Setting Up Your Online Gaming Affiliate Website
Thursday, Dec 10, 2009
Some affiliate marketers are intimidated at first to get started with online poker and casino sites, as at first glance it seems like a difficult and complicated field to get started in. The reality, though, is that setting up your online gaming website is as simple as setting up any other website, and you'll be up and running in no time if you follow a few simple steps.
Setting up Your Site
Assuming you have a web host and have a domain name picked out and registered, the first step is to set up a framework for your site. You'll need to decide on what area you'll focus your efforts, choosing to focus on poker affiliate programs or casino affiliate sites.
Once that's decided, you'll likely need to sharpen your focus a bit further, and pick a smaller segment, such as building a poker affiliate site that is all about high-stakes cash games, or one that'sabout poker gossip, or one devoted to the World Series of Poker (WSOP).
Selecting a poker and casino affiliate program
With those decisions out of the way, you'll then need to select a poker or casino affiliate program to promote. Different sites cater to different types of players, so you'll need to do your homework to decide what affiliate program will likely work best for you.
Depending on the affiliate program you select, once you sign up you'll have access to a wide range of promotional content that the affiliate programs supply to you, including banners, graphics, and even Flash applications for publishing news, tournament schedules, and info on new promotions. Some of the more popular affiliate programs that offer a wide range of content and tools for affiliates include the Party Partners, the FullTilt affiliates, and the Titan Poker affiliate program.
Adding the Marketing Material
Once you've picked the programs you'll promote and grabbed some marketing material from their pre-existing library, you're off and running, as then it's just a matter of weaving the advertising into the content you've written for your site.
Use a mixture of banners and text links, and try as much as possible to make the ads as indistinguishable from your content as possible, as that will increase click-throughs from visitors (and hopefully increase your profits when they sign up and create an account at the gaming site after clicking through).
Last but not least is checking your stats on a regular basis, as most affiliate programs provide you with a variety of stats as far as click-throughs, the total number of players you've referred, and what banners or text links are working the best for you.
