Our series on part-time gaming affiliates has focused on a number of different topics, including defining success and setting realistic goals, planning ahead and maintaining a healthy work-life balance, and enlisting the help of others. In our conclusion to this series, we’d like to present our list of the top 10 tips we feel are essential to the success of a part-time gaming affiliate.
- Make the most of your daily commute: As a part-time affiliate, you probably commute to your full-time job each day. Whether by bus, train or even by car, your commuting time each day can be dedicated to your affiliate work in any number of ways. You can listen to and learn from industry-related podcasts, answer emails on your mobile device, or even write articles and blog posts. Depending on the length of your commute, this can “generate” up to 10 hours of “extra” time for you each week.
- Carve out a niche: Online gaming is a multibillion dollar industry. Let the big boys and full-time affiliates compete for the strongest keywords while you take your sliver of the pie via ranking well for long-tail phrases in the SERPs.
- Remain relevant: Would you spend much time on a website whose homepage clearly hasn’t been updated in the last month? Most visitors, including Google’s crawlers, won’t either. Aim to publish at least 1 new blog post per week.
- Be prepared before taking time off: Planning a holiday? Has an emergency popped up? Will your full-time job and other commitments temporarily leave you with little time for your affiliate work? Have a ready supply of some content that can be posted automatically while you’re away and set up an “out of office” message if relevant. The Internet doesn’t take vacations.
- Experiment: Change things up on your site once in a while with new images, layouts, plug-ins, work schedules, types of posts, etc. While it doesn’t necessarily pay to “fix what ain’t broke”, trying new ideas periodically may improve your site’s conversions as well as your overall webmastering efficiency.
- Make sure potential advertisers notice your site: At the very least, your site should have a dedicated page with advertising options. You might also wish to try the tactic of a blank “advertise here” ad space somewhere on your site. As your site gains traffic and becomes more well-established over time, you’ll want to consider having a full-blown media kit ready on demand. The bottom line is that money won’t be coming in unless advertisers know about you and what you can offer them.
- Social media is for being social: Engage and interact as much as possible with your site’s visitors. Think of it as good quality customer service: if you want people to speak highly of you and your product, you should be “out there” doing everything in your power to create a good name for them to pass on to others.
- Don’t get discouraged if you only have a small social media following: Something organic needs time and care to grow. As the New York Times recently pointed out, lots of social media “superstars” have purchased their followings. Take pride in every real “like” and “follow” that you earn and eventually your audience will increase; we all know who won the race between the tortoise and the hare.
- Build links via guest blogging: You don’t have to be an SEO guru, industry specialist, or even an exceptional writer to produce a good article that another site will want to publish. Whether you do the writing yourself or instead outsource that job, many sites are happy to accept high-quality written content. Guest blogging is an excellent and proven way to get authoritative sites to link back to your site. Even if you only do this once in a while, the increased exposure is essentially guaranteed to give you a boost in more ways than one.
- Attend a gaming industry affiliate conference: A few times a year, the gaming industry truly comes to life in exciting places like Las Vegas, Dublin, London, and Barcelona. There’s no substitute for pressing the flesh with affiliate managers and having a few drinks and chat sessions together to strengthen the personal aspects of your business relationships. Often free for affiliates to attend, the lessons you can learn and information you can gather from attending panel sessions, listening to keynote speeches by notable industry personalities, and even just wandering around the conference floor rooms is invaluable. Plus, your hotel and flight costs usually make for great work-related tax deductable expenses!
In Conclusion
Part-time gaming affiliates do their work solely during their free time. All things considered, it’s still definitely possible to achieve excellent results when that time is wisely put to use. If you remain passionate, disciplined, goal-focused, and open to learning, your success as a part-time affiliate may one day perhaps translate into full-time independent affiliate work.
About The Author
Robbie Strazynski is the Founder of Cardplayer Lifestyle, the go-to news and information source for recreational poker players and fans. He has worked full-time in the gaming industry for two years and is currently the Content Editor for the Euro Partners family of online casinos. Robbie has been a part-time gaming affiliate for three years.