affiliated networking » Poker Affiliate Solutions

New User Friendly Interface – PAS v3 Preview

Tony Guerrero — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:41:26 +0000

How is the new PAS more user friendly? We’ve been asked this question a lot lately. I’d like to go over a few of the improved PAS Admin pages and show how they are now easier to use:

New Publisher Control Panel

Want to minimize time spent navigating your Admin? You can now customize your PAS Dashboard to set your favorite quick links for easier navigation. We have a new global news feed as well, giving you better updates from PAS on important issues such as Payments, Stats, and Player Promotions.

New Member Search Fields

Query player data using multiple search functions. This new functionality allows PAS Publishers to quickly parse member names by several relevant categories.

Improved Translation Interface

Are you a webmaster who promotes to a non-English speaking market? If so, we have a great new tool to help you translate your PAS rakeback site.

Rakeback Stats Page

We know affiliates love their stats! Our new Rakeback Stats Page allows PAS Publishers to group stat queries by groups, poker rooms, websites, and affiliate accounts.

Export Data Page

More Stats! Our new and improved Export Page streamlines the process of exporting relevant player data to an Excel spreadsheet.

Join the discussion in our Poker Affiliate Forum!

Next up: SEO Improvments in PAS v3

Multiple Campaign Management – PAS v3 Preview

tim@pokeraffiliatesolutions.com — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:50:30 +0000

As promised in my last blog post Tony and I will be writing about the new features in the highly anticipated Poker Affiliate Solutions v3. For this weeks article I am going to cover some of the new campaign management tools we will be adding.

The campaign request page has been overhauled, giving publishers a full list of poker cpa and rev-share offers along with added information about the poker rooms such as the network, cpa requirements, and the first time signup bonus.

For the first time on PAS the entire process is automated. As a publisher you will be able to request CPA/Rev Share campaigns and receive your trackers immediately.

Take a look at two preview pictures posted below:

We have also added the brand new “View Offers” page that will give you a nice breakdown of every poker affiliate campaign you have with Poker Affiliate Solutions.

One place to manage all of your campaigns, with Poker Affiliate Solutions v3.

Next Week: Tony previews the new interface!

Poker Affiliate Solutions v3 Launching in March!

tim@pokeraffiliatesolutions.com — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:13:01 +0000

After over a year in development Poker Affiliate Solutions v3 is ready to launch this month! The latest version of our software is the strongest yet. Featuring the same Ruby On Rails technology that powers Twitter, Basecamp, and YellowPages PAS v3 will be the most powerful poker affiliate software around.

Starting this Friday Tony and I will be writing semi-weekly blog posts outlining the new features of PAS v3 and how they can help you succeed as a poker affiliate. Our goal at PAS is to give you the absolute best possible tools and technology to help you maximize your earning potential as a poker affiliate. These new features include:

Multiple Campaign Management
New, More User-Friendly Interface
SEO-Friendly CMS
“Smart Group” User Tracking
5 New FREE Premium Rakeback Templates
Fully Customizable Offers Pages

As announced in our forum PAS v3 is launching at 5:00 AM ET on Sunday, March 21. Join the discussion in the PAS forum!

Victory Poker Launch Weekend Part 2

tim@pokeraffiliatesolutions.com — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:50:19 +0000

Poker professional and Rake Tracker player Tom Luts wrote part 2 of the Victory Poker launch party weekend on the Rake Tracker blog.

Victory Poker Launch Weekend Trip Report

Who Does Your Business Depend Upon?

Craig — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:50:12 +0000

One of our biggest partners announced some changes this week that surprised, upset, scared and even outraged quite a few people. The simple truth is that these changes will likely have a real bottom line effect on many of our hardworking publishers. There isn’t much (if anything) most of us individually, or even all of us combined can do about this. A petition would probably be ignored, a boycott is unlikely to have a powerful enough effect to change policy and general complaining and venting won’t do a thing. The simple fact is Full Tilt Poker may not depend on you to survive, succeed or even prosper.

A company that does what it does effectively can have this kind of power. If you have a really good product that people know about, you will do well, even if you make mistakes and mismanage your product on occasion. Do you depend on Full Tilt Poker to survive? What about the Cereus or Cake Poker network, or even Party Poker? Do you depend on Poker Affiliate Solutions?

If the answer is yes, you will have to hope your partners continue to treat you well and perform their duties as expected, and you will probably have to worry a little bit. That’s OK, but it might not be ideal. If you take this opportunity to strengthen your products and services, on the other hand, maybe you won’t depend so much on the whims of others.

If you can drive traffic to your website because it does something really well, better than anyone else can, then you can always turn a profit. In many ways, we at PAS depend on such people for our success. That’s why we spend so much time helping you succeed, improving our services and staying ahead of the curve.

Perhaps, if you take this time to assess what you do and how you can do it better, in the future other businesses will depend on you.

- Craig

Full Tilt Reduces Rakeback Affiliate Commissions March 1st

tim@pokeraffiliatesolutions.com — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:35:38 +0000

Poker Affiliate Solutions just concluded a meeting with Full Tilt Poker management. Effective March 1st Full Tilt Poker commissions on all new players will be set to 3%. This affects ALL rakeback affiliates of Full Tilt Poker. These changes are not retroactive and rates on existing players will be maintained.

As a result Poker Affiliate Solutions will be setting all publisher rakeback commissions on new sign ups to 3% at Full Tilt Poker effective March 1st. You will continue to be paid existing commissions on all players signed up before the March 1st date. The decision came from the top at Full Tilt Poker and will affect all rakeback affiliates and affiliate networks.

This is a fantastic time to sign up players to Full Tilt and lock in your current rate on those players. As a publisher you should take this week to make a huge marketing push towards Full Tilt Poker. Send out newsletters, place a banner on your homepage, and acquire as many players between now and March 1st as you can.

On a positive note there will be no changes in promotions at Full Tilt Poker, as a publisher at Poker Affiliate Solutions. In fact, we are working with Full Tilt to secure higher promos to help you offset the reduced commissions.

On a closing note there will be no changes for traditional publishers at Full Tilt Poker. Any CPA or traditional Revenue-Share campaign rates will not change. This only affects rakeback affiliate commissions.

If you have any other questions please feel free to email either me, Tony, or post in our affiliate forum.

TimPokerAffiliateSolutions dotcom

and

TonyPokerAffiliateSolutions dotcom

Kind regards,

Tim

Victory Poker Launch Party Weekend Part 1

tim@pokeraffiliatesolutions.com — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 23:42:56 +0000

This past weekend Arthur and I flew to sunny Las Vegas to attend the Trash Talk Championship of the World hosted by Victory Poker at the Hard Rock Casino.

Friday morning I woke up at around 5am to shower and get ready for my flight out. Luckily my roommate Gerry was willing to drive both me and Arthur to the airport. For those of you not living in the Midwest the weather has been just horrible. Freezing cold. I drove to the airport in icy rain that was pouring so hard we couldn’t see the lanes in the roads. Thankfully we made it on time. While getting on the plane I was thinking to myself “I am NOT going to miss this weather”.

Flash forward a few hours and we landed in Vegas. First order of business was to check in to our hotel at the Hard Rock and do some gambling. Turns out we could not check in until 3pm so Arthur and I decided to head to Caesars Palace to play some poker.

Arthur and I each grabbed seats at the 1-3 blind NL Holdem game. We played for a couple hours, the action was loose and fast. I decided to raise UTG in the dark to $15. Arthur on my immediate left cold called and the blinds both called.

The flop came 9d8d6s. At this point I decided to look at my hand and it was 57 off-suit for a flopped straight. Clearly I am a master. Both the blinds checked to me and I decided to make a very sneaky bet of $5 into the $60 pot. My goal here was to fish out a raise from someone and come over the top with a strong 3-bet. Arthur took the bait and raised me to $25. Both the blinds folded and it was back to me. PAS VS PAS, I guess it was bound to happen.

At this point my hand must have looked very bluffy. As such I decided to run what is called “The Vesel” (named after my good friend Joe). ‘The Vesel’ is the act of reaching for the tallest stack of chips in front of you and just toss it in the pot (with a very strong hand). Dont announce raise, and certainly dont count out how much you are betting. Just chuck a ton of chips in the middle. For some reason this looks INCREDIBLY bluffy to people and gets you tons of action you might not otherwise get. Sure enough Arthur called and the pot has hit over $260.

Turn card Qd. This made the board 9d8d6s Qd. Certainly a gross card but I didn’t put Arthur on a flush draw. Needless to say I shoved allin and Arthur turned over the AdJd for the ESPN check mark. I was drawing dead. Stacked by Arthur.

Part 2: Steak Dinners and Victory Poker

-Tim

A Radical Idea, Advertise Products You Use!

Craig — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:14:22 +0000

At PAS, we pride ourselves in giving you options. We’ve been adding a new rakeback offer almost every month and Tony has been working hard to bring you quality CPA and Revenue Share offers.

Why so much choice? Well, I like to think it’s because we are providing you with a tool-set that is capable of crafting a wide range of possibilities. Sure grabbing every single possible offer available is one way to go, but it’s just that, one possibility among many.

Consider Woot, a (successfull) site that dared to be different Amazon may sell kitchen sinks, books and electric drill chuck keys, but competing doesn’t necessarily mean offering a wider range of products. Maybe it means offering just a few products that are really appealing to a select demographic.

Consider your choices. Perhaps add only those poker rooms you’ve played at or frequent. Stand behind your suggestions, offer tricks to navigate their software or analyze of the skill sets of the average player at that room. The bottom line is to choose a model that appeals to players you personally are capable of recruiting, servicing and soliciting recommendations from.

This is not a one size fits all solution, but perhaps the size that fits you will fit the players who can identify and succeed with you!

Top Rakeback Website Trends of 2009

Craig — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 17:40:10 +0000

I’ve recently done a survey of some of the larger players in the rakeback industry and I’m a bit disgusted with the lack of creativity on display. It’s very natural for there to be pervasive trends in web design, and that’s OK. Trends can indicate progress and may be a sign of competition catching up to a surge of rapid development.

Trends can also be harbingers of staleness and monotony. Some design concepts have ended up grossly over-saturating the market (that Web 2.0 look, or shiny… everything) and become the latest and most sought after fashions. Such surges of pop design tend to produce consistently mediocre products. Sure many, even most, of these designs look OK, but very few stand out or dare to try a novel and aggressive approach.

It seems that this problem is especially piquant in our industry, where a persistent game of follow-the-leader seems to be taking place. Not all the currently hot trends are bad, and many simply reflect the larger environment in which design changes and advancements take place. They do, however, chime a particular note that should catch your ear. When the competition all starts to look the same, it is quite likely that no one is innovating. When this happens, cracks appear, allowing small, agile players to shoot through.

There is always room in a crowded industry for new comers, especially when the establishment seems to have become really good at doing all the same things all the same way. There is plenty of new ground to be broken in the affiliate industry and now may be a better time then ever to start digging.

Some of 2009’s Biggest Trends

The Sidebar

The Trend - Having a sidebar with offers on it is nothing new, but the current trend is to have US and/or EU flags on it and to organize by network.

How Played Out? – This is getting pretty common, it’s a popular solution to a common problem – organizing growing lists of rooms in ways that are meaningful to users. At some point this takes up a lot of space and new strategies will be needed. It certainly adds to the feeling that a given site has basically the same product as any other competing site.

Bonus Trend – There seems to be an industry wide competition to see who can cram the most stuff in their sidebars. Half a dozen categories each with half a dozen or so links seem to be the norm.

The Rotating Banner

The Trend- Placing a flash or jQuery powered rotating banner on the front page. These are almost always links to on-site promotions.

How Played Out? – A Year ago just a few sites were doing this, now it’s everywhere. Too many slides can really slow down load times, and most viewers are only likely to look at the first slide. This technique probably isn’t very affective unless you have a captive audience and really well done designs for your banners. In addition to relatively talented developers, these take time to maintain. Use with caution.

Explanatory Graphics

The Trend – Some sort of info graphic to demonstrate what rakeback is and how it works.

How Played Out – I saw more of these pop up in 2009, they are picking up steam but arent as hot as some of the other trends. This is another one that needs some design talent applied to it, if not really done well these just add to the confusion.

Comprehensive Front Page Offers Listings

The Trend – 2008 saw more sites using a “Featured Offers” model than 2009. Sites seem to be going back to large tables that included promotions, sign up bonuses, countries of eligibility and oodles of other fine print.

How Played Out - It’s defiantly catching, but isn’t nearly universal. Those sites that are trending this way seem to all have nearly identical presentations.

PAS Rakeback site 101

tim@pokeraffiliatesolutions.com — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 18:43:51 +0000

Hey all, my name is Tim and I am the new affiliate manager alongside Tony here at Poker Affiliate Solutions. I have been a rakeback affiliate since 2004 and in the spring of 2008 I became a Poker Affiliate Solutions publisher. Once I familiarized myself with the CMS there were a few things I did right away to make my site stand out from the crowd. These are tips that every PAS publisher should abide by.

1.) Introduce your site. PAS rakeback sites have a single sentence of content on their homepages by default. Take some time to write your homepage, as it is the most important page on your site.

2.) Write original poker room reviews. Our rakeback sites start out with placeholder reviews for you to build on. Write a review for each poker room and give it your own voice. Share your opinion with your visitors, and be honest.

3.) Perform basic SEO on your site. Write your meta data, title your pages, etc. Checkout The Magic of Meta-Data on Hubspot.

Here are a few good resources for improving your poker affiliate marketing:

Poker Affiliate Forum – Become a member of the PAS forum community

Digital Point – One of the premier traditional affiliate marketing forums

PokerSEO.org – Randy Rays poker seo blog

I hope you enjoyed my very first blog post here at PAS. Feel free to drop me an email if you would like to discuss some of your poker affiliate marketing ideas.

Tim PokerAffiliateSolutions dotcom