Affiliate marketing creates so many opportunities. To be successful an affiliate needs to know a lot about the product they are trying to sell. This does not just go for poker, it goes for any product. While you can purchase articles to help sell your products or add fluff to your website the best way to go is to be passionate about the product that you are promoting.

It seems to me that there are affiliates in online poker that would not know the difference between a flush and a full house. Those affiliates can take their experience from other types of marketing and make some money. The affiliates that are going to make the most money are the ones that truly understand their online poker offers.

How many of you have played at as many of your poker room offers as possible? When you go to the trouble of playing on every network that you offer you can be fluent on every aspect that an online poker room has to offer. How easy is it to deposit? How fast and knowledgeable is support? Does the software lag or crash? How fast does the bonus clear? How long did it take to get your winnings? All of these are important for you to know when promoting online poker.

Once you have experienced each poker room you can add your opinions and observations to the poker room reviews on your website. You can also answer questions that players ask you with the confidence that you are giving them correct information. When you take care of your player's questions quickly and correctly they are more likely to tell their friends.

Not only is this information useful on your own website but you can use your knowledge in poker forums to answer questions. While you should not spam your website some forums will allow you to add a signature or link in your profile. I get many refers to my blog from poker forum signatures and profile links. It is safe to say that many of those clicks came from people that liked my posts and wanted to find out more about me. If a potential player feels confident that I am knowledgeable about the products I am selling they are more likely to trust my opinion and try my products. This means I will convert more players.

This does not just pertain to online poker. This goes for anything. If you find a lucrative affiliate program out there do not just farm out your content. Do the work yourself. Get to know the ins and outs of that product so that you can write effective, quality content for your visitors. If you are passionate about the product that you are promoting then you will rewarded for all of your hard work.

After Black Friday it seems some affiliates are calling it quits and now they want to get out at a depressed price. Their loss could be your gain. There was a string of bad news in online poker before Black Friday and then it seems to some that the indictments were all that some affiliates could handle in the industry. For well bankrolled operations this could be an opportunity of a lifetime if you are just willing to be patient.

If you look at the marketplace section of online poker and casino affiliate program forums people are selling their websites now more than ever. I have been looking to pick up some under priced websites but at this point I have yet to buy any.

Recently I replied to a post where a long time affiliate was wanting to get completely out of the industry. I got a list of the websites and found a few I was interested in. I asked for some items to help with my ability to value the websites correctly. This included important items including a starting bid price. The selling affiliate refused to give me any information. He simply wanted me to make a blind bid for his properties. This sent up a huge red flag. When I pushed the affiliate into at least giving me a price he got very defensive. To me this meant that they either had no idea what their websites were worth or they wanted someone to make a bid for substantially more than their website was worth. I ended up passing on their websites.

Finding Information on Websites for Sale

Many affiliate forums have rules about what someone must do to make a post related to selling their websites. PAS has one here. It is customary for a seller to disclose certain information about their websites for sale. Poker Affiliate Listings has a great example in their Marketplace Forum of what a seller should disclose. With this information a potential buyer has enough information to start their research. If a post lacks important information and the buyer still refuses to give such info after being approached then this should probably be a signal that something is wrong and you should look elsewhere. If you are able to get this information then it is time to do some research.

There are many items a potential buyer should research. These include the reputation of the seller, the history of the domain as well as the website's revenue, traffic, history and keyword domination. You can do this research in less than an hour and by doing so you can prevent yourself from getting ripped off.

Domain Names

The first thing I always do is fact check their statements. I start by going to Network Solutions and running a whois. A whois lookup will tell you who owns the domain, when the domain was registered, when the domain expires and where it is hosted. You can even purchase an advanced whois that will tell you every time the registrar or web host has changed and the last time it was renewed. The age of the domain is important as Google gives more credibility to older domains over new ones.

Revenue

Once your potential new website passes that test it is time to see how much money it makes. First get a release to go into their affiliate accounts, Google Adsense accounts and get contacts to their advertisers to verify their claims. Also determine if the affiliate account is for sale and if it is how many players are playing on it. If a handful of players are generating most of the revenue then this website is a risky purchase. Look for a well diversified portfolio of players.

Just because a website makes $x today does not mean you cannot improve it or that it will make as much in the future. You must also consider future impacts on the site. For example if the site is aimed mostly at U.S. players it is safe to say that in the short term it will not be as profitable as it once was. You may also find areas that could be improved to increase revenue. Take all of that into account.

Traffic

Now it is time to verify the traffic a website has. Going through their traffic logs is not enough. People have been known to purchase bulk traffic to inflate their traffic logs, especially if they intend on selling their websites. Make sure the traffic in the logs is a match to the language the site is in. If the site is in English but 70% of the traffic is from China then something is probably wrong.

You should also verify the traffic sources. Go to Siteometrics.com and see how many pages are indexed in each search engine. Then run checks on their website's backlinks in each search engine. Next you should run a SERP/Keyword Position for the keywords that you think this website should rank for to bring in traffic. If you cannot determine where the traffic is coming from something may be wrong. You are now armed with a lot of data in your potential new website.

Next install the Alexa Toolbar in your browser. Go to each of the website's backilnks and see how high their Alexa ranking is. The lower the number the more traffic it gets. Alexa is not perfect my any means but it is a good indicator of the website's traffic range. Then see how many backlinks those websites have. This should give you a good idea of the amount of traffic coming from links.

Keyword Research

Often times the seller will tell you that the website ranks high for certain keywords. Use Google's Keyword Tool to see how many people search those keywords each month. If they rank #1 for "Best rakeback in the world" but nobody ever searches it then that keyword adds no value to the website.

Website History

The last thing I do is go to the Wayback Machine and make sure the website has been online as long as they claim. Just because a domain was purchased in 2003 does not mean that a website has been live that long. If there is not any data in the Wayback Machine or all of the data is much newer than the seller claims this should be a cause for concern.

Once you have done this research you should have a good idea of the value of a website. By doing your due diligence you can protect yourself from paying too much for a website. Good luck in this buyer's market. If you are a creative webmaster with a good bankroll then you should be able to ride out these tough times.

On Tuesday, the 2011 WSOP got underway in at the Rio. I didn’t care to put up $25,000 to throw at the No Limit Hold’em game Heads-Up game. Instead, I decided to play the $1500 Omaha High/Low on Tuesday, which has become a yearly tradition. I busted at level 9 but I did have time to make some observations that may be of interest to affiliate marketers this year as you look at your summer advertising budgets.

Walking around the Rio this year, the biggest difference I noticed from previous years was that everyone was wearing normal street clothes. There were very few poker related logos at the Rio. You may think this is the year to lay low but I disagree.

In past years the field would be flooded with logos from PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Cereus. Any other logo would get lost in the crowd as the colors of the former U.S. "Big 3" were simply overwhelming. This year is completely different, allowing any company with well designed attire to draw attention to themselves and get free advertising.

You don't even have to play in any of the events to take advantage of free advertising. For example, there are plenty of open seats in the cash games. You could also just go around in the crowd and talk to people in the Poker Kitchen, the smoking areas or general lobbies to get your company’s name out there.

The lack of advertising from the Big 3 wasn't extremely surprising, but not because of a ban. Before the WSOP, Executive Director Ty Stewart said that wouldn't be a policy change on logos from indicted sites but that the problem would probably work itself out. Indeed, I saw several players with PokerStars or Full Tilt Poker logos and nobody stopped them. I do not see advertisers having any problems with any product you wish to represent, such as coaching sites, software sites or news sites. Also, there are quite a few non U.S. players at the Rio, so if you have a website aimed at players from outside the U.S. there is some value there as well.

This year there are not even any poker related booths beyond the Poker Players Alliance and a couple of poker news sites. This is the year to get to the Rio and be seen without getting drowned out by all of the noise that the online poker rooms created in years past.

It seems so many marketing departments in online poker have just completely given up. Some affiliates are selling out while others are lowering or completely dropping their advertising budgets. An affiliate with a long term goal that has financially planned for a time like this can really use this bump in the road to their advantage. I feel the affiliates that buy and invest now will be rewarded in the future for their risk.

If you do not have a blog starting one is easy and extremely cheap. You can take two approaches. You can start a blog on a new domain and use it to link to your affiliate site or you can add the blog directly to your affiliate website. There are advantages to doing it each way.

Google loves blogs. The content is always unique and typically it will be relevant to the website that you are trying to promote. If your website is about poker then your blog can be about anything in the gambling industry and still be relevant. It could be about your Las Vegas trip. You could also write about your online poker sessions. Writing an opinion piece about industry news is great too. The key is to make the content unique and update the blog at least three times a week. It may take weeks or even a couple of months to see the results if you go this route but it will pay off.

If you choose to put the blog on a domain different than your affiliate website you can use the blog to link to your website. This would be the best option for an affiliate website needing quality backlinks. You need to link to more than just your site from your blog. You should also link to other websites that are related to your industry and also link to news stories about your industry. Find top ranking sites for your keywords and link to them. All of these will help your blog's reputation.

Next you need to get a couple of links to your blog. Affiliate forums will often let you use a signature in their forum. Poker Affiliate Listings is a great example of this. Take advantage of that and link it to your new blog. From there the Google Bot will find you and index your site. The more you update your blog the more the Google Bot will visit your website. The more the Google Bot visits your website the more likely your posts will show up in relevant searches. If you work hard on updating your blog several times a week then Google will really reward you. You will move up on searches and eventually your posts will start to appear in Google almost instantly.

The other option is to install the blog on your existing website. If you already have a lot of backlinks then this will be the best solution. Google will reward your affiliate website for having fresh content added on a regular basis. This will raise Google's respect for your domain which will in turn help you with your affiliate website's search engine results.

On top of helping your website out with fresh content I have learned that blogging has helped to keep my creativity high. The more I write on my blog the more I want to write anything. One idea can lead to another and then another. This can help your overall work performance because new ideas is what makes an entrepreneur successful.

You may not think that you have enough time for a blog but you would be surprised. A blog post can be as few as 250 words and still get Google's respect. A 300 word blog post might take only 20-30 minutes on a topic that does not require research. Even a long blog post that requires research might only take an hour.

vBulletin is the blog software that we use here. It is easily integrated with a forum if your website has one. With vBulletin you can also have a section where your forum members can create blogs. This is free content for your website. Wordpress is another popular blog software that I use on my personal blog. It is easy to use and easily modified with thousands of plugins and themes.

Fresh content is one of the keys to internet marketing and a blog is a great way to produce fresh content on a regular basis. The sooner you start a blog the sooner Google will reward you for fresh, unique content.

Regardless of the size of your PAS site building relationships with your players is very important. In most cases poker rooms do not have VIP hosts that make sure their players receive a VIP experience. This is where you can come in and make your players feel special.

If you are a small PAS publisher then you can add your MSN, Skype and/or AIM account information to your website. You can add it to your index page and your contact page. This will give your players a personal experience from day one. It will also help with conversions. A player may not be sold on one of your offers and may have questions. If a player can contact you live then you can take that opportunity to close the sale.

Larger poker affiliate websites may not be able to use standard chat programs because of the number of players they have. It would be very time consuming to offer live support over commonly used chat programs. There are several options for a large affiliate.

A large affiliate could create their own VIP program. Part of this VIP program could be to offer the higher volume players a VIP host on MSN, Skype and/or AIM. Live chat could be offered only during certain hours or could just be on when it is convenient for the website owner and staff. Another option is to buy live chat software like ProvideSupport. Live support software like that one can be used for under $10 a month. This would make it so that players would wait in a queue. This is important because standard chat programs can put the support person in a situation where they have multiple conversations going. This can be confusing.

Even if you do not want to do live support then you can still give your players a personal experience. Look through your reports and find players that are high volume. Send them an email telling them how much you appreciate their play and that you are there if they need anything. Follow up every couple of months to make sure that they are happy. You can become a VIP host for your players just by sending an email every month or two. It is likely that your players will never need anything but if they do they will be very satisfied that you were there.

Creating relationships with your players is a key to player retention. Too often online poker rooms have forgotten about this. If you can fill that hole and make your players feel like they are more than a rake machine then you will be rewarded with higher value players because they will be happier and play longer. Even if they stop playing at one room they will be more likely to sign up through you for another online poker room because of your support and involvement.