Getting started in Internet Poker

So, my live game is "ok", and getting better now that I'm trying to apply some of the concepts in Small Stakes Hold'em, but I've been feeling that to really improve, I need to get more practice and take more notes.

Taking notes (or consulting reference material) during a live game is, in my opinion, less that practical, so into the scary world of internet poker goeth e-o. Thankfully, I've got a pal who knows a lot about this sort of thing so here's the steps that he's laid out for me to get started. I'm posting them here for two reasons: first, they might be of interest to one of you, and second, having them written down will help me to remember.

Step One: Open up a Neteller account
Neteller seems to be the PayPal of the internet gambling world. There are other money transfer sites that are accepted online, but Neteller seems pretty universal, and for me it came with references (which is important if I'm going to be depositing money with gambling sites).
You'll need to do this at least a week before when you want to start playing unless you want to pay between 3.9% and 8.9% in transaction fees. My experience with them was pretty painless, though they do have a slightly confusing account verification process that involves phone calls and mystery deposits to your checking account (but, they did pay me $0.14 for my trouble...)

Step Two: Are you a Bonus or a Rakeback Whore?
A bonus is a fixed amount of money that the site that you sign up with will pay you for making your first deposit. It's usually something like 20% with some sort of cap, and you only get the money when your MGR goes above a certain point. Bonuswhores has lots of info on how to maximize your bonuses, and turn a $500 payroll into potentially much more (unless your play totally sucks).

A rakeback is a percentage of your MGR that is paid back to you on an ongoing basis. The way this works is that each of the poker sites have a number of "affiliates". They offer each of their affliates a certain percentage of the rake that they earn from players who the affliates refered to them. In turn, the affiliate pays you a portion of the rackback that they got from the site that you actually played on. Confused yet?

Basically, you sign up for the site you are interested in via one of their affiliates, the affliate gets say 40% of the rake that you pay on every hand, the affliate keeps 15% for themselves, and gives you 25%. Some players with really high MGR apparently get offered rakebacks personally by sites hoping to swipe customers from competitors. I'm not one of those players, and if you're reading this - neither are you. For more information on rackbacks, try RakeBackReview.

I was talked into going in the direction of maximizing my rakeback. The reason is that basically a bonus is a one-time deal for every site, and it's only really lucrative if you open up an account with a lot of money. I'm planning on starting small, so the $20 that I get back on a $100 depost isn't really all that exciting. Rakeback on the other hand is for life (from what I understand it), and the more you play, the more you get.

Step 3: Sign up
I'm signing up for EmpirePoker through RakeTracker (non-referral link), because I was referred to both by friends. The RakeTracker signup was pretty straight forward, and their site seems nicely laid out.

My next step is to actually sign up to Empire Poker given the referrer link that was emailed to me by RakeTracker. The reason I haven't done this yet is that since I previously installed Party Poker (to play around), and EP is a "skin" of PP, EP apparently won't let me create a new account, so I need to find a "clean" machine (which will be the desktop box that's currently in pieces on the floor of my study).

That's all for now, when I have some time I'll track down some links to poker glossaries for definitions of things like MGR and skins, but for now, if you're feelling totally confused, try the Beginner forums at 2+2.