15+ TOP Poker Affiliate Programs — Best Poker Affiliate Networks of 2024 For Online Money Making
A few years ago poker was just another niche for affiliate marketing. However, now with the sudden rise of modern approaches and ways to convert, poker is one of the most profitable niches among all others. Poker is more like a sub-category of gambling affiliate marketing, therefore, a lot of people confuse it with other verticals, such as online casinos, bingo, and lottery. However, the truth is that poker is by far the toughest to get into and be successful in.
This does not mean that the market is saturated or anything like that, it is simply because it is a little hard to find relevant information about how to start a career in it. There is always going to be a full web of information on the internet, but it is up to you to scan and extract the things that are for you.
This article is specifically to teach you about the niche and how you can build an interesting and profitable career out of it.
What Is Poker Affiliate Marketing
If you have any prior experience of playing poker online, then you must be aware of how game rooms work. The entire process revolves around a "rake". The rake is a small amount of cash that the room defines in every individual game beforehand.
So if the winner earns $20, he would pay $1 to the game room and the remaining $19 is his to keep. Similarly, in tournaments, there is a small fee that every gamer pays as a buy-in. That money is for the room to keep as well. It does not matter if the player either wins or loses the tournament.
Naturally, a game room wants as many players as they can get. The more the players in one single room, the higher the rake, and the greater the amount of money that a room will generate for themselves. But how can they attract more players?
This is where you, a webmaster comes into play. The poker affiliates are a type of marketers that spread the word about game rooms and send traffic to these websites. Without the affiliates, it is highly unlikely that anyone would make their way to the online poker rooms.
Therefore, as an incentive to the traffic, the rooms offer the affiliate a specific amount of money for each player that they send to the room.
You can include a link to the game rooms on your affiliate website to redirect the users. A poker affiliate usually has a choice between two payment models. The MGR model makes you a shareholder in the total money that a user generates and the CPA model makes you eligible for a specific amount of money on each signup. You can read more about this in the headings below.
Both of the models can prove to be quite profitable if you can successfully divert traffic to the website. If your links speak for themselves then you can charge anywhere between 25% to 40% or even more!
Why Should I Go For a Poker Affiliate Niche
Apart from the fact that currently, online poker is a 59.6 billion dollar industry, the amount of money that you can make from it is crazy.
Even though the earnings might be slow in the beginning, there is still a dominant chance that you will earn a solid income in the future. All you need is to invest your time and hard work in it to build a decent website and post regularly. It takes patience and effort beyond measure.
Poker attracts people of all ages, therefore, there is a huge market out that you can capture with relevant content. Furthermore, the market is not saturated, which makes it the perfect time to jump on the battlefield. A lot of people are not aware that they can earn money by directing links and others are oblivious to the existence of poker affiliate marketing.
A lot of people also belong to the category who just give up after a month or so because they are not making enough money.
Either way, it is a win-win situation for you because this is the perfect opportunity for you to cash in.
A lot of affiliate programs are willing to pay a handsome amount if you generate quality leads and market their room in the best possible way. Here is a screenshot to give you an idea.
How Much Can You Earn as a Poker Affiliate
Even though it is hard to quote an exact figure, it is safe to say that once your website takes off, you can easily earn a solid 5 digit salary each month. Back in 2013, PokerStrategy.com was sold for a massive sum of 49.2 million dollars. Other than this one website, millions of others are sold for 6 or 7 sum figures around the world.
If we talk about numbers on a monthly basis, then Quora comes to our rescue. A lot of people shared their experiences, and on average each one earns around $100 to $150 per player.
According to socialnomics, a corporate poker affiliate can earn anywhere from 50 000 to 100 000 dollars per month with good experience.
Most people are confused as to how they can make money from poker affiliate marketing and how early they can see the results.
To break it down for you, both of these questions are easily answerable. To know how you can make money, you need to understand the science behind the payment models and the other answer will follow through with it.
How Can I Earn Money with Poker Affiliate Programs
The way you can earn money is by directing prospective players to the rooms to sign up via various poker affiliate programs. You essentially build a website, find a niche, establish yourself as an authority, and then you place links or banners from different programs to attract the audience.
Whenever someone clicks on the link, you earn money in one of the following three manners.
- Revenue Share
- Cost Per Acquisition
- Sponsorship
Revenue Share
Revenue sharing is exactly what it sounds like. This is also one of the most profitable ways to generate a stable income each month. This type enlists you get a share whenever your links make revenue. In this type, you can ask for a share of 20% to 40% or even more depending on your portal.
Most of the gambling programs work on this principle, but with poker, everything is dependent on the rake, which is the commission that the house collects, regardless of winning or losing.
Cost Per Acquisition
Cost per acquisition is a single payment paid at the end of a period for referring a certain number of players to an online casino. With this model, an affiliate can ask for anything between 20 to 200 dollars, based on both their experience and their website’s reach.
In CPA, you get paid whenever a player signs up for a game room and makes the first deposit in their gaming account. Some programs might even count the number of signups only, however, that rarely happens.
Typically people presume that you don’t earn as much as you do in a revenue-sharing deal. However, this statement is highly subjective. The revenue sharing is luck dependent, but here you will always get a flat rate irrespective of the players winning or losing. Once you learn how to play your cards right, you can earn through any payment model.
In CPA you have to be careful, as CPA-fraud is very common. As the affiliates earning is not dependent on the success of the players that they direct to the website, they sometimes refer the rooms to their friends and family to meet the goals, resulting in hollow leads.
This is the main reason why you don’t find a lot of programs offering the CPA model, and if they do, they are picky about the affiliates that they partner with.
Always remember that the affiliate program relationship is built on trust and so is your reputation in the market.
Sponsorship
Sponsorship is the least profitable out of the three because it skips on the entire revenue or CPA model. You are simply paid for putting up a banner or a link on your website, which acts as an advertising channel for their game rooms.
However, this type of payment model is very rare and you would hardly find it. Such programs prefer to work with only established or long withholding sites.
Do you have any experience with either of these payment models? Yes/No
When Will I Start Earning With Poker Affiliate Marketing
There is no specific timeline as to when you will make big bucks with poker affiliate marketing, but a year is a pretty good estimate. With the right type of hard work and dedication, there is no reason for you to not make that much at the end.
However, like every other niche of affiliate marketing, it is important to establish oneself as an authority so that you can generate a large amount of quality traffic.
It might take you a year or even more, there is practically no way to put a date on it. But if you keep your mind on it and dedicate your full potential then you would be able to change your side job into a primary one.
Getting Started With Poker Affiliate Marketing
Getting started with poker affiliate marketing is as simple as it gets, but it requires a truckload of time investment and research. The process can be broken down into three parts:
- Finding an affiliate program
- Registering with a suitable plan
- Marketing the link
Find Profitable Poker Affiliate Programs
Finding a combination of a reliable program that is both offering a reasonable commission and on-time payments is a huge task in itself. But with proper browsing, you can always find a good option.
Visit a poker site and click on the affiliate option, which will most probably be tucked in the bottom. If you are new to the search, Google will do the job for you. Just input a query and you will have a list ready in no time.
Check if the program offers a revenue-sharing option or the CPA model. After that, we suggest digging deep into its reviews and checking out the reputation of the site before committing to it. As much as you desire to earn, you should never put your reputation at the line.
Never direct people to websites that seem shady and are breaking the law some way or the other. Check out the game room to see if they are abiding by the laws of your country and have all the updated licenses.
Register
After you find a good website, register yourself for an affiliate account. You will then be assigned a unique code along with an affiliate link to put up on your website. This is practically all you need to kick start your career online.
Establish a good website before registering so that you know that you can direct a specific amount of traffic to the website.
Market The Link
Marketing tactics are honestly based on your skills and your technical knowledge. But one of the fastest ethical ways to earn followers is through paid traffic. You can put up ads for your website using Google or social media platforms in hopes of attracting potential clients to your websites.
But if you don’t have enough funds to back your ads then you might land in some hot waters. If you run out of money to pay for ads, your visitors might significantly decrease. In such cases, we would strongly recommend you to have a chain of powerful content on your website as a subscription form.
When people sign up for the subscriber's list you can send them regular email updates about the new pages that you add to your website.
If you are new to the bandwagon, try to lure organic traffic to your website. Churn out barrels of relevant and powerful content full of keywords placed naturally. Don’t go overboard as it might spam your website. Brush up on your SEO skills, build links, and engage with your target audience through emails and social media.
Regardless of what path you decide to take, later on, the main aim of your website should be to divert as many people as you can to the program links. This is the only way to ensure that you earn as a poker affiliate.
We have some genius tips for you to make your website lucrative.
Tips For New Poker Affiliates
Setting a new website is quite challenging and requires a lot of hard work, dedication, and persistence but the right sort of motivation, you can make it to the top in no time.
Niche
Finding a niche is the key to a successful poker affiliate career. If you try to make a generic poker review site in the beginning, then it might not get as much traffic as you expect. Google might not send in much traffic as well, but there will be a whole lot of competition out there.
The key is to find a sub-niche that is not very common and has relatively a smaller amount of competition. This way you can leverage the Google algorithm by ranking higher with suitable keywords.
Here are some of the top poker keywords that you can use for your website.
Content Is the King
By putting out lots of quality content regularly, you are giving Google an extra chance to put up on the search results page. Content is the main driving force behind a successful website and is quite literally the only way for you to gain followers.
Conquer the Right Target Audience
Your real audience is the people who are interested in online poker, therefore, your content should be tailored to cater to them. Most of them are in for the thrill and the others are in the money. Focus on making your website as relevant to this group as you can.
For poker, your ideal audience is mostly above the age of 18 or 21 in almost all states of America, in short, the legal age. However, the legal age is highly variable all over the world, therefore, it is best to check it out beforehand.
Back in 2012, poker was declared an independent game and did not come under the gambling umbrella anymore. Therefore, the high society, especially the people at the Park Avenue are high class players of poker.
Similarly, there is a specific type of people who play in all states, it is important to do your due homework before you select your target audience.
Conclusion
Poker affiliate programs are a very profitable niche if you can find the right platform and accurately make use of it. Make sure you research well and you keep on putting the best of the best content out there.
Lastly, perseverance is the key. Most affiliate websites fail due to the impatient nature of the webmasters. Ensure that your story is the one with a happy ending.
