2. The vast majority of Internet sites are fully signed up
members of the online affiliate program industry. It is a
huge business based around an extremely simple
premise, the simplicity is optimised by the continued
success of the websites that have taken up the affiliate
challenge. Wherever advertising appears on a site on the
Internet it is almost exclusively part of an affiliate
program. The affiliates are rewarded by sites for bringing
in new customers or generating extra sales, with either a
one-off payment or a percentage scheme. Many of
today's booming online industry owe a great deal to the
success of their affiliates. Online shops, auctions and
gaming sites have all utilised the
3. affiliate programs to maximise individual sites visibility
and to generate extra revenue.
4. Online gaming and more particularly the poker industry
have been one of the largest benefactors of the affiliate
program. Like so many of the online industries, poker
sites have utilised the program to maximise their reach
and to optimise their clientele. The affiliate programs
work with sites commissioning other sites to host
advertising. The poker site does not need to pay their
affiliate until a new customer is generated by the
affiliate, a player that is identified by a unique URL. By
marking out individual players and where they have
emanated from, the affiliate program site or the poker
room can track the progress and the earnings of
individuals. Being able to monitor the progress of
5. an individual customer is a particularly relevant to the
poker affiliate program due to the way in which it is run.
6. In a poker affiliate scheme an affiliate has the
opportunity to earn a percentage of the money
generated for every player that they encourage to join.
Unlike so many of the other affiliate programs, this
share of a players money is not limited to a single
purchase or a few months, it is for the entire lifetime of
that player. It is through this that the poker affiliate
market has become so popular with a number of sites,
both new and established. By earning a cut of a poker
sites revenue the affiliates can earn significant amounts
of money spread over any amount of time. This
ingenuity and increased reward system has not only lead
to a huge rise in the affiliate markets income and
7. membership quota, but also in the revenue of the poker
sites that they represent. Affiliates are aware that the
more players they attract the more money they make, so
it is in all of their best interests to attract as many as
possible. With such a huge spread of affiliate sites, this
mass-marketing program has enabled the poker sites to
reap the rewards and become market leaders or great
pretenders.
