Advertising a poker affiliate program offline

Many poker affiliate programs offer the opportunity to promote their services offline with the use of fliers and such. If you move in the right crowd, promoting a poker room this way can earn you quite a bit of money.

Even though poker attracts people from all ages, the typical online player is a young male. If you are a student, in the military or involved in a team-sport, you are surrounded by potential poker players. Most probably, a few of them are already involved in online gambling, but if you handle your cards right, you can make them join a new one, thus making you a commission when they play.

If you have a lot of friends somewhat interested in poker, why not suggest a weekly game? But, instead of meeting at someone’s house, find an online poker room offering private tables and/or private tournaments.

Many will object to the idea, stating it’s not the same thing. They are right, it’s not, but there are upsides you should point out;

You do not need to shuffle the cards.

After a night of poker, quite a bit of time has been spent just waiting for the cards to be dealt. Online poker doesn’t require shuffling, and the process of dealing the cards are done in a fast manner.

No more discussion of rules

In many home games, there are added rules. For people not used to them, they can be very surprising and sometimes extremely costly. With an online poker room, standard rules apply, and there is no room for discussion.

Much more poker

When attending a home game, it’s not rare people get drunk, or are more interested in talking about Bob’s new boyfriend, than playing cards. When you are there to play, this can be annoying to say the least.

Invite whomever you want

Home games are limited to the room you are playing in, the amount of tables etc. Online, you can virtually be any number of players, while most home games tend to max out at 10 players or so. If some of the regular players isn’t housebroken, playing online takes away the problem of explaining to your wife/husband why there’s beer and chips everywhere, including the children’s room and in the shower.

Long lost friends can join.

If you had a game with your college friends, why not email them and invite them as well? Playing online makes it possible for anyone, anywhere to join your game.

If you are inviting your friends to play poker online, you might want to share the rewards with them. Nothing can break a friendship faster than someone cheating the other. Telling them about your plans or sharing the reward eliminates this risk. If you are actively promoting the poker room to colleagues, classmates or acquaintances is a whole other story, that’s about actually making money.

Due to the high competition of online poker, you stand a very good chance of finding an affiliate program offering good incentives for players (i.e. high sign up bonus, rake-back or such) and good commission for recruiting new players. Depending on who you plan to invite to the poker room, you should check out the special features available. Many poker rooms offer private tables and tournaments among other things.

Just inviting your friends can make you quite a bit of money, if you manage to actually promote it to a wider audience; you stand a chance of making a small fortune.

Choosing Commission Model For Poker Affiliate Programs

One of the most profitable niches for an affiliate marketer is with no doubt online poker. If you have a poker website making money it is fairly easy, but make sure you are choosing the right commission model for your affiliate program; fixed commission, revenue share or a combination of both. Use this fairly simple way of calculating which commission to choose.

Sending players to various online poker rooms is a lucrative business. Due to the very high competition, the poker affiliate programs need to offer very high commissions to attract new affiliates. For webmasters, this is as good as it gets.

The typical poker affiliate program offers variations of commission, making it possible for you to analyze your traffic and referred players, helping you choose the best model for you and your site. It is not always easy to know the break-even point for revenue share vs. fixed commission, but if you know your visitors, all you need is a calculator.

You need some information about the players you refer. This is sometimes hard to know, but usually you can use a rough estimate. The more information available to you, the better you will understand your players. Try to find out – or guess – the following:

• Referred players average limit (player level)

• Type of game preferred (limit/no-limit, stud, Omaha etc.)

• Table size preferences (usually 6 or 10 players/table)
  

To find this information out, you can use any method available; a poll on your page isn’t a bad idea, one or a few easy questions will get many answers, making it easier to estimate the above details. There are numerous ways of getting to know your visitors, but that would be another topic, and therefore beyond the scope of this article. If you have no information about your visitors, or if you are yet to build your site, look at a few different levels (of limit games) to see the impact on your revenue. The same applies with table size and type of game, investigate and evaluate.

What you need to know about the affiliate program is the following:

• Rake percentage (the percentage the poker room earns from every pot)
  

• Revenue share (the percentage of the rake paid to the affiliate)

• Average number of players on active tables (on the referrer’s player level)

Find the average number of players seated at the tables, as well as the average pot. This information is given at almost all poker rooms. If you can’t find the information in the affiliate interface, log in as a player and look directly at the tables.

Then calculate as follows:

(rake percentage x average pot x revenue share) / average seated players

This gives you the average commission for one played hand.

Look at their fixed commissions and do another quick calculation:

Fixed commission / earnings per hand

This gives you the number of hands the referred players has to be part of, before you make more from revenue share than from the fixed commission.

If you want to know the time each player has to spend in the poker room to make up for the fixed commission, all you need to find is the average pots per hour. This information is also available in almost every poker room. Then simply calculate:

Number of hands (from the calculation above) / hands per hour

Giving you an estimate of the time each player has to spend in the poker room before you start earning more than the fixed commission.

Now you have a few more parameters to consider before choosing your revenue model for poker affiliate programs, take your time – it is well worth it.

Poker affiliate programs – Look beyond the obvious

If you have a site about poker, casinos or gambling in general, you stand a good chance of making a nice profit by using various affiliate programs. But, choosing a program solely on its pay per sale percentage won’t necessarily maximize your revenue. Looking at your visitors – and what they are looking for – will make it easier to choose a new poker affiliate program.

The online gambling industry is one of the most profitable niches for an affiliate marketer. But, due to its potential revenue, the competition is very hard, and you really need to make the most of every single visitor you get.

The more information you can gather about your visitors, the easier it gets to choose the right affiliate program suiting their needs. Much information can be accessed from your website statistics – or from the account statistics if you are buying traffic with contextual ads. What search terms attract the most traffic? Do you know exactly why they are arriving and where? If the most common search term is very general in its nature, it can be hard to know exactly what the visitors are looking for, but if you are getting visitors from more specific search terms, you should have a pretty good idea as to what your visitors are interested in.

Once you have evaluated your visitors’ needs, it’s time to figure out how to meet them. If you are getting search engine traffic for any term related to poker bonuses, odds are many of your visitors are looking for just that. No matter how good the affiliate program’s percentage, if they do not offer a bonus high enough – or no bonus at all -, most of your visitors won’t sign up, hence not making you a commission. Instead, this would give you an excellent opportunity to find as many poker rooms possible with high sign up bonuses, and hopefully many of your visitors will come back to find a new poker room with a good bonus once they are done with their first choice.

In the same manner you can find affiliate programs matching most keywords, if you have visitors you KNOW are looking for one particular thing – no matter if it’s poker bonuses, Omaha tables or stud – you should try to present them with products and services matching their needs on an as detailed level as possible.

Assuming you have a somewhat good knowledge in the niche you are working within, finding this kind of information can be done rapidly, but the more effort you put into finding the correct casino- or poker affiliate program, the better your traffic will convert. Most often the poker rooms offer trial accounts, making it free and easy to check out both the software, type of games and whether or not it’s a busy poker room or not. All this information is highly important for knowing IF you should use the affiliate program in question, as well as for the marketer choosing what commission plan to use.

The more information you can get hold of – both about your visitors and about the affiliate programs – the better. You should always evaluate the programs joined, to ensure they are converting as expected.