Whether you are a newbie rakeback affiliate or a baller looking to expand your existing business, the tips below WILL increase your site’s brand, traffic, and revenue.

- Write rooms reviews from a players perspective.  Listing deposit methods, rake calculations, games offered, and bonus details are important but put your own signature on glance pages by writing a personalized room review.  If you haven’t played at a room, ask around. Google is your friend.  Find a forum like TwoPlusTwo and open a thread asking about the PLO 6 max games on Merge.   Whatever you do, please please Don’t Be Ordinary with your room reviews.

- Concentrate your initial SEO campaign on niche keywords.  Trying to make it above the fold for “Full Tilt Rakeback” will prove to be an uphill battle.   Target niche phrases where there is sparse competition. Some of these keywords will bring you higher value players than generic searches will.  “Aced Poker Rakeback Deductions” >  “Best Rakeback”

- Form a partnership with a reputable training site that is not already promoting rakeback to their players (there are a ton out there).  Offer the webmaster a revenue share of the players he or she refers to your rakeback site.  This can be done via a Refer A Friend program such as the one we offer PAS Publishers.  Go into the partnership with long term plans and goals for both parties.  Create a custom referral tier for the partnering site that involves increasing rev share percentages at specific MGR levels.

- Insert content on glance pages asking players to contact you if they already have an account at the room they are attempting to sign up at.  Don’t let your players give up. Find out what games they play and find the player a room or network that caters to their playing schedule and limits. More on this below.

- I can’t stress enough how important it is to have individual contact with your players.  This doesn’t mean you have to be on IM with them all day.  Rather, make note of what games and limits they play. Find out what times they play at.   If they are in the UK, find a room that has good traffic during your player’s peak playing hours.  Peak traffic times at the Boss Network may not align with a UK player’s schedule. Refer to Poker Scout for Room/Network traffic statistics.  Keep your ear to the grindstone.  Where are the fish swimming these days?  Give your players options.  Sure they may love the software at Full Tilt, but their hourly rate will increase exponentially with rakeback and softer games.

- Running a forum can be a huge time commitment. Partner with existing forums to offer rakeback to their player base.  Pitch the forum’s owner on a lifetime revenue share of the players they refer.  Make the deal appealing enough to the webmaster so that he/she is invested in the partnership just as much as you are. Paying for ad space is fine.  But it doesn’t add another member to your sales team like rev share partnerships do.

- If you have friends who are poker players (I am assuming the majority of you do), set them up with a referral account on your site.  Tap into their friends (player base) with a life time rev share agreement for every player they refer to you.  Have business cards made (they are very cheap) and pass them out to your friends who play live poker.  Write the friend’s referral code on the back of the card so they get credit for players they refer.  Live poker is boring.  Give your friends something to do at the tables

Tony