The following is a guest post from my friend Greg Walker, an experienced poker affiliate. Feel free to check out his Real Money Games site to see an example of a well-structured affiliate site.

How interesting is the content you write? Is it engaging and entertaining? Or is it reserved and constrained by imaginary Internet laws that insist that you sit on the fence and try to sound more important than you need to?

If you have a niggling feeling that you might be in that second category (don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone), here’s a tip for you: try writing whatever the f*** you like.

The Internet isn’t one big royal dinner party, nor are you constantly trying to impress your girlfriend’s father every time you sit before a keyboard. This is your website and your work. Don’t write how you think you should write, but how you want to write.

If you’re writing a poker news post, why not mention how much of a melon you think Durrrr is for making that play? If you’re writing a poker room review, don’t be afraid to spend five minutes writing about the insanely awesome chip movement audio. I’d rather read about that than the standard “this room has good player traffic and great support…” line yet again.

This is one of your greatest opportunities to voice your opinion on virtually any topic you like. You don’t need me to remind you how satisfying it is to let people know what you really think in your quest to set the whole world straight. Make the most of it.

Every article that has as much inspiration as a rainy Sunday afternoon is destined to fade in to the greyness of Internet content for eternity, failing to leave an impression on each and every person that reads it along the way. Don’t be that kind of writer.

Nobody wants to read articles that have as much enthusiasm as their most recent gas bill.

You know that feeling you get in that 30 seconds prior to forcing yourself to write a review? Yeah, you don’t get that if you’ve decided to write how you want to write. If you’re writing as if you’re talking to a friend it becomes far more enjoyable and less of a chore. Forcing yourself to be uncreative when you write is such an unnecessary punishment that affiliates seem to subject themselves to.

If your everyday talking range is more colourful than a toddler’s drawing of what they think a rainbow should look like, then maybe you should tone it down. But in general, just write as if you were talking to a good friend. In theory that should make your content interesting, as you wouldn’t have many friends if you were constant semi-formal bore.

Bonus tip: have an opinion.

I spent 2 hours watching clips of Bill O’Reilly on Youtube the other day because he’s such a total d*ck. Now, the important thing here isn’t that he’s a d*ck, it’s that I spent 2 hours watching him.

He is so unapologetically opinionated that I wanted to hear more of what he had to say. In fact, if Youtube had asked me if I wanted to pay $5 to watch the most annoying clip of Bill O-Reilly ever right then, I wouldn’t have been able to fire up my Paypal account quickly enough.

Note: If you’re from the UK (like me), Bill O’Reilly is like Kilroy but louder. Not necessarily more annoying though.

Here are a list of words (mostly adverbs) that you should avoid using when you’re writing your next article:

• Maybe
• A little
• Fairly
• Probably
• Quite
• Somewhat
• Might
• Possibly

There are a lot more, but this is a good foundation to work from.

There’s a huge difference between saying “PokerStars is quite possibly the most popular online poker room” and “PokerStars is the most popular online poker room”; one sentence is wishy-washy and drab, whereas the other is gripping. Guess which one is which.

Being opinionated may well mean that you’re not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s better than sitting on the fence and definitely appealing to nobody.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 25th, 2010 at 1:19 pm and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.