Poker Affiliate Programs

About Poker Affiliate Programs

This page provides an overview of how poker affiliate programs work, different types of affiliate programs and provide recommendations on why some plans are better than others.

Ten Common Poker Affiliate Questions and Answers

1. What is the best poker affiliate program? Our Top Pick = Poker Affiliate World. Why we like “PAW”.

2. MGR vs CPA and which is better?

3. How do I utilize bonus codes and referral codes?

4. Which rooms accept USA Poker Players?

5. How do I quality for the advertised CPA?

6. Can I give my buddy $50 free to play with and take the $125 and profit $75 myself?

7. Can I sign up my mother / family member to play under my tracker?

8. I do not have a website, can I still make money with poker affiliate programs?

9. Can I trust the poker affiliate programs.

10. How much money do poker affiliates make?

What is the best poker affiliate program?
Our Top Pick is the Poker Affiliate World Network. This is because from within this one network you can promote from the best poker rooms in the world, all from one unique affiliate interface. All of your tracking codes, all of your stats, and all of your payments from one spot instead of spread across multiple different sits.

Oh, and did I mention the “bigger than you can get on your own CPA’s” offered through this network.

For example, FullTiltPoker’s advertised CPA is $75 or $100… Through PAW you get $125. Same room, just more $$ for your players.

MGR vs CPA and which is better?
I’m going to give you a straight answer. CPA, most likely. Take your $$ now and re-invest it to get more CPA players instead of letting your MGR players build up a revenue stream.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself… Let’s explain the difference between MGR and CPA.

MGR is sometimes called NGR or Net Gross Revenue that the poker room earns from a player. If you refer a player, you get a % of that players “MGR” from the poker room. In exchange for you sending the poker room a player, they pay you a percentage of that players MGR. Typically this lasts for the lifetime of the player.

Most rooms offer somewhere between 20-30% mgr as their advertised rate to new affiliates.

Benefits of MGR

If you land ‘wales’ or other high value players it is generally lots of recurring revenue month after month after month… as long as those players are playing you are earning income.

Once a base of players is built up, you have a steady stream of income

It is easier for new affiliates to get bumps in MGR than it is to get higher than advertised CPA’s, generally speaking.

Drawbacks of MGR

The bad news is that it is harder than one might think to land wales and even when you do, you can lose them.

long term profitable players, and you can lose players you rightly referred to poachers.

Poaching affiliates – they spam your players with offers and get them to create new accounts, which no longer earns you the rightful percentage.

rakeback affiliates which honestly is mostly player driven. Most good players want rakeback… There is nothing wrong with being a rakeback affiliate whenever the rooms themselves allow it as long as you are not recruiting current players (poaching).

CPA, or “Cost Per Acquisition” is a 1 time flat fee for referring a player to a poker room.

This is an upfront fee, paid by the poker room to you for every player you send that meets the poker room requirements. These requirements differ from room to room, but generally you will get paid the one time payment, upfront, for your player.

CPA’s start as low as $75 per player to around $150 for most rooms. Typically you will see at least $100 CPA. And CPA’s scale upwards huge for affiliate who can send large volumes of players, and I mean rumors of even up to $400+ for the huge affiliates sending hundreds if not thousands of players per month… Sick, huh?

Benefits of CPA

Upfront Money – A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush
Get the value of your player all at once instead of requiring him to be a profitable player
Not concerned with rakeback and poaching affiliates
Don’t have to worry about fee’s, chargebacks, etc…
Easier for most new affiliates
Some programs offer hybrid programs where you get a smaller CPA up front and a smaller MGR % over the lifetime. I believe SunPoker offers this plan and Mark from FocalClick and a regular on the PAP boards is a top affiliate manager to talk to.

How do I utilize bonus codes and referral codes?
By utilizing poker bonus codes or poker referral codes you can better help ensure that you are tracked properly for the players you send to online poker rooms. With many online poker sites, such as FullTiltPoker.com, you can request a unique referral code.

Whenever a player visits types in your unique poker room bonus code when creating their account at the online poker room, you will get credit as the affiliate. Most of the times this will override any previous cookie left by a previous affiliate, ie the poker bonus code takes preference.

Poker Bonus Code Tips – Good Poker Referral Codes

Brand your website with your bonus code, meaning make them relate. The best example I can see of this is this series of Kick Ass Poker Bonus Codes, where almost all of the bonus codes utilize the “Kick Ass Poker” theme in the bonus code.
Use an easy to remember and to type bonus code. Avoid using words or letters that can be misread as numbers, such as 1ookbonus. Is that “lookbonus” or “onehundredKbonus”? Know what I’m saying? Don’t make your traffic guess.
If you are an offline promoter, use a locally/geographically related bonus code, such as your college mascot, town name, your groups name etc… If you are inviting everyone from your local golf league to an online poker private poker tournament use the name of the pub you all hang out at after a round.One of the ways we branded one of our bonus codes for a promotion in Athens, GA a few years back was to utilize … our rival schools name and add ’sucks’ at the end. One of my early bonus codes was TECHSUCKS and I passed out flyers promoting party poker at the UGA vs Ga Tech game.
Make sure the room you are going to promote lets you utilize poker bonus codes. Mitchell from Poker Affiliate World Affiliate Network can get you custom bonus codes for many online poker rooms, and manage your accounts all at once.

Which rooms accept USA Poker Players?
This is important for affilaites who are promoting primarily to the USA online poker market, frankly you are going to need to promote USA Poker Sites. You can promote all of those poker rooms (except bodoglife.com) through the PAW network. I also should recommend this site for comprehensive information on USA poker rooms.
How do I quality for the advertised CPA?
This depends on the room. The short answer is that you need to ask the affiliate manager of the perspective room you are planning to promote. If you take our advice and jump on the network, Mitchell can point you to the direction you need.

The short answer is that as long as you are sending real players (not your buddies or your ’sister’ who is playing the bare minimum raked hands required to clear the CPA, even as stated in T’s & C’s, poker rooms will investigate and withhold payments for any fradulent activity.

Can I give my buddy $50 free to play with and take the $125 and profit $75 myself?
And can I do this on a big scale with lots of players? No. This goes back to the above question. No – I would not invest in this as a business model.

Hundreds if not thousands of affilaites have ALREADY tried this and they do not work. You will lose your money by giving away $50 to collect a $75 CPA.

Trust me, do not do it. There are more threads than I can imagine of people trying this, dumping thousands of their own dollars in free $50’s for players, getting scammed by the players with the free money and the poker room not paying the CPA. So instead you just gave a bunch of strangers/scammers free money.

Don’t repeat this mistake.
Can I sign up my mother / family member to play under my tracker?
Only if they are a legitimate player and not someone you are looking to make a quick CPA on. You also need to clear this with your affiliate manager, but the general consensus is that having a family member sign up under your tracker is ok if they are legit.

I do not have a website, can I still make money with poker affiliate programs?
Sure, utilize bonus codes (see above) and do offline marketing via flyers, poker leagues, organizing private events, etc.

I will say that unless you are really integrated in to a poker community that is ripe for online poker then you will probably not refer big time players to poker rooms… Not saying you can’t get a nice income stream every month through offline, but for massive exposure you need a web site.

Online is where the real money in online poker room affiliate programs lie.

Can I trust the poker affiliate programs.
Ahh, the million dollar question. Yes to many, no to some. My best advice is to get on the PAW network to promote your rooms as this program offers quality rooms like FullTiltPoker.com (whom is also trustworthy).
How much money do poker affiliates make?
As the Poker Affiliate Pimp himself says, the harder I work, the luckier I get. Some poker affilaites are making 6 figures per month. Yes, you read that correctly, six figures per month doing this. These are the mega affiliates, the super affiliates and the cream of the affiliate crop.

Most affiliate managers will tell you that only 1 out of 50 affiliates who sign up for a program ever send 1 real money player. Pimpin ain’t easy… but for those who have a passion for poker and a work ethic there is a ton of money to be made as a poker affiliate.

and by the way, Tech does indeed suck