There are a host of excellent poker blogs and poker affiliate blogs we at Poker Affiliate Solutions read. They’re listed below in no particular order.

• Iggy’s Party Poker Blog - a long time resource. Shows the importance of regular poker content. Always an entertaining read, it shows you don’t need fancy seo packages or the latest wordpress themes to rank well for poker related terms. It’s number two for “poker blog.”
• Tao of Poker - An excellent blog from Pauly - writer, traveler, poker player. Not only do we like his writing, we’ve got a number of Dead fans in the office. Not just a poker player, but a full-time writer, with articles and/or columns on a number of other websites and Bluff Magazine.
• Bill’s Blog - An awesome resource for information about the online poker industry. If you are a poker affiliate, get the feed on this one.
• Money Hater - A hilarious poker blog from PokerBob. He just needs to update it more.
• PAP Blog - Our friends at Poker Affiliate Programs write a good blog with fresh content on the industry. Excellent tools for a current or prospective poker affiliate.
• Joe Tall’s Blog - Poker, Rakeback, Deuces Cracked, Poker Coaching and more from our friend Joe.
• Michelle Lewis’s Blog - Um, Er, she’s hot. And it’s good reading about the goings on in the world of poker - online and off.
• Noted Poker Authority - Ed Miller’s Blog. He is a multiple time 2+2 author and his blog is an excellent poker strategy resource.

There are actually a ton more. We’re always reading about the industry and poker generally. A few more: JeremyEnke.com, PokerNews, Pokerati, Grinders Warehouse, DeathDonkey, and a bunch of others I am forgetting. Comment to turn us on to more good resources.

Are they the two most important things in Internet Marketing?

Hard to say - online poker affiliate marketing has so many components that dictate the level of success. But niche and brand are certainly foundations.

When we started marketing poker online five years ago, rakeback was actually quite a niche business. And we used our knowledge of the business, our first to market position, and our communication skills to excel in the niche. If you are going to dominate a niche, you need to know everything there is to know. We literally educated customers about rakeback one by one via email, IM, and private messages. (It’s that whole educating versus selling thing. Educating is better.)

Now, of course, rakeback is, if not the standard of poker affiliate marketing, certainly a staple. It’s no longer a niche business. There are many providers. Reliability, accuracy, statistics, knowledge, on-time payments, and good deals are now absolutely necessary just to get your foot in the door. But there have become niches within the rakeback industry, and there are many more yet to be developed.

Here is a simple but powerful example about niche based on Raketracker’s google analytics. These are conversion rates based on keyword (all for the last 75 days):

• Cake Rakeback - 8.33%
• Eurolinx Rakeback - 6.41%
• Ultimate Bet Rakeback - 4.00%  (This one will be going down as it appears we have lost position.)

Then:

• rakeback - 1.48%
• rake tracker - 1.06%
• raketracker - .58%

The more specific - the better the conversion.  aka Niche.

Niche turns into Brand by continually doing something in a consistent way.  Raketracker has paid rakeback to customers every month for the last 52+ months - it’s how we became one the strongest brands in rakeback.

If you were starting from scratch in rakeback today - make sure you think brand from day one.  Make sure your friends, people you play with, your friends friends and the people they play with all know that you’re the rakeback guy or the rakeback gal or the rakeback place.  Then make sure you are consistent in your actions.  Maybe you send personal notes with payments or call your top five players.  Do something unique and do it consistently.

And keep niche and brand in mind.

You should be ready to field questions from your players about how rake is calculated, what it means, and which sites use which methods. These numbers are obviously important because they ultimately play a role in determining MGR.

Calculating rake is done via two major methods - dealt and contributed. However, the two types of contributed rake are different enough that they need to be explained as two different categories – average contributed and weighted contributed.

Dealt Cards:
Under the dealt method you are allocated an equal share of the total hand rake assuming you are dealt cards. You are deemed to have contributed to the pot by being present, even if you fold pre-flop. If a six-handed game produces $3 in rake each player is allocated $.50 of it for purposes of determining MGR. Sites using this method include Full Tilt Poker and InterPoker.

Average Contributed:
Even though it is contributed, it is actually similar to Dealt in that the rake is split evenly – amongst players who contribute to the pot. Therefore, it doesn’t matter how much you contribute. It just matters that you contribute. Folding pre-flop without contributing to the pot (no BB or SB) means your rake consideration is zero. If you contribute $3 to a $600 pot, 3 people contributed something and the total rake is $3, your allocation is $1 or a third. Average Contributed Rake Calculation sites include Eurobet and Hollywood. Ultimate Bet Rakeback also comes from this method.

Weighted Contributed:
The weighted proportion of the pot is the proportion of rake you will receive. If you put in 0% of the pot, you get 0% of the rake. 50% contribution gets 50% of the total rake. Absolute Poker uses this method.