Dealer Dan, pictured here with WWE Superstar Mick Foley, has been in internet marketing since 1996. He likes hugs, long walks on the beach, and making money while wearing his jammy jams. For more information, you can read all 
Welcome to the F.A.Q. section of Affiliate Bible.
This is the section which lists Frequently Asked Questions – basically questions I get asked often enough where rather than repeat myself I’ll just put it here.
It’s worth reading if you’re a new affiliate as there’ll no doubt be questions here you have – or questions you hadn’t thought about yet.
At the bottom is also a contact form – if you have any questions not on here please don’t hesitate to send me an e-mail and I’ll be sure to answer it.
Always happy to help.
I’ve broken this into specific sections.
General Affiliate Questions:
Is there a lot of site maintenance after I’ve launched my website?
It takes a lot of work to launch a poker portal – however once it has launched, the hard work has generally just begun. You have to keep the website fresh, and keep updating it with content. Think about it from a search engine point of view: discounting all other factors, is a 30 article website with no updates in a year going to be better than a 90 article website that gets updates on a daily basis? It’s possible that the website with no updates now has information that is no longer relevant or current, so the search engines don’t want to deliver that sort of content to the visitor.
Other factors that you have to consider once a site has launched is monitoring the visitors with programs like Clicktale, doing split testing, determining what works and what doesn’t work, updating banners, keeping all content relevant and up to date, studying your statistics and so on. You’ll also find that as you go along, there’ll be things you wish you had did differently, so you’ll be going back to work on things like that on a regular basis.
You’ll also have to work on link building and getting links to your website, as web links are an important factor that help in your rankings. Overall once your site is launched: that’s when the real hard work and fun begin.
Should I host my own Advertising Banners?
Practically every affiliate program offers advertising banners that you can use to advertise your products. The majority of these affiliate programs will also allow you to use the banners which are hosted on their servers.
While this can be convenient, I don’t recommend it. For one, this is just yet another DNS Lookup the visitors computer has to do when they visit your website. Second and most importantly, if the affiliate programs server is down that they use to distribute the images, then your visitors are going to be greeted with a big red X.
Also I’ve noticed quite a few affiliate programs decide to delete their banners, and not replace them with any new banners or even notify affiliates that they were removed. Affiliate programs also can change URLs from time to time which will require you to update all banner code.
Unless it’s a dynamic banner that updates based on the latest news or events, host your own banner and save yourself a lot of hassle with red X’s.
Poker Affiliate Questions:
Is being a poker affiliate going to be worthwhile financially?
Unfortunately, this one depends on so many variables that there is no clear cut answer. What is “good money” for one person is a pittance for another person. It also depends on the websites that you run, the competition out there, your search engine rankings and so many other factors.
For example, assuming no competition and similar traffic for a moment, if you put the same amount of work into a poker rakeback website compared to a website on poker rules, you’re going to see a large bigger return on the rakeback site than you are the rules site, even if they have the same amount of content etc. However then you bring in all the competition, and suddenly that all changes.
The main thing is, while making money should be your primary goal, you’ll also need a passion for your website, and the topics that you are writing about or focusing on. The Gambling Affiliate Market is not something that you can just pop in and make thousands overnight on. It’s a very tough, competitive market and requires a lot of hard work.
How long until I make money as a poker affiliate?
As you can imagine, all websites are different. The topic of your website is crucial, because certain topics will always make more money than other topics. However then there are a lot of other variables like your search engine rankings, and how often the keywords you are targeting are searched.
The average amount of time it takes for a poker affiliate to start making money is 6 months. I would be more on the cautious side, and state 12 months. So if you are wanting to be a gambling affiliate you have to ask yourself – are you prepared to work 6-12 months without any money, putting in hours upon hours of work per day to make the best possible websites?
Now I should note: one of my mottos is “Hope for the best, Plan for the Worst”. Just because I say 12 months doesn’t mean it will be 12 months. Plus as you go along, as long as you are learning and educating yourself about everything, you should find it a lot easier to make money. I launched a small 40-page poker website last year, and within the first month it was making $1000+ per month. However I also launched a specific casino game website with 30 pages and it took 8 months to see any money from that, due to a visit to the Google Sandbox.
How much money can I make as a Poker Affiliate?
This amount will vary greatly, and a lot can depend on what type of website you run, as well as the demographics of the users that you bring in. In theory, a poker strategy website is the best money earner, because it brings in new players, however teaches them to become better poker players, thus increasing their lifeline as a poker player. If they are on revenue share then this is obviously beneficial to you.
Rakeback affiliates fall under the same category. You are keeping your players in the game by giving a huge percentage of your income away as rakeback. While this can obviously hurt you – earning only 3% as opposed to 30% – a rakeback payment for a player can be the difference in a winning month versus a losing month, and can extend the lifeline of rakeback players.
Therefore in theory, websites that attract the new poker players, the ones that are liable to lose all their money, may not see you make as much gross money as the former two. However new poker players often create a loyalty with the poker room, so will not move sites to get a better rakeback deal, or because they heard the games are softer elsewhere.
Ultimately, you can earn from $0 a month to over $1 Million a month. There are affiliates out there that at the very least gross 7 figures per month.
While there is no set answer to how much you can earn per month as a poker affiliate, if you work hard, and know what you are doing, you should eventually be able to make $5k-$10k per month. That’s not set in stone, but if you work hard, keep yourself educated, and become good at what you do, then you should be able to make that amount at the very least.
How do Poker Affiliates Get Paid?
The methods poker affiliates gets paid varies from program to program. Some poker affiliate programs will put your affiliate earnings into a player account, at which point you can withdraw the money via the same methods and options a player gets. Other programs have an internal system where you can choose how to get paid, ie: player account, e-wallet like Moneybookers or Neteller, Cheque, Bank Draft, then they will either pay you monthly, or you go in once a month and process a withdrawal.
Can Americans be Poker Affiliates?
es they can. Even if a poker room doesn’t accept US poker players, practically all of them accept Americans as affiliates. The only poker room that doesn’t accept American affiliates is PKR. However you can sign up through Poker Affiliate Solutions or Poker Affiliate World and promote them via there.
Is there still money in being a poker affiliate? Is poker affiliation drying up?
The short answers to this are yes, and no.
Things have changed in the poker affiliate landscape, and you will find that a lot of the medium-high earners in the poker affiliate world are already diversifying, and looking into other things. Poker affiliation is definitely on a downward streak due to various factors, some of which include:
– Popularity. Poker just isn’t the “boom” it once was.
– UIEGA: The UIEGA and various other specific country laws that have popped up within the last couple of years have really put a hurt on the online poker world. The biggest poker market is the United States of America, yet it’s just not that easy for an American to deposit anymore. Many new poker players don’t get the chance to become real money players, simply because they have to jump through various hoops to deposit. Even outside the US, it can be difficult to deposit in various countries. It’s not as easy as providing your credit card information anymore
.
– Bad Affiliate Programs: It seems many affiliate programs are forgetting just how important affiliates are, or how affiliates helped them grow and helped get their brand name out there, and are using the clauses in the contract we sign(which basically says “we can screw you anytime”) to actively and retroactively take away affiliate earnings.
– Bad Poker Rooms: Bar a few select rooms, the majority of poker rooms just aren’t that good at player retention anymore. I know many affiliates are frustrated at watching the “1st Deposit” column fill up, while the “Additional Deposits” column remains blank. A large part of this is also due to the skill level of poker players, because even at the lowest limits you will find better poker players than in years past, so new and uneducated players are losing their bankrolls faster.
– Competition: The search engines are very tough to rank high these days for even the most obscure keywords. It’s not impossible by any means but it is very difficult, and rarely will one start making money overnight anymore.
Despite all this, there is still a lot of money to be made in online poker. There are new poker players emerging every day; current poker players looking for new rooms or just waiting to be enticed. The only real difference in 2010 compared to 2004 is this: we actually have to work hard. 6 years ago we could throw up a website overnight and it’d make money. Now it is a lot more difficult, a lot more competitive, and a lot longer journey(the majority of the time). However as long as you know what you are doing, you really can’t help but make money. In September 2009 I launched one poker website and all it had was 40 poker room reviews on it and nothing else. A year later it’s a steady $3k a month earner for me, despite absolutely no work being done on it since launch, other than various marketing techniques.
WordPress Affiliate Questions
How do I change my URLs/Permalinks?
Log into your WordPress backend, and in the sidebar expand the “Settings” tab if it is not already expanded. Click “Permalinks” and you can change it in there.
What is the Best WordPress Permalink Structure?
For all general websites I’d recommend:
/%category%/%postname%/
I personally add an extension at the end like “.php” on some sites for example on Affiliate Bible I use:
/%category%/%postname%.php
The reason i did that was many years ago Google was having troubles identifying directories and pages and I’ve stuck with that. You don’t have to do that.
Misc. Affiliate Questions:
Who is this payment from: Red Giant LTD / support@49erscasino.com ?
That is Focal Click.
This article was written on November 15, 2010 however all articles are looked at on a monthly basis and updated to keep them relevant.
If you need to contact Graeme, please see his Contact Page. If you are an affiliate manager wanting promoted please see this page.
