Gambling Guide - How to start in gambling (42)
Before reading through the whole guide, I’d like to point out one thing: gambling in general is VERY different to other niches and often has it’s very own attributes / characteristics depending on what market you are in. The average US gambler is acting way different to a European gambler. Then again, a German gambler acts converse to an Eastern European gambler.
All in all, there is definitely more than one way to make money on gambling. This is far from being a blueprint and should much rather help you on your first steps while avoiding beginner mistakes.
Personally I’ll be focusing on the European market in this guide. It’s rather simple – Europe is where the money is at in gambling, especially after the US cracking down Full Tilt Poker. It’s proven fact that the average player’s value of (Western) Europe is superior to the US player along with gambling being hardly legal in the States.
So far, the plan for the guide is the following:
1- General / Introduction
2- Payment models
3- Difference of games / casino to betting and poker /
4- Different kind of gamblers / angles you can use
5- Traffic possibilities (not a 100% sure yet but likely to be included)
1. General Info / What brands to promote / Introduction
There are probably a shitload of online casinos around nowadays which in the end, have quite a lot in common. Browsing through different online casinos you’ll see most of them have a pretty similar pool of games to choose from and similar bonus offers. That’s because most providers are using the same software, preferably Playtech or Microgaming.
Whatever software a casino is running, I’d focus on casinos running one of the two above mentioned options. Both of those platforms have their pros and cons, but I’d definitely consider them market leaders. During the last 2 years some big brands moved to Playtech as their live casino feature is pretty much killing it. Still, nothing wrong in Microgaming neither. Personally I have had the best experience by promoting Playtech casinos.
So how do you decide what brands to promote? The easiest way in my opinion is to simply browse through the organic results on google.(tld) of the country you’re planning to work in.
Obviously, these so called ‘casino guides’ are as legit as a fake newspaper article about the effectiveness of Acai berries – but they have one thing in common: despite promoting the highest paying affiliate programs on their top spots, they pretty much know what’s converting or not from their own tests. Whatever site owner you talk to, there’s no way he’s going to put a non-converter in his top spots. Converting is a huge problem in gambling and therefore the most exposed spots are usually used for top converting brands which makes creating a list of potential brands extremely easy and bulletproof. In gambling, it’s all about the converting brand. Often you’ll reject a potentially better CPA / Revenue Share offer by an unknown brand and keep your proven winner. Sounds stupid, but you’ll experience pretty similar.
Browse through the organic results for keywords like casino, online casino, roulette, blackjack, slots – you name it. Use game names first and compare your list of ‘top roulette casinos’ of different sites to their ‘casino review’ lists. You’ll likely face the same 5-6 brands for all categories of which at least 2 are run by the same operator. Don’t focus on roulette only here – just browse through all the obvious keywords for the casino niche and take your notes.
Gamblers are gamblers - they don't stick to Casino or Betting
A lot of online casino operators are offering a much wider range of games / possibilities to gamble. As an example, having a bwin account enables you to not only bet on sport events. You can transfer your funds across several platforms including online casino games, sports betting, skill games, lotto, board games, slots, etc. etc. etc.
Some brands are market leaders in a certain niche of gambling, but I definitely recommend to promote brands offering at least some cross sale possibilities. Often enough I’ve seen a lot of money lost on bets placed through a mobile device by players who initially signed up for an online casino. It’s free money and you want to offer them the possibility to lose as much as possible as easy as possible – no matter if it’s at their home PC or in a sportsbar placing a bet through mobile.
NOTE: Get in touch with a rep of the brands to make sure cookies / tracking is set for cross sign-ups in case their betting site is branded different to their casino site. If they don’t track it you won’t make any money even though you initially sent the player to the casino.
Mobile devices are good for at least 25% of the casinos traffic nowadays, so make sure you look out for a casino offering a well optimized mobile website (you won’t find many apps in the stores but most brands are doing a good job optimizing their mobile sites).
Let them play for free in case you don't get their deposit right away
While promoting any brand, you should always keep the so called freebie offers as an option. You don’t want them to take the majority of your traffic, so put it in a bottom banner or some exit pop if possible. These freebies usually offer freespins or free money for a certain period of playing time or a no-deposit bonus. While they are far away from being the no. 1 option to promote due to offering something for free and potentially preventing your player from depositing, they are a good option to catch exit traffic. Traffic that needs to sign up to get the bonus -> first step already taken to make the first deposit later on. Again, don’t push these offers – quality won’t back out. But better get a leaving visitor to sign up for these than miss him completely.
The bonus requirements and terms for the turnover of these no-deposit / free offers are likely to make it impossible to withdraw any of the players winnings. Don't worry about your commission being negatively effected, as 99% of the players will never see a cash out of their 'free' won money. More likely, they'll be surprised how much they won without spending a dime and will give it a shot with real money.
Proven converters for me through whole Europe:
affutd & europartners. The second operator was known for some itchy stuff back years ago, but from what I’ve heard, a lot of AMs changed, they switched their platform to Playtech and after that never heard any complaints. The first one is actually run by William Hill online, a stock exchange traded company and one of the biggest bookmarkers in UK. If you’re going into Europe, make sure you got accounts at both of them as their brands are well known and have solid reputation all over the place. Other solid programs are affiliateclub and iaffiliates.
Last advice for the first part of this guide is to NEVER go through an affiliate network, ALWAYS go direct. Most of the operators run 2-3 brands or more anyway and you’ll get WAY higher CPAs in case you decide to run CPA based campaigns. Just an example, I once saw an offer for a brand priced at $160 CPA while I was able to get $420 direct. Base (deposit amount by the player to count as paid action) was same for both.
2. Payment models
So here we go with the 3 (actually 2) most popular payment methods in gambling. In fact, one of them is really bad for the affiliate side therefore will be cut down to just a short info why you should avoid it.
The 3 ‘big’ models are Revenue Share, CPA and CPL.
REV SHARE
Revenue Share is where the money’s at in gambling. Everybody running gambling on a large scale will tell you that it has huge advantages over ANY CPA deal you can get.
In rev share deals, there are certain factors to be considered when chosing a plan / setting up a deal with the brand of your choice.
Generally, average revenue share models start at 30% and go up to 45% depending on volume you run and what niche you’re in. Especially with high quality casino players you can get 40%+ quite comfortably without asking for something unreal.
Despite the % you’ll get of the casino’s revenue, there are several different possibilities to set up a revenue share deal which are the following:
- rev. share deals based on turnover:
Some brands offer you a turnover based revenue share which in my opinion, is not a real revenue share. They will explain you that in fact it is, as every casino earns on commissions per bet round (their margins) but in fact, it’s not. In this model, you only get paid based on the turnover a player generates. So, a player losing 1k in a roulette spin will give you shit compared to the ‘traditional’ revenue share whereas your earnings would be 300-450 depending on your %. Turnover models are interesting if you drive a lot of slots traffic or generally spoken games that have smallish bet sizes per round. In example, a player can easily do 20 spins a minute on a slotmachine at 2€ each – it sums up. Another advantage is this model is that you cannot produce a negative turnover different to real revenue share where it’s very common to have negative days.
Personally I’m rather skeptical towards this model. It definitely has advantages, but I never heard of anybody putting it over a ‘real’ revenue share deal where the actual losses are what you get your commission of. In the end, I love to be on the casino side when a a player is gambling, and in fact that’s what you do when going for P/L based revenue share.
- rev. share deal based on winnings / losses of players:
Here you go, here’s the money in gambling! You’re basically taking position on the ‘house side’ of the casino / gambling operator and getting a share of their profits / losses.
Generally spoken, I hardly see people withdrawing a lot of cash even if they win big. Most of the time, the casinos will do a good job in giving them enough time to re-bet the won amount again in doing ID checks and all that stuff. Even more, it’s not present in cash but just a number on your screen -> makes betting higher amounts much easier if your credit was bumped by a big win. As a rule of thumb, once a withdrawal is done, you can count on this amount not to return to you from that player. Sounds very broad but it’s just my experience.
For traditional revenue share deals, there is one big difference when negotiating a new deal: NNC or not.
NNC stands for ‘no negative carryover’ and means the following: including a NNC in your deal, your commission balance gets reset every 1st of the month. A total loss of 10k during the previous month won’t effect the new month at all.
Without NNC, your previous month’s balance (if negative) is taken to the next month. Can prove costly when somebody hits a jackpot of 6 digits, although often enough the money still returns before it’s withdrawn.
Personally I’d ALWAYS recommend to go with NNC deals. Usually, you get around 5-8% less share of the profits, but it’s worth it. Not only because of negative balances being reset, much more interesting it gets in case you got lucky and on the 31st of a month, a players hits a 50k jackpot. Right from tomorrow, all his losses from this win will be counted as profits for the casino. Get the idea ? Right, in a perfect world, you’ll get your commission of 50 grands the guy ideally loses right the next day.
Different to CPA models, your commission % isn’t that much about the players quality as you only get for the quality you sent. Many brands do promotions for the 1st month 50% deals and the 2nd 45% etc etc. If you’re able to get such a promo deal, do the following:
Ask your AM if he can hold the release of this deal back. Means, you first send them some traffic at a 30%ish standard commission and as soon as you deliver volume, you ask them to activate the promo deal. From that point on, you got a lot of traffic with a decent revenue share deal alive. 10-15% can make a HUGE difference in gambling. Make sure you let the deal start after you’re sending traffic. 90% of the brands will agree on that.
To get better revenue share deals, you gotta deliver volume and a reasonable quality of traffic. Due to that, don’t always focus on instant ROI with campaigns – more volume can increase your % by easily 5%. Take it as a delayed ROI.
CPA DEALS
Like ‘traditional’ CPA marketing, you get paid per action. This action is not a sign-up, but much rather a deposit. Normally this deposit amount is referred as ‘base’ so you get XXX $ CPA with a base of XX(x).
Before explaining more details, the most important thing first: CPAs are heavily adjusted on month to month period except you’re a proven affiliate and known for quality. Obviously, a CPA deal has to back out for the brand, therefore your CPA will be lowered / increased accordingly. Most of the time, the base gets adjusted first which seems to make a small difference, but in fact, it does much more than you can imagine. Let me explain in detail:
Talking about a base, let’s say you get a deal of $250 CPA with a base of $30. Especially in Europe, prepaid cards like paysafecard / ukash are VERY popular for depositing in casinos. With the current $ to € rates, a €25 paysafecard is good for $32.42 => you get your CPA. In case your base gets increased to $35, it’s like forcing the player to do a second deposit before you get your commission. By doing that, they ensure you’re sending ‘legit’ players and not one-time hit and runners.
The difference in these two deposits is HUGE, therefore focus on QUALITY when going with CPA. Otherwise your base is going to fly high along with your CPA to crush. Casinos aren’t stupid, in fact, they are some of the smartest networks around in my opinion when it comes to shaving / adjusting pay terms.
CPA deals differ widely depending on the traffic you’re sending. Traditional high value players are roulette players and live casino players, returning slots / videopoker players. Blackjack players have not that much quality in them and tend to lose and quit fast. Roulette is where the big money is at as they are the most addicted and dumb players (sorry to everybody who enjoys playing roulette).
If you’re running game specific campaigns, a good idea is to create certain accounts for different kind of players to make sure quality backs out for both. Don’t mess up your high quality roulette players with shitty scratch card players. Separate them. It’s more work to set everything up, but it pays out.
Same goes for splitting up countries. CPA deals are VERY different from country to country. Ask around, eastern European traffic isn’t good for 50% of a solid western European player. Be upfront about what kind of traffic you’re sending to avoid any problems afterwards. Sending Polish players to a deal made for German players won’t work. Don’t even bother trying, it’s a waste of time.
Talking about quality is the big problem in CPA: if you’re sending them a reasonable quality, you’ll stay on the deal. Likewise, you never know how your numbers would look like going with a revenue share deal for the same traffic. Therefore, if you can afford it and plan for a longterm business, at least try revenue share if you stay on CPA deals for longer.
Another quality issue is the kind of players you’re sending. Don’t expect same CPAs for real casino traffic while sending make money online players to the casino. They’ll realize very fast as these system players tend not to re-deposit and die fast. Normally, once they notice these systems in fact do not really work well, they’ll never deposit again. Therefore again, be straight upfront about what kind of players / traffic you’re sending to avoid getting booted of a deal. The big brands normally are surprisingly fair when it comes to setting up deals as they know there’s a shitload of competition – don’t risk their goodwill for a quick buck.
CPL DEALS
Short but right on the point: waste of time. If you stay on CPL deals, it’s likely you’d do better with CPA or Rev Share deals. If not, your traffic is crap anyway and you’re doing something wrong. CPL is the biggest waste of money in my opinion when it comes to gambling as traditional signup to deposit % for good traffic are around 35%++. Most of the bigger brands won’t go for CPL anyway from my experience and will likely prefer a CPA deal.
BOTTOM LINE
The big money in gambling is in revenue share. It just takes 1 high roller to lose 5 digits month by month and bring you a lot of revenue. If you’re not too depending on cashflow by network payments, I’d always try revenue share (talking about quality traffic). As make money schemes are normally quite short term players, CPA deals are fine here. Some guys making make money traffic work with revenue share as well, but the majority is definitely with CPA here. Rule of thumb: quality traffic = Revenue share, lower quality / systems / make money = CPA.
3. Difference of games / casino to betting and poker
Like with many niches, quality is a huge problem in gambling. Moreover, your quality is dependant on several factors such as total deposits, lifetime, activity etc. etc.. Still, the quality is directly related to the different kind of gamblers. A slots player will play much different / behave completely the opposite to a punter on a sportsbetting site.
There is no 'general' classification of quality for a different game, but I'll try to explain my thoughts based on my experience by seperating different games and explaining their gamblers attitude as good as I can:
- Live Casino
Live Casino players quality is amazing. It's easy to explain, players love that casino atmosphere chatting with a hottie while losing their money. Normally the dealers are usually quite hot at the good brands with a 9:1 rate of female to male - guess why 
Stakes are normally a bit higher on Live Casino games than the digital versions, therefore quality of your players can improve a lot by promoting it. Inserting hotties into your banners are always a kickstart for an improved CTR which comes around with cheap clicks and ends in usually more profit.
Stick your head into a couple of brands and check their Live casino offers / dealer pages. It's surprising how much a hot dealer staff can change compared to a dick parade - try it out and you'll understand what I'm talking about 
- Roulette
Roulette is king. The biggest value in casino players is in Roulette. They tend to stake highest, their lifetime is usually pretty solid, their first deposits are higher than avg (hello higher CPA as they crack the baseline right away). Moreover, there is a shitload of Roulette offers on every casino on the web making it always attractive to 'try something new' for those players. It's insane how much these players are staking online in my point of view, just go to your local casino and watch the Roulette table for 10 minutes and you'll get an idea why their betsizes are superior to any other players. Gamerounds are played pretty fast, even faster in online obviously, and those players have this 'next spin will be mine' mentality somehow.
Moreover, when they win big, they don't quit different to slots player hitting a jackpot. Due to the enormous payouts they are more used to winning big and less likely to withdraw from my experience. Catching Roulette traffic or advertising using Roulette angle is usually the best way or at least the best try to somehow bring quality in.
- Blackjack
Another table game, although the players lifetime is much shorter and the avg. players value is smaller compared to Roulette. With a shortish payout of 2:1 for a regular win, those players aren't used to big swings like Roulette players are. They usually tend to withdraw faster than Roulette players from my experience and don't stake that much for one betting round. Options are quite limited when playing Blackjack, extra bets for Silverjacks etc. are an option there but many people play it the 'traditional' way.
From my experience, Blackjack players have a shorter lifetime than Roulette / Slots players and tend to withdraw their winnings more regularly. I've heard of some guys that had great quality in Blackjack players, but my experience was a little different, so test it on your own.
- Slots
If you're on rev. share, slots players are usualy a solid base to work with. Their initial deposits are usually smaller than table games, especially since the bonus can be turned over on slots easily. Betting sizes vary differently, you can bet between a couple of cents up to 200€+ per spin, but the average bets is somewhere around 0.50 - 2.00€ in my book. Slot players are usually the more addicted players, therefore their lifetime and redeposit numbers are doing great. They hardly withdraw their winnings unless they hit a bigger jackpot / bonus round as with 'regular' spins you'll hardly win that much on slots.
If you have the budget and can afford some delayed ROI, slots players are a great way to establish your userbase at a casino. When you're running CPA deals, slots players can somehow be an issue regarding quality as they tend to convert late. Means they often deposit 10-20€ for their first deposits and crack the baseline later on, different to Roulette / Blackjack players who need more cash right away for starting their game. Then again, they tend to stick around for quite some time and therefore can increase your longterm net gain (which is important for a CPA deal to backout on the operator's side).
As you see, Slots are kinda tricky but there's definately huge potential. If you manage to find the sweetspot, they can generate a very strong returning commission month by month.
Tip: try to find slots that are well known offline as well. They usually convert like mad and the players you're getting by doing so are real retards that love to gamble for years.
- Poker
To back out for the operator, Poker players are supposed to play mand hands to generate as much rake as possible. This can only be achieved by becoming a winning player which the majority of gamblers is not unfortunately. I haven't got any final numbers unfortunately, but from several AMs I've heard their poker players are coming for the vast majority from a handful of affiliates only. This market is saturated, with forums like pokerstrategy poppin up and earning 6-7 digits in revenue monthly, you'll have a hard time beating what they can offer in terms of exclusive bonus offers / rakeback promotions / special tournaments etc. etc.. Back some time Poker was extremely lucrative with the online buzz going around, but since crackdown in the US a big market left the field and you'll have a hard time competing with the very big dogs on the market.
Compared to regular casino offers, I'd not recommend to promoting poker honestly. There's simply a lot more cash to be made on casino traffic taking into consideration the pure domination of a handful of affiliates in poker.
- Betting
One of the biggest markets, especially since you can bet in-running on close to any event going on in the world. Many of the big brands offer live streams to make the live-betting experience even more consumer friendly, and especially those live-betting angles tend to work great. A lot of brands are offering realtime banners showing the current odds on the upcoming / running events and even casual gamblers feel attracted to those.
Similiar to poker, punters usually back out after being registered for a couple of days / weeks if they redeposit a second time. As a rule of thumb, if you can get the majority of your players to redeposit for at least once, you're doing very good. For betting, I'd stick with rev. share given the lifetime value of a player and the never ending events they can bet on.
Here again, try to find brands that are known in the country you're promoting at. For instance, mybet / tipico / bet3000 is well known in Germany. Ladbrokes / William Hill / Victor Chandler are players in the UK. They are real brands that people know for years and are more likely to convert on.
- Other Games
There's a shitload of other games / offers / angles to take. I can't count them all, but anything related to slots like videopoker are usually solid players if you find a good traffic channel to get them. Table games such as baccarat have huge potential but from my experience a limited userbase.
Scratch cards are something I've heard good feedback about, but personally cannot share much about. Same goes for Bingo, especially being very popular in the UK with all the Bingo halls being around at every corner.
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Nice guide mate, have you run any paid traffic gambling campaigns? The two programs I see advertised everywhere are 888.com and partypoker have you had any experience promoting those?
Originally Posted by Mr Green
Yes, facebook is an option to direct link depending on the lander the casino offers you. Most of the time, if it's a 'play free now' page it will get approved. Haven't had any problems with account suspension so far and I know quite a couple of guys running it as well. Otherwise I'd give adult traffic sources a shot, personally I run pop unders on porntubes and I know some casinos do pop unders on torrent sites on their own as well.
Another option is to create a lander with iframed play for free games like almost all the major brands offer it. Make it look like fun play. After the players win a little on fun mode, they will be asked to deposit / register for real money.
Another option for especially betting is using livestream sites to place your ads / pop ups. Look for the crowded events like big soccer games / huge tennis tournaments like wimbledon etc.
Beside that, buying banners on crowded forums is a good way as well. Usually they charge quite expensive due to the limited resources available for this niche, but quality can be superb. Especially if you promote an exclusive deal with low bonus turnover.
For 888 / partypoker: 888 is a well known brand. Their customer support isn't as strong as affutd for example, but they are well established and offer a lot of promos etc. Nothing wrong in running them in my opinion, just personally I experienced the programs mentioned in my OP to convert higher (around 3-4% higher CRs from sign-up to deposit).
For poker: guys are banking on it. Personally spoken, I would not touch Poker. I had some insight view into traffic sent by affiliates to Poker divisions of 2 brands, and around 50% (!) came from 2 HUGE affiliates operating under well known brands. You won't be able to compete with pokerstrategy / pokernews / highstakesdb and the promoted offers on teaching sites running poker traffic. If you deliver traffic, they are stupid players which is poor as for poker CPAs are usually low while you get commission on the rake => bad players lose fast, don't rake much.
^^^ 100% right.
I used to run poker offers directly trough the operators. the top converters were 888, betsafe, mybet, betway, paf, partypoker via paid search.
I moved to online casino games (Europe and Scandinavia only) after "Black Friday", and got much better conversion rates in most traffic sources.
One thing i learned was the casino have much higher life time value than poker rooms, and if you're running affiliate accounts based on rev share this is a big issue.
Adult traffic can work really well, just need to do proper tracking and a bit of cash flow. the problem with high ticket items/payouts (such as a $300 cpa) are harder to optimize if you're shooting for an average of 50% ROI (meaning you can spend up to $150 for testing each ad/keyword/match type before pausing it). testing can take some time if you're driving traffic using Bing/Yahoo and also 2 tier search engines.
Google is a beast, but harder to get in when trying to run fake pages related to online casinos. you don't really have a chance to run ads without cloaking.
Torrent sites are poor quality traffic, even for the casino.. low deposit rates etc. however, sites like sidereel.com etc can work perfectly fine ("watch free movies" type of sites).
My only problem when working directly is the payment frequently.. most operators don't pay you bi-weekly/weekly like cpa network does. there are some cases when you'll get better payment terms but you really need to drive massive amount of traffic, not to mention massive amount of actual depositors.
Click costs for online casino terms are really expensive in Europe, don't even think you can compete in the UK market. most of the paid advertisers are the actual brands. but doing this right in other countries can be really beneficial, where the click costs are relatively low compare to the main markets such as the UK.
Watling for part 2 fjk87! great stuff by the way.
I'm learning and it feels bauss! Gambling is a niche i've wanted to learn more about, 1 of the only big niches i havnt squared off with
Thanks fjk87 & eleadstudio!
So 1 main point i'm understanding so far is the allusive attractive "POKER" isnt that great for making money compared to casino/betting? I think a majority of affiliates who are inexperienced with the gambling niche would have said 'poker' is the best initial choice (atleast that's how i was thinking). Mainly because i see it everywhere and it's the in sport, but not necessarily where the big spenders/easy converters are.
In your opinion what are the top 5 converting countries for gambling?
If you have the proper testing budget, would you recommend rev share or CPA (or always split test based on the traffic?)
How strict are the casino networks on landing pages/angles? Is there a lot of room to be creative?
Excited for the rest
Originally Posted by stackman
1. Poker is just one piece of the puzzle, the whole gambling niche contains the following sub niches, which are big enough to make you $xxx,xxx/month. seriously.
**Casino Games**
- Poker (BIG!)
- Video Poker (BIG!)
- Slots (BIG!)
- Blackjack (BIG!)
- Roulette (BIG)
- Keno
- Baccarat
- Craps
Other niches inside the gambling world (with sub niches as well):
**Bingo Games**
**Scratch Cards** (HOT!)
**Sports Betting**
2. Top Countries:
- Germany
- Sweden
- Australia
- Spain (HOT!)
- South Africa
- Italy
- Netherlands
3. With proper budget i would go with rev share as a starter. move to hybrid after good performance.
4. There is no such thing strict in that niche to be honest.. do what you're good at and you're all set. there isn't such creativity among the gambling affiliates, same shit everywhere, bidding wars on "online casino" terms on adwords and other search platforms (cloaking the hell out of them with "free online games" and "offline gambling equipment" type of sites), when the ocean is wide open.
As long as you're sending depositors they don't really care.
Don't let them catch you using trademarks.. not on your ads, or on your newest facebook page/s.
Hide EVERYTHING! traffic sources, placements, keywords and landers. i'm serious like hell.
great tips guys.. keep it coming... i am extremely interested in this niche.
Great post and I'll share my experience with this market too.
First a little background how I got in... I own a few coupon websites and Unibet has been huge for them (40 euro CPA for tier2 countries for example) and I was making over 10k a month at some point through a network. Got contacted by Unibet directly to ask if I wanted to go direct with a rev share deal. Took the deal (45% profit/rev share) and since then I've been looking more into it. It's not my main focus, but it's a very stable longterm income source.
What I'm focussing on is sports betting and this is a niche that people are totally overlooking. It's HUGE. Especially with the big sport events like the euro/world cup of soccer, but also tennis like Roland Garros and all other ATP events. Especially with search it's easy to get (relative) cheap traffic to this and if you combine it with a promo code, you have a proven converter.
Then my last tip, which is probably most interesting: east european countries (yes, those countries where you can still pay pennies) are BIG as far as gambling goes. Don't neglect them. It's new to them, so take advantage of it.
Countries: You can't go by conversion. It's players value that counts imo. I'd much rather prefefer a player with a high value than 5 eastern europe players to be honest. Highrollers are what you're looking for. It sounds stupid, but the wealthier the country you advertising in, the better your chances / earnings will be.
Games: Totally different story. There is a shitload to cover about that, my post about no. 3 will likely cover a lot of these aspects including value of different style of players. Huge differences in here.
CPA/REV: If you can afford it, stick with rev. share with NNC (no negative carryover) all the day in my opinion. Some guys I sent are playing for 5+ months losing 5 digits every month of which your commission is calculated from. It's insane how much these guys lose online, I personally never expected it to be that high.
Strict about advertisement: They don't give a shit. Not a shit at all. As long as your players are having reasonable value, they will take them. I've seen things getting approved like 'online casino hacks' without a single hesistation of managers.
How long do the cookies usually last and can you still track converting ads 7 days later once they are done playing for free and decide to make their first deposit?
What would you say is a necessary budget to make a success in this niche? $5k, $10k, less, more?
We eagerly await for the rest of your guide
Holy tuff!
This is super interesting shit bro
wakey wakey..........
Originally Posted by paycoguy
Originally Posted by jimcrim
If you go with revenue share, I'd go with 15k+ to be honest. Revenue share can take some time until it pays off as your aim is to create a big user database which generates permanent losses over months. Especially while starting it's kinda luck / difficult to see how your players stick, how much they lose etc. Talking longterm, revenue share will give you higher earnings without a doubt if your quality is good => any CPA deal has to pay out for the casino / brand too obviously.
PS: Going to write the second part tomorrow, stay tuned
Part 2 is life, feel free to ask any questions / add things I might have forgotten! If anybody wants recommendations for certain lables / casinos to promote for what product, hit me up on PM or skype.
Great post! It answers a lot of questions. Do you have a Part 3 in the pipeline?
Originally Posted by magnate
Originally Posted by fjk87
You cannot focus on amount x here. Depends on several things. Are you going with a CPA model ? If so, 5k will probbaly do the job unless you're extremely unlucky in picking your traffic. After 5k spent you should get a reasonable return and quite some good idea if you want to stay on gambling or not.
If you go with revenue share, I'd go with 15k+ to be honest. Revenue share can take some time until it pays off as your aim is to create a big user database which generates permanent losses over months. Especially while starting it's kinda luck / difficult to see how your players stick, how much they lose etc. Talking longterm, revenue share will give you higher earnings without a doubt if your quality is good => any CPA deal has to pay out for the casino / brand too obviously.
PS: Going to write the second part tomorrow, stay tuned
Originally Posted by fjk87
Turnover means:
A player does 20 bets at 2€ each per spin on a slot. Makes 40€ turnover.
Out of this turnover, a certain % goes to the casino which is their margin. In that example, at a margin of 10% it would be 4€ of which you get XX % commission.
Slots generally generate a lot of turnover while table games are more or less short play games compared to slots. Hope this helps, if not, feel free to PM me or ask in here
gogo next post!!
Been pretty busy last weeks, sorry for the lack of updates. Expect #3 to be posted during this week
Have you also tried mobile gambling offers (if they exist)? Haven't seen them around except the slots offers so far...
^^^ They're live and kicking! jackpot city, winner, ifortune and plazawin are a good start.
BET365 also run mobile version i think
Check them out. but you'll not find such a great deal at networks.. work direct with the advertiser/s.
prepare yourself for monthly payments.
Mobile does work but often enough quality will suffer overall in my opinion. For betting, mobile is perfect running angles like "in-play bets" etc. Most casinos are pretty unexperienced about mobile traffic but I agree, most of the operators do have mobile optimized pages. As always, try and negotiate a deal with them after sending them some mobile traffic to find a sweetspot working for both parties involved. Betting can be really good on mobile when big sport events are running / about to start
Regarding good starts, affutd, europartners, jackpot city.
About winner: would you trust a brand that runs their affiliate management section out of a former well known scammy aff network and consists for a major part of people who did a walk out at a major casino brand ? I would not. Have heard poor stuff about winner and given who's involved, I'd avoid them. Just sooo many other alternatives around
Running winner casino offers for a long time... getting paid each and every 10th. to my InterCash card
And yes, there are plenty of brands to work with... but there are some converting and some who doesn't.. and that's the trick. :-)
100's of online casinos you can promote, but i can count on two hands the brands i would work with for the long run
I am brand new to the site just signed up today. I would love to talk to anyone who has promoted gambling offers in the past. I am interested in getting my own product in this vertical out there and is quite different from what everyone is accustomed to. I've always been on your side of the fence, but not sure how to proceed being on the operating side. Looking forward to hearing from anyone interested in discussing the industry.
Originally Posted by b00t
Updated, sorry for the delay guys. Feel free to hit the thread or simply PM if you have any questions
to give you an idea of how much can be made from casino, I used to be the SEO for one of the major online casino brands, we had a number 1 ranking in Australia on google.com.au for a particular long tail keyword, it generated 10 visitors per day and made us $30,000 a month in revenue, crazy lol.
One of the biggest pains when working with these online casinos is getting proper tracking implemented, you can pretty much forget about getting a pixel placed unless you do some really good numbers, when I worked for the casino I couldn't even get subid tracking, I had to hack something together using the IP address and a crude pixel implementation.
Originally Posted by matthewk
Although this was written back in 2012, I find a lot of it to be true even today.
Thank you fjk87 for this immensely useful and well researched tutorial. Much appreciated.
Ochani.
Usually I am no friend of pushing such old threads.
But here you are absolutely right, it´s still great to read.
@fjk87, what would you say is different nowadays?
The mobile traffic is more than half of the overall traffic - that's one big change. Any others? Are you still into Casinos fjk87?
Originally Posted by ochani
This is probably the biggest change since 2012.
I also was running 100% desktop since 2017, for me it was a big change as well to work with mobile traffic and responsive landers and stuff
Not running much casino nowadays anymore, but I still know most of the guys I used to work with back then. I asked them a couple of questions after seeing this post, just to get an idea what's up nowadays, here's the results:
from the operator side:
- desktop value is > mobile
- CPL deals are a ripoff in all cases, the only 'fair' deal is revshare. CPA > CPL. If CPL backs out, CPA does and longterm, revshare would make more. CPA requires huge budgets to test obviously given the lead value
- regulation got much harder, it was pretty much wild west, any angle was possible, now especially make money is much more strict
- web sign up is much stronger than CPI, no matter mobile or desktop web. According to operators, web players are much more 'serious' about gambling and have longer lifetime
from the affiliate side:
- big brands got giant userbases, the 'old' casino brands convert worse simply because the chance that the user has an account from years back is way higher than with all the new brands
- branded games still go super strong, money makers changed a bit, live casino used to be the highest value, now it's slots (preferrably high limit slots)
- try not to run only makemoney, you won't be able to stay on any deal longterm without getting lowered and/or scrubbed
- much more inhouse media buying going on, especially with the newer brands, the 'big guns', think William Hill/bet65 etc. got a lot of exclusives for big sources nowadays too
Take everything above as replies I got, I cannot guarantee what's true or not, although the people I asked are people I know for years and I'd consider trustworthy.
All in all, slight changes, but the basic principle of my post is still valid - simply because not much can change in the niche itself, you got table, slots and in the past years some 'game' type of gambling, but in the end, the niche is different to other niches, because you'll likely not convince someone who's into gambling to start gambling versus buying something he actually wouldn't buy.
Originally Posted by fjk87
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