New to the affiliate game, wondering about the advantages of being a sub-affiliate

[ghstfckill]

Hi all, first post

I've been doing a ton of research the last couple days, just starting to explore the poker/affiliate world and I was wondering about the advantages of being a sub-affiliate?

I've found sites such as PokerAffiliateWorld, and PokerAffiliateSolutions that offer all in one solutions for rakeback etc, but how much as an affiliate are you giving up to these sites? Or is it totally standard when starting out to work with these affiliate networks and then branch off on your own? If the info is out there in another location I'd love a link, if not any help you can give would be super appreciated!!

[Laurence]

It's perfectly normal to start out with networks like that, but I have found that it's quite a burden not to have any personal contact with the poker room. It makes you pretty much unable to set up customized tournaments for your site / community, and they usually don't keep themselves up to date with the latest developments and promotions. On the upside, the deals are usually much better than any new affiliate would get when affiliating directly.

As for a great gambling affiliate resource, take a peek over at Dealer Dan's Affiliate Bible | An invaluable guide for all gambling affiliates. Contact the owner, alias DealerDan, personally if you'd like - he tends to offer a helping hand.

Now go out young jedi, and make the world proud by not laying your hands on the millionth standard mini site and make a creative authority portal instead.

[ghstfckill]

Haha, yeah one of my primary goals when making the decision to enter this business is to do something that was outside the mold of the "million standard mini site" model. That being said, I'm smart enough to realize that there are some very successful people in this industry and i'd be a fool to not seek out their help if its offered. Thanks for the input!! Would love to hear anybody else's thoughts on Pro's/Con's of creating affiliate relationships yourself or going through a super affiliate to do it for you.

[Poker Affiliate Solutions]

It's perfectly normal to start out with networks like that, but I have found that it's quite a burden not to have any personal contact with the poker room. It makes you pretty much unable to set up customized tournaments for your site / community, and they usually don't keep themselves up to date with the latest developments and promotions. On the upside, the deals are usually much better than any new affiliate would get when affiliating directly.

As for a great gambling affiliate resource, take a peek over at Dealer Dan's Affiliate Bible | An invaluable guide for all gambling affiliates. Contact the owner, alias DealerDan, personally if you'd like - he tends to offer a helping hand.

Now go out young jedi, and make the world proud by not laying your hands on the millionth standard mini site and make a creative authority portal instead.

Hi Laurence,
I very rarely speak to the cons that get pointed out about working with networks such as mine, I dont want to offend or incite an attack and defend argumentative thread. There are pros and cons to going alone, choosing a network, or using a blend of the two. Your post created a need for me to clarify a few things on the downsides you listed as they are misinformed.

We most certainly can offer any sort of customized tournament for a publishers userbase. They can slice up their userbase however they want to to determine eligible tournament participants. Our ability to offer it, is no different than if one were to go alone. All that is unique about our taking care of this process, is the list of players(all obtainable in publishers admin, with advanced selection criteria/sorting), tournament structure/requirements, and participation requirements are determined by the publisher and paid for by the publisher. Due to our scale and size, we get a lot more operator buy in to these ideas, quicker turn around time in getting them up and running, and more willingness for the operator to share(not always guaranteed) in the promotional costs.

In terms of up to date content on site promos/bonuses. The content, creative, direction, design, UI/UX of a publishers website is 100% customizable and in the hands of the publisher. Our API enables a publisher to have full creative control of his/her website while still getting maximum service from PAS. If a publishers isnt happy with our timeliness in reporting the items you mentioned and its of importance to them, there is nothing standing in the way of that publisher obtaining that information, and publishing it on their website themselves.

The mini site/cookie cutter thing that is tossed around is a frustrating misnomer that id like to try and dispell. PAS has grown and evolved so much from the rakeback whitelabel site it once was. Our drive to be THE poker affiliate network over the past 2 years has broadened our capacity and capabilities tremendously. We have ~3000 publishers, so there are at least that many websites we power, as some have multiple sites. Bottom half of our publisher bell curve of these sites dont see a lick of traffic. The middle towards the hi end of the bell curve have several users, have publishers who dont put any effort into bettering their site. They rely on word of mouth, and dont 'work' on their site. We cant make someone realize the importance of onsite marketing, development, to the success of your poker affiliate business, hence these two parties comprising the cookie cutters that are out there. The hi end of the bell curve has the real professional internet marketers, many of which people are not aware of due to the seamlessness or desire of the publisher for non reference of PAS. Below is an example of such a publisher we recently started working with.

A recent partnership we did is a great example of our customability, adaptability, what have you...RakeBackNation was tired of running that site, wanted to free up time to focus elsewhere, relieve overhead burdens, and still share in the profits of what they built. Their site is completely operated top to bottom by them as it was before our transition and they utilize our API to access the administrative components of PAS services, power their data feeds, user information gathering, administrative functions, etc.... We managed this transition in a bit over a week, thats a sizeable RB business that has been around for 7 years, with tens of thousands of players, and multiples of that in poker accounts, . We took over management of their affiliate accounts, and virtually everything you can think of in terms of administration, leaving them to do what they do best, be internet marketers. The biggest compliment in this, was the seamlessness of the transition to their users. I mention this case to reference the flexibility and the advanced capabilities of PAS and what it is designed to accomplish.

I encourage people to ask us about concerns they have with PAS as well as approach us with any sort of business development ideas(it can never hurt to throw out a line, worst thing that happens is a connection was made). I know you will be pleasantly surprised at the advanced capabilities of the systems, our processes, abilities and staff.

wow, i got carried away here with self promotion. i apologize, im proud of what weve done, are doing, and will do. if its too much, please nuke.

chris

[Laurence]

Lol, I was talking about PAW more than PAS. Sorry if you took offense, or felt the need to clarify. The mini site madness is also something that the most website owners seem to choose themselves, and has nothing to do with your API, or at least that's not what I meant. It beats me why some people choose to go for some sloppy dealer theme instead of getting a custom one made and then cut by a coder. Sure, it's cheap, but it also makes for some ugly ass waste of web space.

[ghstfckill]

Hey Chris, appreciate the response and the passion. As someone that's brand new in the business I'd rather have way more information in a response then a short canned one liner. I'll be contacting you guys next week to talk and see what all you guys can offer. And thanks again Laurence I'm going to contact DealerDan as well. If there are any other affiliates that are using/used a super affiliate, I'd love to hear your opinions on what you feel like the best option for a new affiliate is.