I'm looking for some additional high quality partners for Poker Strategy Forums. We have some great existing partners but there is room for some more quality niche sites to drive traffic and achieve critical mass.
There's numerous threads about it, but basically in a nutshell, it's nearly impossible to start a meaningful forum because of market saturation and the success/popularity of some of the better forums. Hence, my idea for a shared biz/traffic model. Please see original post further down for all of the nitty, gritty details.
Some of the highlights of PSF in the first year:
- Excellent google rankings for very competitive terms
- Google absolutely loves the site and is there 100's of times a day indexing away. This is great for partners to get keyword topics indexed and crawled quickly.
- A couple of Super High Quality Las Vegas Pro's who contribute and answer questions on a regular basis as well as several very high quality members and a couple of non-paid moderators.
- Very Little Spam. I'm super aggressive about getting rid of junk posts and gibberish. Very little spam (and if it does squeak through it gets deleted quickly). Motto is "When in doubt, throw it out"
- High Quality Design with lots of nice mods to enhance the users experience.
This offer for quality partnerships won't last for ever, once the site hits critical mass (which should be soon) those parnters who jumped on early and contributed to the forums success will benefit greatly
I'm attaching the original informational post from last year as pretty much everything is still relevant.
Original Post from PAP Last year:
Most affiliates understand the importance of having a Forum, but very few are really successful at implementing, and sustaining an active forum. Forums are difficult to start for several reasons, some of which are:· Existing Forums – Hey let’s face it; there are some great forums out there, CardsChat.com, 2+2, FlopTurnRiver.com, etc. Why would someone join a new forum, when there are lots of other very active forums?
· Web Site Traffic – Not everyone that visits your site is going to be interested in participating in a poker forum but some will and if you don’t have a place to send them, they will look elsewhere (and might not come back). It takes a sizeable chunk of traffic to drive enough potential forum members to make a “community”. If people aren’t posting, and getting answers to their questions the forum dies.
· Active Management of Forum – Successful forums need active moderators who know what they are talking about to stimulate discussions, manage spam, and ban abusive posters and unwanted trolls.
Basic Information about the forum software & design for PokerStrategyForums.com· Custom Web 2.0 VBulletin Skin
· VBSEO Plug-in for SEO optimization
· Customized Banner Rotation system for individual forums (more on this below )
· Online hand import system for graphical display of online hand histories.
Types of Partners I’m looking for:· Niche Websites - For example Sit N Go Strategy, Coaching Websites, Foreign Language websites, Game specific type websites (Omaha, 7-card Stud, Razz, Mixed games, etc). Basically, your site should add some value to the content at PokerStrategyForums.com and ideally you are an expert of your niche topic.
· Websites with Nice Clean Designs & Quality Content, no banner farms, etc.
· Responsible Webmasters with reasonable morals & ethics. The participating webmasters are going to require a certain amount of trust amongst each other for everyone’s mutual success.
Why you should partner with PokerStrategyForums.com· Solid group of successful affiliates partnering together with a common purpose of providing a useful service for their website visitors.
· Create discussions and topics with quality keyword back links about articles on your website. High quality, context sensitive back links are becoming increasingly important in Google, not to mention it gets expensive buying links, and if Google discovers you purchased links you may not receive any value from those links.
· Website included in banner rotation on index page of Poker Strategy Forums
· Control 60% of banner advertising within your forum. You can sell the banner space; use it for your own sites, etc. Some limitations may be placed on the types of ads, for example ads to other poker forums, possibly rakeback sites, etc. Basically, if the ads are bad for the community as a whole, they won’t be allowed.
· Website included in monthly/quarterly newsletter correspondence with members list
· Highly targeted traffic, most visitors will arrive at Poker Strategy Forums looking to discuss topics they read about or are interested in.
· I anticipate getting several Las Vegas Pros to participate in the forums, meaning that posters should be able to get reliable, solid advice to their questions. I’ve played professionally in Las Vegas for over 7 years, and I am friends with and have access to several high profile players, card player magazine columnists, etc. As I get commitments from various players I will add them to the list of Participants.
Answers to some Anticipated Questions:· Why would I send traffic to PokerStrategyForums.com, when I could just start my own forum?o Forums are tough to start; most sites just don’t have the critical mass needed to keep a community going.
o Most, if not all of your website visitors are surfing other websites and some of those website visitors are participating in poker forums. By sending traffic to PokerStrategyForums.com, you at least maintain some control of where your visitors exit. For lack of a better term, call it an “exit strategy”.
o Back links, in case you missed it above. The niche sites selected to partner with Poker Strategy Forums will be able to create back links to relevant topics and articles on their websites.
o Poker Strategy Forums is partnering with some great sites which will be in a different niche than your site. You will gain some traffic from them; they will gain some traffic from you, etc. We all lose traffic to other sites every day, you might as well lose some traffic to people you are in business with and who are targeting a different niche, and in this case you stand to gain some traffic from others websites, so it’s basically a win-win situation.
· How many back links can I create in my posts?o A reasonable amount J I don’t want to really set any limits. Back links when used responsibly should be relevant, point to an article on your website you wish to discuss, etc. Ideally, there would be only one back link in any given article, although there are certainly occasions or posts that more back links would be reasonable.
o Basically, you should be able to read the post without it feeling spammy. Responsible webmasters will know what is right, and if anyone get’s overly ambitious they will politely be asked to tone down the links.
· What if two different webmasters who are targeting the same niche want to partner with Poker Strategy Forums?o Most likely, we will only have one expert per niche, so in this example the website with the best design, content, traffic, would most likely be chosen as a Partner.
o Possible exceptions might be in the category of “Poker Coaching” for example. Because it is a Poker Strategy Forum, it would likely benefit everyone if there is more than one Poker Coach available.
I’m sure that I’ve probably missed some items or relevant questions, so feel free to post any additional questions you may have.
If your interested in partnering with Poker Strategy Forums, please send an email to Jason (at)PromotePoker.com with the following information, and any additional information that you think is important in deciding to partner with your site:· Contact information (name, email, PAL username, Skype name if you prefer, etc)
· Desired Niche Forum ( for example Sit N Go’s, Mixed games, etc)
· URL of current site
· Brief paragraph or two of why you think your site would be a good fit for PokerStrategyForums.com
Jason
Aka “The Good Karma Kid”
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Poker Strategy Forums: New Biz Model - Quality Partners Wanted
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