If you have a site about poker, casinos or gambling in general, you stand a good chance of making a nice profit by using various affiliate programs. But, choosing a program solely on its pay per sale percentage won't necessarily maximize your revenue. Looking at your visitors - and what they are looking for - will make it easier to choose a new poker affiliate program.

The online gambling industry is one of the most profitable niches for an affiliate marketer. But, due to its potential revenue, the competition is very hard, and you really need to make the most of every single visitor you get.

The more information you can gather about your visitors, the easier it gets to choose the right affiliate program suiting their needs. Much information can be accessed from your website statistics - or from the account statistics if you are buying traffic with contextual ads. What search terms attract the most traffic? Do you know exactly why they are arriving and where? If the most common search term is very general in its nature, it can be hard to know exactly what the visitors are looking for, but if you are getting visitors from more specific search terms, you should have a pretty good idea as to what your visitors are interested in.

Once you have evaluated your visitors' needs, it's time to figure out how to meet them. If you are getting search engine traffic for any term related to poker bonuses, odds are many of your visitors are looking for just that. No matter how good the affiliate program's percentage, if they do not offer a bonus high enough - or no bonus at all -, most of your visitors won't sign up, hence not making you a commission. Instead, this would give you an excellent opportunity to find as many poker rooms possible with high sign up bonuses, and hopefully many of your visitors will come back to find a new poker room with a good bonus once they are done with their first choice.

In the same manner you can find affiliate programs matching most keywords, if you have visitors you KNOW are looking for one particular thing - no matter if it's poker bonuses, omaha tables or stud - you should try to present them with products and services matching their needs on an as detailed level as possible.

Assuming you have a somewhat good knowledge in the niche you are working within, finding this kind of information can be done rapidly, but the more effort you put into finding the correct casino- or poker affiliate program, the better your traffic will convert. Most often the poker rooms offer trial accounts, making it free and easy to check out both the software, type of games and whether or not it's a busy poker room or not. All this information is highly important for knowing IF you should use the affiliate program in question, as well as for the marketer choosing what commission plan to use.

The more information you can get hold of - both about your visitors and about the affiliate programs - the better. You should always evaluate the programs joined, to ensure they are converting as expected.


Theo Swan is writing about choosing the right payment model when joining a gambling related affiliate program. Read more of Theo's thoughts at Affiliate Ranker.