Guide on Getting Started as a Casino Affiliate
Online gambling is expected to approach $60 billion US by 2020 for its size of the market and one of the best ways to get a slice of that pie is by being an affiliate. According to Statistica, the market has gone from around $20 billion in 2009 to $50 billion in 2018. Gambling affiliates represent an important part of the industry and betting companies rely heavily on affiliates to drive players to their brands. To get started you’ll need to create a website with a lot of content, then you’ll want to join a few casino affiliate programs to work with then you’ll want to collect all of your hard earned commissions. So if you are new to being a webmaster, this guide is for you so let’s get started!
What is an affiliate?
An affiliate is a term that is commonly used by gambling webmasters. It implies the person or companies has joined an affiliate program to promote a product or service. Most affiliates have websites but not all affiliates need to have a website in order to operate a business.
What do casino affiliates do?
Contrary to popular belief, casino affiliates do not work a 4 hour work week and they don’t just hang out at the beach all the time. They certainly can afford to take enough vacations but the industry today is full of hard working people and there are no real short cuts anymore. So you’ll find them working hard at the office or at home so they can have the time later to relax at the beach, without the laptop! If you ask any affiliate program, they will tell you that most casino affiliates have a website and they drive traffic to those sites through search engine optimization, sometimes social media and other ways of driving traffic to the site. Some affiliates focus on email marketing, buying and selling of media and ads on advertising networks like Google’s Adsense. Some do exclusively YouTube videos for their means of marketing and traffic generation but for the most part we know many players start their search in a search engine and are looking for casinos, reviews, bonuses and any question that comes up
How do casino affiliates earn commissions?
In the world of online marketing, many affiliate programs and commission networks can pay per click, or for a set number of impressions or for a sale. When it comes to online gambling, commissions are typically paid out in 1 of 2 ways: CPA or revenue share. Typically commissions are not paid on a single sale as players can stay playing at the casino for life. Revenue share usually works where you as the affiliate will get a percentage of the player’s losses and this amount is paid every month.
The other payment type is called CPA which stands for Cost Per Acquisition which is a single one time payment given for referring a depositing player. There are usually activity terms required before a CPA is triggered so sometimes affiliate programs will request minimum deposit amount on a player. Most programs offer some type of CPA but it’s given on a case by case basis and programs are always worried about CPA fraud.
Which casino affiliate programs should I join?
Gaffg.com lists all types of gambling affiliate programs and they have a big list of casino affiliate programs. Their most popular category of programs are US casino affiliate programs that focus on the American markets.
Affiliate Networking & Conferences
Whether you are a new affiliate or have a site with any level of success, you’ll want to do some networking, make some friends and ideally attend a gambling affiliate conference. If you are looking for a conference to attend, the Summit of iGaming Malta is a yearly conference in November and it’s one of the largest igaming events around. It’s a great event to attend where you get a lot of opportunity to meet all of the people behind these affiliate programs and a chance to meet a lot of affiliates.
Some typical numbers for revenue share start as low as 20% commission and can go as high as 40%. These numbers will of course vary from program to program. Some CPA rates might start as low as $75 but have been known to exceed $200 when you refer a depositing player.
