Exploring New Markets

June 18, 2010 in Affiliate Marketing

Note: This post has been sitting waiting to be published for several weeks. Now that I re-read it, its sorta of boring IMO. Most everyone knows I like to talk, and sometimes ramble too much. This post is one of those lol – However, I am sticking a couple great Poker Affiliate Tips at the bottom, so if you can read through all this, thanks and I hope the tips help you.

I dunno about you, but I get bored super easy and I have to keep things fresh in order for me to stay interested. For the last 4-5 years being a Poker Affiliate has been fun, exciting, and sometimes even stressful. Those are the good parts of being a poker affiliate. The bad part is the constant changes by Poker Rooms, roller coaster commissions, and of course the constant UIGEA battles raging in courtrooms. As with any business, the thought of having all your income tied to one customer, or in my case one industry (poker) can be scary and really is just a silly risk that will eventually bit you in the a$s. So since the start of 2010 we have been researching new markets to jump into, and I think we have found a few.

Finding New Markets

You can use google to easily find a million new markets to jump into. The problem is finding our which ones you can compete in and which ones will make you the most money. the wild card in all this is; You have to have some kind (even just a little) interest int he market. Without the passion to drive you, money is the only motivator, and that leads to bad things. Laziness, complacency, lack of motivation, lack of knowledge, etc.

Most reader of this site know last year we jumped head first into a new market with a series of sites centered around the books and movies “Twilight”. This market was white hot a year ago, and with 3 more movies coming out, and a world wide cult following it will continue to enjoy success as long as the site is live. I wish I could take credit for the success of the sites, but honestly it was just a shot in the dark. At the time all I knew was gaming, and even with 10k Visits a day we we not monetizing the site well. Thankfully after a learning curve I because decent at Adsense, Ebay, amazon, CJ.com, etc. So the sites made money and lots of it.

So some things just happen to go right with the twilight sites, and that was my first venture into a new non gaming market. We have since sold all the twilight sites, except for 1 which is our largest non gaming property now. While our primary income still comes form Gaming (Poker) with all the changes to US law, deposit issues, funding issues, etc – We made the decision we have to diversify ourselves and FAST!

After some research, I had it narrowed down to a few new markets, non I was passionate about really, so I knew I needed to keep looking. I finally realized my new big project has been staring me in the face for the last 8-10 months. Every 3 week I was paying $50 to watch the next big UFC event. every weekend I was catching old UFC fights on Spike TV. I’m a serious UFC addict! If I was younger (and tougher) I swear I would try and be an MMA fighter Anyway, so I started really looking at the UFC Market. At first glance the SERPS told me there is some very old very established UFC/MMA websites.

Jumping into a new market

My buddy Dealer Dan write a great article on building mini sites and taking advantages of opportunities here: Time Limited Niches – Now I don’t want to rehash everything he has already said. But READ that article ASAP! Just like the poker market, non gaming markets work pretty much the same. You need:

• A Nice Domain
• Write Quality Content
• Get some bank links
• Add more content
• Keep up with current events (more below)

The list item there has a lot of old school webmasters confused it seems. Before you could be the first in a niche, get the most links, or have an exact match domain and sit confidently atop the SERPS’s – With all the recent changes to Google, current events, live search, social media, and keeping fresh content are now a nice formula for ranking well. Keeping your site current will keep you a step ahead of the older more established websites, you are actually offering something people are actively searching for.

Two new Projects we are working on

I’m mainly known as a “Rakeback” affiliate by a lot of the webmaster I know, but most of the actual Poker Rooms that knwo me, they know I’m a CPA guys whenever possible for most new sites. I’m not going to get into the age old Rakeback Debate, but as a small business owner I want to be diverse as possible and I’m always looking for ways to extend our reach. So here is a couple of my most recent projects:

Internet Poker Bonus – This is reallly my wife’s websites and so far she is doing very well. Nice domain name, nice template

UFC Betting – I am super addicted to UFC stuff, my boys and I have even bought a bunch of boxing gear, safety equipment, training videos, etc – We don’t plan on becoming MMS fighters, but its a great way to stay in shape! We have a very nice custom design for this site almost ready, and we plan on this being a big site. Within in the first 10 days of the site being live, we had over 150 visits and even made some money. So this seems like a great market where our experience and SEO knowledge will allow us to compete quickly.

Poker Affiliate Tips

As promised, I knwo this post is a little boring so I’m goign to share a few good Poker Affiliate Marketing tips. Use these tips to make your self some money because I knwo it works!

1. Look Past the US Market – I’m an American born and breed, but I have so little faith in our government to regulate or handle anything without screwing it up so even if by some miracle we ever do regulate gaming, it may be worse than we could ever imagine. Over the last 2 years we have invested a lot of money into building sites and translating websites into various languages. We use a great pro translation firm and these guys do top notch work. Translating and targeting new markets has made the difference between making ok money in this industry, to buying my dream car and being able to afford to buy my kids a new car. So don’t feel trapped by the US market, be ready for w/e the world throws at you by “going global”

2. Do not try and be the next pokerlistings.com – Not because you shouldn’t strive to be a dominate force int he industry, but because you do NOT HAVE to be the next pokerlisting. All too often I see people wanting to emulate what PL has done, and simply put you can do better than that. If you want to compete in the poker industry, find some original way to build your client base. Even if that just means writing great content that doesn’t sound like its form a commercial. Remember, its not how much traffic you havem its what you do with it. If you have traffic, you can make money simple as that.

3. Draw your own conclusions – The first thought that pops in my mind as I write this is: Do not believe everything you hear on a Affiliate Forum or Webmaster Forum. I’m positive that people intentionally mis-lead people quite often, and worst of all people are all too ready to except what they hear on a forum or on a blog as the gospel. DO YOUR OWN WORK! don’t rely on me to tell you about SEO or Marketing, get out there and find out for yourself and then use that knowledge to make money. While other people are debating on a forum all day, you can be out gaining valuable information which will help you rank better, rank faster, and make more money.

Ok so that’s it for today. Sorry if this post was sorta boring but posting here helps me organize some of the random thoughts that swirl around in my brain.