Time for a light-hearted look at the characters you’ll find in the slot99 affiliate business.
After 9 or so months since I considered myself part of the business (started with the second version of SNG Planet which actually had the potential to convert, before this it was really just a bunch of my strategy articles on a website) I’ve come across many types, especially at http://www.pokeraffiliateprograms.com/ , the poker affiliate community that I’m proud to be a part of:
#1 – Mr Freeloader
Has stumbled upon the concept of being an affiliate for poker sites and is almost delerious with the possibilities of becoming an overnight millionaire… when faced with the investment of $9 in a domain and $10 a month for hosting Mr Freeloader simply laughs. Why spend all this money when I can put up my banner farm on a blog and spend my time watching the money roll in??
6-months later: Gone.
#2 – Mr Pokah Playa
Failed online poker pro, knows all the sites, all the poker terms and maybe even a small group of similar players. Assumes that this makes his opinion more valuable than those of veterans of the business for many years. Answers every post on every subject for a short period of time, regularly demonstrating not only a complete absence of ‘business acumen’, but often creating an image of an irritating failed-poker player while actually thinking that he makes a valued contribution.
6-months later: Well, he got a couple of mates to sign-up for rakeback deals but was too busy giving others his opinion to actually learn about the business… sells site for a fraction of the income he could have earned each month… gone.
#3 – Mr Incentives (also known as Mr Back-Of-An-Envelope)
Biro in hand and envelope on table this newbie to the business works out that if he offers $50 to players to earn enough points to earn him $100 and gives them half then repeats 100’s of times he could be stinkkkkkkking-rich. Then one day a brainwave hits… why bother recruiting real players at all… then I get to keep the whole lot! Usually first appears to complain that he has not been paid by one affiliate program or another, receiving around about the same amount of sympathy as if he’d just sh*t in the public swimming pool.
6-Months Later: Well, we can usually measure the lifespan of the true fraudsters in days, the deluded incentive guy who wants to do a better version of poker source may last a couple of months longer.. maybe.
#4 Mr Back-In-My-Day
Here we come onto the veteran of the business, he was a poker affiliate using mainframe valve-run computers while you were still in nappies (diapers for my US readers). This affiliate finds newbies in this industry intensely irritating and feels that it is his duty to put them down at every opportunity. The google ranking mechanism which favours age (and age of inbound links) will keep the veterans decidedly mediochre website high in the rankings for a good while yet – enabling him to gloat over the heads of these pesky newcomers about what fantastic deals he was able to get with the poker rooms.
6-months later: No problems here, there will be plently of newcomers ready to stamp on by then!
#5 – Mr Spammer
Has read internet bulletin boards such as the Warrior Forum (a very good resource but with a decidely spammy undercurrent) and knows the keywords like ‘upselling your ebook’, ‘bonus offers’, and ‘JVs’… decides that working with other affiliates will help ‘leverage the power of the list, and ‘mutually boost our link juice’. Decides to send out e-mails, then more e-mails, then forum private messages, then more e-mails to the point of driving the recipients insane. In fact, one week I did not get a mail from a known ‘Mr Spammer’ and actually called my host to check that the system was still working…. fails to realise that the effect is actually to become ‘black-listed’ by many legitimate affiliates – missing out on the future JVs with those who could actually make a difference to the business.
6-months later: e-mail arrives, dear {firstname_fix} I have seen your website…
Just a quick disclaimer… any implied reference to real people in this post is 100% deliberate… if you believe that it is you then, yep, it most probably is.
Maybe next time I’ll give you my good natured and serene views on forum and blog spammers in the poker affiliate game…. hmmmm.
