Gambling Affiliate Marketing — $4 000 in 3 Weeks

Gambling is considered one of the most popular and profitable niches in affiliate marketing. In fact, it is true. The gambling niche includes sports betting and all kinds of online casinos with slots, bingo, and poker rooms.

Statista announced that in 2020 the market size of the global casinos and online gambling industry reached $227 billion. Grand View Research announced that the global online gambling market was valued at $53.7 billion in 2019 and is expected to grow at 11.5% from 2020 to 2027.

The growing availability of gambling platforms and gambling mobile applications obviously contribute to market growth. Many mobile casinos offer a free play version for some games, fueling the growth. Many countries legalize online gambling activities allowing players to experience real-time gambling activities. Due to the outbreak of COVID-19 and consequent quarantine and social distancing measures players shifted to online gambling. In 2020 the sports betting market declined due to the cancellation of the major sporting events; however, online casinos witnessed increased public interest. Online poker got even more attention than usual, particularly from young people aged 18-25. Over many years, convenience is one of the key aspects of online gambling popularity.

Ok, gambling platforms need more players. Here come affiliates with their traffic sources to be directed to gambling platforms: marketers and webmasters drive traffic (potential customers) to gambling platforms and receive payments for registered customers.

Where to Find Gambling Affiliate Offers

Most online casinos and betting platforms offer affiliate programs, aka in-house affiliate programs. There are no special requirements to join them. Before applying, scrutinize the details, such as commission rate, traffic requirements, statistical and reporting tools, and promotional materials.

Besides in-house affiliate programs, there are affiliate networks — intermediary platforms that unite numerous advertisers and publishers (affiliates). ClickBank, Rakuten, ShareASale are just a few examples of affiliate networks, there are many more other well-known reputable networks.

Commission Types in Gambling Affiliate Marketing

• Revenue share model (aka revshare). This is the most popular commission model in the gambling niche. It allows affiliates to receive commissions on all the profits earned by a casino from a referred client. Usually, the revshare is between 5% and 35%.  
• CPA model. This model implies that affiliates are paid a flat rate for a specific action of a referred client. The required action is a deposit. Most casinos set a minimum required deposit (it varies from $1 to $10). Affiliates usually earn $50 and more for a client who made a deposit. Actually, the customer behavior is analyzed, so if a player deposits $1, then plays once and quits, there is a chance that an affiliate won’t get the commission.
• Hybrid model. This model is a combination of the CPA and revshare commission models. Here you are paid around $20-$35 for a deposit and a certain percentage (10%-20%) for all the following deposits. The higher the number of referred players, the more you earn.

Note: Never hesitate to contact your affiliate manager or affiliate support. If you are productive in generating high-quality traffic, your commission rate may be reconsidered to the higher rate.

Before joining an affiliate program always pay attention to the "no negative rollover" policy.  As you know well, players don’t always lose, sometimes they win. But you win when a casino wins. So you’re paid when the player loses. Now, when a referred player wins, a casino may share with you losses too. However, most online gambling platforms apply the "no negative rollover policy", which means that a negative balance is zeroed at the end of every month.

The Target Audience

Determining your target audience is the key to success. Let’s see. The average player is between 25 and 45 years old with an average income, impulsive. In other words, players are people who look for an escape from their daily routine. Wealthy people with higher income are less prone to gambling; people with lower income wouldn’t risk losing money. Next, the younger audience, 18-25, has lower solvency, so youngsters prefer casinos with numerous bonuses and special offers; additionally, they aren’t into high stakes (remember, you’re paid commissions). Females are not that rapt gamesters than males, but ladies are still attracted to certain games (for example, slot machines).

So, target the middle class. With the right approach, every referred client can bring you income (revshare or hybrid models) for a long time. Where should you look for traffic? Usually, gamblers are fond of sports and cars, you may get traffic from adult platforms and even streaming platforms. In fact, people you need to target like bright and strong emotions. They strongly believe in luck and fortune. Use these character features while designing creatives and landing pages.

In 2019 desktop traffic was dominant due to larger screens and sound and volume capacity; however, the continuous improvement of mobile devices leads to a bigger share of the market year by year. Gambling from mobile devices allows players an uninterrupted gaming experience from the comfort zone, at any time anywhere.

Traffic Sources in 2022

As with any niche, the right choice of a traffic source determines your potential ROI and income. You need high-quality inexpensive traffic. Lucky are owners of blogs, websites, and video channels devoted to gambling with loyal audiences. Naturally, they get free organic targeted traffic.  But gambling-focused platforms are not the only source of traffic for gambling affiliate programs.

• Websites & Blogs. Well, if you already have one site with a loyal audience, use it. As always, you need great original content, case studies, or live streams to keep your readers interested. If people trust you, they would listen to your recommendations. Make detailed reviews of gambling platforms, highlighting their pros and cons, share your experience. In this case, readers will click on your affiliate links.        
• Social media (Facebook and Instagram). There is no secret, Facebook (and Instagram) bans accounts for gambling ads. Ok, if you are experienced enough, you can try cloaking. Actually, Instagram and Facebook can generate tons of high-quality traffic, and you can benefit from these social media platforms via the promotion of mobile applications.
• Applications. Mobile applications represent mini-versions of casinos – users can enter a casino and play directly via an app. Actually, mobile apps are not sources of traffic, but they are instruments to generate traffic to online casinos. You can use social media communities and pages to promote mobile apps (yep, you cannot advertise a casino, but you can advertise an application) generating traffic directly to the affiliate offer.
• YouTube. Contrary to some social media platforms, gambling ads are not prohibited on YouTube. There are numerous channels related to gambling and sports betting. Optionally, you can open a channel, upload some high-quality videos and live streams and use this channel to promote affiliate offers. Alternatively, you can find several YouTubers with established audiences and purchase an ad space. It can be a banner, a custom-made video, or even a paid space in description to a video.
• Push Notifications. The case study below demonstrates how effective push notifications can be for the promotion of gambling offers. This is one of the best traffic sources for gambling affiliate offers: inexpensive and easy to adjust. As long as you test thoroughly creatives, the outcome from the push notifications campaign might be really good.
• Telegram. Again, you can create a Telegram channel and drive traffic from your website or social media groups (like Facebook with strict bans for gambling ads). Or, you can search for popular active entertainment channels and agree with owners to make a couple of posts.
• Pop-up & Pop-under. Cheap, low-quality traffic. However, some marketers still succeed to get pretty high ROI.
• Native ads. This type of advertising was trending in 2019 and demonstrated good results. The ads are presented as a part of a website in an unobtrusive way. This method requires testing, but it works well.

GEO

Europe is considered as the leading GEO in the gambling niche. Gambling was legalized in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Malta. However, the US market is huge too. In 2020 the Asia Pacific region has demonstrated significant growth due to slackening of regulations and higher availability of digital currencies. As experience shows, the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Russia, India, Brazil, China, Japan are favorable countries to promote gambling affiliate offers.

Case Study 1

Below is the example of earning on a gambling affiliate offer using Push Notifications. A marketer has previously worked with sweepstakes but decided to try gambling offers due to higher payouts.

Brief summary:

Offer: Syndicate Casino from Advidi (CPL + Deposit)

Traffic source: Push Notifications

Period: April 30, 2019 – May 8, 2019

GEO: Australia

Expenses: $408

Income: $815

Profit: $407

ROI: 100%

The marketer was a bit worried about the rather high CPC in Australia ($0.12), but he got conversions from the first day. There were three types of creatives used in the campaign: picturing someone who has won; secrets to winning at casinos revealed; click-baits with girls and money. Below you can see the examples.

The landing page looked quite simple but had very high conversion rates.

The marketer noted that during the campaign he’s got 64 leads. Below you see the stats provided by PropellerAds.

And here is the screenshot from Advidi.

In fact, the traffic was medium quality, but still, there was a deposit.

The marketer confessed that he is just a college student at the very beginning of his affiliate marketing journey. Well, the results are pretty good for the beginner.

Case Study 2

A marketer has proved again that the gambling niche is profitable. It wasn’t his first experience with gambling offers: he worked with various offers and different traffic networks. This time the marketer set his choice on three Asian countries: Malaysia (0.011 bid), Indonesia (0.007 bid), and Thailand (0.017 bid).

Ad format: Native Ads

Period: September 2020

GEO: Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand

Expenses: $1 568

Income: $5 538

Profit: $4 000

ROI: 250%

The regular A/B testing helped to select the best pre-lander (I used Asian girls’ images to let the ad look as native as possible):

Creatives looked quite fresh and lucrative. Properly chosen creatives mean 50% of success.

It was the first experience with native ads for a gambling offer and it worked just fine. The general stats with leads:

And the stats from the ad network looked as follows:

Overall, the marketer received more than 100k+ clicks and around 400 leads. As a result of the campaign, he got 250% ROI, which is indeed a significant achievement.

Conclusion

Gambling affiliate marketing is like any other business — with proper research and strategy, you will be successful. Some affiliates earn really impressive amounts monthly ($10 000 and more — unfortunately, the higher the income, the less marketers are prone to reveal the details). The most high-earning affiliates have their websites and YouTube channels to generate targeted traffic to affiliate programs. Despite its competitiveness, the gambling affiliate market is vast, so you can always find your own hotspot. However, you should always keep in mind existing regulations and government policy towards gambling.