New Guy saying hi.....and help

[Daveshoelace]

Hi Guys,

I'm new, and by new I mean very new. I just wanted to introduce myself to you all and hope some of you take pity on me .

My name is Barry Carter, I make a living playing poker and writing for a number of UK based poker publications - WPT Magazine, PokerPro Europe and Pokernews.com. Its great work which I thank the lord for every day.

I had a lightbulb appear above my head a week ago with an idea for a business venture, which would be an affiliate based website. The details of which I shall share as it develops, but right now I need to learn some of the basics.

I am pretty clueless about how to start a website up and how to set up my affiliate networks. I know nothing about 'sharing links' or any of the other stuff Ive read on this site.

So basically if anyone can point me in good direction to get going it would be much appreciated.

thanks

Barry Carter
PS. Im aware I may have just essentially asked how a long a piece of string is.

[Zilla]

Hi Barry,

Welcome to PAW. I've read alot of your articles in the past and your a great writer.

As you've already noted in your post - you've asked some very broad questions there and there is quite a big learning curve that all new affiliates / webmasters have to go through.

Without knowing the specifics of the project you have in mind this is the general advice I would give you:

1. Website design - if you do not know anything about HTML/CSS or website design then I would highly recommend you buy this service in from an experienced coder - Your looking for a clean design and clean coding and if you are new to website design then you probably won't achieve this first time around and you'll spend a massive amount of time trying to do this when your time can be better spent elsewhere.

2. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - this is something that you do need to learn. SEO is a never ending learning curve, but you would need to understand the basics of how to get your new site into the search engines and how to target and rank well for keywords.

As a start there is a free ebook available on PAW from Brad Callen which would give you a good introduction to SEO.
http://www.pokeraffiliateworld.com/F...+EBook.cms.htm

3. Research - this is something you really need to do before you even start your project. First off - the poker niche is very competitive - so first thing would be to research your "idea" and see if anyone else has already done it which may affect the way you go about your project.

Then you need to decide the niche you are going after - this will determine not only the design and content on your website, but also the keywords you will target. Keyword research is a big part of SEO as you want to target a mix of keywords some of which will be easier to rank for than others. For keyword research then this is a good free tool
http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/gtrends/


The above is very general and broad advice but I hope it helps somewhat. I would recommend just sitting and delving through the posts here at PAW - it is a goldmine of information for new affiliates and you'll be surprised how much you can pick up by just spending a day reading through old posts here.

Were a friendly bunch here at PAW though, and you'll always find people willing to help with any questions you have.

Regards,

Adrian.

[Daveshoelace]

Thanks Adrian, plenty to get me started. I'll look into SEO right away.

Noob question time, is a web designer and a coder the same thing? I already registered the domain name for my site and I have the content for each page, so ideally want one person to design, make pretty and set up the whole thing from that.

[Zilla]

Yes for the purpose I am referring to a web designer / coder is the same thing.

Sometimes you can seperate it into two, first off getting a site design template done (ie: a graphic of how your site will look) and then getting that design coded into HTML/CSS.

Are you going to be adding content on a regular basis? If so you may be better getting a content management system setup such as Wordpress and then just getting a custom wordpress template designed for it. This will allow you to add content quite easily without any coding knowledge probably something similar to what you use at pokernews.co.uk to add content.

[Daveshoelace]

Thanks again and thanks to all the guys that sent me a PM. I will get back to you but for now Im going to concentrate on the content of my website down and getting a webdesigner/hoster (Very happy to listen to suggestions on that btw).