What makes a good poker affiliate for your poker room?

Each affiliate no matter the size is very important in our marketing efforts.  Each affiliate represents a piece of the entire marketing pie.  A good affiliate represents our room in a professional and beneficial manner to the customer.  Good affiliates know their customers well and have creative and intelligent ways of helping them make decisions. They not only good at getting the customers to our site, but even better at selling them on whey they should play at our site. 

What makes your poker room the best place for affiliates to promote?

Sunpoker.com is on the Cryptologic network of poker rooms, currently one of the top networks online in terms of volume.  The rake generated at the poker room has increased over 600% since October of 2004.  In addition, many of your customers may not have tried Sunpoker.com yet, so there are many new prospects available.  As you well know, poker players like to play at a number of different poker rooms.  While, many of them have probably played the Party’s and Pokerstars of the world, there is an entire breadbasket of customers itching to try a new room. 

What makes your poker room a unique experience for its players?

Sunpoker.com offers a unique bonus structure to new players.  Not only do new players receive a deposit bonus, but players also receive a monthly bonus each month based on the number of hands played. 100% up to $50 on your deposit and $40 after 200 raked hands.

One of the nice features for Sunpoker.com is the capability to customize the software. Players can choose between background colors and deck colors. There are also options within the software on the displays in reference to Bet Amounts, Hand Value, Play Money Tables, Location, Card Animations and Chip Animations.  Players can also choose to turn off the chat function if the so desire, which can be a good thing!

Sunpoker.com always has a consistent number of exciting tournaments going on for players.  Whether it’s the 2005 Caribbean Poker Classic, $200,000 Freeroll, $56,000 (£30K) guaranteed tournaments every Sunday, daily $11K and $21K tournaments, or weekly freerolls, Sunpoker.com always has some real value added tournaments for players to enter. In addition, each year they host tournaments sending them to the WSOP.  Last year, one of our affiliates actually qualified for a WSOP event. 

How does your poker room plan to separate itself from the other online poker rooms?

What separates our poker room from many other stand alone poker rooms is that we drive A LOT of players to our poker room from the casinos we represent, The Sands of the Caribbean and Omni Casino.  What you have as a result is a number of weaker players trying their hand at poker.  There are numbers of blackjack and slots players that will give the poker room a try because poker is the hottest thing in online gambling. 

What do you see as the most essential things that a poker affiliate must be doing today to achieve long-term success?

It really comes down to the basics: hard work, creativity, and persistence. When I first began in this industry almost 3 years ago, sites with very little content or value added could still do really well.  A lot has changed since then. A new affiliate must find a niche and work hard at exploiting that.  

Provide the customer with as much information about what you are selling as possible.  Write articles, reviews, commentaries, short stories, or whatever you can think of that would help your customer with their decision.  Put your own personal touch on your writings.  It will come through to the user and they will connect with your message more. Continue to update this daily. 

Be creative in what you provide.  I am amazed each day by the amount of programs webmasters have developed to help with your poker game. That is thinking outside the box and offering a real value to your customers. 

It really just comes down to persistence though.  If you continue to work hard, add unique content, and optimize your sites for the search engines you can achieve long-term success. 

What does your poker room offer its affiliates that others can only dream of?

If you look at the different poker affiliate programs, I think that you will see many of them offer many of the same rates and resources.  The real difference with affiliate programs is with the willingness to support your goals as an affiliate. I know that we have worked with many different affiliates with their own specific goals for their site.  Maybe this was a custom banner, or we helped run a tournament for them, or helped them write a specific review.  I know we offer the willingness to listen to your ideas and help you support your marketing efforts. As an affiliate, that would be my most important concern.

What are the best methods that your affiliates can use to generate leads?

It seems as though affiliates all have their own unique way of generating leads.  It includes things like search engine optimization, developing and growing niche communities, offline advertising, word of mouth, email campaigns, viral marketing, media buys with other sites, and many others that I know I am leaving out.  Affiliates are discovering new ways to generate leads each day.

Do you consider affiliate's suggestions?

Absolutely!  We have implemented a number of affiliate’s suggestions over the years and will continue to do so.  Affiliates are amazing marketers.

Where do you see the relationship between the US DOJ and your industry in 1 year? Three years? Five years?

I have tried to predict this for the past almost 3 years and I can never tell what is going to happen next.  I honestly do not know.  I do think it is headed in the right direction for our industry.  

What is the best way to get your commission increased?

We have a tiered commission level.  All affiliates start at 25% and increase based on the number of real money players sent during the month.

Basically, the more real money players you send to us in a month the higher your commission will be. Here is the structure:

How does your poker room plan to market and promote itself over the next 12 months?