Pretty Link

Pretty Link is the name of the plugin created by Blair Williams. Very quickly to install this from your dashboard, click on your “Plugins” tab, click “Add New,”  type in “Pretty Link” in your  search bar, click “Install” once you’ve found the one by Blair Williams, then activate. You’ll have a new tab at the bottom of your dashboard to use your new plugin.

Settings explained for affiliates

If you really want to you can set up different groups depending on which project you’re working on. Let’s say for example you promote online poker sites, poker software, and poker clickbank products. That’s three groups right there for the organized types. Simply click on “groups” then “Add a pretty link group” type in your information and hit create.

To create a new cloaked link click “Add Link” type in the url you want to cloak, give it a new pretty link (yoururl.com/name you want for your link… example yoururl.com/fulltilt) title it (from the example it would be full title poker) give it a description if you want then click on “Link Options.”

Under redirection types you have a few different options. If you want a truly cloaked link select cloaked. Change parameters to “Standard Parameter Forwarding” if you want to get credit for your sale and click create.

If you’re interested in simply tracking a page you can select “pixel.” This will create one of those 1 x 1 pixel images that many websites including paypal use to track pages. There are question marks you can click on for help with the plugin in case you get lost.

Tracking

You don’t know what you don’t track. Perhaps you are promoting a program that isn’t converting very well as your primary affiliate program yet your secondary affiliate program is converting like hotcakes.  You can track your clicks through your Pretty Link dashboard. Not only will you see how many times someone has visited the link, you’ll also see how many times unique visitors went to said link. In other words you can tell if you have repeat visitors going to a site versus new ones.

Based off the information collected on click thrus you can log into your affiliate program website to see how many sales have been generated. If you’re sending 200 visitors to generate 1 sale for one product yet only 50 visitors to generate 2 sales of another product you now know you should at least switch the order of your affiliate programs.

Link Jacking

To me this is an old wives tale created to sell cloaking software. Yes, most cloaking software sells at prices anywhere from $7 to $197. Some are designed specifically to send visitors back to the webmaster’s site as a favor for cloaking your links (and yes Pretty Link does have an option for you to do this if you’re so inclined.) While it is true that a few people will try to get around you earning a commission, most people surfing the internet are far too lazy (or don’t even know) how to get around you earning a commission. Before December of 2009 US webmasters didn’t even have to alert the general public that the product they were promoting was an affiliate program!

So why cloak?

There are two reasons to really cloak a link. Bruce mentioned one in his recent comment “it looks more professional.” This is especially true in an e-mail, as people don’t really want to see a hop.yourid.product.clickbank.com url nor do they want to click on it. Yet yoursite.com/coolproduct looks much better and appealing to your reader. The second reason is to track. If you’re trying to make money on the internet (or already make money on the internet and want to make more) you have to track your results. There is no way around this. The more you track, the more you can optimize. The more you optimize, the more profit you’ll be putting into your pocket.

Jason Narog is the creator of the royal flush of spades poker card guards and is currently installing Pretty Link onto all his WordPress websites.

Quick Facts about Twitter

Please don’t let the popularity of Twitter fool you, a good portion of accounts on there are owned by the same people, just using different names. Some people may have 1 account others may have a dozen or more accounts. It’s like Facebook or Myspace, there are a lot of real people on there then a lot of people pretending to be other people as well. Think AOL about 10 years ago when you could have 5 screen names per account so someone could be JohnDoe one second and then JaneDoe the next time they log in.

So who does the majority of the tweeting? Celebrities and internet marketers. The marketers are of course trying to shove another product down your throat and ironically they’re pitching it to other internet marketers. Basically it’s whoever is the best salesman in the situation wins. But don’t let this little rant of mine talk you out of using Twitter, as there are other ways you can use Twitter effectively aside from Tweeting.

Twitter Lists

Ah, the Twitter list, this has to be the greatest invention of all time. So you reserved yourself a Twitter screen name for the keyword you wanted to target. Guess what my twitter name is… pokermoneyclips. Anyway, now that I have my name I can’t really get any more use out of throwing keywords into my titles now can I? Yeah, I can through the use of the “Twitter List.” A twitter list is something you can create in about 5 seconds, where you throw some additional keywords in as the title of your list for SEO purposes. Please keep your titles related to what you talk about though as Twitter is erasing accounts on an hourly basis for mischievous acts. It works something like this, I sell a poker novelty, so I created a list called “poker novelties.” The phrase itself doesn’t generate a ton of traffic but hey I wanted to rank on the SE’s for it so I went after it. So now I have an additional page on the SE’s for my desired keyword phrase that features all my tweets to links of stuff I want people to look at and my main url on the right hand side of the page.

Twitter for one way links

Another reason to be on Twitter is for the one way links back to your website. There are a ton of websites out there that feature twitter user profiles and keep track of who is following who. If someone is following you that is on one of those websites, that’s an additional link back to your site. Not only that, it’s also a link from a website that is not considered a “bad neighborhood.” 99% of poker websites are considered bad neighborhoods by Google, which is why you have to do more work to gain any PR. Let me put it to you like this, I built a website in another “good neighborhood” niche, and well it has a PR of 3 in a matter of weeks with less than 20 sites linking back to it. For us poker webmasters we have to work a little bit harder. Any one way link you can grab is a good thing, and Twitter lists allow you to grab a handful of links without any additional effort.

How To Gain Followers

Being that there are about 5 million products currently on the marketplace to grow a following I’m not really going to spend much time on the subject matter. I will however caution you against paying for automated programs that follow people based on keywords as you won’t see your desired results. You’ll spend more time un-following people than you should and your list of followers will still be incredibly low. Search around for a free alternative, follow a few people a day (if you follow too many people too quickly your account can be terminated) and just run with it as it only takes about 5 minutes a day to grow a decent following. As with the search engines, people following you is equivalent to people linking back to your website.

Now go out there and make the most of this opportunity.

Jason Narog wants to know what kind of poker card protectors you’re using

The most common form of article marketing

The most common form of article marketing involves posting your articles on websites such as Ezine. There are dozens of Ezine clones throughout the net, all of which survive by the written word of article marketers and webmasters. It’s a simple premise, authors write an article about 450 – 2000 words long, then place links in their resource box at the bottom of the page that point back to their website. If the article is written well and makes sense to the reader, the reader may click the link and visit your website. Search engines see these as links back to your site and count it as another vote for your website. Other webmasters also have the option to use your article on their website as well, giving you additional links back to your website.

Guest Blogging

Guest blogging works exactly as it sounds, you ask another webmaster for permission to write articles for their website. You write content for them, they let you put a link back to your website in return. Everybody wins, as the webmaster gains new content and you get what you wanted, a link back to your site and more exposure to the marketplace. With each additional website you guest blog on, you reach a wider audience. Being that the average person needs to see your name or brand seven times before they remember you or are willing to buy from you, this can give you the exposure you need.

Article Trading

Similar in style to guest blogging, you simply exchange articles with another webmaster. They give you an article to post on your website, and you give them one in return. This method works on two levels, you gain additional content for your audience, and you gain the link back to your website from their website.

This seems harder than simple link trading why should I do this?

What do you think is more powerful, a well written article or a link buried amongst other links on someone’s website? You’ll be lucky to get a few clicks a month from the link, whereas with the article people are becoming aware of who you are, what you think, and what you’re passionate about. You are providing the audience with something. People on the internet are looking for information, and if you provide them with that information they’ll be happy. You’re looking to grow trust with your audience, and to gain trust you need to provide them with something of value. If you’re a great poker player, share some strategies about poker. If you’re a great math and computer guy, put together a poker calculator for the audience.

Avoiding Duplicate Content

There is a simple method to avoiding duplicate content and it’s known as “spinning.” Article spinning is the act of rephrasing an article to make it unique. The same meat on the topic is still there but it’s worded differently. Is spinning bad? That all depends on why you’re doing it. If you’re spinning someone else’s content then yes spinning is bad. But if you’re rewording your own content to ensure that people will find you in several locations I see absolutely no harm in that. If you truly believe in your service, then spinning can be a good thing. If you aren’t providing anything of value, stop doing what you’re doing right now and come up with a way to provide value.

- Jason Narog is an avid poker player and the creator of the royal flush of spades poker card guard

Alright so you’ve now signed up and been approved by a poker affiliate site (online poker room, poker merchandise seller, poker software, or poker book site) and now need to place their link on your website.

Where to start?

If you’re using WordPress, the process is fairly simple. Begin by logging into your WordPress dashboard then scroll down to the tab labeled “Appearance.” Click on “Widgets.” Scroll down and find the widget labeled “Text.” Drag the text widget to where you would like your ad to appear (depending on the theme this can vary from left or right, top, bottom, etc.) The top narrow bar is for the title of your new widget. Give your affiliate program a captivating title that is sure to grab a reader’s attention. Now simply paste in the code provided by the poker affiliate site in the bigger box below the title. Click save and your ad is now live on every page of your website.

Location matters

Being that you’re looking to drive traffic to the affiliate program you want to maximize placement of this ad. The typical human eye scans the top left of the page first, meaning that if you want to catch someone’s attention quickly you want the ad closer to the top left of your page than the top right. Where do people typically finish looking at a page? Believe it or not they look at the top right last.

Make your ad words ones of action

Writing an interesting title for your affiliate program helps grab a person’s attention. Try to think from a visitor’s point of view when writing the title. What words would make you want to make the purchase? What words would make your friends want to make the purchase? Action words help as well, as you want your visitors engaged, not passive, just like in the game of poker. Action drives the game.

Want to only promote an affiliate program on one page or post of my website?

Great question. When you create a new post or page in WordPress there are two tabs you can click on in the top right corner, one is labeled “Visual” and the other “HTML.” After you have written your post simply switch over to “HTML” and insert in the affiliate link into your post or page and click save.

Know your product, know how to place your ad!

If you are going this route it is important to make sure you use an intriguing title related to the product you are marketing. If it’s a book by Phil Hellmuth your title should look something like this “Name of book by Poker Legend Phil Hellmuth, Jr.” Do some market research on how stiff the competition is on Google for the product before going this route. If 1,000,000 sites are already promoting the book its probably best to avoid trying to promote this product in a post or page. If less sites are promoting it you have a better chance of people not only seeing your site in the search engine results but giving yourself a nice commission as well.

For American Eyes Only

One word of warning for all you poker affiliates out there living in the good old United States of America. The FTC has now stepped into monitoring affiliate programs online. They’ve deemed it necessary to alert visitors that you will be making a commission for the referral. Do some research on the topic to the best practices of how to comply without hurting your sales at the same time.

Drive traffic to your success

Once you’ve placed your poker affiliate links on your website start driving traffic and you’ll start seeing commission checks. The more traffic, the larger the check.
To Your Poker Website Success,
Jason Narog – Creator of the Royal Flush of Spades poker money clip

Joined up with pokerprolife

A couple of weeks ago an online pal of mine Peter Golob, one of the biggest names in online poker in his native Slovenia, and who is also one of the owners of a popular poker affiliate site http://www.pokerpro.si for Slovenian players asked me to join their team, as they are looking to expand beyond their region and into the international stage with their new site http://www.pokerprolife.com.

The right guy for the job

Although of course most of their team are already good English speakers, none of them are native English speakers, so I’m very happy that they considered me as the right native English speaking person to join their team.

Helping pokerprolife with the English language

I will be helping them primarily from an English language point of view but also because of my own knowledge and experience of search engine optimization and the online poker world. I’m fully sure that their extensive experience in the online poker affiliate business will make their new site a success also, and I’m looking forward to playing an active role in the growth and development of this site.

Follow my progress with pokerprolife here

I will be blogging right here on http://www.makingapokerwebsite.com about the progress of this new poker affiliate site http://www.pokerprolife.com and in particular my role in the site.

Study a new programming language

I’ve mentioned before, both here and on the pokeraffiliatelistings forum http://www.pokeraffiliatelistings.com/forums that web coding is perhaps my weakest point as a webmaster. I clearly need to improve in this area.

I’m out of date

The last time I studied any new language was Vb.net and that’s over 5 years ago, and the last time I actually sat any exam was over 11 years ago when I completed my now well out of date Microsoft Certified Solution Developer qualification.

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Keep up to speed with the internet and technology!

These days though and I think especially with anything to do with computers, the internet and technology in general one needs to be adaptable and keep up to date. And so to make myself a better all round webmaster… I’ve decided to study a number of topics on the very resourceful http://www.w3schools.com/ site.

Studying PHP?

I’m going to start with PHP, one because unlike HTML and CSS, which I have some knowledge of I know virtually nothing about how to code PHP, so it’s the area I have most need in improving. Secondly I keep hearing it’s easy to learn, so hopefully I can get to grips with it easily and quickly.

PHP is easy?

I’ve actually gone through about 15 pages on w3schools very quickly already this morning and have to say yip so far it all seems straightforward enough, especially for someone who is familiar with other programming languages, though there could be one little downside to this too, as I can already see myself getting my syntax confused with other programming languages.

Take the PHP exam

Anyhow I’m going to see how I get on with that. There is also an exam option for $75 with w3schools. I haven’t decided whether I’m going to take the exam itself.

Is doing an exam in PHP any use?

I’d imagine it would be useful for someone who was looking for employment in internet programming, for me as far as I can gather it’s usefulness would be purely as something concrete to aim for, but really the main point is just to satisfy myself that I ‘know’ PHP.

I mentioned previously in the “Advertising platform problems put me off working on the site” post that I was having issues with the Ikarus Theme.

Ikarus theme not working

Basically since the update to the latest WordPress version 2.8 (2.8.4 at time of writing) the Ikarus theme is basically broken in several areas and still months after this has happened there does not seem to be any working fixes coming from the developer of the theme. I actually tried to comment on the developer’s site about this and my comments are blocked (for one reason or another), anyway I’ve had to reluctantly abandon using this theme as a result. This has thought me a few different lessons.

• Firstly, it’s important that for whatever theme you choose that either support is readily available to upgrade the theme or the theme itself is simple enough that it’s easily modified to suit new versions of WordPress. Better yet would be if the theme is written in such a way that changes to WordPress and Internet Browsers are likely to have a low probability of breaking the functionality of the theme.
• Fancy Theme = More Issues? Related to the first point. I really liked the Ikarus Theme as it had a lot of different options and functionality. But this seems like it might also be its Achilles heel. Even the developer of the theme months after the initial problems were reported with WordPress 2.8 (and it’s not fully compatible with IE8 either) is unable to fix it, so for webmasters like me who just have limited knowledge of the coding side of things it’s next to impossible to change the Theme when these complicated problems arise. After arriving home and getting back into ‘work mode’ after travelling for the previous month (I really have to stop going on trips!), I thought ok I need to change this theme fast. I picked the thematic theme http://themeshaper.com/ . It lacks a lot of the ‘bells and whistles’ that Ikarus had but it still feels powerful enough. It also works smoothly. The result is my website looks quite bare looking now, but one can still navigate around quite easily. And right now my main concern is that my website is up and running normally once again. Meanwhile, I’m going to continue to see what I can do with this theme and also see if they are other themes out there that I feel would suit where I want to take www.makingapokerwebsite.com.
• Have a backup. Once I started having issues with Ikarus, I had no secondary theme ready and waiting to put in it’s place. This was a bad mistake, in fact this lesson can be applied to many areas of life in general, particularly in regards to your career and business. Basically the old phrase ‘Not to have all your eggs in one basket’ comes to mind, anyway…. before I get too side-tracked, what I’m basically saying is that the smart thing to do would be to have at least 2 themes that you are satisfied with available for use with your WordPress blog, then if for whatever reason your default one becomes broken, then hopefully one of your replacement themes will still work fine, and if and when your theme of choice is fixed then of course you could select it once again if you so wished.

Theme support should not be overlooked

So… to surmise what I’m trying to get at here. Basically the theme you choose should not be just about its functionlity and ‘prettiness’, in fact if anything if the functionaility is very complicated it can prove a liability when it comes to adapting to changes. The level and availability of support for your theme is also very important, perhaps themes built and maintained by a community of enthusiasts might be an area well worth looking at, that way you are not reliant on any one person or company, and last but not least make sure you have a second if not a third and fourth theme ready to substitute for the times if and when your theme of choice no longer functions as expected.

Gave OpenX a shot

I had planned on doing lots of work on making a poker website this month but it never happened for a few reasons. Firstly I decided to try out the OpenX http://www.openx.com advertising platform, but I had more difficulties with it than I had bargained for, and it ended up taking up a lot of my time with really nothing to show at the end of it .

Was not impressed with OpenX documentation

Although it is a popular product, the documentation appears very poor and to cut a long story short I basically made a mess of the installation. After having further issues with upgrading it, I decided to start all over and reinstall it, but after then reading a few negative posts on the OpenX forum itself I thought enough is enough.

OIOPublisher sists well with WordPress

I’ve since purchased and installed the OIOPublisher http://www.oiopublisher.com plugin, as it’s just a WordPress plugin the installation was simple. I haven’t looked into it enough yet so I can’t comment on how good or bad it is, but at least I’m off to a good start on it.

Work on site lessened

The problems I had with Openx sort of put me off working on the site – and I ended up drifting off, playing more poker instead and doing other web stuff. Anyway I don’t plan on spending so much time again, for the time being at least, on getting my site advertising ready.

Improving making a poker website

I’ve still got plenty of other tasks I want to achieve before I start feeling really satisfied with making a poker website. The main areas I intend to work on over the next one or two months are to add some more permanent pages, either solve some issues I’m having with the Ikarus theme or switch to a different theme.

Improving the usability of the site

Laying out my posts in a better way so as to improve my readers experience. Improving my site seo wise. Checking that my site is as Google friendly as possible. Beyond Google, trying to also make my site seo friendly for other search engines. See how I can use social networking to further the exposure of my website.

Getting personal

Sorry for the delay in posting. This post is a bit more of a personal blog type post. Going to keep these to a minimum but don’t think it’s too bad writing the occasional one.
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Finished just out of the money AGAIN!!!

Anyway once again I was in Madrid for a week from the 14th to 21st May. I played in the main event €1k + €100 buy-in of the 3rd leg of the second Spanish Poker Tour at the Gran Casino Aranjuez. I finished 11th out of 101, only first 9 finished in the money though . 

Live cash games are where it’s at

After two long days of playing into the early hours of the morning and coming so close to the money as you can imagine I was very disappointed. I did make up for it though later in the week though when I won about €3k in a couple of days play at the bigger casino in Madrid the Gran Casino Madrid. I don’t play live cash games so much but I really really should.

Live cash games are easier to beat than online cash games

There are  many downsides with playing live cash games, the main one being the expense of it all. If like me you don’t live near a casino then you have the expense of travelling and hotels, then there’s the expense of playing, the rake is higher, tips for dealers and waiters, you get to see far fewer hands than on the Internet. However all this in my opinion is more than compensated by how bad most live players are. These days even relatively low stake games online like .5/1 NL are populated by the most part by people who know how to play poker.

Casinos attract fun gamblers

If you can beat .5/1 NL online then from what I’ve seen and heard in most European casinos you have an even bigger edge at 5/10 NL live. Casinos simply attract on average a more recreational type of gambler, some of whom really do not understand or even want to understand the game, they are eager to gamble, better again, some of them have so much money that it seems like they hardly care, as a poker player you can’t afford to feel too much compassion for other players at the table, but I still prefer taking money from a multi-millionaire than a struggling student.

Going all cosmopolitan on you

The other thing about casinos, especially in a cosmopolitan city like Madrid, is that you meet some very interesting people, that you obviously don’t get to meet on the Internet.

Tweaking ‘n stuff

On another note, I’m going to be concentrating for the next 2 to 3 weeks on adding pages and tweaking elements of the site so there might not be another post for a while, there should still be pages added and updated, so do come back during that time to check for updates.

1. Plan your SEO before launching your site

    Well I have to admit I didn’t exactly plan my SEO for http://makingapokerwebsite.com. I can’t argue with the point really, seo is such an important part of a successful website. I will say in my defense that this poker website blog is very much about someone who is not an expert at web design finding their way towards creating a decent website. One of the mistakes I made in this area was assuming that WordPress tags were stored as meta tag keywords, where the hell I got that idea from I don’t know. Though this wasn’t quite as bad a mistake as I first thought, as the value of using meta tag keywords is debatable these days.The great thing you’ll discover about WordPress if you ever use it, is that there seems to be plugins for just about anything you can think of. I found a great plugin called all-in-one-seo which helps to simplify making your site search engine friendly http://semperfiwebdesign.com/portfolio/wordpress/wordpress-plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/ .

2. Plan to build a content rich site

   I think I’m on the right track in this regard. I’ve gotten into a good habit of providing one new post in or around a week. In addition to this I’ve also began to add some new pages and see this continuing on.

3. Don’t stress out about the domain name

   I got lucky I think that this domain name wasn’t registered. It pretty much describes what the site is all about, so I’m very happy with that. For the poker site I have in mind I already have registered a few domain names, but I’m inclined to think for a few reasons that I might wait until the time, when I’m ready to begin the poker website, to then choose the name. One of the reasons for this, is because I read somewhere that domain names registered for a longer period are viewed more favorably by search engines, which my domain names aren’t. Also, perhaps were I to come up with another domain name from scratch it might make the whole process a bit fresher.

4. Keep your site design simple

   My website’s design isn’t as simplistic as Randy’s. Nevertheless, I think I’ve kept it reasonably simple. I don’t have a whole lot of colors going on. I’ve big text for ease of readability. I don’t have any flash images. I do have some javascript but that’s because it’s built into the theme I’m using. I think the stuff I do have on my site like social networking tags, tag clouds, latest posts etc add to my user experience, so it serves a purpose rather than being there purely for show.

5. Do the basic on-page search engine optimization stuff

   Again I would have to fail myself for this point. Now that I’ve started to use the all-in-one-seo plugin this should help matters, but I haven’t been paying due diligence to every post and page’s search engine optimization. This is something I absolutely must change going forward and also to get it right from the start once I commence the poker information website.

6. Get links, but don’t stress out about it

   I’ve made pretty much zero effort to get links so far, so I certainly haven’t been stressed out about it. I think I have been right so far not to go looking for links too proactively for my website as it was in its very early stages and I didn’t want to be pestering webmasters looking for links to a site that hadn’t yet much to offer. I think the making a poker website blog is beginning to come along nicely now though and soon I will embark on a link building campaign along with the other non-spammy ways Randy suggest to increase my website’s exposure. I’m thinking sometime in June would be a good time to kick off such a campaign. I will of course blog the whole process.

7. Pay attention to your traffic

     Pay attention to your traffic: After hearing many great things about it, I installed google analytics last week. It provides a whole stream of interlinked information that can really help you address issues and improve the way your site operates in terms of being found more often in search engines and retaining your visitors for longer. The making a poker website blog is still very young, but if and when the site grows, is when I would expect google analytics to be a very useful tool. But even now, I can already see, that for some of my posts, especially the longer ones, that people are not always taking the time to read them. This tells me that perhaps I need to take into account peoples short span of attention these days, perhaps to emphasis key points and provide in post links to key points, such as my post about the best way to display your email address http://www.makingapokerwebsite.com/the-best-way-to-display-your-email-address-on-a-website/. The real juicy bit is at the end of the post when I talk about Recaptcha, but people may not always have the patience to get to this part, so maybe making the overall reading experience more user friendly I can help my readers to get more out of my posts.
   

8. Use the force Luke aka Stay away from the dark side

   Sounds a bit sinister. I presume Randy means don’t try anything underhand, annoying or illegal and so forth. Well I hope it’s clear that I’m putting in some honest effort here. I certainly have no intention of doing anything illegal or underhand such as spamming, sending annoying auto-generated link requests and the like. Anyway that’s a pretty simple point to follow, its either a path you are going to take or not. Even from a purely selfish point of view though I think staying ‘white hat’ makes sense, as Randy says you can make a ‘fortune’ as a poker webmaster by just doing things the right way without undue effort so why the hell take an underhanded approach!

    

Going forward positively?

So on the 8 points though I think I got somethings right, it was by no means a flawless performance. Link building is something for going forward. I’m still not totally happy with some of the finer points of the look of my posts, so I want to address that before I really start to promote my site. The main areas which I need to focus on now is improving the way I do things seo wise and improving the overall experience of the reader on my site. On a positive note I think everything is moving in the right direction and I have learned a few lessons for when it comes around to beginning the poker information site.

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