Tips for new affiliates

[wagerprofits]

Hi Guys

I made a comment a few days ago about a lot of new people comming into the affiliate business but not really having a clue about the industry, so I wanted to start a thread as so many of you have some great tips to offer.

Please add as much as possible so that when future affiliate add me to skype or msn I can show them this thread.

Thank you for your input.

Shaun

[casinojack]

Ill start!!

**target keywords

A lot of new affiliates come in looking for great keywords that 2 trillion others are trying for, I suggest you find easier, longer keywords. Have no idea how ro where to get them? May I offer one of many ebooks I have , for you to use free: http://affcorner.com/ebooks/huge_nic...word_lists.zip

Is a video ebook, and has a lot of good information. Enjoy !

PS, do NOT resell this, is for you to use ONLY, and to try and resell. Thanks !

[LiveCasinoPartners]

I would add to stick to one niche. When i first started I made a site reviewing casinos, bingo sites, sportsbooks and poker rooms. I got no where with that, and I wasted months.

Also, focus on content. Write, write, and write some more. In the begging I thought my 20 pages was enough, and how in the world could I write more. As it turns out, there is tons to write about.

Be patient, do not be discouraged after 6 months, and you feel you are not getting any where.

[wagerprofits]

Come on no selling our sites pur tips....

Shaun

Ill start!!

**target keywords

A lot of new affiliates come in looking for great keywords that 2 trillion others are trying for, I suggest you find easier, longer keywords. Have no idea how ro where to get them? May I offer one of many ebooks I have , for you to use free: http://affcorner.com/ebooks/huge_nic...word_lists.zip

Is a video ebook, and has a lot of good information. Enjoy !

PS, do NOT resell this, is for you to use ONLY, and to try and resell. Thanks !

[pgaming]

Trust is everything and this should reflect in your content. Therefore IMO write the content first don't even think about keywords. After writing you content ask yourself,

What is the content about from here you should be able to pinpoint a good description and the keywords that describe your content.

JMO

greek39

[ntaus]

I have a few suggestions, thinking back over the years:

1. Colors have a lot to do with the way traffic responds to your site. Cindy posted an article way back that basically boiled down to - pastels are restful and don't incite action - vibrant colors create energy (enthusiasm for gambling). Green is the color for gambling tables.

2. Lots of white space - it's restful to the eyes.

3. Don't use your full screen to write - people have different sized monitors so it makes sense to center your stuff on the screen then no-one has to scroll.

4. Test, test. Sites look different in various browsers. Casinos use the latest technology which means that players must have certain models of browsers in order to play. I read yesterday that only 14% of the web is still using IE6 - so test in IE7 - do IE6 if you have access to a computer which has IE6 since you can't carry both on the same PC. Firefox is getting more and more users - you can carry Firefox on the same PC with IE7. Pull your pages up in both to see the difference and do what you can to make your page look well in both. MAC users can only play Flash at most casinos - so they are a lesser percentage of players. Sometimes you have to compromise in your targeting. I can't speak for Netscape - haven't used it for years - I'm sure it's still viable.

5. Take the time to research your keywords and make sure you use them a number of times in the relevant pages. Put your keyword for each page in meta tags.

6. If you're playing to the US, don't bother trying to buy pay-per-click advertising.

7. Lots of reciprocal links - try to avoid 3-ways. Check to make sure they are linking back. If you exchange links with well-built popular sites in our field, Google will give you more importance. Webmasters in GPWA will usually exchange links with beginners - they remember how it was.

8. Look at lots of other gambling portals. If they've been around for a while, they know what they're doing. NEVER COPY - but you can learn some tricks from the way they do things. Most webmasters use Copyscape which shows them any duplicated pages or text and you will get caught.

That's it for now - I'll post again if I come up with more.

ntaus

[casinojack]

Come on no selling our sites pur tips....

Shaun

(If I am able to post the book here, i would...Is not MY ebook...Just was too large to upload here...MODS< feel free to delete post.)

[Bently]

Its just like gambling really, remember there's no holy grail, just hard graft, dedication and discipline and perhaps also just like gambling just when you think you have mastered it along comes that loooooong LS

[Renee]

Andy from AGD has also offered help to new affiliates to get them started. Great idea in my opinion... just thought i would add that

[thepokerkeep]

I wrote this article quite a while back but it's probably still relevant today...

https://www.gpwa.org/forum/building-...wd-173417.html

[GamTrak]

Trust is everything and this should reflect in your content. Therefore IMO write the content first don't even think about keywords. After writing you content ask yourself,

What is the content about from here you should be able to pinpoint a good description and the keywords that describe your content.

JMO

greek39

Excellent point greek! That is how I prefer to do it and it's my next task.

I'll be back with some tips later.

[stgeorge]

Be honest in all your dealings and don't pick fights in hotel lobbies.

[thepokerkeep]

Be honest in all your dealings and don't pick fights in hotel lobbies.

+1

[JaqiC]

I have discovered in the last few months just how important it is to have a mentor, or someone who you can talk with when you start to get discouraged or when your google analytics graph looks like the U.S. stock market of late. That is when your affiliate "buddy" can help to put things back into perspective for you. It also helps to remember that the work that I do today will probably not start to payoff for months down the line.

[tuleja]

Get links to your website. Your website won't get listed in Google until they spider it from someone else's site. I find that my sites with the most traffic tend to have more external links pointing to them. When you can afford it, get a good program for link exchanging. Take the time when someone wants to exchange links to make sure that there is a path from the sites homepage to where your link is. Some people will try to abuse link exchanging by putting your links on a dead page with no links to it. Be warry of 3-way link exchanges, lots of people will put up a junk site, have you link to their main site, and link back to you from their junk site. I've had someone want me to link to their site, and they wanted to link back to me from a site like inkjetcartridges.ru. My biggest laugh was when someone wanted me to link to their site, and wanted to link back to me from a directory I own that is already linking back to my site.

Focus on one niche like WagerX stated, but when you have a chance, create sites of other niches. You might find out you will do better in a different niche than you started with. Once you have been doing it for a while, always have a backup plan. Alot of people from the U.S. left the industry in 2006, and Washington State has made life difficult for many affiliates, focus a litte time in a different industry, have a different industry as a backup if needed.

New affiliates spend way to much time looking at their stats at the affiliates programs websites. Remember to spend more time researching and working on your sites progress than looking up stats every few hours! When you can afford it, a good stats program like statremote saves a lot of time! And no, i'm not selling their program, it just makes retrieving your daily stats a much quicker task.

Make sure you update your sitemap.xml file each time you add pages to your website. Google uses this file to easily find new pages of information you have created. This is a very important file to keep updated.

This forum has been here a very long time, there is a lot of very valuable information here, learn to use the search button. Almost all of the question you might have will have probably have been asked and answered in the past.

[bb1web]

Hi all,

I'd add that you can't make money sending traffic to bogus programs and to borrow the phrase ... there are many ways to skin a cat ... well there are many ways to arrive at a bottom line which does not reflect the quality of traffic you have sent.

You would think this day and age that programs were smart enough to realize that every time they are stealing from their affs that they are stealing off the end of their program's prime if not entire existence.

But it still happens all the time. We just had a network called Grand Prive turn its back on the thousands of contracts it made with honest affs who did their part ... and now this same network flaunts its unscrupulous behavior in our faces every single day it continues to exist.

Choose your sponsors carefully and once you see which ones are going to earn money ... dump the rest.

Sponsors should have aff-friendly terms and Andy of AGD will guide you in that area if you're needing help.

They should be accessible and in good standing with the community because you don't want to find out you've been sending traffic to a place that supports blackhatters because it is in effect paying someone to do their very best to put you out of business using the most unspeakable means necessary to get the job done.

some people support these places and then say well they've never hurt me but what they don't understand is 1) their turn hasn't come up yet, 2) they don't consider the abstract just the obvious. In other words by that program allowing blackhatters it encourages more of the same.

If you don't like being copied then don't support programs that pay these people.

[Holland87]

I have discovered in the last few months just how important it is to have a mentor, or someone who you can talk with when you start to get discouraged or when your google analytics graph looks like the U.S. stock market of late. That is when your affiliate "buddy" can help to put things back into perspective for you. It also helps to remember that the work that I do today will probably not start to payoff for months down the line.

I agree with you 100% JaqiC! If I had not had my mentor I would have been done with all of this months ago. I am hitting 1 year in the biz next month and finally the work I put in a year ago has started to payoff in the last few months.

My tips to new affiliates from a new affiliate.............

1. Find a friend, mentor in the business.
2. Believe that you will succeed and don't give up too quickly.

(Thank you Tony for all your help and motivation! I suppose sending me your sub affiliate links is one way to keep me going, huh?!?! LOL )

[lovingdiver]

Sponsors should have aff-friendly terms and Andy of AGD will guide you in that area if you're needing help.

Who is Andy from AGD? I 'm newbie

[thepokerkeep]

Andy is our industry watchdog... this is his site:
http://www.affiliateguarddog.com/

Join, read, save yourself time and money!

[thepokerkeep]

Who is Andy from AGD? I 'm newbie

BTW - welcome to the forums!!