Monthly Archives: July 2009

Online Marketing

No Way That Is Her!

1 Comment

I was just on facebook when the following ad caught my attention:

fatloss-hotchick

No way that is her in the after!!!  I actually thought this was a great ad though because it caught my attention and I clicked the link to see if there were more pics of the hot girl.  Unfortunately there were not :(  They did have a cool site though with a bunch of good affiliate links in it and am sure they probably make some money from this.

Anyway, this just goes to show that sometimes the best ways to grab people’s attention is to make them not believe you.

/end of weird blog post

Affiliate Managers, Bad Affiliate Programs, Online Marketing

Affiliate Managers Contacting Through Facebook

11 Comments

I understand, its hard to get new affiliates to promote your room but sometimes I just want to tell these people to LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE!  It’s one thing to send emails to addresses associated with sites, but sometimes the contact becomes a tad too invasive.  I get random people adding me to MSN with no clue who they are, and a few times now I have even received messages to my facebook account.

Like I said, I have grown used to the emails, but I look at Facebook as a more personal venue.  Even though it can be used as a great networking tool for people you have actually met or talk to, it should NOT be used as a method to promote your brand and contact potential affiliates.  It is actually just kinda creepy to me.

Anyway, I decided I would try and turn this into something productive that hopefully other affiliate managers could take something from and provide pointers on what I don’t like about these or most forms of “first contact” from affiliate managers.

Here is the message I received from NAME REMOVED of Cool Hand Poker with things in bold that could be improved if you had to use this method to contact an affiliate for whatever reason:

Hi Graham,

Not some mad stalker – I promise! :)  I am sure you prefer the term “e-stalker”.  “Stalker” is so real world.

I am an advertiser interested in promoting our Poker room – Cool Hand Poker via your network.  Network eh?  I bet you couldn’t even list some of the sites I have.

Been doing research to find appropriate media partners for my client, Belle Rock Entertainment. The company owns various online gambling sites (Poker, Bingo & Casino) and have been operating for over 10 years.  If you had done your research properly you could maybe tell me a few of my sites and why you think they would be a good fit for your room.

Cool Hand Poker is a relatively new and small poker room – it was launched late last year and we are aiming to grow the business. It is quite unique in its marketing, as the target market is “everyday people” or people wanting to learn & play poker socially / newbie poker players onto the site. We are not aiming for the big-stakes Professionals who usually go to the more aggressive sites such as Full Tilt or Poker Stars.  More on how this is a retarded idea later.  Do you really think you can keep out the “sharks” from a site.  Also, you do realize those are the ones that make money, not the guy who plays poker once a week.

We are focusing our marketing efforts on the UK, Canada Europe and Australia & NZ (not USA or Africa) – would be helpful to understand your traffic split (USA vs. target countries above) and targeting capabilities better?

In order for me to motivate for any media deal, we must provide as much detailed information as possible. Besides Cool Hand Poker, we also market Casino and Bingo – further opportunities to work together!  Oh, I forgot I was trying to sell you on why I should promote your stupid site.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Warm regards

NAME REMOVED

The thing that annoys me more than anything is NAME REMOVED has probably copied and pasted this message to hundreds of affiliates.  Anyway, since it wasn’t an email I will let facebook deal with the spammers roaming their site:

am-facebook

Her messages lack personal touch, and really do nothing to make me want to work with them.  For further proof here is an email from NAME REMOVED with the things that need improvement in bold:

TITLE OF EMAIL: Advertising/Affiliate partnership (FuzioPoker)‏ First off, the site is Fuzion Poker (instant points off for spelling mistake)

Hi Graham,

By way of introduction, my name is NAME REMOVED and I am the Poker Affiliate/Publisher Manager at COMPANY REMOVED.  And, you already lost my interest.  I don’t give a fuck who you are, why are you contacting me!  It’s bad enough you creeped my whois info to get this email instead of looking for the site contact email.

I am an advertiser interested in promoting our Poker room – Cool Hand Poker via your website. Would be grateful if you could contact me to discuss opportunities?  “Cool Hand Poker”, really, thats the name you went with?  Ummm… I don’t care about opportunities, you contacted me, remember.  What do I get out of this?

My aim is to find appropriate media partners for my client, Belle Rock Entertainment. The company owns various online gambling sites (Poker, Bingo & Casino) and have been operating for over 10 years.  Whatever.

At this time, I am specifically focusing on our Poker room – Cool Hand Poker – the emphasis being on fun, free or low-stakes, social poker games. Especially for newbies wanting to learn poker in a friendly, safe environment.  Fun, free, low-stakes?  Let me guess, you probably want me to send these players that will make me no money on an MGR deal too, right?

We are focusing our marketing efforts on the UK, Canada Europe and Australasia – would be helpful to understand your site and traffic split better?  Do your own research.

Looking forward to hearing from you. Not likely.

Warm regards,

NAME REMOVED

Anyway, I hope someone learns something from this post so I don’t have to use you as an example for one of my future posts.

My Day, Poker Affiliate Life

Summer Is Finally Here

1 Comment

It is finally starting to get warm here.  Yesterday I went golfing with a couple of friends but played like crap.  Just trying to enjoy the nice weather.

I have been going to a lot of soccer games lately.  A few weeks ago John Goldie and I went over to Montreal to watch Toronto FC take on Montreal in the final game of the Canadian Championship.  Toronto needed to win by 4 goals which everyone thought was an impossible task, but I had faith they could do it.  We did a little pre-drinking before the game with all of the TFC fans, then headed over to the game on the subway.  The subway ride was insane.  Everyone was chanting and jumping up and down, at several points it felt like the train may even derail.  Once at the game, there were between 200-300 Toronto fans.  Toronto quickly went down 1 goal after a penalty kick, but shortly after came back to score 2 before the end of the first half.  The second half was insane as they continued to score and within the last 10 minutes put in the goal to give them their 4 goal lead.  Just before the end of the game they sealed it and put in a final goal making the score 6-1.  It was such a great experience as we stuck it out in the rain screaming our voices out and in the end were rewarded with the Canadian championship.  The players all came over to our section after the game and threw their jerseys out to the fans.

Also soccer related, Zinadine Zidane came to Toronto a few weeks back and I watched him play a friendly against “the Canadian All-stars”.  Most of the players other than Zidane and Palermo (Boca Jrs) were crap, but it was still cool to see one of the greatest soccer players of all time.

Next week I am going to start part 2 of my bartending training: the advanced course.  It sounds fun and will be pretty cool because I get to invent my own drink and present it to the class.  Also, I got tickets to see Sarah Silverman next week which should be fun.

On the work front, lately I have been spending a lot of time building a casino site.  It seems like everyone is getting into the casino side so I figured, why not.  If anyone has any good sites and wants to swap links, let me know.

My other sites are doing all right, just grinding on and not really growing much.  Need to start spending more time on those but as usual I have either been too lazy or have been more focussed on getting the casino site off the ground.

Lately I have also been thinking about heading out to Budapest for the conference out there.  Anyone else planning to go?