Sebastian

Hey Guys,

I feel I have a solid understanding of this game now, thanks in part to some amazing affiliates who helped me out on PAL. Since I like to share, here is how I would break down poker affiliating success, with the knowledge I have today:

Poker Affiliating Is About Converting Targeted Traffic

For me controlling comes before converting. If you optimize your site for "durrrr", you will have no control over your visitors, and you won't be able to convert them. Why would a guy typing in "durrrr" in a search bar sign up at Pokerstars ? Instead if you would optimize for "safest poker sites", you would understand visitor intent. This gives you control, because you can now show your visitors how to fulfill a need.

Visitors Are Looking For the Best Way Out Of Your Site

Visitors only stay a few minutes on your site at best. Truth be told, they don't really care about how great your design is, or the quality of content. They are looking for the best way to exit AND accomplish an action at the same time. If you don't give them a compelling way to exit, they will exit using backspace.

OK so what do you do with this knowledge?

You add calls to actions, above the fold, tailored to the referral query. You don't place too much text above the fold, and make the calls to action very apparent. For example => safest poker site # 1 is / safest poker site # 2 is. Keep it simple.

People want something, you give it to them. You fulfill a need and get paid for it.

The Long tail is Much Longer than you think

Don't worry if you're not ranking for "poker sites" on page 1 when you start. Do this instead. By an exact match domain name that has value, but isn't ultra- competitive. Find converting long tails and start adding them to the title tags of your internal pages. Interlink all of your internal pages to the homepage using anchors related to the domain name. Your internal pages will convert by themselves, and will push value to your homepage.

Affiliating isn't a waiting game, where you retire by making top 3 for a keyword. You can't just sit there and wait 1 year for this to happen. Follow this recipe for your content, and you'll start making money right away.

Sebastian

PS: add me to msn if you're interested in discussing this more, exchanging links, etc...