New Affiliate - Advice Please

[AffiliateWizard]

Hi Guys,

I am new to all this and have a few questions that are currently going through my mind!

Basically I have -

1. Registered a bunch of domain names
2. Setup hosting with Justhost
3. Installed Wordpress and found a bunch of templates to play around with

I also attended the Affiliate show thing in amsterdam a few weeks back.

So, a few questions to start -

a) I have registered several domains name for different categories of sites - acesonlinecasinos.com, acesonlinepokersites.com, acesonlinerackback.com. I was thinking of starting with acesonlinecasinos.com focusing purely on online casinos?

b) I have downloaded and signed up to every casino I can find (although I'm sure there are more out there). I wanted to to review and rate each and every casino I can find and have a link/banner against each review. This would means signing up to every affiliate program going. Is there any reason why I should not take this approach? Is there any reason not to sign up to all the affiliate programs going? Or is it advisable to partner with just one or two affiliates? What's the strategy here?

c) Is wordpress the way forward for creating my sites? It seems that lots of people recommend it but obviously I know next to nothing about it at present so I don't know how flexible it is or what can be done with it. I do have a copy of dreamweaver (and photoshop). Can I create a site in wordpress and then edit it in dreamweaver if I run into limitations with wordpress?

d) I have received a couple of emails when I first signed up here with offers of help and potentially becoming a "sub-affiliate" I think is the idea? What is the deal with this mentoring - is it advisable or do you get less revenue. Can you change from being a sub-affiliate to a proper affiliate?

e) I'm thinking that I should really have my site almost completed before signing up as an affiliate because I see that most affiliate programs offer an introductory rate for the first month or three and so therefore it would be a good idea to have the site up and rearing to go before officially signing up as an affiliate the the sites on my website?

f) What's the best way of marketing the site? Obviously there is seo, linking, maybe email spamming, perhaps google adwords? PR in a industry magazine? What works for existing affiliates?

I am sure that I will have a LOT more questions as things progress but these are all I can think of right at this moment. I am obviously feeling pretty overwhelmed at the moment and don't know where to start really. I think I will just start working my way through all the casinos that I signed up to and write reviews for each of them and come up with some kind of rating system for each of them, pros and cons, etc and then use that information as a basis for creating the site, then sign up to every affiliate I can find and put my banners/links against each review of the site and then try and spread the word, I guess. Does this sound like a reasonable plan of action?

I'd really appreciate any help that can be offered to answer some of these questions and any other advice/ideas you might have to help we on my way!

Thank you a lot for your answers and advice!!

Cheers,

Stuart Ray

[Lenny]

Ill try to answer a few of those for you.

B. Dont spread yourself too thin, you dont want to be pushing 20 different casinos when you first start out. My advice would be to promote 5 strong, high quality, casinos. focus on them and keywords for them, once you start getting traffic then you can add more properties.

C. Cant answer this as i tried wordpress and just didnt like it, I stick to dreamweaver and strict html and some php.

d. Subaffiliate does not cost you anything, The affiliate who refers you gets a little extra comission from the company not from you.

e. Yes. Find out which offer a bonus for first 3 months then sign up to them later on hen you can send some players.

f. Seo

G.

[sipka]

My answers:

a) I would suggest pick that domain (niche) you are passionate about. I started with poker, but I wasn't really into poker, so my pokersite died slowly. Last year I started a bingo site, and it works 10 times better than the poker one ever. It is important to chose the one you like if you want to write your content yourself, because you will write better copies for it and they will sell better too. Hazo wrote a great post about it on his blog: Importance of Picking the Right Niche | Successful Affiliate
If you like casinos, then chose the casino vertical first.

b) For starter I agree with Lenny, chose 4-5 affiliate programs and market their properties, you don't want to have $5-$10 at 100 places that you cannot withdraw. When you grow your traffic, then promote a bit more. Be careful upon signing up to programs, not all affiliate program is good out there. My golden rule is to check Affiliate Guard Dog (Casino Affiliate Programs | Affiliate Guard Dog) every time I want a new program to work with. AGD has a great list about good and bad affiliate programs. Check if the program carries over negatives, bundles its casinos, pays on time, etc... If you like what you see about the program, then make a Google search, GPWA forum search about the program. If everything is OK in those threads then go to Casinomeister (Online Casino Information - Player and Casino Advocate - Casinomeister) and read the player comments about the casinos (You want returning players afterall, so a program can offer 80% rev share and the stars, if they are scums to players, 80% of 0 equals 0).

c) Wordpress can be a good starting point, you can setup your site quickly and just concentrate on the content. Plan your site setup and chose the method that fits well into your plans and is able to expand with time. You will see that as your site evolves you will want other functions, other features so you need to lay down the groundwork now to allow your site grow naturally in the future. If you prefer to handcode html in Dreamweaver then that is fine too, just remember: if you site reaches 1000s pages, it will be extremely difficult to maintain a handcoded website.

d) Lenny said it right, you are a proper affiliate, just you signed up under someone else, and that person gets a little share after your revenue share. It isn't deducted from your earning, it is handled by the program.
GPWA has a section for casino sign-ups, where you can join the chain if you want, so you can have others under you as your subaffiliate (a bit more earnings)

e) Yes, at some programs you might want to wait until your site is established and has traffic enough to use the first months bonus rev share.

f) Do not ever think about email spamming, it's sad to see that as a new affiliate you identify casino affiliating with spam, it's not your fault of course, but the fault of those unethical webmasters who think that spamming is the way to go and make our industry look like a spammer band. At the best programs you cannot go far with spamming either, as they will close down your account, so your earnings will be lost. A reputable program also has a clause against spamming and they strictly forbid it.
If you don't have $$$$ in your pocket to pay for an introductory campaign of your site then your best starting point can be SEO, some article releases to article directories to gain some backlinks, but I wouldn't spend a lot of time on link building at the beginning, just push out great content, set up a Google Webmaster Tools account, analyze your Google Analytics, find long tail keywords (you won't rank for online casino in 5-10 years lol) so by targeting long-tail keywords you can get traffic right away.

Your plan about writing reviews sounds good, but you might want to write pages with specific long-tail keywords related to depositing methods, regions, etc.. (everyone is writing casino reviews it will be hard to rank good for "XY casino review" and in my experience these kind of keywords are just informative keywords, they won't convert that well like the "call-to-action" keywords). What I mean: Player1 is searching for the keyword "XY casino review" - he might just want to know some more about the casino, the review has to be very unique to click through to the casino, stuffed with personal experience, etc...(and if the casino is not that super popular, the search volume for specific casino names will be quite low, and most of the time the player already has account with the casino just want to know more.)
Player2 is searching for "Moneybookers casinos for Irish players" - it shows he has Moneybookers and want to deposit through this method, he wants to spend money, just he doesn't know where. If you have a page around this keyword, he will find what he wants and will click through if your page has clear call-to-action.
Randy Ray has a great article about how to compose keyword variations, it is about poker keywords, but it can be easily translated to any other vertical. Poker Keyword Research Tools - Poker Keywords and Phrases

Hope this helps, and welcome to CAL and good luck with your venture!

[CK]

Awesome advice from both of you

c) Wordpress can be a good starting point, you can setup your site quickly and just concentrate on the content. Plan your site setup and chose the method that fits well into your plans and is able to expand with time. You will see that as your site evolves you will want other functions, other features so you need to lay down the groundwork now to allow your site grow naturally in the future. If you prefer to handcode html in Dreamweaver then that is fine too, just remember: if you site reaches 1000s pages, it will be extremely difficult to maintain a handcoded website.

This can be hard but it doesnt have to be. Our site is around 700+ pages or something to that effect. John and I have it set up that it acts like a cms in that we use includes for absolutely everything we can to make our lives easier. All menus, tables etc are using an include. The only thing that's different would be the actual design. If I was to change our design now, I would have to edit each page...but thats from not planning early on. If you were to set your template properly Im pretty sure you could accomplish that as well.

Anyway, thought I would just add that.

[Matt Geer]

If you have absolutely no idea about any html, css, php, etc.. I would definitely recommend Word Press. If you happen to go that route and need help getting started or want a quick tutorial on who/what/how/ to use it, pm me and we can set something up. Very easy to use (beginner friendly).

However, unless you learn a little bit of basic html you will become frustrated regardless of what type of program you use. May I suggest:

W3Schools Online Web Tutorials

Start with the html, then xhtml, css, and so forth..its all free and really great because you can input code on one side, hit submit, and it will appear on the right (if done correctly).

If you are willing to spend $10-$25 or so, pick up "head first into html, xhtml, css" <---great book for beginners, the first couple chapters were a refresher for me since i already knew a few things, but everything is explained very easily and in a manner that can be understood.

Hope this helps - Good Luck!

[RockbetJohn]

I'm scanning this post fairly quickly. My advice and tips are:

Wordpress rocks, check the wordpress plugins suggestions by other affiliates here

Check affiliateguarddog.com to see which programs are legit and have terms that don't harm your earnings. Negative carry over and predatory terms and waste your time and money.

Besides posting on the forum seek out an affiliate mentor

Try playing and downloading the casinos that you are reviewing. If you want to promote any product or service you better understand that inside out and the top affiliates always stay on top of the game

Make sure your site provides value. Pretend you were a visitor to your website and ask yourself if you have any reason to stay at the site, tell your friends or click on a link or banner. If you don't have anything special for your players then don't expect them to click on your site, refer friends or ever return again.

Ask your affiliate managers for feedback.

Cheers,

John