Online gambling industry involves billions of dollars and attracts more and more marketers looking for sources of online money making. The distinguishing features of gambling offers are high payouts and easy conversion. But it would be an error to say that casino affiliates make easy money. Getting good results in gambling vertical requires knowledge, skills, and some investments.
You can work with online casinos directly, promoting their offers or you can join one of the affiliate networks. Gambling networks hold out numerous offers from multiple brands. These platforms represent a comfortable and secure solution for several reasons.
Advantages of working with gambling networks
- As a rule, networks pay affiliates on the weekly/bi-weekly basis and offer numerous methods of payouts, while casinos aren’t that regular with commissions and may delay payments.
- Networks, being specialized in marketing, provide more advanced statistical and analytical tools. Real-time feedback helps webmasters and marketers to tune their campaigns and get a clear picture of the results.
- Guidelines and personal advisors. Networks are interested in your success as much as you do: they receive their commission in accordance with your results; therefore, they provide you with all possible assistance.
Commission models
- CPA: a specific action is required from a client. Almost always casinos need a deposit from clients, some casinos even set a minimum deposit value. For example, if a minimum is $50, and your client deposited only $10, as an affiliate you receive nothing for this client.
- CPL: in this case clients also have to perform an action, for example, sign up leaving contact data (name, phone number or e-mail).
- Revenue share: you receive a percentage from casino (up to 50%; some casinos offer lifelong commissions).Usually you’re paid from clients’ losses. Be aware of ‘negative carryover’ (clients sometimes win; therefore, casino reducts from your commission).
- Hybrid: a combination of CPA and revshare models. In this case you get paid for every deposit (the rate is lower than in the CPA model) + commission (the rate depends on number of clients you send to the casino).
What commission model do you prefer?
8 votes
Best traffic sources for gambling offers
Known for their attractive payouts gambling offers are quite fastidious in terms of traffic. Aside from the limited selection of traffic sources, in many cases you might face strict requirements towards the quality of your traffic.
- Push notifications: a relatively cheap and popular traffic source, which is pretty easy to arrange. Solid but not high-quality traffic.
- Pop: one more low-cost source of traffic. Many beginners prefer driving traffic to affiliate offers via mobile pop because they get impressive traffic volume with minimum investments. Though, traffic quality isn’t of the first grade.
- Facebook: a lucrative traffic source with strict rules and limitations for anything gambling-related. Well, cloaking helps to skirt the bans. However, cloaking adds to the expense, but Facebook traffic is usually of high quality owing to targeting options within your ad campaign.
- Google: an excellent source also known for its bans on affiliate ads and high competition. Yet still, if you follow the rules (not to get banned) and avoid common mistakes (see below), you will come up with high-quality, convertible traffic.
The most widespread mistakes of casino affiliates
Right off the bat, the following mistakes are mostly related to webmasters entering the gambling vertical with their gambling-oriented blogs or websites:
- Stolen content (add here copied and non-involving) and/or content with outdated information.
- Overdosage of links and banners. Hopefully, you’ve heard about ‘banner blindness’. So, do not turn your blog into a ‘banner farm’. The same is applied to links: an excess amount of links might lead to negative SEO effect and decline the conversion rate.
- Underestimation of the link strategy and campaigns.
- Skipping ‘call to action’. Your readers need explanations and invitation to action.
- Importance of on-page SEO (titles, keywords, structures, etc.).
By the way, you may join the GPWA forum, the largest platform for gambling affiliates. Marketers from all over the world share their expertise and discuss new rules, bans, and changes related to traffic sources and gambling advertisers.
Remember: the key to success is in the combination of the offer and a selected traffic source. Within the gambling vertical restrictions and limitations are applied not only to traffic sources but offers as well. Read thoroughly all the details related to the offer, otherwise you might lose your payment.
Case Study: $3 150 in 1 week on a gambling offer
The case study from AffiliateFix Forum.
Ad format: Push Notifications from EvaDav
Offer: Grand Casino; Golden Game
Campaign period: May 27, 2019 - June 2, 2019
GEO: UA, RU
Targeting specs: Chrome/Yandex browsers on mobile devices
Expenses: $900
Income: $4 050
Profit: $3 150
ROI: 350%
The marketer used a standard method: push notifications with links to the landing page, which redirected clients to one of the gambling platforms.
An average CPC for both GEOs: RU — $0,069 and UA — $0,031.
The CPA model for this offer required a successful registration; for RU/UA GEO — a deposit of $7 and higher.
One of the reasons for success — close monitoring and closure of underperforming websites.
For push notifications the marketer used just catchy images and texts corresponding with the design of the landing page (‘user shouldn’t get bored’). In one week he got 71+k clicks.
In a single week he earned $4 050 spending only $900 for the campaign. Here is some stats:
Push notifications can work well on gambling; be creative and test your campaigns.
Conclusion
By driving traffic on gambling offers, webmaster can make stable earnings. Casino, lotteries, blackjack — it's an eternal niche business based on the popularity of gambling among large number people. So you can safely create sites, recruit social media groups as sources of traffic for the long term.
