Casino Affiliate Programs

Some of the most lucrative affiliate programs to join are without doubt online casinos. Many affiliates are attracted to the gambling industry for the excitement and the full knowledge that billions of dollars are in circulation making it one of the most lucrative in the World. Even the fact that affiliates know that they are entering a highly competitive industry does not deter them because of the financial rewards on offer.

The temptation of huge affiliate paydays often cloud over the full realization that promoting an online successfully takes a lot of commitment and hard work. Casino affiliate programs are also no get rich quick scheme and you will have to build up your traffic through search engines, banner exchange, directory listings etc because pay-per-click marketing options for gambling web sites are few and far between.

The slight restrictions on your marketing options may delay the time when you start seeing positive results for your efforts. Many affiliates get disenchanted with this waiting period for web site pages to get indexed, ranked and traffic to increase and gladly bow out to chase another affiliate marketers pot of gold at the end of another rainbow.

The facts are that only a small percentage of casino affiliates make the most of the money. Some may call these super affiliates but the reality is that they are normal affiliates in most ways but with a slight difference. These affiliates are willing to work harder and smarter than other affiliates and are not phased by set-backs and disappointments along the way. They have a sure goal and will not rest until they have reached it. They visit the forums, contact affiliate managers regularly and monitor their stats so they can track and test the results and make changes that may increase their traffic or player conversions.

Not all casino affiliate programs are the same so it really does pay to do some research just to ensure that the program you are going to join is right for you. Commissions are standard and come in ‘revenue share’ which is a percentage of the profit the casino makes from the players you refer. This will be the net profit after any deductions for welcome bonuses and charges that the casino may have to incur and commission normally starts are 25% and is tiered. The more real money players you refer the higher percentage of revenue share you will receive. Affiliates are normally paid commissions for the lifetime of the players they refer.

The second commission option is CPA which stands for ‘Cost Per Acquisition’. This is a one-off payment which is connected to either the amount deposited by the player or the amount of money that they have actually played with. While revenue share income is derived from the players losses this is not the case with CPA. It does not matter if your player wins or loses, you will always receive the CPA income stream on each player. The downside to CPA is that it is a one-off payment so you do not receive any further commissions for the lifetime of the player. CPA is also tiered and some programs start at $50.00 per player and rise to as much as $300 when you have referred a specific number of players.

That being said there are a limited number of casino affiliate programs that do offer a combination of revenue share and CPA so the affiliate gets the best of both Worlds.

The last commission is the additional webmaster revenue where you will receive around 5% revenue share from the commission of any webmasters that join the affiliate program under you. While this additional income stream is welcome it is not something to build a business around. The big money will always be with the revenue share and CPA options. Some casino affiliate programs have the webmaster revenue tiered sometimes up to 10-levels which is a complete waste of time. This revenue should be one level and a flat 5% commission. 10-level webmaster commission may have worked in 1995 but is completely out of date for today‘s casino affiliate industry.

You need to ensure that the casino affiliate program has a wide range of marketing materials. They need to offer much more than just banners such as landing pages, html mailers, cd-distribution, offline flyers and popups etc. Any webmaster forums connected to the program is a good sign that help and advice is at hand, not just from the affiliate manager but from other affiliates who are willing to provide some useful tips and advice.

You need to have access to your affiliate stats 24/7 and they should be updated in real time. You should be able to create trackers in the control panel that you can use individually with each marketing campaign so you know immediately where your success is coming from. Once you have a level of success from the marketing techniques you use it is just a matter of duplicating these techniques to multiply your income.

Do your homework before you join any casino affiliate program. Try and get some feedback from current affiliates. Just joining some online forums will provide you with enough information on specific casino affiliate programs. If there is a rogue affiliate program out there you can be sure the bad news and warnings will be fired across all the relevant forums in a matter of hours.