Secret Tips to Grow an Online Casino with iGaming Affiliates.
Affiliates are the cheapest and fastest way to grow your gambling business
- You don’t have to build a marketing team or allocate a large budget to your marketing efforts.
- Besides, this is an effective way to grow your business because each affiliate multiplies the traffic to your online casino.
Many business owners think that all affiliates look the same.
They think that multiple affiliates make a difference and guarantee success.
This is far from the truth.
IN THIS ARTICLE, WE WILL GIVE YOU SOME GAMBLING TIPS AND PRACTICAL ADVICE ON WORKING WITH AFFILIATES SO THAT YOU CAN START WITH THE RIGHT KNOWLEDGE AND ACHIEVE SUCCESS QUICKLY.
Your new affiliates need to drive traffic that fits your business vertical
If you have an online casino (or poker rooms) and your affiliate marketers focus on sports events, you’ll attract the wrong crowd.
People who bet on soccer have a completely different experience than people who play online slot games. It’s unreasonable to offer them play slots or roulette.
If you ignore this fact, it’ll lead to poor conversion rates and low business results.
On average, 1 out of 4 people who play slots also make wagers.
It’s much smarter to ask your new casino affiliate what their vertical is to understand if the collaboration is a good fit.
Your affiliates need to be the right size
Different affiliates will ask for different types of deals. You can offer a CPA model, revenue share, or hybrid deals.
If you want to learn more about the different types of deals, please use this link. We share how to get the first hundred iGaming affiliates for your business (without wasting money).
Getting a good deal for your online casino from an affiliate will be very difficult.
Traffic is important to test offers and improve user experience quickly
That’s why you need to generate it somehow!
If you’re just starting out and ready to burn some cash, working with small affiliates may be the wrong choice.
Smaller affiliates prefer online casinos with proven results.
Would you rather work with an affiliate program that has a proven track record of bringing in a lot of money, or a brand new casino site that has nothing to show for it?
Exactly!
The vast majority of new affiliates would choose the former because they can’t take a chance on losing a paycheck. They have no margin for error!
Working with institutional partners like Catena Media may be your only choice to move things forward quickly.
You’ll get traffic this way, but there’s a downside to this method.
It’s not cheap! The cost of this traffic channel is similar to typical media buying.
If you don’t know your numbers at this point, the cost per acquisition of each new depositing customer may be higher than you can currently afford.
Nonetheless, this can be a viable tactic if your goal is to get numbers as quickly as possible, maximize the Average Revenue Per User your business generates, then use real data to look for better deals.
How much do affiliates make?
Affiliates usually earn between 25% and 50% of the gross gaming revenue (GGR) they generate.
For example: your active affiliate made ten million dollars in revenue this month. You paid out nine million as profit to your customers, leaving you with one million dollars.
One million dollars is your GGR.
You’ll pay between two hundred and fifty and five hundred thousand dollars to that affiliate.
Just as a revenue share.
Affiliates receive their revenue share only when they make a profit for an online casino or sportsbook.
Your best affiliates will make you millions. We know the biggest affiliates for several brands that generate three million dollars per month in commissions alone. The revenue generated by these affiliates can reach into the tens of millions.
Start your gambling affiliate program
Launching your affiliate program is essential if your business depends on affiliates.
However, launching it for the sake of launching is a bad idea.
You’ll have to consider many things such as:
- Affiliate Software. Data consolidation is as important as the marketing tools you provide for your affiliates.
- Commission levels. Your offer must be competitive on the market.
- Terms and conditions have to be transparent and easy to understand.
- Success plan. No affiliate program succeeds itself.
- You’ll have to hire people and allocate resources to support all of your efforts.
Monthly commission levels from the Gamesys Group Partners.
Be careful about judging affiliates based on their past results
Don’t be afraid to negotiate deals individually with every affiliate you work with.
They can generate good traffic but be mildly successful with previous affiliate programs.
Many things can go wrong, such as offers that don’t work with the audience they generate. If they’re generating traffic and you think they can be successful with your product, you should negotiate a deal that is interesting to them and won’t bankrupt you if it doesn’t work out.
It’s not uncommon for affiliates to become successful after switching to another online casino.
DraftKings affiliate managers take time to learn about their affiliates before sending the offer.
Have a good tracking system
Every affiliate account is different, and you need to know exactly what they’re doing to promote online casinos.
- What kind of content do they create and what are their goals?
- What kind of deal do they want from you – is it a pure revenue share or a hybrid deal that guarantees them a paycheck?
Remember! Your players want to be entertained, outplay you, or earn a steady income.
Your players want to be entertained, outplay you, or earn a steady income.
And if the first two don’t matter, the latter can get you in trouble.
Pay attention to gambling affiliates that teach their audience how to make money on sports betting. These sports betting tips may bring you a lot of new customers, but in the long run, they can cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses.
And you’ll be the only one paying for it because affiliates have already got their CPA deals in advance.
There is no negative carryover with most online casino affiliate programs. For example, at the end of March your affiliate may have a balance of -$10,000. He’ll start with $0 in April
Affiliates don’t expect to deal with a negative balance because it’s easier for them to register a new account or switch affiliate programs. It would be better for the affiliate to move on and start from scratch somewhere else instead of starting with a negative balance.
Make sure you track all traffic sources properly and spot any strange patterns
Example of a No Negative Carry Over at a casino affiliate program – CasinoLuck.
The situation is a bit different for sports betting operators because they have to deal with tougher margins. A single big win can put them in the red for some time. This is the reason why many don’t want to offer negative carryovers.
But every situation is different. Casino operators and affiliate managers like to look at the big picture. Сasino tips: If an affiliate consistently brings in positive results and one single bet puts him in red, it’s in the casino’s favor to give a no negative carryover to an igaming affiliate program.
GTRevenue affiliate program offers no negative carryover for all products (with some exceptions).
Always keep your affiliates happy
Most affiliate programs have similar offers. There is almost no room for a stretch because you simply can’t pay more than you earn.
Your business needs to make a profit
That’s why personal relationships and the way you manage your affiliates are so important.
- Stay transparent and make sure your offers aren’t misleading. Pay affiliates exactly what you promise them.
- Pay your affiliates. Don’t make them wait for a paycheck or you’ll lose them. This is so easy to understand, but even today many casinos choose a slippery slope and lose their reputation.
- It’s not easy to maintain personal contact with every affiliate. Especially if you’re managing hundreds of them. Make sure you message or email them regularly and ask them about their challenges. This way you can learn a lot and prevent some problems before they occur.
Summary to tips on gambling
- A cookie-cutter approach can drastically reduce your chances of building successful relationships with your affiliates.
- Affiliates focus on vertical markets. Sports betting traffic won’t work for online casinos and vice versa. Get to know your affiliates’ target audience or you’ll attract visitors you can’t convert into First-Depositing Customers.
- If you have a brand new casino without any performance, the size of affiliates is important. It’ll be difficult to work with small and medium sized affiliates. You may want to pay more for the traffic and sacrifice your profitability for it in the beginning.
- Affiliates make money by driving traffic. They get paid based on their performance, and some of them can bring your online casino or sportsbook business millions of dollars per month in profit.
- There is a reason why businesses set up gambling affiliate programs. Starting such a program isn’t for the faint of heart, and resources need to be allocated in order to grow.
- A good tracking system will help you identify affiliates that are hurting your business. Make sure you have bulletproof data to react immediately.
- Always stay in touch with your affiliates and listen to their feedback to improve your marketing efforts.