So what have I been upto? The honest answer is nothing much. I have been doing some work on a few other projects and been working more on the small changes and preparing for the official launch of the Poker Forum on PNB. This will hopefully be this Monday to co-inside with PokerNewsBoy.com being officially 1 year old. The Forum will be mostly News based, but will also contain some info on the league that will soon start and the staking section too. Hopefully add section as the forum increases, but it will be mostly Poker News related.

Other recent additions to PNB

The stuff that I have been working on (and still trying to tidy up) are new but essential things that any affiliate website needs to succeed. For example review pages, I have been adding Online Poker Sites reviews such as PokerStars, DoylesRoom, Full Tilt and a load more. I have also been focusing on trying to rank for there bonus or referral term as well, such as Doyles Room Bonus Code and Full Tilt Referral Code. Still no great luck with that, but slowly improving and will hopefully get there.

Other new additions are the Online Poker Rooms section and the Poker Player section (needs tiding up). So although I haven’t been as busy and productive as I should be, Poker News Boy is still slowly moving forward. So if you are looking to exchange a few incontent links give us a shout.

Other things happening in my life.

So for all you noisy people who love to know whats happening in peoples personal lifes, here is your fix. Although nothing has been really happening. Currently trying to quit smoking. Which isn’t going to well. Laptop recently broke. So never had a laptop for two weeks and had to use my old computer that is as slow as death. To add to the things breaking, my pride and joy broke (47″ HD TV). So that is still away getting sorted. With still no sign of that getting fixed yet.

And the big thing coming up is that I am expecting my second child in 3-4 weeks. So that will be a big change yet.

So apart from that nothing else really happened. Just trying to pick up my productivity and increasing the earnings. Ohh, Still not a millionaire yet either. But going in the right direction.

First up is a promo for my Poker Affiliate friends over at PAL. I am going to give away $100 to the top two affiliates who rank for the term “Poker News Boy Relaunched“. So this is me trying to give back to the community that helped get me and PNB where it is today. I would also like to thanks the members for there kind words about PNB. That was great to wake upto.

Another new thing that some of you like to read PNB is the addition of the PNB Newsletter. This will be a weekly newsletter that will go out every monday. It will just be a quick recap of what happened in the poker world that week. So abit excited about that, and I hope you’s all sign up.

I also have a crazy link sale going on over at PAL. I am doing the unthinkable and giving away quility permenent links for $40. All these links go in new posts before they are published so that they are there when google first indexs the page. I have not went totally crazy though, as I am limiting this to 50 links and a max of 10 links per affiliate. Compared to what I usually charge this is an extreme bargain.

What else? There is also plans for an affiliate news section going up on PNB, this should be pretty cool and will be looking some help and particapation from my poker affiliate friends.

That is pretty much all I can mention, there is still a few big suprises in the horison but I’ll keep them under raps till closer to the time. But things are going good for PNB.

p.s if your looking any links contact me on Skype: pokernewsboy.

First was the great news of bring Kevin in on the mix on PNB, which has been great for me and PokerNewsBoy. Kevin will be a real asset for PNB and I’m sure will take the site to the next level. This also generated extra funds, so we have a new template that should be complete any day now. I have to thank Eduardo (Eyenod) for that. He has been really great through the whole process, even putting up with my overeagerness and everything else that comes when you deal with me. I’m sure Eduardo will agree, it can be a struggle just putting up with me, never mind anything else. So hopefully you will see the results from all Eduardo’s hard work in the coming week.

Next was the inclusion in google news. This was something I looked into near the start of PokerNewsBoy. unfortunately the first 2 times I tried I was unsuccessful, due to having the site set up wrong. I actually have to thank Marcus for giving me a help with that. He really helped getting PNB into google news.

The only problem was after changing so much on PNB, google dropped the whole site. Apart from still featuring in Google News. Thank God thats fixed now, but it was a really worrying week for me. This also caused some problems with plans to run a blog from the Irish Poker Open. As when I was there google wasn’t indexing any of my content. So I gave up after day 1 at the Irish open. Which turned it into a great weekend.

I went with my mate Stevie to the Irish Open. Stevie would be a fairly well known online poker player. Mainly because he dominated the high stakes tournament scene about 3 years ago, before turning to playing cash. He is probably better known from his online screen name “AllinStevie”. However, Stevie busted level 5 of day 1, which corrisponded with my departure from blogging. The bar was calling, and I hate to disappoint the bar. It’s never let me down before, so I try my best not to disappoint it.

So day 1 at the bar wasn’t to messy, day 2 was.

Day 2 at the bar started 11am by watching the Man Utd, Chelsea game and finished by me leaving a cash table at 4am because I got board funding everyone at the table. In Between is mostly a blur. But their is a few things I remember that I found funny or at least rememberable.

I can remember Man Utd getting beat. We actually watch the game with Teddy Sheringham, as he had also busted the tournament day1. This was followed by many Vodka Redbull’s. Then we meet up with a few of Stevie’s mates. (This is where the name dropping starts). So we ended up watching the David Haye, Ruiz fight with Chris Moorman. One of Stevie’s close friends. This is where one of the funniest quotes I can remember from the night happened.

So after a bit of slagging going on, mostly me slagging Moorman that his father was a better and more recognized poker player than him. Incase you didn’t know, Moorman paid for his dad to play in a poker tournament in the UK for his birthday, which he won and over took Moorman in live tournament winnings. However after that Moorman told us something his mum said to him, which I though was funny as..

Him mum said ” Why do you keep going to these live event’s to play poker. You never win. Why don’t you just stick to playing online with the amateurs.” I thought that was so so funny. Probably one of the best tournament players of my generation and his mum thinks he isn’t good enough to play live poker.

Apart from that going on, Marty Smyth, was also having his stag do with his poker mates. They had paid for a midget (sorry if it offends anyone but don’t know the proper term) to be hand cuffed to Marty for the whole night. That was funny as well. By the way, remember to Vote Marty Smyth into this years WSOP Tournament of Champions, hes giving any winning from the tournament to Charity.

After that its a bit of a blank, I can just remember leaving the cash tables at 4 after getting allin for about £600 with AQ v KQ. Lost that, King came on the flop.

Great weekend though.

And PNB also went back into google where it left the day I got back home, which removed alot of worry. Another good thing was the mini site I just built. I built a mini site targeting a few keywords, mainly Victory Poker Rakeback, and that has been ranking well and gaining a few sign ups.

So although their was a few low points over the 2 weeks, mostly just google dropping the site, it all ended up good, and ended up having a great weekend because of it.

For over the last week I have been talking to a number of affiliates who have been interested in joining PNB, even nearly accepting 2 offers before turning them down or talks breaking down at the last minute. I think in total I had 7 people enquires before accepting the offer from Kevin.

Kevin is better known as his PAL username (Kef272) and is also the owner of The Poker Fish, as well as many more mini sites. He is an expieranced affiliate and has been affiliating for over 4 years. However, this isn’t really why it was Kevin that I choose in the end up. The biggest reason was the fact that he wanted to help, he wanted to be involved. Which was exactly what I was looking. I was wanting to find an affiliate who was as excited about the places PNB can go, and wanted to help it get their. Thats why in the end up Kevin was an easy choice.

So now Kevin owns 37.5% of PokerNewsBoy.com, and I am excited to have him come onboard. I now own 50% with our silent partner Stevie Devlin (AllinStevie) owning the final 12.5%. Hopefully this is the winning team to take PNB to the hights it can go.

Other recent news, is that a day after Kevin signing up to PNB, it also gets accepted into Google News. That just could be a good omen. I’ll also write a blog post at a later date to try and help a few people on how to get into Google News, just don’t take it as gospel, just why I think I got into Goole News, and what I changed to do so.

I hope you keep an eye out for all the big changes soon to happen over at PNB, and I will also try and keep you’s 3 or 4 readers of my blog updated.

p.s. Also getting a new mascot made. I’m looking foward to seeing that finished. You can see the progress so far in the pic above.

To be honest I am in no hurry to sell, as thanks to a bit of help from Dealer Dan and Unknown Webmaster, PNB has seen a large increase in sign ups and money from ad space. So I could easily plod along slowly increasing traffic and slowly increasing income until I finally get where PNB should be. The only problem is PNB can be much more. I see the terms that PNB is nearly ranking for, not the word nearly, page 2 for best rakeback offers on google and page 4 on google for best full tilt bonus doesnt get traffic. But alittle help and I believe PNB could rank for near anything that it focused on.

So what am I looking? well see this is the thing. People will assum that I am actually looking to sell a share of PNB, but what I am actually looking is someone, with expierance that can see the potential that I see looking at it every day. People will ask me how much it makes from rev share a month. When the answer is very little. How many sign ups does it get? Until this month maybe 2-3 a month. To be honest so far this month I have averaged one a day, its amazing how a little tweeking can make a differance. But what I am looking is for some who can see that they are getting a bargain at the $5k I am asking for and a $1.5k investment into the site. Where as most other affiliates will see it makes very little from Rev Share so cant be worth that.

So I don’t mind waiting till I find the right affiliate that wants to buy in, just dont expect the asking price to be the same next month though, as the way its going is up.

Totally off subject, I would like to thank Justin, one of the Tower Gaming affiliates for being a great hand this week. I wont go into details, but he went far far beyond the call of duty this week for me. I owe him big time.

Now that the excuse statement has been made, I can get to the point. As probably most poker affiliates, I like to play poker. Although like playing poker and being good at poker are two different things. The reason I actually got into Poker Affiliating was because I went bust playing poker, and was looking for some fast cash to get back in the game. That was my first mistake, their was no fast cash. However, it did get me hooked on Poker Affiliating.

So now I try my hardest to keep cash off poker sites. Which is strange because my initial plan was to make money to put on poker sites. The reason is because I am shit at poker. I used to think I was great, but really unlucky. But a man can only be unlucky for so long before he realizes luck has nothing to do with it.

So if, like me, you are affiliating because you can’t make the money playing poker, don’t think you can now. I made that mistake when I got a big payday on PokerStars. It cost me over $900 in one session. Wasn’t the brightest of ideas.

So here is my advice. At all cost try and keep money off poker sites. Some times its impossible due to a large amount of poker sites paying into you online poker account. But in some circumstances it is. For me I now only try and take cash from links sales or work that I have done over PayPal, unless its small like $50. But if someone pays me $50 I would be better just getting them to credit PokerStars and say me an hour.

The big problem is that I am probably a winning player. But at maybe 10c/20c stakes. However, If you get $1500 into you Stars account its hard to play at the 10c/20c tables. For me it is. To be honest I can’t remember the last time I was below $1/$2. Which obviously I’m not a winning player at. So any funds I don’t instantly cash out, are as good as spent.

I think this is a problem for most affiliates, apart form the 10% who would argue they are good poker players, just unlucky. You probably are just unlucky. However, to the poker affiliates who think because PokerStars paid them and now have a bankroll to play at much higher stakes, this doesn’t over night mean you are good. Cash out and start playing the 10c/20c games.

Poker Affiliates are usually Poker Affiliates for a reason. Because they are shit at Poker.

If you are one of the 10% of Poker Affiliates who are great at poker, please leave your name, so I can say sorry for suggestion you weren’t. For the rest good luck, and cash out.

But after thinking about it I am now looking to sell off 49% of my PNB, to an affiliate with the skills PNB needs, has the spare money to buy in, and has the time to put work in the site. Should be no problem! But I would like to say a big thank you to Dealer Dan for taking the time to look over the site and give me honest advice. And more than that great advice.

Then a few days later I asked Unknown Webmaster for some advice on a basic technical problem. Most affiliates would know how to make a go/ folder no problem. However I am not one of them. Anyway, I asked Unknown for some advice, and I never got advice I got a far more.

He actually spend about 2-3 hours explaining everything about the go/ folder. How it works, why it works, why you should do it and anything else that came up while we where talking. If I have ever meet an affiliate who knows what he is doing when it come to analysing stats, he is the man. So I would also like to say a big thank you to Unknown Webmaster.

I just wish I had half the knowlegde Dealer Dan had, and half the patients of Unknown, and I would be flying. But this week has been a good week and both affiliates have really helped and put me back on the right track again. I know feel I know a little more about my site and where I want it to go. Plus, also feel I am an expect in creating go/ folders.

If you get the chance check out both Dealer Dan’s and Unknown Webmasters affiliate blogs. There is a wealth of information in both.

Also I am trying to increase affiliates I have as contact’s on skype and msn. So if you fancy a chat about anything, hit me on MSN: gerrypoltorak@hotmail.co.uk or Skype: pokernewsboy.

I don’t know how many of you’s would have heard of Winner Affiliates or Winner Poker, but I think it was about 3-4 months ago I got contacted on Facebook on the account I use to promote poker and such. This is different from my personal account on Facebook. But to be honest rarely use either. Did alot when I first started as a Poker Affiliate.

However, I got a message from a guy called Hanan (good guy), talking about their poker site and affiliate program. Usually if I get contacted by Face book with anything like this, I usually just stick it straight in the read fill and forget about it. But on this case I actually had a quick read. More to with the actual domain that he mentioned. I thought the domain Winner.com was great. So I ended up getting in contact and signing up as an Poker Affiliate at Winner.

To be honest though, I signed up put up on banner and forgot about it. Until today. Today Hanan contacted me again. Asking what he can do to help me earn money through Winner. And to be honest I though it was the usual rubbish trying to offer me 5% rev share increase for a month or something. But this guy seemed to actually want to help. So this is my thumbs up to Hanan and Winner Affiliates.

So by the end of the conversation I got an exclusive deal to offer my players, a few customized banners and some information about Winner Affiliates and where they plan on taking Winner Poker, and never gave him anything extra stating I will see how the convert first.

To be honest though I think I will give them some extra publicity as he was extremely good and I woundn’t mind working with him. Which always helps when promoting a poker room.

Just another quick thumbs up. Colin previously at Reefer Poker now at GR88 Affiliates another great Poker Affiliate to work with.

Now that I have finished with what I’ll be needing and where it will be going, I am left with a site that will need 200 pages just to get started. Great. What happened to the idea of building mini sites. But I’m glad I got that sorted and now know what is needed content wise, and how much it’s going to cost me content wise. Although I will be writing most of the content, I just can’t face writing player profiles and Poker Site reviews.

So all I need to do now is get started on the writing. To be honest I am actually looking foward to going through this whole process of building a big site, as I have never done it before. Although Poker News Boy probably would be classed as a large poker site, that kind of happened by accident, and most of the content is news posts.

So now I need to go find a writer for the Poker Reviews and Player Bio’s and get a move on and stop talking about starting a site and actually start. To be honest, I will probably just use one of the writers that I use on PokerNewsBoy, that way I won’t be disappointed in what I get.

Just to put out a little shout out, I have recently started using PokerFelts, who is a member on PAL (Poker Affiliate Listings), as one of my Poker News writers and I highly recommend him. But please don’t over load him with work, I still plan on using him.

So now to get back to work on the new site. By the way if you have any advice, it be very much welcome. Just leave a comment with some suggestions. And again please excuse the messy writing. This is the last time I’m apologizing for it  though.

The reason I decided to start this Poker Affiliate Blog is because I have just signed up to Register Hosting. And after paying out for a years hosting, the nice people at Register gave me 3 Free Domains. So I did what any successful Poker Affiliate would do and i spent many hour looking to see if I could find the best 3 domains that are still available. Actually I didn’t.

Instead of actually putting in some research I did what I usually do and pick the first 3 domains I can think of that are available. Hence, PokerAffiliateSites.net. I also took PokerSitesDirect.com and InternetPokerDirect.com. Please don’t ask me why I choose those domains, as honestly I have no idea. Except for the PokerAffiliateSites.net domain, as I think I was reading Dealer Dan’s PokerAffiliateBible at the time I was picking the domains. So though it would be cool to have an Poker Affiliate Domain on the books.

Even if you look at previous Poker Domains that I have purchased, that would be a good example of how not to pick domains for the poker site you want to build. Take Poker News Boy as the prime example. What a horrible, horrible domain name. And by the time I bought a new Poker News domains, PokerNewsWorld.com, to replace PokerNewsBoy.com. I though it would do more harm than good changing over. I suppose all in all it turned out ok, people now know the name Poker News Boy and it gets searched regularly for people looking my site, so it turned out ok.

Ok, so now you know why I started this Poker Affiliate Blog. Well you know one of the reasons. The other is I am about to start a new poker site. One that will probably take some effort and planning. So I thought it be good to jot down what I’m doing as I build it, just incase it’s a success. Probably not though. Knowing me, I will build a poker site that gets loads of traffic but no sign ups. I’m good at building them. But just incase I’ll try and log what I’m at.

I hope you can follow my ramblings in this blog as well, as to be honest I will be writing most of these posts the way it comes into my head. So might be all over the place. But if you got this far down the post you’ve done well. And thanks for reading. Also can you please leave a comment at the bottom letting me know you got to the end of the post. Just so I know its readable, just!

In later post’s I will try and help with things I’ve learned in my short time as a Poker Affiliate. Might help the newbies or help them from making the same mistakes as me. And if you want to follow the progress of my new site, it’s called PokerRankings.org, from now on I’ll be referring to it as Poker Rankings or PR for short.

Hope you enjoyed my first post, and a small journey through my though process on how to become an unsuccessful poker affiliate. Actually that’s the domains I should have bought UnsuccessfulPokerAffiliate.com, probably suit my Poker Affiliate Blog better.