“Who comes to my store or web site, who actually buys from me? What are they like? How old are they? What do they do for a living? What motivates them? Are they conservative, or easy-going? What controls their decision to buy? Price? Necessity? Availability?”

This is called marketing research, and as a poker affiliate, you should know about it. Too many business owners guess what their audience wants without going past the surface and thinking deeply about it. Once you understand your audience, you will understand how to sell them your product.

Step 2: Know your product, and why people use it.

Do you know how your customers view your product? They buy it because it solves a problem for them. So what is that problem? Emails to customers should address the problem and offer your solution. What are the benefits of your product versus the competition’s?

Why would customers want your product or a product like yours?

Step 3: Positioning

What do you offer our customers that others don’t?

Outstanding, individualized customer service, reputable sites being reviewed, etc?

Step 4: Create a killer headline

Cater to the basic needs of your customers. Step into their shoes and think of what the most important reason behind buying that you would have. Go over the above notes, and choose the most compelling reason for your target audience.

Ask a question
Example: “Having trouble finding a poker room you can trust?”

Pique their interest
Example: “We have bonuses and offers you won’t find elsewhere…”

Appeal to the younger, newer players
Example: “Want that new car? The most profitable games to play are at these poker rooms…”

Offer something unique
Example: “Want to visit Las Vegas? We’re giving away a free trip. Details inside…”

Step 5: Personalize your email

Use their name if at all possible. If the name can’t be scripted into the email message, use something personable such as “Dear fellow poker player,” or “Dear fellow chip shuffler.”

Step 6: Create lead paragraphs that pull people in

Take all the information you gathered in steps 1 to 3 and write a paragraph highlighting the main reasons why people buy from you. Use the language & slang of the subculture too, as its more inviting and personable.

Use the word “you” other than “I” or “we.” You’re subconsciously communicating to them that they are the important ones. They don’t really care about you and how great you are, but what you can do for and how it matters to them is important.

Example:

“From the moment you walk into our store, we concentrate on you. We will spend individual, quality time to discover your needs, and to help you create a marketing plan that will help your firm grow-and make you more money.”

Step 7: Say it early

Not everybody is going to read your whole message, so make your first paragraph clear and concise. Throw the call to action link in there too.

Step 8: Give them reasons to buy

The main body of your content is where you sell them. You’ve already appealed to their emotions, now its time to give them the technical facts of why they should buy your product. A great way to think of this is to imagine yourself at a store, buying an item. What questions would you be asking the sales rep? Let them know why your software is better than your competition’s.

Example: “The software is free to download, and free to play as long as you like. If you choose to play for real money, making a deposit is quick and easy. When you wish to collect your winnings, your withdrawals are available at your leisure.”

Step 9: Create a strong call to action.

Send a direct message to the customer that you want them to take an action. People don’t know that they’re supposed to sign up and play, unless you tell them to.

50% Examples: “See our exclusive bonus offers now…” or “Sign up and play poker now…”

Be as enticing as possible. Instead of “Click here to visit our web site,” choose some more compelling text. Pique their interest, and make them want to find out more by clicking the link (in your email). Use curiosity to bring them in.

100% Examples: “Click here to see how you can make a living playing poker” or “Visit our exclusive offers, where poker rooms will match your first deposit”

Don’t let customers put off taking action. Make your offers stand out and put a false time constraint on them by using phrases such as “limited time offer,” or they’ll just put it off until tomorrow, and never take action.

Step 10: Offer an incentive

Offer customers something of value, and give it to them for free. Whether it be a free ebook, discount on products, match on deposits, etc. This incentive should be placed in the P.S. section of the website because, besides the headline, the P.S. section is the 2nd most read part of email messages.

Step 11: Keep the email short.

Reading messages can be time consuming and hard on the eyes. Many people scan over emails so they can move onto doing better things. For these reasons, most people spend less than 10 seconds on most emails, and won’t read anything that takes longer than 90 seconds to read in its entirety. Do yourself and your customers a favor, and keep them short.

This poker news article was written by admin is original content of Best Odds Corp.

We’ve been redesigning our old website (www.imaconlinepoker.com) from HTML to WordPress, and have run into what is likely to be a common problem. We changed several directory names such as www.imaconlinepoker.com/rule/poker/ to www.imaconlinepoker.com/poker-rules/. Permanently redirecting this individual page was no problem, but the child pages in the folder is we want to change. Here is the code we used to do that:

Redirect 301 /rule/poker/ http://www.imaconlinepoker.com/poker-rules/

The directory above has child folders and pages. So how do we solve the 301 redirect problem for that? What if somebody goes to www.imaconlinepoker.com/rule/poker/texas-holdem/ through an old link? For SEO and marketing reasons, we obviously do not want to be displaying our visitors with a 404 page. What we wish to do instead is direct them to the new Texas Holdem Poker Rules page. We can do that by simply doing a regular redirect such as follows:

Redirect 301 /rule/poker/texas-holdem/ http://www.imaconlinepoker.com/poker-rules/texas-holdem/

But what if we have hundreds or thousands of pages underneath each subdirectory? Adding the simple 301 redirect code would be simple yes, but also tedious and time consuming. Lucky for us, we’ve found a solution that will dynamically redirect the child pages / sub directories and help our users find the content they are seeking, all without costing us valuable time and energy in creating thousands of 301 redirects and stuffing our already full .htaccess file. Here is the .htaccess rewrite code to move an entire folder of content:

RewriteRule ^rule/poker/?(.*) http://www.imaconlinepoker.com/poker-rules/$1 [R=301,L]

The $1 on the end of the second URL appends anything extra after /poker-rules/ onto the new directory. EG /rule/poker/ would permanently redirect to /poker-rules/ now.

This poker news article was written by admin is original content of Best Odds Corp.

This poker news article was written by mc is original content of Best Odds Corp.

Sites Still Accepting US Poker Players

• Carbon Poker
• Bodog Poker
• Cake Poker
• Sportsbook.com Poker
• Players Only Poker
• BetUS Poker

*Links go to reviews of each room

04-19-2011

If you’re stuck with a bunch of points in your Full Tilt Poker account, it may be beneficial for you to use the following strategy:

1. Order a bunch of tournament tickets, other players have reported them to successfully show in the Full Tilt Poker cashier.
2. Send an email to support@fulltiltpoker.co.uk asking to have the tournament points converted to real money and added to your account balance.

No reports of success yet, but this is a better method than simply losing your points right?

04-18-2011

We are beginning to see at least some levels of confidence from our clients as we have been able to contact and have discussions with Pokerstars.com. We are still waiting on responses from Full Tilt Poker, Absolute Poker, and Ultimate Bet.

Absolute Poker and UB Poker are still allowing players to play, but it doesn’t seem as though anybody has been able to cashout just yet.

Also, Victory Poker has decided to leave the US poker market. Victory Poker’s CEO Dan Fleyshman stated over Twitter, “Asked the Cake Network to block U.S. players from the Victory Poker site. They are supportive of my decision. Hope it gets regulated 1 day!” The Cake network, however, continues to accept United States poker players.

Affiliates and players alike seem to be in an array of panic. Affiliates are selling their sites, and players continue to communicate to us that they had all of their money in their online poker accounts. Some players reported to have “never once cashed out.”

Best Odds Corp sees this as a strike to it’s core business, as all of the online poker sites indicted were strong advertisers on our network. However, we are staying the course and continuing business as usual. Adjustments will have to be made, and we are preparing for this in an orderly manner.

We encourage other affiliates and players alike to stay the course as well. Though this is a period of uncertainty, you will see your money, but it may take some time.

Remember this event next time you’re at the voting polls.

04-16-2011

Pokerstars

• PokerStars has halted real money play for US players. Players can log in but can’t sit down at the real money tables. The PokerStars website can be accessed by going to pokerstars.eu and player support is available at support@pokerstars.eu.
• Steve Wynn has canceled the previously heralded Wynn-Poker Stars partnership
• Pokerstars has already lost 25% of it’s traffic.

Pokerstars Prohibits US Poker Deposits

Pokerstars' Announcement to US Poker Players

Full Tilt Poker

• Full Tilt Poker has left the US market until further notice, and is ensuring that the money is safe with them. Players may send inquiries to support@fulltiltpoker.co.uk.
• Fertitta (Stations Casinos) has ended their partnership with Full Tilt Poker
• Full Tilt Poker likely to lose 40% of it’s traffic.

Full Tilt Poker's Announcement to US Poker Players

Full Tilt Poker Disallows US Poker Players

UB Poker & Absolute Poker (Cereus)

• Pokernewsdaily.com source says UB Poker and Absolute Poker are likely to stay in the US

The United States Department of Justice Indictment

• The cause of the indictments
• The Indictment Part 1
• The Indictment Part 2

Laughing About The Situation

Pokertableratings.com Table for US Department of Justice

This poker news article was written by admin is original content of Best Odds Corp.

This poker news article was written by admin is original content of Best Odds Corp.

This poker news article was written by mc is original content of Best Odds Corp.

We beg to differ.

From our experience, our opinion is that the only real winners in this affiliate program are the operators themselves. Not only do we feel that Bewinners screws their customers, but also their affiliates.

Fortunately, Best Odds Corp has avoided getting mixed up with what many poker affiliates feel is the shadiest poker affiliate program in the industry.

Best Odds Corp felt the blow of Bwin early on, so we were lucky to not become overly involved. Bwin took over Pokerroom.com and almost immediately used predatory terms to terminate affiliate agreements with it’s most loyal affiliates, including us. We lost tens of thousands of dollars per year in revenue due to this decision, and a sour taste was left in our mouth. But that didn’t stop the Bwin affiliate managers from telling us that we should begin to promote Bwin.

From: Katrien Verhoeven <Katrien.Verhoeven@bwin.org>

Hi Dan,

we seem to keep missing eachother.

my skypename is kavienna92

I’d like to ask you to promote bwin instead of PokerRoom and Europoker.

I can set up an account for you and send you new textlinks and banners, you only have to take off the PokerRoom banners on your website.

Pls let me know if we can continue!

br katrien

Fortunately for us, Best Odds Corp decided early on not to send further traffic. A referral would squeeze through here and there from old links, but once we pulled our links, no further referrals were sent. Here’s my response to Katrien:

Katrien,

I don’t currently feel that promoting bwin will be valuable to the Best Odds Corp websites. We have gone through some very troubling times with Pokeraffiliate.com in the past and now have very little connection with it (Casinoroom.com). There was a period of nearly a year where checks were bouncing, there has always been a high turnover of affiliate managers, the revenue share players seem to be low value, and the CPA requires players to qualify.

Dan

Katrien replied, making an attempt at reassuring that we “wouldn’t regret” promoting them:

Hi Dan,

You’re right, there were some problems with PokerAffiliate.com.

But we did everything possible to solve them and in the end you did get paid

I don’t understand your comment about the high turnover of affiliate managers, I have been your affiliate manager for the last two years, no one else!

Anyway I can honestly say that if you decide to rethink promoting bwin you won’t regret it.

The conversion rate is much higher and it’s the most well known brand in Europe (especially due to our sponsoring deals with the big soccer clubs, AC Milan,  Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and the Moto GP).

So as an affiliate you will definitely profit from this too.

Pls let me know when you’re still interested!

Thx br katrien

We received the following email after 60 days lapsed since our last referral (NPA) to Bwin:

Bewinners then sent this follow-up “clarification” note two days later:

Bewinners sent us the following termination email after 90 days without an NPA:

As you can see, Katrien wasn’t being as honest as was being stated in the emails. I’m glad that we declined doing business with this shady poker affiliate program.

It’s reasons such as these that we’ve chose to not promote the Bwin affiliate program. Might I add, the emails above were sent without the intent of allowing us to easily reply. The reply-to address field was filled with the following email address:

noreply@bewinners.com

To this day, Bwin continues to receive glares from the industry’s top affiliates due to the numerous predatory terms in their agreement. I won’t go into detail here, because there is already a resource that fully explains each of these predatory terms and is a haven for affiliates.

Why Bewinners is opined to be the worst affiliate program: www.belosers.com

Submit your story about the Bewinners program here

This poker news article was written by admin is original content of Best Odds Corp.

This poker news article was written by mc is original content of Best Odds Corp.