Poker69's Affiliate Blog

Back on Thursday I posted a thread asking for a review of my site, which was focused on betting on the biggest North American sporting event of the year - The Super Bowl.

When I posted the thread the site was on a default wordpress theme with about 5 pages of content. I was seeing some traffic come in a couple days before the Super Bowl and wanted to take advantage of it, trying to get conversions to some sportsbooks.

After the initial post I got some great feedback, including a huge in depth review from Dealer Dan, that made me realize a bunch of stuff that I didn't really think about. If you haven't read the thread I suggest you go read it now.

From the information I gathered there was a couple things I needed to do to the site in order to gain trust from visitors and get conversions.

Here is the end version so you can relate -> Bet on Super Bowl
Here is the original version -> Original Super Bowl Site

Looks/Design:

I personally hate the default wordpress theme, but I am fairly new to wordpress and haven't really found a place with other good themes that are simple for me to use and understand. The site looked ugly on the wordpress theme I had it on so I decided to go to my "bread and butter" and switch it over to a static template I've used for a shit load of sites.

I customized the template and little bit and then sent Eduardo (eyenod) a message to see if he could whip me up a header. Of course he had it to me extremly fast and in about two hours I got the site switched over to a much nicer looking template

Content:

There were a couple comments on the content, firstly the way it was laid out in big blocks (combined with the fact that the wordpress theme is so skinny it looked awful), and secondly that I didn't have enough content.

I could only get 3 pages on content added to the site for this year because I have another bigger sports betting portal that really needed like 20+ super bowl articles posted. But I fixed up and added to all of the pages on the site to make sure that they were good quality articles, and worked on making them flow better.

Over the next year I am going to be adding a bunch of content to the site to get ready for next years game.

Conversions:

I replaced most of the banners with text call to actions. Down the left hand side I listed the sportsbook with the best odds, best banking options, and best high roller bonus. I think giving visitors a choice to suit their needs will probably equal more click throughs then a banner would.

I put up a Crazy Egg script on the site to track visitors, but I had so many things running through my mind on the weekend I forgot to change it when I made updates so it didn't really work out. The one thing I did learn from the stats its showing is that on the homepage the #1 site listed got twice as many clicks as number 2 and 3.

E-mail Capture:

Capturing e-mails has been brought up by a couple really smart people (Dealer Dan, Dave, J.Goff), and although I started it on some bigger sites, I don't know why I wasn't taking advantage of it on others.

This Super Bowl site was a perfect time to capture e-mails, and I wish I had more time to make a mini e-book or something about sports betting, etc. I ended up getting an Aweber form set up in the sidebar as well as one that pops up when people visited the homepage (I had to change it half way through so it only pops up once to each visitor). From this I only managed to grab like 4 e-mails (one was Enke lol), but hey if I converted 1 of those people through my broadcast it was worth it.

The Hard Numbers

Regrettably I managed to F up somehow with the separate trackers at Sportsbook.com (me and Stephen were PM'ing back and forth trying to figure it out and I guess I had done it wrong and they were all going to my normal tracker). And the other two books Bodog and 5Dimes don't even give you separate tracking (that I know of?).

So I really don't have any solid numbers on sign ups or revenue from the site specifically, as it is all mixed up with my other big sports betting site. But I can say that overall the Super Bowl was my personal best day ever in RMPs as an affiliate. Sports betting has a lot of potential man, I love it.. more about that at the bottom of the post though.

Traffic - Again a little disappointed in the numbers but I wasn't ranking for many real big terms. This year was just the start for me. If I can get the site ranking for various Super Bowl terms it will get a ton of traffic. I had just under 400 visitors Super Bowl Sunday, 180 Saturday, 262 Friday, and 1365 overall. Of the visitors 760 were Google visits and 67 were from Bing. I had over 500 different terms searched for that brought visitors to the site.

The way I look at it is from those 1000+ visits I had 5 conversions for $500+ revenue or whatever it was definitely worth my time. This site isn't a one time thing, as every year the Super Bowl will continue to be huge (record numbers this year). Here's a awesome quote from Dealer Dan:

Seriously ask yourself - if someone comes up and asks about betting on the Superbowl and asks you "What is the best website for information on betting on the Superbowl?". Could you honestly say yours is the best? I'd be working and working until I could honestly answer that "Yes, my site IS the best."

I want my answer to be YES next year. If I can answer that question with a YES and I SEO the shit out of the site I think it can be a huge money maker for me.

Posting that site review was one of the best things I've done in a long time, it really opened my eyes and got me motivated for a number of different reasons.

Whats Next?

I've got a project I'm starting up today for another big event. I am going to start a "Blog Series" over at CAL that will go step by step on the creation of the site. I will be as detailed as possible, and will of course be posting numbers and results and everything during and after. I'll make sure I have separate trackers set up so we can get some sure numbers as well.

I decided to do this for a couple reasons... It will motivate me and make me work hard, I will for sure be accepting input and critique (hopefully I get lots), I will be learning stuff as I go, and it will probably be really interesting for others to follow along (especially newer affiliates).

The site will be a sports related site, but the things that go into creating a sports betting site are very similar to a poker portal. This is also possibly a way to get some more traffic over at CAL... I am getting into more casino and sports betting stuff and would to see more members over there posting. I also hope other PAL members get into sports betting, because I barely look at it as competition... it creates more opportunity for building links, etc. that will help out more then hurt.

Anyway I will get that Blog Series started later today with part 1 for anyone who is interested.

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EDIT - I got my blog series going over at CAL, check it out and comment!

Creating an Affiliate Site From Scratch
Part 1 - Research and Planning