How do you manage your poker affiliate income?

by mitchell posted Aug 26th 2005 at 22:00PM

http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=http://www.pokeraffiliateworld.com/affiliate-resources/how-do-you-manage-your-poker-affiliate-income&title=How do you manage your poker affiliate income?

I thought I would write a quick article about the importance of managing your money correctly when starting out as an online poker affiliate. Many new affiliates will not admit it, but they have never cashed out their monthly revenues. Instead they deposit it at the site and lose it all back to the house.

Now I am not saying you should never play with any of your affiliate income, but be smart about it. Especially for you younger guys just getting started in this industry. Reinvest that money into a new site or a marketing budget for your existing promotions. Or perhaps you can get that money into the stock market or real estate market.

Let's be honest, a huge percentage of online poker players are losing players. Most of us became poker affiliates because we didn't want the uncertainty and the swings that you have when trying to derive a true income from playing online poker. With that said don't even give yourself the chance to lose any money back. Although this is old school, I like to have my biggest programs send me a check every month. This way I actually feel like I have a "real job". I do maintain my own bankroll for playing in a Neteller account but I try not to mix up my playing bankroll with my affiliate income.

The biggest mistake people make in online poker and the reason many go bust night after night is because they move to a higher limit that either their bankroll or skill level does not support. Lets say your a profiting 1-2 player and you get your first $500 transfer from an affiliate program, it is not difficult to justify (well it's free money, maybe I'll take a shot at 5-10) and next thing you know your entire $500 is gone and all that work you did promoting the month before is down the drain.

Trust me, when I first started out I gambled way too much with my affiliate revenues. I was playing in 30-60 games that I had no business being in.........ever. It's not hard to do when a few thousand starts getting dropped into your player account every month.

But then I realized if I was going to be serious about this I needed to start treating this career like a real job. None of us would take our "real jobs" entire paycheck and deposit it at PartyPoker (at least I hope not) then why would we transfer all that money from the affiliate programs into our players accounts?

If you talk to most successful poker affiliates, you will find that they cash a large percentage of their monthly revenues out each month and reinvest it into promotions or marketing. Bottom line is this............Don't be a Donkey and piss away your affiliate revenue at these sites. Cash it out, support your family, buy a new car or a hooker, whatever...........but make sure you are getting a chance to enjoy all that cash each month!

Jeremy