In the early days of poker affiliating, the question always asked by new affiliates was “Should I take MGR or CPA?” Nowadays, an equally important question is “Should I go direct or work with a network?” This article is going to explain what a poker affiliate network is, how working with a network compares to working direct, and why I personally prefer to work with a network.

What is a Poker Affiliate Network?

A poker affiliate network is a group of affiliates who have combined their efforts to take advantage of increased CPA/MGR deals. By pooling their traffic together, the individual affiliates are able to negotiate better terms and bigger payments.  Two examples of existing affiliate networks are Poker Affiliate World and Reef Media.

Individual affiliates are able to sign up for the network, generate tracking URLs and bonus codes for a wide selection of online poker rooms, view all of their stats in one location, and receive one payment for all of their traffic.

Working with a Network vs. Working Direct

There are a few primary differences between working with a network versus working directly with individual poker rooms: you only have one affiliate manager, you view all your stats in one location, and you receive one payment each month.

One Affiliate Manager

When you work with a network, you handle all of your business through one contact instead of maintaining communication with several affiliate managers. This is nice because no matter what you need, you can fire off an email to your one contact and have it taken care of.

Also, since you will likely be in touch with this person at least once a month, it is easier to develop a good relationship as opposed to trying to develop a relationship with an individual affiliate manager who you might contact once or twice a year.

Stats in One Location

One of my favorite parts about working with a network is that I can log in to one location and view all of my stats for the month instead of having to keep track of several usernames/passwords and log in to several websites.

Some affiliates don’t like that they aren’t able to view individual poker room stats from the source, but if you need further proof you can always email your affiliate manager and have them send you screenshots of the individual poker room’s affiliate backend, so it has never been an issue for me.

One Payment per Month

Ever since I started working with networks, my accounting has become much simpler. Every month I request and receive one wire transfer to my bank account instead of logging into several websites, requesting payouts, and collecting checks/wires from each individual program.

Why I Prefer Working with Networks

Although I think I have already explained a few of my major reasons for preferring networks to individual programs, here are a few more reasons why I like working with networks:

• It makes selling your network easy. About a year ago I sold almost all of my sites, and by having all my statistics in one location it was extremely easy to prove revenue for all of my sites. Also, we only had to transfer one affiliate account instead of 10+.
• Bigger starting CPAs. By going through a network, you almost always receive a bigger starting CPA than by going direct. Also, in my experience it has been easier to increase the deals as you increase your volume via the network than working direct.

The only way I would go back to working direct was if I became big enough that I could actually negotiate better deals direct. However, even with the network taking their cut off the top, I have always found that my current player volume gets better deals going through the network.

What do you guys think? Do you work direct or with a network? Feel free to leave your thoughts below.

I suppose I’m a little late getting this post out now that we’re over a week into the new year. But considering that there are 254 days left in the year, it’s probably ok 

Most of my goals this year are business related. I’m excited because this will be the first year where 100% of my focus is spent on improving my business. I do have a few personal goals mixed in as well. Anyway, let’s get to it.

Business Goals for 2011

1. Double my monthly income writing.

This is the only goal I really have where there is a financial figure tied to it. The reason for this is that it’s really the only thing I have any (financial) control over it.

To achieve this goal, there are a few things I’m going to do:

• Hire a coach. Done. Having a coach will help me in several areas including finding work and improving my writing skills.
• Double my daily output. During the last couple of years, I’ve been pretty relaxed when it comes to how much written work I do. I’m working on that now and as a result, I’ve already seen some improvements in addition to making more. I’m more efficient for one thing.

2. Build 2-3 niche/info sites per month.

These sites are smaller sites focusing on very specific niches. Monetization will come from many different sources including adsense, amazon and clickbank to name a few. Many of these sites will give me the opportunity to create my own products as well.

There are many benefits to building these sites. For one, there are many fundamentals to learn including keyword research, finding the best method for making money (which is very niche dependent) and split testing. You also see results faster since the competition is weaker (obv another benefit for someone with half a clue and gambling marketing exp) or not there at all.

I’m sure I could build more than 3 per month. In fact, I recently read that someone was putting up like 10 or 15 of these a month. However, while these are small sites that will bring in much less income ($xx to $x,xxx) than an authority site (+ $x,xxx), I still want to have a quality over quantity mindset. I want to provide value with these sites. I also want to maxmize each sites’ potential.

3. Source the niche sites out.

My plan is to start sourcing these sites out. I think that I’m pretty good (or so I’ve been told) at explaining things, so teaching someone how to build these niches sites for me should be easy. It’ll give me time for my bigger websites too.

4. Build 3-4 authority sites.

I want to build 3-4 authority sites this year, all on things I enjoy doing and talking about. After all, doing what I want, on what I want, is the reason why I like working for myself. Well, one reason of many, I guess.

I’ll disclose further details as to what the sites are going to be about in later posts. I want to get them planned and launched first. But you can expect 2 to be launched between March and May, and one to be launched in the fall. If I do a 4th one, it’ll be spontaneous – I have no idea when it’ll go up, if it goes up.

I’ll discuss monetization strategies with these later on as well. I won’t be focusing on monetization that much in the beginning anyway. My focus will be on building traffic, which  hopefully results in a list and more importantly, a community. 

5. Build my first wordpress site.

I’ve been working on my coding and designing skills for some time (php at the moment). I’d like to develop my first wordpress site. I’ll probably build a blog theme to use on this site. Depending on interest, I might offer it for sale.

6. Create a portfolio.

I need a portfolio to showcase the different skills, services or products that I offer. This includes my writing, any themes or templates I make and anything I choose to sell (graphics, themes, etc) on other sites like graphicriver or themeforest.

I’m still not sure where the portfolio will be. It’ll probably be here on this site. I’m still thinking about it and will let you know when I do.

7. Posting here more often.

I’d like to post here more often, maybe 2-3 times a week. My biggest issue is that I’m not sure what direction to take the blog, especially considering that I might turn part of it into a portfolio. I could provide some tips for various things, random things from what I do regularly, business stuff, etc….

Anyone have any thoughts on what they’d like to read about?

…..

Well, that’s about it for my business goals for 2011. You may have noticed that I left all monetary goals out (except for the writing). I see many others saying that they want to make “x” amount of dollars this year. This is ok for things you have control over. But when it comes down to passive income, you just don’t have enough control over what you make. It just seems to me as if these guys could be setting themselves up to fail that way. Besides, if you do the (quality) work, the money will follow. I’d rather focus on that - it’s easier to manage/control at least.

Personal Goals for 2011

I don’t have too many personal goals for this year. But the ones I do have are very important.

1. Lose 75 pounds.

Pretty self-explanatory. I need to make friends with the gym equipment in my garage. This is only 6lbs a month, which shouldn’t be too hard to accomplish. I’m sure I’ll end up doing more than this for the first couple of months at least.

2. Spend more time with the fiance.

It’s pretty easy to lose time when I’m on the computer all day. But I need to remember why I work so hard – to spend more time with my friends, family and my fiance.

3. Take more breaks.

Same idea. I spend too much time on the computer. Life is way too short for that. While I have business goals to accomplish, I feel that it’ll be much easier to do when I’m not running myself in the ground day in/day out.

I have a few vacations lined up for this year too which should help some.

…..

All right, I think that’s it. If I think of any more I’ll be sure to post them. If you guys have any goals for this year, post them in the comments below. If you made a 2011 goal post, let me know and I’ll post them here.

Kevin’s 2011 Affiliate Goals

Deneil’s 2011 Goals

Randy’s Goals for 2011

The last couple of months has been crazy. I moved to Full Tilt to play the 90-man SNGs since PokerStars kicked me off. Everything was going ok after that. I was making decent money (averaged about $7 a game iirc over 700 games), final tabled a few MTTs and the girlfriend and I decided it’d be worthwhile to move to Oregon so I can pursue poker a bit more aggressively.

And then FTP decided to pull out of Washington. I guess I can’t say I was shocked when it happened. It would’ve been nice to have some sort of warning though (from both sites). But I guess if they were to do that, many players would likely cash out and Stars/FTP wouldn’t be able to squeeze us for whatever rake they could.

So, my staking deal ended as a result. There just isn’t a site out there where I can put in any kind of volume, so it didn’t make any sense to continue with it.

Since I had a bunch of free time open up, I thought it would be a good idea to get my affiliate business going again since I stopped doing it 9 months or so after I started to play poker. But then I had to make a decision – do I focus on my affiliate/media business or do I try to move to Oregon? I had a few people willing to help me out and get me to Oregon to play, so that wasn’t that big an issue. And I didn’t want to wait until my lease was up (4-months or so) to move because I’d likely be working on my business and would have to put it on the backburner again to play.

After some thinking and reflecting on where I am now and where I wanted to be, I decided I had to chose between poker and my business. Both were in it’s infancy so to speak – I wasn’t invested much more in one than the other. So, it didn’t make much of difference which I chose to do, I just had to pick one or the other. That way I could focus 100% and really excel.

I ended up choosing my affiliate business. It’s bittersweet to be honest. I really enjoyed playing and I was really getting good (obv thanks to my coaches and peers). But at least now I can focus on building a sucessful business.

So now I’m in the process of planning and launching a site. I was originally going to do a poker site or two, but after seeing what’s been happening the last few months combined with all of the other affiliates bitching about this program or that one, I decided to get the hell out of the gambling affiliate vertical for now – maybe for good. Only time will really tell.

My focus now is on smaller info/niche product sites. I’ll be launching 2-3 between now and the end of January/beginning of February. Once those are up I’ll be creating a training program so I can outsource these smaller sites so I can focus on a few authority sites I’ve been wanting to start. I’ve also been wanting to start a blog about building sites/affiliating. But I’m on the fence since so many different “niches” within the vertical of making money online is saturated. It’s not that I feel as if I can’t compete with those guys, I just don’t want to create a site that isn’t unique or that sounds like a broken record. No one wants to hear the same shit that’s repeated day in and day out by all the successful bloggers now. So, once I can come up with a few ways to make myself different while still providing value, I’ll launch the site and let everyone know about it.

Speaking of which, if everyone who stops by could give me some thoughts or suggestions for this blog (the one I’m thinking of starting), I would really appreciate it. Things that would be helpful to know include:

• Things you struggled with as an affiliate when you were first starting out. If you don’t do any affiliating now, what questions would you have?
• What kinds of tools would’ve been helpful when you were first starting out? These could be programs, plug-ins, templates, etc, etc
• Fast forward to now – what kind of help can you use and in what medium (outsourcing, software/programs, diversifying, tech, etc).
• Are there things you want to learn, but don’t know how to do? This could be coding, design, PPC or getting started in other niches.

Anything along these lines would be helpful. Better yet, I’m sure many of you guys read at least 1-2 blogs (if not more ). What topics or ideas do these guys get across well/don’t get across well? This will obviously vary from person to person, as everyone learns differently. But still good to know nonetheless.

I think I’ll leave this post on that note. Since what I’m doing is changing and I’ll be working on different projects, I should have more newer and/or interesting things to blog about. I’ll be posting a “2011 Goals” post here in the next day or so too – hit me up on skype/msn if you want to do some cross posts/links if you’re doing a similar kind of post.

Have a happy holidays!

~Matt

The biggest goal that I missed was the volume. My volume was laughable for this month – only 200 games. I knew the 90mans took longer, but didn’t realize how much longer they really took. I think 200 games is still much lower than what I’m capable of and will look to increase this significantly for November. I did review quite a bit (although maybe not 5 hhs before each session) and also managed to watch races less. It took me until the middle of the month to get started, but I also managed to start working out in the mornings before I start work/playing. So all in all, October was ok in terms of what I was wanting to accomplish poker wise.

October was also a great month in terms of my game improving. I started playing heads up cash as well as watch videos and review other player’s hand histories. I wanted to improve my post flop game and am pleased to say that while it’s far from where I’d like it to be, it has improved a ton.

Additionally, I added more MTTs to my schedule. I managed to final table 3 MTTs this month. About the middle of the month I final tabled the Early Daily Double B but was coolered a couple of times and busted in 8th iirc. This last Monday was a big day for me as I final tabled the Early Daily Double A and 10k GTD w/Early Antes simultaneously. Although I held the chip lead for most of the final 1-2 tables, I only took 3rd in the EDD A, but I did chop heads up in the 10k GTD and took 2nd. I ended up making $2700 or so in MTTs and $3k or so for the day.

I gotta give my buddy some credit too (you know who you are) for helping me tons with my game. I’ve done nothing but improve and it’s only going to continue going up from here.

Oh yeah, since my last post the girlfriend and I decided to move to Oregon so I can play on Stars again. I won’t be able to move until Spring 2011 though which eliminates and minor possibility I had of going for Super Nova Elite. But I’ll get Super Nova no problem though.

Aside from poker, October was a decent month for business too. I decided to go ahead and get back into affiliating. I have most of the site planned out. At the moment I’m looking at 500 pages of content (50 to start/launch) with plans of having well over 1,000 pages. Most of the urls/seo is taken care of as well. I decided to farm out the design/coding though because although I feel like I’m capable of doing it, I just don’t have the time. My current plan is to have the site launched by the end of December or beginning of January. If anyone has a site that they would like linked too (all gambling niches), feel free to let me know and I’ll get them worked into my content.

Speaking of affiliating, I’ll be adding a list of services to the blog as well. I’ll offer some content work, but will offer a little bit of design and coding too. I thought about offering some form of consulting, but after seeing many affiliates whom I feel lack experience offer these services (content, seo, etc), I felt it was better for me to wait until I had more experience myself. I still might offer something that revolves around the beginning stages of planning/building a site. I haven’t decided yet though.

I think thats about it. October was an extremely busy month and November is only going to get busier. Hope everyone’s October went well and good luck at the tables in November.

~ Matt

To start off with, September has been my busiest month ever since I started working for myself over a year and a half ago. This is due to me picking up other projects in addition to my own grind (work + poker) which already consumed quite a bit of my day to begin with.

One of the new projects I’ve started in September is the task of coaching other players new and/or struggling in the micro 18-man sngs. Despite being somewhat time consuming, I really can’t regret taking on this extra workload. I have found that by coaching other students and sharing my thought process in addition to listening to theirs that my game has improved as a result. Even if I don’t agree with why my student may do “x” in a situation, I still learn why he/she did it. This leads to me having a deeper understanding to how other players may think in similar situations, therefore enabling me to quickly recognize and counter their actions. Not sure if this makes sense (I probably f**ked up explaining it..), but the point is that my game has improved while helping others to improve themselves.

The other project(s) I’ve taken on in Sept has been more website/affiliate related. The sites aren’t mine though and I can’t disclose what the sites (urls) are….but they’ve been keeping me busy…

Aside from being busy, September has been a stressful month for me. Ever since I started playing backed and receiving coaching I’ve never experienced anything more than a hiccup of variance here or there. Well, lol, I started off this month playing @ 50% in the $6/18s (dropped down from $16s to learn to play more tables at once) which lasted for about a week. After a brief chat w/my coach/backer, we decided that I should go ahead and move back to the $16s as well as add the $27/18s to my grind. Bad timing…   … Once I started to load some $16s and $27s I found myself losing every flip, bubbling every other game and having days where I was losing $xxx for the first time and pretty close to $x,xxx within a matter of a couple weeks. This is really nothing when you think about the games I play (4 $27/18s puts you in the hole pretty quick)…but seeing as it was my first real downswing, it’s just been sick to deal with. I’ve reviewed countless hand histories as well as have 2 of my coaches review my hand histories to more or less give me a sanity check – just make sure I’m still playing well enough to win. Just sucks to go from being really confident about my game to questioning every play I make  (std or not), watching every race (something I stopped for the most part) and even tilting at times – something I have never really done before.

If the above didn’t make my September long and stressful enough, I got an email today stating that PokerStars aren’t taking my kind anymore….players from WA state aren’t allowed to play on their site anymore. This really hinders a lot of my long/short term goals…but I’ll figure something out. In the meantime I’ll just play on Tilt.

Ok, so that’s pretty much everything that’s been going on with me since my last update. I think I’ll close this post off w/a list of my goals for October….

• 1,500 min/2k max games – This might be harder to do since I have to play on FTP now and my std games (18man turbos) don’t ever load. So, now I got to play 45 man non-turbos and 90man KO turbos…both are games that take considerably longer to complete…
• Review 5 hand histories before each session
• Stop watching races
• Work on my emotional state when I play. I really, really want to get to a point where I’m like ‘meh’ each time I face negative variance. I don’t want to tilt or explode out of my seat when I’m 3-outered on the river (ZOMG RUFU**KING SRRS STARS????) for the 4th time in a row.  << Not sure if that’s familiar to anyone…. 
• Start working out. Ideally I’ll work out at least 4 times a week + improve my overall diet.
• Take breaks from the computer more frequently.

I’ll update a little bit more often now too… maybe twice a month so my posts aren’t so long to read. Anyway, good luck grinding in October everyone……

~ Matt

I think most people who go on vacation try to leave their everyday commitments at home and forget about them. I’m not really like that. While I definitely try to relax and not work, I do use vacation time to reflect on the last year or so in terms of my business. I think of new projects, re-evaluate where I’m at with current ones and set new goals.

This year I’ll be focusing on establishing goals and completion dates for my affiliate business. I stopped focusing on building websites in late 2009/early 2010 when I decided to focus more on playing poker. I have all the knowledge needed to build profitable $x,xxx - $xx,xxx websites. It’s just a matter of doing it. Before, I never had much in the way of ‘goals’ or ‘time frames’ for the different tasks I needed done – I just did the work. Now, I feel as if it’s too easy for me to load some tables and put off the work until later. So by setting goals/time frames to everything I need done, it’s a bit easier to hold myself accountable for what gets done or doesn’t get done.

Aside from making plans on getting my websites going (**again**), I’ll be spending the remainder of my free time reviewing my poker game. I won’t have much (if any) access to the internet, so I’ll be going the next week without playing. I figure that if I can’t play, I might as well review. I’ll be bringing my laptop equipped w/SngWiz, popopop replayer, poker stove and a shitton of hand histories. Most hhs will be mine, but some will be copied/pasted from my coach’s forum along w/the coaches’ notes on each student’s hand history.

It may seem odd that I would spend my vacation time doing poker related stuff since that is what makes up 90% of my day. I dunno, I just feel like spending a week reviewing is going to take my game up another notch. I’m really motivated too, especially after seeing my buddy bigbluffzinc crush $16+ 18-mans as well as anything he decides to reg for. He’s final tabled several Mtts in the last few weeks as well. While I’m definitely happy for him and his success (he’s worked hard for it), it’s hard not to be envious of his success and want it for myself. So hopefully that somewhat explains my motivation/drive to spend so much of my “relaxing” time working on my game. My goal is to be at the $27s within a month or two and the $38s/$60s by the end of the year. I think I can do it if I just put my head down and work at it. It’s served me well (in addition to my coaching) thus far.

Ok, so I think that pretty much covers it for now. I have plenty more to say, but I’ll save it for when I get back. I’ll talk to you guys later.

Good luck @ the tables.

~ Matt

Anyway, if I had your link up to the right but it’s not there now, just let me know.