, rather than fumble around. Even if it cost some margin. 10% of some business is better than 100% of *no* business. /images/graemlins/laugh.gif )

[12AX7]

Hi RT1,
Yes, after reading the changes in the Adwords policy it clearly is a more difficult way to go than it used to be. But many sources (including Google itself, naturally) hawk it as a method.

Apparently, until the present set of rules, the idea was to run Google Adwords that landed the client onto a companies commercial site. Say "Musician's Friend" or "Amazon.Com" and you'd get a percentage of thier purchase as your referral fee.

I'd hoped to do the same with Party, et. al.

So I did go get some storage and bandwidth from an ISP a few months back. But I've not worked on it yet. For some of the reasons below.

My fears about content creation are:

1) I'm not a poker expert at this point, just an apprentice, so to speak. Anything I write may mislead people. Even if I thought it was OK when I wrote it. So from a personal perspective, that just worries me. I spent many years in Info Tech as a Level 2 Tech. People came to me and expected correct answers. So it's sort of ingrained to be accurate. Especially considering the licensing costs of some of the mainframe software I supported. (Nothing like "system down mission critical page outs at 3:00 am. LOL!)

2) If I take expert materials and incorporate them into my website, not being a copyright expert, I have no idea when my writed would cross the line from "research" to "copyright infringement". I recall for years the Poker FAQ had a blurb that 2+2 asked them to remove the summary of the HPFAP strategy. So I was somewhat concerned about that too.

3) Artwork... Gotta have nice looking, easy to read pages. Not sure what the costs for "glossy" artwork are.

So hopefully you can see, I'm not opposed to working at it, etc. Just mulling over the details a bit. (And naturally, the hawkers of Adwords would have you believe all this can be avoided, for a price-per-click model.)

FWIW, I've been know to work 'round the clock on Enterprise software issues, so work doesn't frighten me. Work with unknown rewards, is a little more daunting though. Always having been a corp. dweeb, entrepeneurship, outside of poker itself, and a small business or two me and some buds tried, looks daunting.

(I suppose that's why most folks stay mired in 9-5 or worse. It sux, but it's a known quantity. Or at least is was "once upon a time". LOL!)

Bottom line with this point is I can work like a dog given that I can run to my own body clock, or the motivation (i.e probability of success) is great enough. I've never been know to be lazy. Cranky and fed up with BS at times though, definitely.

Anyway, I'm all ears. Thanks again for the reality check. It's much appreciated.

[ QUOTE ]
Hi MustbeBlufin,
Thanks for the reality check. /images/graemlins/laugh.gif

I was seriously hoping a Google Adwords approach would reduce some of that by allowing you to get rewarded for click throughs that "convert" (to customers that is).

Is that a generally failing approach?

I see what you mean about percentages. Sounds a bit like the deal of being a Stock Broker where you commission percentage goes up as your volume goes up.

But I'm still curious... Can/does the Adwords approach work at all? And, why the need to be in an existing affiliate's downline? (Not that that's a bad thing. Might be nice to be shown the ropes, rather than fumble around. Even if it cost some margin. 10% of some business is better than 100% of *no* business. /images/graemlins/laugh.gif )

[/ QUOTE ]

The adwords approach may work for a small percentage, but with the resources out there for the consumer I think you can assume overall a losing approach. If you pay for each click I'm not sure how many would just sign up without checking other offers around. It can be part of your plan, but not the only part.
As far as commissions go: yes the % goes up as your total mgr goes up, but that doesn't mean your margin increases. Higher volume players get better deals than lower volume players do and it is a delicate balance to keep everyone happy. Why does he get more than me etc.

You do not need to be part of an existing affiliate's downline, but in many cases it can help. If someone like affiliateev.com has the resources offer you a higher starting percentage to start off than the poker site will then you can start off much more competitive. Kinda hard to attract many customers when your rate is lower than what others are offering unless you are willing to take losses to build your customer base.