The process?

[Spry]

i've never done any rake back affiliation so I really can't comment on that part.

A CPA deal means you send a player to a site, they meet a set of requirements, you get a 1 time payment.

A rev share deal means you send a player to a site and you get a % of that players value to the site for the 'lifetime' (i use lifetime loosely) of said player.

A rake back affiliate is essentially are rev share affiliates who give most of the rev share back to the player and keep a smaller cut for themselves.

[RB]

And you wouldn't recommend someone starting fresh to go with the CPA/rev share model? Cheers!

[Spry]

i would recommend CPA

[pokerprop]

Only a very small percentage of players care about rakeback and this removes the natural conversion process. clicking www.pokerstars.com in an article that looks something like this is natural:

PokerStars is world's largest online poker site with more than six times the peak player volume of their closest competitor PartyPoker. Although it's true traffic volume, game selection etc. are great reasons to join PokerStars, the reason I personally choose to play most of online poker via www.pokerstars.com is I'm certain the games are fair and regulated, and in the times I go on a lucky run I am certain I'll have no trouble getting paid.

(the above set the topic. In order to transition, the next paragraph should be about what you said last).

3rd paragraph: Back on the topic of player volume, PokerStars...

(4th paragraph and transition of 3rd).

(conclusion)
_______

Clicking that link is natural. If you had all sort of related topics linked inside the article "naturally" linked where a player becomes interested in what's linked, they might click a link, start reading the next page on your site. They see these www. links through out reading but they don't stand out, they're just natural reference. Were included however was strategic, I built their authority and then gave a real reason to join giving an opportunity to convert but it was natural the text read www.pokerstars.com.

Re: Not being good at writing

This is a grind at first but comes natural in time. Think back to 9th grade about topic paragraphs, sentence structure, transition. Etc and keep reading thinking "how does my article flow". This is why 90% of writers suck - they lack the grade school basics. Serious though I don't know any big words, I don't how to spell, it takes me proof reading 3-5 times to get my article right and it often still has mistakes. I think do an okay job overall though just from having fought through it so long it gets easier and easier in time.

I'd personally say even if you had the money, doing your own content until making money from the site you're working on makes sense. This way you're learning the topic from own research better, but also are gaining experience editing. Down the road you'll certainly want to buy content and get good at fixing it up. If I can edit and make someone elses work great and post it with cross links, images and meta in 45 minute each, I can order 50 articles per month, work 5 days per week and 1h 45m of my time is spent on those days working on and then posting others articles. Not a ton of work and in a year I have 600 pages of content. From here the goal would be to keep trying to find and/or train writers that can write closer to your finished product. this frees up more time and now maybe one hour per working day goes into this, or maybe you start doing 85 or 90 articles per month still working the same amount of time on purchased content.

Additional Advice

Time Management #1
Bankroll Management #2
Everything else #3

The time management is obvious. Bankroll management is not obvious to all start ups. When you get an affiliate payment it is not your. It needs to be divided. So stock them all up for a month or three months or whatever. Then decided okay how much am paying myself. Pay your self that and move it into two account. 1 your own money that is personal, 2 a savings account for taxes. Next take the remainder of what's left and decide okay how much here needs to go to tax, put that aside. Then the rest deciding the best use for business. The danger of affiliate marketing is most start off with no income, so you never learn good bankroll management in the early going, and then later sloppy bankroll management leads to all sorts of problems. For sure need to manage money well and do it as 1) pay myself - with taxes stored, 2) store taxes 3) decide where to reinvest. Understand this when first payment is $75.00 will develop good practices for later when payments are many thousands.