www.TightPoker.com
http://www.TightPoker.com
TightPoker.com is known in the poker affiliate world as one of the leading poker affiliate sites. Formerly known as teamfu.freeshell.org, MJ knows SEO and he knows it well. For years teamfu.freeshell.org dominated the search engines for keywords like Party Poker.As many of you know some of the largest poker affiliates in the world frequent our boards here at PAW. For obvious reasons however many of our larger affiliates including myself do not advertise all the sites they operate.
With that said, lets talk about TightPoker.com. For anyone that has been in this industry for any amount of time then you certainly know how successful teamfu.freeshell.org has been over the years in the SEO arena. When I think of the SEO guru's or geniuses in this industry, MJ over at TightPoker is on the top of my list. Recently he went through a major rebranding and moved the site from teamfu to it's new home of TightPoker.com. It is no surprise to any of us that TightPoker.com is back up in the top of the search engines once again.
We could pick apart the design, the SEO, the content, ect, and try to analyze why TightPoker is so successful and drives such a ridiculous amount of traffic. But instead I interviewed MJ and got all the answers right from "The Man" himself. Bottom line when it comes to the success of TightPoker.com however is content, content, and more content. Now throw in wisdom of a white hat SEO genius like MJ and you got yourself a winner. Congratulations to TightPoker.com and MJ on being a Poker Affiliate World Featured Site.
1. Tell us about how you got started in the Poker Affiliate Industry?
Funny enough, rakeback. My friend and I were playing a good deal of
poker back in 2002 on Party Poker. We saw how the affiliate program
worked and thought that it would be a smart idea if we signed up each
other's affiliate accounts (against Party's TOC, of course) to collect a
portion of our rake back. Naturally, we started signing up other friends
that played and it all sort of took off from there.
2. As a Super Affiliate what do you atribute the majority of your
successes too? (SEO, hard work, bringing on BIG players, mentors, etc.)
I think success in the SEO industry is a lot like success in poker
poker. For instance, You can be an angle shooter and go for a quick
buck, but you'll always be on your toes and coming up with new ways to
avoid detection. Or, you can simply put in the serious effort to learn
the game and gradually build yourself from the small stakes into a
winning player. There's no real magic outs, because all of the
information is free and available to anyone who is interested in picking
it up. The magic is putting more effort than the next guy to become
great at what you do.
That all said, knowing how to change gears is a must for any serious
poker player, so the same goes for SEO. There's nothing more pathetic
than being that dinosaur in the $5/10 rock garden talking about the
"good old" times. Don't be that guy.
3. What are your favorite programs to promote and why?
I actually don't have any one favorite program, as each site has their
pros and cons. For example, I love PokerStars because of their great
marquee image, reputation and customer service, but they don't have much tools to help promote their site. Partnering with Party Poker can be rewarding if you're capable on the business front due to their remarkable affiliate program (tools,managers, promotions, etc), but they can also be blunt or draconian in their methods.
Second tier sites like Poker Room offer a middle ground, where the
managers are happy to work with their partners, but also don't have the
name brand power of the major sites.
In the end, it really depends on what you're looking for in your
program. I think a good mix is always a good way of doing things.Never
associate yourself with scummy or sleazy sites, however.
4. And now the big question that enquiring minds want to know.....Why
the switch from teamfreeshell [teamfu.freeshell.org] to TightPoker.com?
I could pull a litany of Harvard Business School case studies on the
benefits of good branding, though re-branding in the SEO arena takes on a whole new meaning.
Many people are a proponent of the, "If it's not broken, don't fix it!"
ideology, which I actually prescribe to myself most of the time. That
said, I saw a much higher cap with where I could take the site with my
own brand, TightPoker.com, than vs my old name of teamfu.
Namely, with the big IPOs of the major sites going on at the time, it
really opens up the business options of an affiliate like myself.
5. Has the transition been an easy one and would you do it again?
Three months in the Google Sandbox feels like three years to most
people. I think it can be hard if you're not prepared or have reasonable
expectations of what was going to happen, but I came in with a very
deliberate plan to begin with, so I wouldn't say it was a bad experience.
Would I do it again? Well, I'd prefer the stomach lurch of being all-in
with AQ vs KJ on the bubble in the main event than to go through another Sandbox...but yeah, I'd do it again if I had to. It's +EV.
6. Are you working on anythin new or do you have any big plans for
TightPoker.com in 2006?
I've always got new ideas in the works and have had a project under
wraps for quite some time now. It's very player oriented and will give a
lot back to the players, so I'm looking forward to what it can do for
the poker community.
7. We noticed you won a MTT recently at Stars. Most poker affiliates
are fish as you know. Would you fall into this category, or was this
big win justified :)
Well, I've been a winning poker player for over six years now, although
I have only been serious into poker for the last three, so I think this
win is pretty justified.
I think it's pretty evident that if you look at a good deal of the big
affiliates, many of them are solid poker players like myself. Sites like
PokerTips and Play Winning Poker offer great strategy and resources to
the poker player, as well as being successful websites. There is nothing
better than good content and you can only create good content if you are genuinely good at what you're writing about.
So for any small or potential affiliates out there, takes notes, as you
can gain a lot from this way of thinking.
8. If I gave you a million dollars today, what would you do with it?
I'd call PokerListings and tell them that someone delivered their check
to the wrong address. Oh, wait, you meant seriously? Well, I'd probably
invest that million and figure out a way of turning it into two million.
9. And finally........who is the hottest female ever to walk on this
planet?
Easy answer: Whichever girl I'm currently with, of course. 0:)
10. What's your take on the White Hat vs Black Hat methodology?
I, of course, consider myself a White Hat, so I'm rather biased in this
regard. If you look at things in the long term, you can see that the
industry is naturally going to go the route of White Hats. You can fight
against it all you want, but you're swimming upstream if you do.
A lot of Black Hats will say that they do better than any White Hat
possibly could. I would also counter that in the big picture of things,
Larry Page and Sergey Brin would be considered White Hats, which in
case, all the combined Black Hats in the world couldn't even come close
to the financial or personal reward of working to create something useful.
Thanks again to MJ and TightPoker.com for the opportunity to interview you!
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Nov 05, 2007
