Following the Herd:

I act on instincts. I can’t read an instruction manual to learn how to build something. I like to splay the pieces out on the floor and put them together where I think they make sense and use the instruction manual as a reference when I get stumped. This has been a fundamental foundation of who I am. My company’s fundamental foundation looks like this: We develop products that provide value to our end user and our vendors and we monetize that relationship through affiliate marketing.

What does that preface have to do with this post? Who I am has ultimately sculpted a large portion of who my company is. My instinctual nature by definition makes me think outside of the box, because I don’t look to even realize that a box exists. My core wants to provide a product with lasting value so that it can be improved, enhanced and capture loyal customers. Most of the advice I see or hear about affiliate marketing involves some variation of “content is king” and “SEO”. I get so tired of seeing those tenants that I felt compelled to write this post.

I am not saying those two things need to be completely ignored, as many people make a terrific living concentrating on those two sayings. But I see far too much one size fits all advice and herd mentality in the poker affiliate industry. I am here to say that content is king and seo being the only way to make a living in affiliate marketing is crap. I have developed multiple websites, including an affiliate network, that, combined, have over 250,000 registered users and 10 employees. I have been one of the top 5 poker affiliate marketers over the past 4 years. This may scare people to know: although I use content to explain what our websites are doing, I didn’t employ one SEO type tactic on my sites until late last year. We made a hire to help with content. However, I still prefer that his role isn’t writing content for SEO friendliness that no one reads. I don’t care that it may help with the SERPs. The idea of doing something that no one will read or use and only exists for a robot to find is preposterous to me.

After saying all that, please reference my statement regarding my company’s fundamental foundation, defining our against the grain focus.

I have a core problem with writing content to beat the search engine at its search functionality. It seems very disingenuous to me. I am here to tell you content is not king and SEO is not nearly as important as you think in Internet marketing.