GPWA Times - Issue 20 - March 2012

changed their terms and conditions to be less affiliate friendly, you will find that a large majority were pok- er operators that have very high lev- els of brand recognition. Another disadvantage of promoting established poker sites with strong brand recognition is that many of the high-value players are already playing at those sites. Promoting poker sites with weak brand recognition Now let’s explore the advantages and disadvantages of promoting poker sites with weak or nonexistent brand recognition. While simply promoting these operators will not give your site any additional cred- ibility, it will give you an opportunity to introduce your players to brands with which there is a good chance they do not have existing accounts. And while the overall conversion and retention rates may be lower for these rooms, you can expect to receive a significantly higher starting commission rate. In some cases your starting com- mission rate may even be twice as high as it is with one of the larger and more recognized brands. The point to remember with newer poker sites or operators is that they absolutely need affiliates to help them build their brand. Not only do they need the traffic and players that poker affiliates provide, they also need enormous amounts of page views and eyeballs constantly seeing their brand on our sites each day. This is one of the fundamentals of building brand recognition. And luckily for poker affiliates, many of these operators are will- ing to invest in paying higher affili- ate commissions to begin building their brand recognition. In most instances poker affiliates will find that the newer or less recognized poker sites will also be much more willing to negotiate custom deals or special promotions. One advantage of promoting a less recognized brand is that if the poker site does indeed grow and become a top site in the geographical mar- ket you are targeting, you will en- joy multiple benefits. Not only will you have a robust player base as the brand grows, there’s also a good op- portunity for SEO benefits as you have aged pages up about the site. Unfortunately, however, there are disadvantages and risks when pro- moting many of these newer op- erators or less recognized brands. Because of the relatively low brand recognition, it is hard for an affili- ate to know how solid the operator’s financial backing is. If history tells us anything about the online poker industry, it is that there is always a risk that the operator could be here today and gone tomorrow. In addition, payment processing for both affiliate payments as well as player payments should be a con- cern when considering promoting a less recognized poker room. It’s al- ways best to ask around on affiliate and player forums to find out what the current processing times are. Although the risks of promot- ing some of these brands can be higher, there can often be greater rewards as well. It is imperative, however, for affiliates to perform a great deal more due diligence re- garding newer affiliate programs or those without a great deal of brand recognition. After reviewing the significance of brand recognition when choos- ing new affiliate programs to work with, I think there is only one clear answer: It’s important to work with both types of operators. Brand recognition is certainly an important factor to consider when choosing which affiliate programs to work with and how to work with them. My suggestion is to always go with a revenue-sharing plan for the programs you feel confident will convert and retain your players for years to come. For new programs or poker sites without any real brand recognition, it often makes sense to start with a reasonable CPA and see how they perform before mak- ing the long-term commitment to revenue share. At this point it’s up to the poker site to retain your referrals and prove to you why you should switch to a revenue- sharing plan. In closing, it can safely be said that no two affiliates will ever see identical conversion and re- tention rates with the same affili- ate program. So much depends on the individual URL, targeted de- mographic, content and keyword strategy. Not split testing or trying out different programs on various pages is truly doing a disservice to your overall business. The beauty of frequently market- ing and trying out new affiliate programs is that over time you will learn which perform best for your individual websites or campaigns. And when you get this dialed in, there is a good chance that it will be a mix of the most recognized rooms in the industry as well as some rooms that even surprise you! Jeremy Enke is the CEO of Poker Affiliate Listings (PokerAffiliateListings.com). “One of the greatest benefits of having recogniz- able brands on your website is that it lends credibility when your traffic first arrives.” 47