Archive for the ‘Affiliate’ Category

New Search Engine is not Cuil

Monday, July 28th, 2008

After reading about the new search engine on PAP, I decided to take it for a spin. It was down.

So after an hour wait, I headed over to cuil.com and checked it out. Here was my first search.

http://www.cuil.com/search?q=chanpoker&sl=long

These rankings are terrible. First Chanpoker.net should have no weight whatsoever, and how could chanpoker.com/help be the highest ranking page from the .com site?

Not to mention the black woman with cleavage that shows up on chanpoker.com/promotions

So then I searched for my name, and I don’t even show up.

Brandon Berndt

Trying to be the next google is like trying to be the next Jordan, Woods, or Jesus, it just isn’t going to happen.

Google is no longer a search engine, its the biggest name on the internet, and there is no room in the market for anything else (yes I am talking to you yahoo/msn)

I ended with “cuil will never be google” and got “No results because of high load…
Due to excessive load, our servers didn’t return results. Please try your search again.”

Poker and Casino Domains for sale

Monday, July 21st, 2008

Poker and Casino Domains for sale. I have been asked to sell a couple domains for some people. If you are interested, please contact me via my contact page.

BETSENT.COM
CASINO-SUITE.COM
HEADSUPOKER.NET
HOLDEMPROMOS.COM
MMA Betting (comes with site/logo)
NOBUYIN.COM
PARLAYODDS.NET
POKERHEADSUP.NET
POKERSTARSMACAU.NET
POKER-TELL.COM
POKERTIPSFROMTHEPROS.NET
RAZZSTRATEGY.NET
SIGN-OUT.COM
UKODDS.NET

Major Google Shake Up

Thursday, July 3rd, 2008

Today is a bad day for many of the biggest poker affiliates in the world. It looks like 5 of the biggest traffic sites have been completely dropped from googles search engine. I am really sorry to hear about this as I am good friends with most of them and would never wish this on anyone. Drops like this could cost each of them over six figures PER month.

I am really hoping that this is just a glitch that Google will fix as these affiliates have spent thousands of hours working on their sites to see it all go away in a day. It should be very interesting to see what happens from here on out, and see how Google handles this situation.

How to Run an Affiliate Program

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

Its been written about in every Affiliate forum/Magazine, spoken about at almost every conference, and yet it still seems people aren’t listening. Don’t get me wrong, there are some great Affiliate Programs out there that are doing the right things, but for everyone that does it right there are 5 missing the boat.  Its not that hard to do.

Common complaints are they don’t have enough man power to fully manage their program. That doesn’t fly with me. I split my roles between managing the poker room and affiliate program, and still make time to handle my responsibilities. Yes I put in long hours, but that’s what it takes. Before I run on a tangent, lets get back to discussing running the overall program.

First, make sure your team understands the ins and outs of our industry. Nothing kills your opportunity to create an Affiliate brand like AM’s running around making a fool of themselves. AM’s should never:

    - Send out template emails to affiliates. Take the time to study their sites, and show them that you care enough to review their sites. Affiliates work day and night to create their sites, the least you can do is show them the respect by looking over them
    - Never do anything that could possibly be considered spammy. That includes emails, posts on forums, or contacting affiliates via messenger services.
    - No matter what an affiliate says in a forum, never ever reveal personal information (yes stats are personal) in a public forum. Resolve the issue in house and then you can ask the person to update the situation. If the affiliate is just looking to pick a fight, or is sending fraud players and wondering where his CPA’s are, other members will see this and call them out for you. The better relationship you create with affiliates, the more they will stand up for you when
    something negative appears.

After you have built a solid team, sculpture your Affiliate Program around two things: Your Poker Room/Casino, and your affiliates. Your Affiliate Program should be an extension of your poker room/casino. If you are not having weekly meetings with your Poker Room Manger and Marketing Team to discuss whats going on in the client and promotions, you are doing something wrong. Your Affiliate Program should also be built around the strengths and weaknesses of you client.

Likewise if you are not listening to the needs and wants of your affiliates, you are not utilizing one of the most valuable assets you have. Think about it this way, your Affiliate Team has 1-10 members to brainstorm and sculpt your program. Whereas you have hundreds if not thousands of affiliates who would love to tell you what they would like to see/have. You would be surprised the amazing ideas affiliates come up with.

Throughout the blog, I will go through more of what it takes to run an affiliate program, but I hope you enjoy this brief introduction. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me or leave a comment.

Welcome to the Blog!

Wednesday, June 18th, 2008

This is my first blog, and am really looking forward to it. So stay tuned for some good fun!