Poker69's Affiliate Blog

Creating a Site From Scratch - Part 2 - Getting Started

If you haven't read Part 1 - Research and Planning go do that now

Part 2 - In this part of the blog series I will be going over what I do to start a site once I have the template ready, and my planning all finished.

The Template:

One of the things I have been focusing on lately is the looks of my sites. In my opinion an ugly website can instantly turn off a visitor and will only make it harder to convert that visitor into a sign up. I had been using some ugly designs for some sites, like the default wordpress theme or a plain theme with a header I whipped up in paint (just embarrassing).

I knew for a site like this, that I want to have thousands of visitors to, that I needed a nice looking and clean template.

After sending in instructions for my custom template, I received it a couple days later. I was amazed by the looks of the template when I first got it up for a preview... just perfect and exactly how I was hoping it turned out. I want to give a plug here for Eduardo, who can create some awesome and clean looking templates - visit his Eyenod Design website to check out his stuff or contact him.

Taadaa the March Madness Predictions template is up and looking beautiful.

Choosing The Affiliate Programs To Work With:

When I am ready to start building my site I like to know which affiliate programs I am going to be promoting, so that I can include it naturally within my articles and on the site.

When I choose programs to work with I look at a couple things...

The affiliate program must be a program that will make me money. Well of course right? When I say this I mean they must be top converting programs, that will give me a fair commission. Because I mostly choose MGR when working with sportsbooks, it must be a program I think will be around for a while so I can actually earn the "lifetime revenue" (which is hopefully at least twice what I would make with a CPA plan).

I also make sure that the affiliate programs I am promoting have a solid product (in this case sportsbook). Because I am on revenue share I want to make sure that my players will be happy there and continue to bet there, hopefully for their lifetime of sports betting online. For example, If a sportsbook doesn't pay out their players, the players will stop betting there, and I won't be making money.

The affiliate program must also be an overall solid affiliate program, with good affiliate managers, reasonable payment times, good marketing materials, etc.

Three Sportsbook Affiliate Programs I am working with and recommend:
Commission Account (sportsbook.com)
Bodog
5Dimes

Right now my no doubt top sportsbook affiliate program to work with is Commission Account (Sportsbook.com). Not only do they have a great sportsbook that is US friendly, they have an awesome AM (Stephen), who is very active on the PAL forums which is a big + for me. They have an exceptional program and I highly recommend working with them (you can use my aff. link above if you want to check them out ).

Launching The Site:

Since I had everything planned out, the next step I took over the weekend was launching the site.

When I got the template I organized it exactly how I wanted it. I put the sportsbooks in the position along the right as I had planned, and then fixed up all my links in the navigation to make them exactly how I wanted them (had this planned out in the research and planning stage).

I was writing content before I got the template so I had a bit of a head start. Once I got the template I posted up the pages I had already written and messed around with a couple things to get it looking nice. Over the last few days I have been working on writing some more articles and getting them posted up too.

Two important things that I look at when posting my content for the site launch are interlinking and on page SEO.

First of all when I write my content I like to make sure that most articles are as in depth as I can make them, and I try to include my keywords I am targeting a couple of times (in a natural way). When I post them up I always try and do a couple basic on page SEOing, such as using H2 tags and bolding keywords when appropriate. I then scan through the page and find anywhere that I can interlink to another article on my site, as long as it makes sense to the visitor as well.

Now What? The site is ready to be launched. This is where I start pointing links towards the site, while I continue to build it out. I have about 17 pages up there right now and within the next week I want to make that 30+. This week I will be doing some SEO'ing and continue to build up the site.

Part 3 - SEO'ing and Preparing For Visitors (Coming Wednesday or Thursday)

My first post didn't get many comments, but I am hoping there are some readers out there finding this useful or entertaining. Let me know your thoughts in the comments..