Yeah, I've done a LOT of poker affiliate marketing. There's tremendous money there.

Interestingly though gambling sites still only pay, at best, about half the rev share I've heard porn sites pay their top affiliates. I was one of a few poker sites' largest (generating them hundreds of thousands in rev monthly) and got somewhere between 35 and 40 percent typically. From what I heard from my friends in the financial industry, in porn you can get 85% if you're large enough.

It's baffling to me that a company that serves up web video can make serious profits even while giving 85% of their revenue away.

So you had monthly revenues in the tens of thousands? Why aren't you still doing this (or are you)?

I did and I am, but revenues dropped a lot after two events. One was Party Poker spinning their affiliates off of the network (long, boring story, but you can probably Google around about Eurobet or Empire Poker and find out more if you care to). I managed to rebuild almost back to where I was, which was no small task at all, but then the other happened, which was the UIGEA forcing Party Poker out of the American market.

Now my revenues and margins are considerably smaller than they were back then. I could maybe, with full time effort over a long period, have rebuilt, but I didn't bother because of the general instability of the industry. I'll pass the opportunity to get on a soap box about our government's stupidity here, but suffice it to say the Bush DoJ (and maybe Obama's too, not sure yet) made the business seem a less worthwhile investment than something not in such a legal minefield.