As an online gaming webmaster and the founder of the largest poker affiliate community in the world, I like to think I have been on the forefront of industry news and growth for the last few years.

The reason I wanted to write about this topic (online poker addiction) is because it is one that is almost taboo and not really something affiliates or operators ever discuss. After all, if people did not lose money in rake or games of chance, I may still be hustling an outside sales job in Corprorate America.

Nonetheless I think it is a topic that needs to be addressed at some point in our industry. If we do not address it as an industry, the politicians and morale do-gooders will address it when the time comes for real regulation.

I believe that 90% of online poker players have no problem with addiction and probably play with discretionary income or for entertainment. Unfortunately there is that small % of players that will become addicted. Not that this should be a big surprise though, gambling addiction has been around since the days or riverboat casinos. The reason I called this article Gambling Addiction 2.0 however is because online poker players have so many outs and excuses when it comes to denial of their problem.

Another reason I wanted to write this article is because ironically enough there ARE affiliates out there who have never cashed out an affiliate payment and gamble their revenue away each and every month. This is sad, and is why I have always been a big proponent of NOT paying affiliates into players accounts.

In respect to online poker addiction and why it is 2.0 though; If I had a dollar for every time I saw someone lose their entire bankroll or not be able to pay bills because they were “running bad” I could probably retire. Let’s say I had 100K in my bank account and consistently went to the casino and played slots every night until 4:00 A.M. losing $75K in a few months. Everyone would agree that I had a massive gambling addiction. With online poker however, individuals can simple say they are “running bad”, or blame losing 50% of their net worth on “variance”.

I remember when I started playing online poker and you had to get permission from Lee Jones to even sit in a $100-$200 Limit game. Now days anyone can increase their deposit amounts with a simple email and be playing $300-$600NL with their life savings in less than a few hours.

I am a firm believer that each individual in the world is responsible for their own actions. Likewise if someone tricks off their entire roll or life savings, that is a them problem and not a me problem. But over the years I have seen the limits increase and the amount of people sitting with $50K+ online grow exponentially. I’m not saying people shouldn’t be able to “take shots” at the higher limits.

But I am saying as the deposit limits and table limits in online poker keep rising; at some point when we do get closer to regulation, operators having a GA link in the footer of a site, and a “self exclusion” tab is not going to be enough to convince politicians that the industry is doing enough to curb online gambling addiction.

So there, I crossed the line and actually brought up the idea that online poker addiction exists and that it is probably easier to get addicted to than any other form of gambling. Personally I’m glad I gave up any hopes of ever being a poker player and stuck with the business side of poker many years ago.

If you found this article from a search engine while searching “online poker addiction” or “online gambling addiction” and you think you may have a problem, here a few links that will be helpful.

Addiction Recovery

Gamblers Anonymous

This is a great “How To” article written by Jason Spry on how to diversify your affiliate income outside of gaming and poker affiliate programs. If you are not thinking about diversification right now, you could be setting yourself up for massive failure or disappointments in the future.

I encourage you all to read this article in it’s entirety.

If you have been around the poker affiliate world for very long you probably already understand the importance of diversifying you income streams. If you were around in 2006 with the UIGEA was passed you may know first hand how important diversification is. I know several affiliates who went from pulling down a steady five figures per month MGR from PartyPoker to a few hundred after Party left the USA market. Just recently a handful of the largest poker portals online were slapped with some sort of google penalty and where they were ranking great for ultra competitive terms for years. Right now, these massive sites don’t even show up for their own name search until around page 5 or 6 of google!

The point is, diversification is important and this article takes a look at three ways you use your poker affiliate skills to diversify your income streams.

Promoting Multiple Poker Rooms

This is a simple answer, but if you promote different rooms you will not be as invested in one particular rooms success or failure. If you are a new affiliate, the general consensus is that you should start out small with only one, two or three rooms to promote but as your site grows, so should your offerings. Earning income through multiple poker rooms will help you not be overly dependent on one or two rooms for all of your earnings. As this industry has shown us, anything can and will happen that can directly affect your bottom line.

Promoting Other Poker Products, not just online poker rooms.

From ebooks, to poker software, to online poker training courses there are multiple ways to diversify your income. Some affiliates who are great at strategy put together ebooks and sell them through clickbank. You can promote these ebooks yourself and earn a hefty commission, typically between 40-60% of the selling price.

Poker Training sites like Card Runners offer referral programs where you can earn cash, gear or even trips based on how many clients you refer and the best part is that those are great players to have because they are investing in their poker education and are likely to be online poker players.

For some ideas on more products to promote, just visit clickbank.com and search for ‘poker’ and there will be pages of products you can quickly and easily promote although you should obviously use discernment when picking a product to promote to your users. Make sure it is quality and has content that is helpful. Many of the publishers will give affiliates free copies in consideration for promotion, just ask and show them that you are legit and considering promoting them and most everyone I know will. You can also use different marketing methods for promoting these products including PPC in many situations.

Promoting niches outside of the poker and gambling world.

If you can compete as a poker affiliate, then you can compete in virtually any online marketing niche. The poker market is one of the most competitive areas of all internet marketing, and the skills you have learned and developed promoting poker can be transferred to promoting the other niches. And the coolest thing is that while the payouts usually are not as high as poker, the niches themselves are going to be way less competitive.

Ok, maybe not every niche (porn) but as a general rule these niches are wide open for a savvy poker affiliate marketers.

So this begs the question, “How do you promote virtually any niche?”

I struggled with this question for a long time. It was a major time waster to have to researching affiliate programs, sign up with programs, understand how their program works, test the program, and then start using the program when the profits were miniscule compared to most poker programs. It simply took a lot of time and the larger affiliate networks like commission junction and clickbank just really didn’t do it for me. It just didn’t make any sense to spend any of my time diversifying outside of the poker affiliate market. I already knew who to work with, who to trust and how to promote.

Then one day all of that changed. I learned of a cool tool that allowed me to partner with ebay and make money with their affiliate program. I also found an awesome plugin designed to work directly with the ebay affiliate partner network that made total sense for small niche sites. If you can find it on ebay, you can affiliate for it.

Go to ebay.com, search for something you have sitting on your desk right now, be it pen to your lcd monitor, your wireless phone or your pocket knife. Chances are that someone on Ebay is selling it, and you can profit from it. I’m not going to go into the details on how to pick a niche, but I will show you an example of an ebay affiliate site that is making money right now and has been online for less than a month.

How to create niche sites and profit from ebay.

Ok, boy this is probably not the best idea to share this niche as it could create competition, but Jeremy and the Poker Affiliate forums have been a daily part of my career for the past four years now that I want to give a little something back. If you decide to give this a shot and do your own site then please just pick a different niche, would ya?

Well, Jeremy’s prop bet with Brandon inspired me to bust out an old domain I picked up on a whim late one night. Introducing Cheap Baseball Tickets, which is a wordpress site utilizing ebay plugin to display ticket listings to the major league baseball teams. Hey, if you are in the Chicago area and are looking for cheap Cubs tickets you know where to look, right?

Yes I know cheap is spelled wrong in the domain name, cheap was taken. The initial setup of the site, from start to finish took about four to five hours to set up and get my initial pages created. This consisted of one page of each MLB teams and their listings. This only includes a paragraph of rough text on each of the main pages for the most part. I did outsource some of the content and had some articles written to cut down on my production time.

If any of the visitors click on the links they are taken to ebay with my cookie. If they win an auction and complete a purchase you earn a %. If they are brand new to ebay and you convert them then you earn a $25 credit / ACRU. Yes, I know $25 is not poker affiliate CPA’s, but people much easier to convert to ebay than Full Tilt… know what I’m saying?

So far the site has made a little over $100 and has been live for about a month or so with most of the traffic coming from organic search. There is plenty more earnings potential to tap in to as well as more content to be added, but the potential has been shown as a money maker. If you want full disclosure on the site with exactly how to go about setting up a site like this for yourself, read through this step by step guide to setting up a wordpress phpbay site. It will walk you through the entire process including recommending themes and getting started from scratch and even shows you how to set up wordpress if you are not familiar with how it works.

I hope this guide was helpful in exploring some different avenues to diversify your poker affiliate income and get more money making websites out there working for you.

Go To This Website NOW and start diversifying your affiliate income.

I think I have written on this topic a few times since 2005 in various different places such as this blog, PAW, the PAP forums, or even other forums. But for whatever reason I feel the need to write about it again.

I think it’s probably because we’re right in the middle of the WSOP main event, and everybody is caught up in the thrill of poker and big cashes. This is the 6th year that I have really followed the WSOP, and unfortunately I have to tell you; every year the wsop and poker in general bores me more and more.

I suppose this is a shitty thing to say since I am a poker affiliate and have made an exceptional living off the business side of the game. But for me, it’s the business side that I have passion and drive for, not being a player. I’m sure if I tallied it up, I would be a losing poker player over my lifetime. On the business side however I’d say I am winning.

The fact of the matter is that the majority of poker players, especially online, are losing or moderately better than break even. This is fine if you play for entertainment or fun like me….. But unless you’re in the top 10% of the only 20% of online players that are profitable, trust me, you’ll make way more money spending the same 12 hours a day playing the affiliate game.

Don’t worry I have been there before, and so have many other affiliates. I remember I used to play 20-30 hours online poker a week at one point. What a waste in retrospect…..

So without rambling on, I just want to make one point to those of you reading this who are caught up in all the poker excitement this week or perhaps find yourself wasting half your week hitting the raise, check, or fold buttons.

Remember - 90% of you will make tons more money as a successful affiliate than you will as a professional poker player.

Now get to work and have a great weekend!

Oh, and one other thing, if you are a winning online poker player, don’t listen too closely to me……after all I am just a professional slots player.

This video is an oldie but a goodie. While surfing SEO Guru Markus Tandler’s site today, I came across this video again by Bob Raines.

In this video Bob shares 10 tips on what you need to do in order to become a super affiliate and make money online. Here is a summary of the 10 tips that he mentions in the video. Watch this short video, and these tips will make a lot more sense. Enjoy and have a great 4th of July weekend.

1. Build Your Own Brand

2. Create Challenges Followed By Rewards

3. Think “Playground Theme Park”

4. Build Communities On Top of Communities

5. It Won’t Scale If You Do It Yourself - Use The Communities

6. It’s Only Data And Transformation Of Data

7. Commoditize Community - MAKE MONEY MONEY MONEY

8. Get Real Or At Least Authentic

9. There Are 2 Groups Of People

10. Acquisition or Awareness

Bob Raines is an SEO consultant and generally just a cool dude to hang out with. Thanks Bob!