The Secret to Poker and Casino Affiliate Marketing
Friday, Jan 15, 2010
For poker and casino affiliates, it truly is the best of times and the worst of times. On the bright side, they get to operate in one of the most potentially lucrative affiliate niches that there is, enticing potential players to do something nearly everyone loves: gamble. On the cloudy side, the potential profits in the poker and casino affiliate world have attracted a massive amount of competition from other affiliates, with everyone trying to cash in.
What Makes You Stand Out?
This doesn't mean that poker and casino affiliates need to despair; it just means that, more than ever, they have to be on top of their games. In the past it was possible for affiliates to fake their way through it, providing some basic content about poker and casino sites, some reviews and bonus codes, and call it a day, without really knowing much about poker or casino games or ever actually playing on the sits they were promoting.
Those days are gone, though, and poker and casino affiliates today need to spend time themselves on the sites they're promoting if they want to have any real chance of success in the competitive world of affiliate sites for online gaming.
Reviews of online poker rooms and casino sites are one of the primary types of content that most affiliates provide, and website visitors are getting more and more savvy when it comes to reviews, as far as what they respond to and trust.
Writing Quality Reviews
You really can't fake a good review, whether you're pitching deals and bonuses on Party Poker, VC Casino, Global Live Casino or any other online gaming site. If all of your reviews basically say: "This site is great. I love it and you'll love it, too," with no real details or differentiating factors, you'll quickly lose any credibility with readers on your affiliate sites. They'll back out and close the browser and do another Google search for "Party Poker reviews" and this time select another affiliate site from the search results.
Aside from knowing the ins and outs of the sites you promote, it always helps your marketing in general if you can put yourself in the shoes of the audience you're targeting. It's easy enough to list that a casino offers 126 different games including 28 different online slots, but that doesn't exactly entice a visitor to click through your links and sign up.
What Works
A simple paragraph about a particular slot you played and how you were down to your last .25 but won a crazy jackpot to cash out $10 000 is infinitely more appealing to potential players, and the sort of thing that will increase your signups and conversions over time.
It's easy to fall into the bad habit as an affiliate of working on auto-pilot and trying to get as much content and reviews out there as possible for every available gaming site, but in many cases you're better served to slow down, stop, and think more as a player.
Positive AND Negative Aspects
What really is appealing about one site versus another? Which sites are good at immediately creating a fun, welcoming environment when you first log in and start playing? Are their certain sites that are hard to navigate or have annoying pop-ups or other drawbacks?
While the temptation is natural to only say great things about the sites you approach, viewing them critically through the eyes of a player can lead to valuable content on your site, as many visitors will appreciate the negative along with the positive, as it leads a greater authority to your sites and establishes you as a resource that can trusted.
