During this time I have experienced multiple failures as well as a few great successes.  I have made a lot of money on the successes, but at the same time I have taken some pretty brutal losses on the failures.  Welcome to the life of an entrepreneur, it’s never an uneventful journey.

Similar to a high stakes poker player, being a serial entrepreneur you have to expect, and be mentally prepared for many swings throughout your career.  You also have to be willing to assume a level of risk that 99% of your friends could never imagine.  When starting out, you have to be willing to risk your last dollar into something if you have conviction that it will be successful.  It is virtually impossible as an entrepreneur to become a millionaire without this type of attitude.

With all that said, there are not too many projects I work on these days that give me the entrepreneurial goose bumps.  In fact, out of 100 different business ideas or investments, I can think of maybe 3 or 4 throughout the years that I have been as excited about as what I am working on now.

I have never been more confident in something as I am in the success of what I will just call “Project V” for now.  Getting back on my own and being the CEO of my company is the best move I have ever made.  I have assembled an amazing team of individuals at Empire Marketing, and this is a primary reason I have 100% confidence in what we are building.

As you all know, I have always been a firm believer in surrounding yourself with successful people.  This principle is especially important when founding an internet start-up.  You are only as good as your weakest link.

I keep speaking in the forums, in this blog, and on the radio about innovation for one reason.  I want everyone to realize that it doesn’t matter where you’re at right now, what you have failed at in the past, or what your net worth is.  Everyone has the ability to create their own destiny and make big things happen regardless of circumstances.

A wise man once said the following:

“Imagination is more important than knowledge”

Albert Einstenin

My goal is to build PokerAffiliateListings.com to be the #1 resource for poker affiliates in the world. The main site has not been launched yet, however the forums launched last Thursday.  This is a unique community however that is private and invite only.  In essence, the members are building the community up by inviting their peers from the industry.  So far the reception to this new concept in our industry has been amazing.  The private forums are only a small piece of the overall site however.

And since the brand is named “Jeremy Enke’s Poker Affiliate Listings”, it makes sense for me to move my personal blog over to the new site.  Don’t worry though, I will have a redirect in place so you can still hit your bookmark or type in JeremyEnke.com to get to the blog.

Likewise, don’t fear.  My personal blog over at PAL will still be filled with business, humour, and everything else many of the readers here have come to expect.  See you on the flipside!

P.S., if anyone needs an invite to PAL you can email me directly at jeremy AT jeremy enke dot com.

As many of you know, I absolutely love doing radio shows.  To me, radio is much more exciting than writing content all day, although lately I seem to be doing a lot of that as well.  Since leaving PAP, many affiliates have contacted me and expressed how disappointed they were that I would no longer be doing Poker Affiliate Radio.

To be honest this is one of things I knew I would miss the most when I left PAP.  I told you all that I was not going to disappear, and I meant it.  Over the last few weeks while I’ve been working on new projects, I was approached by my long time friend in the industry Brandon Berndt about doing a new show together.  It took me about 30 seconds to say,” that’s awesome let’s do it.”  I realize PAP is continuing on with their radio show on Tuesdays and I will be a regular listener and fan!  I encourage you all to continue listening to PAP Radio as well.  With Randy as the host, there will be some GREAT knowledge there.

Our show however is going to be called Affiliate Life Radio.  Of course we will discuss all the various topics and strategy related to poker affiliate marketing, but we will also be adding the twist of discussing the overall affiliate lifestyle.  Let’s face it, none of our buddies actually live or work the way we affiliates do!  Both Brandon and I are extremely excited about this new show.  I believe internet radio is truly still in its infancy and I can’t wait to build and grow this new brand.

Being independent once again in the poker affiliate industry will allow myself and Brandon to cover a wide variety of topics with an unbiased approach.  And if you know Brandon and I, then you can probably imagine how much fun we are going to have actually doing the show as well.  I envision Affiliate Life Radio being the “Maxim Magazine” of radio shows in our industry!  Aside from affiliate discussions and guests, there’s really no telling what to expect!

Throughout the last five years in this industry, I have made so many friends, and learned so much from many of you.  In fact, I don’t think as an affiliate that you can ever stop learning.  Nothing brings me more satisfaction than being able to share some of that knowledge through articles, blog posts, and now our new radio show.

I’d like to personally invite each and every one of you to listen and join in on the fun of our new radio show this Thursday afternoon.  We will be hosting this show every Thursday at 3:00 CST / 21:00 GMT.  You can find the show at Affiliate Life Radio.  The call-in number will be (347) 945-6340. Don’t forget to “favorite” us or leave a comment at BTR!

Although it’s just Brandon and I right now, we would love to bring in any additional hosts that may be interested.  Any Canadian or UK volunteers?  See you all on the airwaves this Thursday!

I think I was initially turned off to the idea because my only exposure to social networking was myspace.  Now keep in mind, I never had a personal myspace account, but I did have several hundreds of accounts for marketing purposes.  Myself and Kyle Healey also operated a myspace resource site that drove over 30,000 visitors per day looking for some of the dumbest shit I have ever heard of for their myspace pages.

In my opinion, giving 15 year old kids the ability to change the html of their pages, add music, and alter backgrounds was the dumbest thing in the world.  Plus, just the fact that I could run hundreds of friend adders, set up multiple fake accounts, and blatently spam comments meant that 1000′s of other marketers were probably doing the same thing.  Oops, it looks like Kyle and I were part of the problem, not the solution!

We ended up getting out of the myspace business and selling our sites for a healthy 5 figure profit a little over a year ago.  I am 100% certain though, we jumped ship at just the absolute right time.

So having the paradigm that social networking sites are all filled with spam and awful graphics, I was somehow still talked into joining facebook.  I was pleasently surprised though that facebook is nothing like Myspace.  It’s somewhat of a mix between linkedin and myspace.  Almost everyone I know has their business contacts as well as personal contacts on their facebook accounts.

Through facebook I have been able to keep up with relatives I have not seen in years as well as friends I graduated high school with over 14 years ago…. <—– (getting old)  A lot of these people I would never have correspondence with for the rest of my life if it weren’t for facebook.

I’m still not sold on all the goofy applications and adolescent stuff like my buddy Brandon Berndt is.  But overall I do have to admit that facebook is pretty cool.  Unlike Myspace, throughout the last couple years Facebook has been able to develop a social network that is professional and allows people to keep up with their friends, family, and business contacts without having to send emails or pick up the phone.

Some may argue that this is less personable, but I would argue right back that it allows you to keep up with the people whom you would never call or email otherwise.

It is still a bit of shock and awe though when I see people like my mom, who can barely turn on a computer blowing my FB chat up.  In the coming years I think it will be very hard for any social network to compete with Facebook.  This is why I am making my prediction right now that in 3 years (October 16th, 2011) or before, Facebook will be exponentially larger than Myspace in terms of users.

I am accepting any wagers or prop bets on this as well, borrow if you have to!  With facebook now over 100 million users strong, they are starting to focus their efforts internationally and getting into translation.  They’re next 100 million users should be right around the corner.

Feel free to share your thoughts on facebook versus myspace or if you agree with my prediction.

Here is my Facebook Page.

I wanted to make a blog post here tonight because many people may have read the forum post I made earlier at PAP and subsequently have been asking me WTF. The emails and Skype messages just keep coming. (Sorry for not responding to all of them).

To be honest, I really don’t want to go into any details on why I made the decision to retire from an admin role at the PAP forums. People can read into it all they want, but it is truly nothing personal, and strictly business.

Of course everyone knows me as the leader of PAP, but I have several other business ventures and things going on in my professional life right now that unfortunately haven’t allowed me to give my full attention to the PAP forums. Amongst the PAP members, I think this has probably been quite obvious too.

Whether you’re a reader, a friend, a family member, or whatever; just realize this, I am crazy and funny at times, I will admit that, but every decision I make in business is well calculated and makes sense for me and my family.

I have the utmost respect for my previous business partners WJ & LF, but for me it was time to break off and be independent once again.

Unfortunately, some people are just born to be the CEO of themselves (if that makes sense). I am looking forward to what the future has in store for me. I have a multitude of business ventures in the pipeline and I am anticipating a very busy few months.

As always, you can stay tuned to this blog to see what clever things I am up to. Or since the entire world seems to be on facebook these days, holla at a brotha there…

This video has been posted on this site forever.  But this pretty much sums up where I am at in life.

In this article, I will describe a little video experiment I did last week for a poker website, after which I got a major increase of visitors. I am a poker affiliate since 2006 and I own some websites in English and one in Portuguese, my native-language. This portal in Portuguese have been growing slowly but steadily, and I have been working on increasing traffic, without black-hat SEO tactics.

Basically, I made a video channel on youtube where I upload poker videos. The idea is to drive visitors to my site, specifically to a forum section where we discuss the videos. About ten days ago I found out that a professional poker player from Brazil would be interviewed in the most famous talk show of Brazil, and this event was getting some buzz in poker forums of that country.

Then I decided I would tape the interview and be the first one to publish it on youtube. After I thought about it, I decided it would be not that safe, since I did not have permission to publish the TV content.

But I didn’t give up. I wrote an article before the interview on my poker forum and got people talking about it. The day after the show, my site was the first one to publish something about how the interview went, with comments. This also gave a slight bump to my visitors number.

That same day I go to youtube and search for the interview, and got nothing. The television station published a summarized version of the interview on their free website and I decided it would be OK to copy it and upload to youtube. I edited the video, fixed some audio problems and added the name of my site at the border of the video, without cluttering it. I also created a forum thread about it, and embedded the video.

The results were above my expectations. 60 minutes after I put the video on youtube, I already had 3 comments and 200 visitors to it. Three days later, the video had been watched by 2,000 people, with more than ten comments, and some people even subscribed to my video channel. The number of visitors to my site tripled, and I got new registrations on the forum. The bump in visitors is still visible six days after the event.

This experiment shows that one of the most important objectives of an affiliate should be giving his visitors what they are looking for. There were so many people searching for the interview on youtube and finding nothing and this “temporary niche” was untouched. Video may not give you money directly, but can be a big factor on acquiring visitors and/or subscribers, with the potential to turn into conversions in the future (my affiliate links got twice the usual number of clicks after the video).

Marcelo is a poker affiliate from Brazil, PAP member since 2006 and Portuguese Moderator on PAP forum. He owns the website Poker Dicas, as well as other smaller ones.

One of the best poker news sites out there that has all the great gossip and real poker news is PokerKing.

I will preface this by saying the guys at Pking have no idea I am making this post.  But they are one of the most up to date and interesting sites out there.  The writers at Pking are on point, and I absolutely love their site because they keep it real all the time.  The Poker Kings blog is ALWAYS updated and is one of the blogs I check daily to see what’s going on in our industry.

No matter what the gossip is, these guys are always are on top of it within hours.  Kudos to their writers, and nice job PokerKing!

I am going to be highlighting some sites I visit every day, and webmasters I have much respect for over the next few weeks.  None of this is ads or paid spots by any means either.  It’s just my honest analysis and plug of the great sites in this industry.  Hell, you guys know this site makes no money! LOL  Now visit the Poker King sites below and see why so many people are regular visitors there.

PokerKings Main Site

PokerKings Blog

For many years now I have been writing about the importance of niche marketing. This is especially important in poker affiliate marketing. Let’s start by defining what a niche is. A niche is simply a certain segment of the market where you intend to focus the majority of your efforts.

Some real life examples for poker affiliates are bonus codes, rakeback, tournaments, freerolls, etc. The biggest mistake I usually see new poker affiliates make is that they build a new site and attempt to be everything to everybody. And quite honestly, in this day and age it is going to be virtually impossible to see success across the board for ALL of these segments in the poker market.

Although it may sound boring to have a site that just focuses on one niche, this is the fastest way to see results. Consider this, you could spend months building a site and writing poker site reviews for every online poker operator in the world, yet after 6 months still not rank on the first page of google for any of these rooms.

On the other hand, you could choose a niche such as rakeback or a bonus code for one specific room. Now over these same months you could focus on specific content, driving targeted traffic, and getting quality links to your pages. Would you rather have 25 reviews spread across your portal that yield you 3 players a month all together, or one targeted site that sends 15 players to one room each month?

Here is a new room that I highly recommend promoting. Being new to the market, taking U.S. players, and having automated rakeback, you should easily be able to make a few thousand a month in this niche! CLICK HERE NOW before you even finish this article.

Of course down the road everyone wants to be able to send multiple players to multiple rooms on a network of sites. Unfortunately however this takes time and will not happen overnight.

The other benefit of driving extremely targeted traffic is that it becomes much easier to convert. If someone finds your website searching for “texas holdem starting hands”, it will be a heck of a lot harder to convert them than if they found you for “best xxxxpoker.com bonus code”.

With that in mind, another area where the poker affiliate market is still behind the times is having solid “calls to action”. Choosing a niche allows you to have targeted traffic that WILL convert better. However you have to “ask for the business” as well as instruct your visitors with what you want them to do. To see an example of this, look above at the CardSpike link. I could have easily just mentioned Cardspike, but instead I sold it a bit and then in bold print displayed my “call to action”

In closing, remember a couple things. Converting traffic when choosing a specific niche is much easier because your traffic is more than likely targeted. Once you start receiving this targeted traffic, don’t be afraid to ask for the business by having strong calls to action.

As always I am looking forward to catching up with my affiliate friends, operators, and affiliate managers.  When you sit behind a computer monitor all week, and 90% of your daily conversations take place on messenger, nothing is better than networking and having face to face meetings.
This will be Joe’s first CAP show, so him and I will be meeting with many of the operators together.  As always my goals when I attend these shows is to meet with as many individuals as possible, close business, and strengthen relationships.

As one of the old timers in this industry, THE most important things I have learned about our great industry is that it is one that truly revolves around relationships.  The successful people in igaming (whether affiliates, affiliate managers, or operators) are the ones that have weathered the various storms, and maintained solid relationships throughout their tenure in the business.

Often times I get asked the question by new affiliates or affiliate managers what the secret to success is in the poker affiliate industry.  And again the answer is always relationships.  If you’re a new affiliate going to this show, do yourself a favor and latch on to some of the baller or veteran affiliates while here.  It’s amazing how much you can learn by hanging out with successful affiliates.  It’s even more amazing what surrounding yourself with this circle of friends will do for you in the years to come.

For new affiliate managers, collect as many cards as you can, and don’t worry about “closing the deal” over coffee in a busy expo hall.  Instead focus on building your personal brand and forging the beginning of great relationships that will last for years to come.

As an affiliate, for the A.M.’s that have these types of relationships with me, it is always an easy sell for them when they want me to promote something new.

All in all, it should be a great show.  I actually brought a camera this time, so there is about a 8.5% chance I will take pictures and post them here or on facebook.  Unfortunately there is a 90% chance that I will lose either my camera, blackberry, laptop, rolex, or various items of clothing.  Hasta La Vista Bitches!

Although my google issues have still not been resolved, I have ironically received more unique traffic this month on the site than any other time in history.  It all started when this post about celebrities brought me 10k+ unique visitors from stumbleupon alone.  Then just this week it also got posted on the homepage of reddit.com.  From there it ended up getting posted to sites like jimmyr and Totalfark, as well as a list of forums and blogs.  This afternoon it also got posted on theonion.com’s entertainment section known as The AV Club which drove an absolute shit load of traffic.  The post was also mentioned on a popular  USA Today Blog.

So with that I consider my linkbait and social marketing experiment a success.  That post has had thousands of views and 34 comments and growing so far….  But as most of you know, I make minimal money on this blog (actually $0 last month).  The point I wanted to make though is that VIRAL MARKETING WORKS.  Creating good link bait and getting it circulated around the internet is really not that difficult if you can be creative.

But here’s the funny thing, I made a post with pics I pulled out of a viral email from a buddy, and then made a simple post with the obvious attempt to drive traffic.

Obviously it worked, but it amazes me that so many people arrive at this post and are literally furious.  Here is a copy of an email I got today.

Email: gary@XXXXXXXXXXXXX
Phone:
Website: http://
Reason: Report a site problem

Message:
After reading you blast about people who live in the Midwest I decided to check out YOUR about Jeremy page. Funny the link you provide about your 3 people does not work. Funny you poke fun at people here in the Midwest but than the link showing pictures of your “people” does not work….so typical. BTW nice “glamor” shot of you but you walk around all day long with that look.

Enjoy today as you will one day get older and “gasp” fatter yourself. BTW I am not fat and I work out everyday…care to visit and go through a workout routine with me? Oh last but not least I am 51.

I mean, are people surfing the net really this stupid.  Can you really get that offended to send someone an email from a site you just arrived at from clicking a link.  I have to laugh.

Anyhow, I had to share.  If any of you are women reading this and you really want to be offended, read either why you suck in bed or  your valentines present, or even any of these two articles .  Some of these will make this post look magnificent.  I make jokes, I love life, I have fun every day, my wife loves me……..Stop taking the internet so seriously.

And always remember,  “You can put lipstick on a pig, but……it’s still a pig”