GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 15 - January 2011

As an Internet marketer with literally hun- dreds of affiliate accounts, I think most of my fellow poker affiliates would agree that checking stats and individually cashing out of each program every 30 days can be a massive undertaking in its own right. While, as I mentioned above, I’d like to see the existing networks grow and be- come more comprehensive, this is some- thing that I believe will happen naturally as the industry matures. In the mean- time, though, I am still a firm believer that, for the beginning poker affiliate, promoting through a network is the best course of action. While visiting the offices of the largest poker affiliate networks (PokerAffiliateS- olutions.com), I sat down with Tim Flores and asked himwhat the distinct advantag- es were for affiliates promoting through a network. Tim stated, “There are the obvi- ous benefits such as higher commissions and one backend to get your trackers and stats. But you also have experienced af- filiate managers that are responsive and always available. “Being the largest poker affiliate network in the world, we generate a great deal of volume to our operators,” Tim also said. “If there are tracking issues, payment is- sues or anything that looks suspect, we can usually spot this immediately and alert our affiliates.” Having the opportunity to tour the PAS offices was an awesome experience in it- self, and you will have the opportunity to read about that in future articles. The intention of this article isn’t to en- courage poker affiliates to strictly pro- mote through networks, but instead to collectively look outside our industry and see what is working well in other verticals. In many cases, individual poker opera- tors do a fabulous job running their affili- ate programs, especially the established programs. Sadly, however, it seems that each month in the forums we read about a plethora of issues coming up with stand- alone poker affiliate programs. Throughout my tenure in the poker af- filiate industry I have seen multiple poker sites come and go. Many of the sites that have folded were well capitalized initially and had great business plans. What some new poker rooms do not realize, however, is that there is much more to having a suc- cessful affiliate program than simply us- ing the out-of-the-box network affiliate software and hiring an inexperienced af- filiate manager. In this instance, you can see where uti- lizing a network would be highly recom- mended. Operators can decrease their overhead by not having to hire an internal affiliate manager or deal with individual affiliates or payments on a daily basis. Instead, operators can focus on player conversions and retention, which are the foundation for running a successful online poker room. Jeremy Enke Jeremy Enke is the CEO of Poker Affliate Listings (PokerAffiliate- Listings.com). Jeremy has dedicat- ed over seven years to the poker affiliate market, with an overall mission throughout this time of helping affiliate marketers reach their full potential and become more successful in this terrific in- dustry. Jeremy has been involved in the poker affiliate industry since 2003. Founding the world’s larg- est poker affiliate community, fol- lowed by the world’s largest poker affiliate network,Jeremy likes to re- fer to himself as a self-proclaimed Certified Baller. Jeremy’s sense of humor and entrepreneurial spirit are second to none. 15 The case for poker affiliate networks