Welcome to the first edition of On the Side, our ongoing article series about making money in the poker industry in unique ways. We’ll look at affiliate marketing, becoming a dealer or floor person, promotional opportunities, and any other way that people are making money in the poker world without cards in their hands. This month we’re looking at affiliate marketing, a great way to make money through poker over the internet—something that’s become quite difficult post-Black Friday.  We have some general affiliate marketing knowledge for you as well as a great affiliate program that anyone can make money with featuring a product that’s easy to sell because it’s the best in the business.  It also is no danger of being shut down by the DoJ.

Affiliate Marketing

Many poker pros, bloggers, and website owners make extra cash by marketing poker-related products on their sites or blogs. This is usually done through an affiliate program. When you become an affiliate for a website or a product you agree to promote their product for a percentage of the sales you generate for them. This can be as little as 5% or as much as 50% depending on the profit margin on the product.

You can usually find out if a product has an affiliate program at the very bottom of the home page, where there will be a link to sign up. You can also sign up on a site like CJ.com where there are thousands of different affiliate programs available and search for products that are related to your site. It’s important to promote products you believe in so that you don’t lose your reader’s trust when they buy a piece of junk that you recommended on your site.

Once you find a program that you like, you can get a tracking link or some banners from the affiliate program web site and put them up on your site. Many people who are new to affiliate marketing stop there, but you don’t get many sales simply from putting up links. Affiliate marketers who make real money are usually those who post reviews of products, add helpful content, and call their readers to action by suggesting they click on the links and try out the products.

An affiliate who puts up a link to a website that sells shoes on his website may get a sale or two. If he also posts a review of the site, talks about his experience in using it, and promotes it as a great place to get good deals with a good selection, he is much more likely to get customers to click through his links and use the site. The more you can genuinely talk about your experience with the site and tell readers why the product is so good, the more credibility you will have and the more sales you will be able to refer.

This month we are featuring a newly launched affiliate program for one of our favorite products, Blue Shark Optics. Blue Shark makes the best poker glasses around, and we wear them at the tables, so the product is an easy one to promote.

The Blue Shark Optics Affiliate Program

Blue Shark Optics is the Official Eyewear of the World Series of Poker, the best poker glasses around, and a great promotional opportunity now that they have launched a very lucrative affiliate program. The Blue Shark affiliate program is great for bloggers and web site owners, but unlike so many other affiliate programs it is excellent for offline promotions as well. Starting a simple blog at blogger.com or wordpress.com takes less than a minute and Blue Shark provides marketing materials and articles that you can use to promote the glasses so you don’t even have to worry about content.

The Program

When you sign up for the affiliate program at BlueSharkAffiliates.com, you receive 20% of all sales with a maximum of $20 per pair of glasses. If you can sell ten pairs of glasses, you can make $200. If you can do this every month, you give yourself a raise to the tune of $2,400 a year. Posting a few things in your blog is certainly worth $2,400 a year isn’t it?

Once you fill out the Join Now page, they usually approve your application within 24 hours and then you’ll be ready to download banners, text links, and their helpful affiliate marketing guide. There are also free marketing tools, including two free articles on poker tells that Blue Shark affiliates are free to use on their site or blog.

The Glasses

Blue Sharks have proprietary lenses that let almost all of the available light through so that you can see your opponents and pick up tells, while revealing nothing but a mirrored surface to them. No one can see your eyes, but you can see everything clearly, the best of both worlds when it comes to poker shades.

We tested out multiple brands of poker glasses this month, and while others made similar claims and had a similar look, they all turned out to be imposters. Those that looked like Blue Sharks were cheaply made imitations and we were gluing them back together within a few trips to the card room. They weren’t as comfortable or as light as Blue Sharks, nor did they have as many options for different types of glasses. Only Blue Shark had the option to get them with your prescription as well, allowing players with corrective lenses a chance to get in on the action and get the advantage that Blue Sharks offer at the tables.

Testing

The program worked great in our tests, and we even made some money by putting affiliate links up on a few of our sites. Everything went smoothly and the interface for the affiliate program was easy to use for our writers who aren’t comfortable with technology.

Join Now!

It’s free, it’s easy, and you might make some money.