My best affiliate advice for new poker affiliates

[MPC]

Prop, I saw myself in some aspects of your post. I started out not knowing what the hell I was doing and while I always knew I didn't have all the knowledge, I truely underestimated what it took. I have been at this for two years, and it was only since the last year that I really realized that I needed change my approach. I have had more success over the last 6 months, but nothing to really brag about.

Year one, I kept telling myself "this is going to take off... I can fell it! And when it does, it's gonna rock!". But it never did. Not because I lacked a plan, but because the plan sucked. I just didn't realize it at the time because I didn't have the knowledge I have today.

Having said all of this, I changed my attitude and took a moment to absorb reality. I've concluded one thing: I can always learn something, and my plans can always be flawed even tought I won't always see it right away. My motto now is more about learning from others and experimenting to figure out the secret to success that you enjoy. When I do something that doesn't produce the expected result, I need to look at the approach again, or the whole direction. It's like banging your head against the wall: It feels good when you stop doing it.

You have no idea how it pisses me off to read "It is so ridiculously easy to make money huge money in this industry that those who are making it don’t have enough hours in a day to earn more money that they already know how to make"! lol! It pisses me off because I want to be able to say it for myself. As much as I admire you, I envy you. And part of me hates you! lol

So here's my question: You speak as if you've figured out a model to be sucessfull, and that you simply repeat and reapply this model over and over and your real problem is lack of time to create more "clones". We all know about SEO's importance but can you take me trought that cycle from starting with nothing to getting to a point where all you have to do is rince, lather and repeat? What is the poker affiliate blueprint that you've discovered? (If you are willing to share, of course)

[pokerprop]

MPC that's a great post.

In my experience most people struggle not with how difficult affiliate marketing is, but they struggle with something commitment/consistency. I'm not speaking directly to you because I don't know your situation, but I'm pointing out that ussually when people find it not to be easy its typically something else such as commitment issues.

I'll provide a formula that will work 100% of the time and make anyone who follows it rich.

Some preparation stuff:
1) You must keep your commitments, goals and priorities loose. A lot of people think I am going to keep working on this site till its 1500 pages and I'm going to get there as soon as posible. Okay while this is not the worst goal to have, I'd rather here someone say.

I'm going to make $10,000 per month as an affiliate marketer, and I'm going to be an affiliate marketer until I'm making $10,000 per month or till I die from trying.

The first goal you have 1500 pages if your successful in reaching its goal. That might be like having 1500 lottery tickets or maybe worst who knows, all you have though is the pages. With the second goal if your successful you have decent cash flow. Both goals are definable though, but the second one does not have a deadline. I'm big on no deadlines for big goals, if you want deadlines do those for the mini goals.. The reason is that an ultimate goal can not have with it an opportunity for failure because if it does, your must less likely to achieve it. If you truly want your ultimate goal so much that you desire to have it with urgency and in that goal there is no option to fail (however long it takes or till i die trying) your much less likely to have commitment/ consistency issues.

2) The simplest way is the best way.

We've all had kick ass ideas for site before like, hell I'm going to do something that has never been done before. Then you look at the project and its like wow there is a lot this. Its programming intensive, not even sure how to code this or go about doing this or that plus this other thing here and blah blah.. Save projects like this till your ready to be making more money to throw on the pile. There are much simpler ways to become wealthy in this industry.

The actual formula:

Step #1
Build one site that needs that has potential to earn money that is simple and will not require much maintenance at all. I own hundreds of sites like this, check out like carbonpokernow.com for an example. Its a simple site, there is a decent amount of content and not much oversell. This sites not perfect but its just a good example of a simple recent site I developed.

Step #2
Build an authoritative website that you plan to grow HUGE and will add tons and tons of new content too it. You want this site to be sticky and something people will come back to often. We don't own this site anymore and its a bit hacked up now but an example that was different then most other sites out there was babesinpoker.com that we used to own. It was a fun site and back when we actually worked it we had news parodies and hot babes all over it. people came back for our spins on the news and to check out babes etc.

Now these two sites go hand and hand.

Your first site is about making money simple as that. Your second site is about maturing and becoming established and google trusted.

Make a commitment that for site #2 your going to consistency add content to it, and give no less than 60% of your working effort or budget to doing just that each week. Those with money can skip this step and just by an established site, but eitherway having one of these is going to be good to have.

Okay so now we know what were doing with 60% of the time. With the other 40%, build more sites. What sites? Well at this point you might not know so just go hit or miss, just keep making 15-25 page sites with truly unique content on them on niches you think might be popular. These sites should all be income focused.

Eventually whats going to happen is that your going to spend about 2% of your time analyzing stats. Literally read outloud (if you might miss in your head) ever single keyword from your stats log that got 10 or more unique searches the past month on your search logs. (when your small you might need to read everyone that got 3 or more). Some will stick out, jot these ones down. Go and see where you rank for these terms.

Your keywords are going to give you ideas for new content to add to sites or ideas for when entire site should be built. Lets say you rank #7 for site XYZ bonus on some small site you've given little consideration too. Well you've just found a keyword that is likely to convert and could be improved. Develop this page further and launch a new site around it.

Try not to give up on sites too soon. If you have a site only getting 100 visitors per month after say 12 months take a look at where you rank for terms. If your off the map all together..then you have what we'll call a challenge site.

If you have a site getting 10,000 visitors per month that is not making any money. This is another challenge site.

These are two types of challenge sites. In the first example we want to sell this site off. Were not trying to sell someone a dog or anything, but like I said this business is easy. There are other people out there who will take on the challenge and might have ideas to do all the stuff like link exchanges, purchasing links or w/e that personally I waist no time on what so ever. (wait no time on link building? yup I'll explain that later). Sell the site honestly, describe it as number of visitors, mention you never really did much with it, have not gotten links, how old it is, that the content is unique etc and just get rid of it.

With example #2 of a challenge site. This is where we need to find out the sites value. Does this site get repeat visitors, natural links etc?. How often do bots crawl it. Go back to your log and see all the terms that stuck out as being decent ones where you discovered you were ranking #7 for. Now go write a couple new articles for this site and link to that term and page. See if you notice and improvement. Repeat this process with other terms several times to see if your site seems to be passing on heavy, moderate or low link value to other sites. After a while you'll get an idea if this site is valuable to you or not. Now if you find its not valuable, sell it. A good marketer into mass traffic could find a better way to monetize it, remember our business is about doing things the easy way so let someone else go out there and do all the hassle stuff.

Last step: Keep building new sites. When you can afford to add some more sites like the second type of site I mentioned that are more about traffic and providing value, but do so with partnerships. The thing with these sites is were going to use them to market our other sites, an occasional (and I mean very occasional) link out to one of our other sites here and there as well as some direct ads.

With site #1, build tons and tons of these. When you're full time. You got 40% of your time or budget to work with (60% is going into content creation for our big sites). Use that 40% wisely, no more than 1/4 of that, 10% overall should really be going into admin stuff (support, analyzing stats, emailing AMs etc). The remaining 30% creating new sites that are income producing and simple is the primary focus as well as doing onsite SEO (adding new pages, rewritting content etc) for existing sites.

Follow this system and always always be consistent and you'll make a lot of EASY money. Now in the beginning stages there might be some doubt as to if the actual earnings are worth it or not, but be consistent for a few years (and it won't take that long for most I'm sure) and they'll look back and laugh at the time when they though the work they did was not worth it.

Other stuff:

You'll make mistakes along the way. Sometimes letting go of a site to early and sometimes hanging on to it too long. It most often will average out in the end so only second guess this a little if there is learning that can come from it, if there is nothing to learn don't focus on it.

Writing good content deserving of #1 rankings comes natural with practice. Just write lots and lots of bad content if thats what it takes, evenutally from being in the process you'll get better at it and also start to see the difference when you're #3 of your stuff over the sites #1 and #2

Just personal opinion but too much emphasis is put on getting backlinks. I own quite a few sites google trusts that have lots of new content added to them frequently over a long period of time. A couple links from one of my established sites and I don't need any more than that. I have people ask me all the time why do you rank #1 for this term and I rank #6. I have thousands of backlinks and yahoo shows 5 or 10 or something they'll say 0 for your site. Content worthy of #1 rankings gets it a lot of the time. A couple good links with everything else done correct is all you really need. I know google is already getting smarter, they whole lets build a zillion links think I think will be short lived, but this is a prediction and others disagree so take it for only medium weight.

My method of making money is easy. think about it, your writing content or hiring someone else to write content and that is most of what your doing its not that hard really. There are harder ways to make money, you could trouble shoot all your challenge sites and try to find out if its a diamond in a rough or is simply a lemon - but that takes time, knowledge, experience etc.
There is nothing wrong with this business model either, personally its just not the one I chose.

Here's how I'd describe my model. I take a bunch of stuff and throw them into a funnel. I see what comes out on the other side. The things that don't come out, I take out of the funnel myself and examing them. Some I put back into the funnel for a second or third try while others I trade for or sell to purchase more things to try in the funnel. In the end many things that worked come right out the other side.

Commitment, Hard work, dedication, consistency are all required ingredients for success. With faith these come natural. Some ingredients can be substituted such as investing smart over working hard, however the bottom line is its about those four things. Once you have those the rest is easy.

Most people quit and say it was too hard or not worth it, this is not over how difficult it was but rather their lack of faith motivated laziness and they failed to go at it with the required ingredients mentioned above.

[GregW]

That's the best post I have read this year. Thanks prop.

[Tom]

Seriously awesome and insightful post prop. Thanks!

[MPC]

Yes, thank you indeed. A lot of the things you describe is what I have come to realized in the last 6 months, so it's encouraging to see that I am on the right track in terms of my vision. I think of myself as a smart person. I know I am capable. I beleive it. You speak a lot about committement, which is key in all of this, regardless of which area you spend your time in. I think that is ultimately one of my greatest barriers. I have a full time job - a job that pays well, but that is demanding. I am committed in spirit, but reality make it impossible for me to dedicated the attention that is required. I am passionate about affiliating. I truely am, but my passion inteferes with my personal life. It affects my relationship with my family. It causes tension which in turn cause me frustration because I know what I have to do, I just can't do it. It's a constant juggle between work and family, and that in itself causes me stress which distracts me and makes me even less efficient. I think ultimately, that is my problem. I need to see some results to get some motivation, and also to convince those around me that this can work and is worth pursuing. If I have no positive results to show for the sacrifices my family is asked to make, then it's only normal that they don't offer the support I need. I understand their perspective.

Considerign that, I guess what I need to focus now is the low hanging fruits, because there are some out there. Actually, I did make an interesting agreement very recently and I will announce something that I have never seen done on any poker website up to this point. I am betting a lot of money on this project, and I think it will provide some interesting results. This is one of my low hanging fruits. I need it to work! It HAS to work! lol

[pokerprop]

Post Removed

Sorry guys this post was meant for private forum. I'll add back in edited version if future. I understand a lot of responses won't make sense when reading later, so I'll plug this back in and also edit the old ones to clear up some grammar when I have time.

[PokerNations]

Wow PokerProp, amazing freaking story man! You should write an autobiography, I would read that thing in a heartbeat!

Congrats on pulling through all of the ups and downs man, very impressive!

[Stiankr]

I also have to say WOW. Thanks alot for your sharing pokerprop. Some excellent advice there and your story is a sad one but also really motivating. Most of the "self constructed" obstacles i face is bullshit compared to yours. With this attitude there is no chance in the world you could ever fail. Again, thanks for sharing and i have to say this is maybe the best post ever written on PAW/PAP and now PAL After these posts i would guess there is not many people in here who would turn down a business offer from you.

[wjb316]

Pokerprop thank you for taking the time to write these posts. I concur this is one of the best threads I've ever seen at PAW/PAP/PAL. Amazing story and very motivational.

[MPC]

Gee thanks... Now I just feel like a whiner! lol

Great post. Thank you for sharing.