Some basic questions from a new poster

[Nick997722]

Hello, I am an avid amateur poker player and have been thinking about starting an affiliate site for some time now. I have very little knowledge in this area however so am hoping I may be able to get a little guidance to some basic questions I have. Thanks in advance for any responses!

1) My number one question is whether trying to break in as a poker affiliate is realistic / worthwhile at this point in time. I ask this for two reasons; one – there seems to be a boat-load of poker affiliate sites out there, is the market already saturated? The second concern I have is the recent legislation that passed in the US. Although I live in Canada any legislation that potentially limits the ease for American players to play poker seems like it would have a negative affect on affiliate sites.

2) My second question is in regards to domain names. How important is it to have a catchy domain name and secondly from a search engine / ethical standpoint is grabbing a domain name similar to an existing domain name a bad idea? Obviously many domain names are already taken, if for example someone wanted to use: pokerplayer.com for their domain but it was taken would using something like poker-players.com be a bad idea?

3) Are there any good books / resources on becoming an affiliate besides forums? Jeremy from this forum forwarded me his old book but I believe the server it is hosted on is no longer active as I get a http 500 error whenever trying to access the book. Is it worthwhile looking at non-poker specific affiliate books? I came across an online book called ePokerAffiliate, has anyone read it, is it any good?

4) Finally a more general question about site layout. I notice many affiliate sites have a fairly what I would call “busy” home-page, lots of links, links to articles on the site etc. Is this just the personal preference of many affiliate sites or is this done for search engine optimization or other reasons?

Phew, sorry for the long-winded post and thanks for taking the time to read through it!

[GoodKarmaKid]

Wow, finally a new poster who takes the time to ask some intelligent, well thought out questions.

My number one question is whether trying to break in as a poker affiliate is realistic / worthwhile at this point in time.

Very good question? It really depends on your motivation and what your goals are? The Poker Affiliate business is highly competitive as you noted and in my opinion it would be very difficult for newcomers to the industry to become major players, people making say more than 20k a month. Not impossible, but very difficult. It depends a lot on the amount of time and money your are willing to invest also.

Can you program the site yourself? or are you going to have to pay for a good design.

Are you a good writer? Will you write the content yourself? or pay someone to do it?

How much time can you invest into the business?

How much money do you want to make? or need to make if you are thinking about doing it full time?

there seems to be a boat-load of poker affiliate sites out there, is the market already saturated?

Yes, & Yes. There are a lot of really exceptional poker sites which provide an enormous amount of quality content for their web visitors. For sake of example lets say there are 1000 quality poker sites on the Internet, you could multiple that by a factor of 500 or more for all the banner farms and crappy sites.

I would recommend developing a poker niche, some small sub-topic which you think you are knowledgeable in and could provide original, unique content for. Once your figure out that niche. Exploit it to death, and own it, become the go to guy authority figure for that topic.

Although I live in Canada any legislation that potentially limits the ease for American players to play poker seems like it would have a negative affect on affiliate sites.

Definitely, Anyone who thinks that the US Ban won't affect the number of players on other sites has been drinking the wrong cup of Koolaid.

My second question is in regards to domain names. How important is it to have a catchy domain name

From my experience, a lot of SEO experts and webmasters disagree on this question Technically, speaking if you had an incredible site, that was well optimized, great content, nice backlinks. you could call your site: thecrappywebsiteaboutpoker.com and it should do fine, but in my opinion it is definitely helpful to have domain name that relates to what your site is about, and an easy domain name to remember. If you do a google search and look at the top 5 answers for a search, I think most people click on the url that most closely matches what they are looking for (no scientific proof, just my opinion based on my own habits)

secondly from a search engine / ethical standpoint is grabbing a domain name similar to an existing domain name a bad idea?

As you pointed out, there aren't that many great domain names left. In the example you gave pokerplayer.com , those are pretty generic terms, I don't think it would be considered unethical at all to use somethign similar. On the other hand, the terms shouldn't be trademarked type of names or you will have big problems down the road. Cardplayer-Mag.com for example would get yourself in a lot of hot water eventually or any domain name with WSOP in it or PartyPoker, etc. Lots of these sites fly under the radar for awhile but eventually have problems.

Are there any good books / resources on becoming an affiliate besides forums?

Other than Jeremy's book, I'm not aware of or have any opinions on any specific poker affiliate type of book.

Is it worthwhile looking at non-poker specific affiliate books?

Most definitely, SEOElite (in the affiliate tools section of this site), TheSEOBook, are a couple that come to mind although they aren't specifically about being an affiliate they are good reads.

I came across an online book called ePokerAffiliate

Never heard of it, so cant offer an opinion one way or the other.

Finally a more general question about site layout. I notice many affiliate sites have a fairly what I would call “busy” home-page, lots of links, links to articles on the site etc. Is this just the personal preference of many affiliate sites or is this done for search engine optimization or other reasons?

Another excellent question, I would love to get some other opinions here also. I'd say some affiliates do it for a few of the reasons you mention, others do it because they don't know better, there is really a fine blend of what is best, a lot of it depends on your specific site, goals, potential readers, etc.

Phew, sorry for the long-winded post and thanks for taking the time to read through it!

Long winded, well thought out questions, deserve long answers

Hope I helped a little,

Jason

[Graham]

Originally Posted by Nick997722

1) My number one question is whether trying to break in as a poker affiliate is realistic / worthwhile at this point in time. I ask this for two reasons; one – there seems to be a boat-load of poker affiliate sites out there, is the market already saturated? The second concern I have is the recent legislation that passed in the US. Although I live in Canada any legislation that potentially limits the ease for American players to play poker seems like it would have a negative affect on affiliate sites.

There is always room for another site, I think the key is to come with something that hasn't been done before, or go for a specific target of players. If you do everything properly and read up a lot on SEO and have a nice design it is very possible. It may take a lot of hard work before you actually see any reward, but the things you will learn from being a poker affiliate are priceless and can be applied to many different online markets. Even though I have only been doing this for just under a year, I have probably learned a ton of things that will help me out a lot in the future. With regards to the new legislation I think it will definetly have a negative affect, but in time it will correct itself out. I am sure a lot of affiliates will drop out due to the new laws which will create openings for new ones.

Originally Posted by Nick997722

2) My second question is in regards to domain names. How important is it to have a catchy domain name and secondly from a search engine / ethical standpoint is grabbing a domain name similar to an existing domain name a bad idea? Obviously many domain names are already taken, if for example someone wanted to use: pokerplayer.com for their domain but it was taken would using something like poker-players.com be a bad idea?

Domain name can be pretty important. I would try to keep it as small as possible, and target whatever target market you are going after. If it is going to be a site for poker players from China, it would probably help to have both "china" and "poker" in the domain name. I don't know how much it matters, but it will probably have some affect. I wouldn't worry too much about having a similar domain to another site. As long as you aren't stealing their content, or trying to impersonate them, then you shouldn't have anything to worry about.

Originally Posted by Nick997722

3) Are there any good books / resources on becoming an affiliate besides forums? Jeremy from this forum forwarded me his old book but I believe the server it is hosted on is no longer active as I get a http 500 error whenever trying to access the book. Is it worthwhile looking at non-poker specific affiliate books? I came across an online book called ePokerAffiliate, has anyone read it, is it any good?

I would learn as much about SEO and online marketing as you can. I am not too sure of any really good books off hand, so I can't add much more to that.

Originally Posted by Nick997722

4) Finally a more general question about site layout. I notice many affiliate sites have a fairly what I would call “busy” home-page, lots of links, links to articles on the site etc. Is this just the personal preference of many affiliate sites or is this done for search engine optimization or other reasons?

I think the number of links depends on what the goal of your site is. If your site is an "Everything about Poker" kind of site, you will have many more links than a site that is just about a poker league, or a single player. I try to keep as few links as possible, but sometimes its hard to pick one thing over another.

Hope some of these things help, and good luck with the site.

[hoursurfing]

Originally Posted by GoodKarmaKid

Wow, finally a new poster who takes the time to ask some intelligent, well thought out questions.

What you don't like the normal "how do me I make money fast first website.., help please!. now"



1. Its not oversaturated but you either need 1. Alot of time or 2. A good idea or 3. Smart marketing techniques.

2. If you are in a niche market finding a decent domain shouldnt be too hard. I personally would stay away from - in the url's because it's my belief that people associate the - with spam. Thats just my opinion on that because I do a lot of marketing where people see the entire url and I've noticed bad conversions with alot of -'s in the url.

3. I have never read epokeraffiliate but I'm sure it's pretty good. I've seen some of his marketing techniques in practice and a lot of people overlook what he does.

4. The reason a lot of poker websites have a bunch of links on the homepage is probably to have those pages ranking highly (seo reasons)

Those are my opinions and if you decide to try it I wish you good luck. Its fun but VERY stressfull especially now.

[losercore]

Originally Posted by hoursurfing

What you don't like the normal "how do me I make money fast first website.., help please!. now"

LMAO

But to the OP. You'll never know if the ideas you have will be worth it until you try. The nice thing about poker affiliating is it costs almost nothing to start. A web site and domain and for less than $100 you are up and running for a year of paid hosting.

Like Good Karma said: Find something different and exploit the hell out of it.

Best of luck.

P.S. Regarding epoker affiliate - I would not pay for anything just yet. You can get all the information you need right here for free.

[Graham]

Originally Posted by losercore

But to the OP. You'll never know if the ideas you have will be worth it until you try. The nice thing about poker affiliating is it costs almost nothing to start. A web site and domain and for less than $100 you are up and running for a year of paid hosting.

How about $10 for 2 domains and one year hosting? Check out http://www.netfirms.com/max. It is supposed to be for maximum PC Readers, but I am sure they won't mind You can also get 1 .com and 1 .ca if you like.

[Nick997722]

Thanks for all the replys! I'll always impressed with the way people on the web are willing to share their knowledge. Some great comments, thanks again and I'll keep you guys posted on how things go if I follow through.

[losercore]

Originally Posted by Graham

How about $10 for 2 domains and one year hosting? Check out http://www.netfirms.com/max. It is supposed to be for maximum PC Readers, but I am sure they won't mind You can also get 1 .com and 1 .ca if you like.

Is that for real? Is there a catch? Seems too good to be true. I checked it out but there has to be a catch

[mikebrad]

Is that for real? Is there a catch? Seems too good to be true. I checked it out but there has to be a catch

I took him up on this offer, the hosting VERY SLOW!

[Graham]

Originally Posted by mikebrad

I took him up on this offer, the hosting VERY SLOW!

I gain absolutely NOTHING out of this offer. I have several sites hosted with them and was just passing on the good deal. I have heard some people say it is slow, and others say it is very fast, so I think it just depends which server you get put on. I just think its a steal because its hard to even register 2 domains for that price not too mention free hosting.