We all know why online gambling is so popular. This is a very convenient and quick way to try your luck while giving freedom to your passion. Gambling gives people a chance to experience the unique thrill of victory.
What is Affiliate Marketing and why do Online Casinos in Canada use it? Source: Pixabay. Basically, affiliate marketing is a type of digital marketing that rewards third-parties for driving traffic to a.
Today we will talk about such an area of promotion for this industry that most successfully solves the issue of attracting new players to online gambling. Ladies and gentlemen, we are talking about affiliate marketing.
Essentially, an online casino is a website that contains any form of gambling. In turn, affiliate marketing promotes online gambling and attracts traffic to the casino website. In return, an affiliate receives monetary compensation that depends on the conditions of an offer.
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Join for free →Who can be an affiliate? For example, bloggers, who are casino players themselves, act as affiliates who share tips with their audience and talk about online gambling platforms. Also, affiliates may be owners of thematic sites related to iGaming. They advertise partner online casinos and monetize interactions with ads. Also, affiliate networks can act as intermediaries between the casinos (advertisers) and affiliates to provide their services to both parties.
Referral links or banners posted by affiliates bring the most relevant traffic to the casino. Users who come to online casinos from affiliates will be much more likely to register and leave deposits because this is already a warm target audience. As a result, an alliance between online gambling and affiliate marketing, with the right approach, will always show a positive ROI.
There are three main ways affiliates get paid for the traffic they bring to online casinos and sports betting services.
Revenue Share, or RevShare, is a payment model in which an affiliate gets a percentage of a casino’s net revenue received from a referred player. This is a long-term model (often lifetime). An affiliate can earn from 5% to 50% of revenue during the active period of its lead playing in the online casino or using the sports betting service.
This method helps affiliates have an interest in bringing the highest quality customers to iGaming. However, this method also has a shadow side. The casino affiliate can receive not only a percentage of revenue but also incur losses after the referred player wins. So affiliates will have to evaluate the risks associated with this model. This also should be considered before choosing this payment method for the affiliate program in online gambling.
CPA stands for cost-per-action and cost-per-acquisition. The most common CPA method is to pay for a deposit. Sometimes such a model may come up with flexible payments for registrations or downloads. Yet more often, advertisers prefer to pay for new regular players; therefore, if the lead leaves after the first deposit, some online casinos do not pay affiliates.
As you can easily guess, the Hybrid model is a flexible combination of RevShare and CPA models. With this method, an affiliate receives a one-time payment for player deposits, as well as for each subsequent amount deposited. In addition, if the affiliate continues to bring new quality players in, its fee percentage may increase with the hybrid payment system in gambling.
Why is Online Gambling Affiliate Marketing Profitable?
So why does affiliate marketing stand out this favorably from other ways to promote online gambling? There are several good reasons that online casinos and online betting sites should cooperate with affiliates.
The times when advertising has to be paid only upfront stayed in the past. Today affiliate marketing is entirely focused on performance. Even in cases when the affiliate receives a high percentage commission, your ROI remains positive. This strategy also makes gambling traffic of much better quality, which brings you guaranteed sales.
Unlike attempts to calculate returns from an iGaming conference or promotion in a magazine, you can calculate profits up to every cent in affiliate marketing. In addition to this, you can use an affiliate platform that helps you track and manage your programs in real-time. For example, your online casino will be able to see which affiliate site banners or ads work better or worse, adjust payments to affiliates, and much more.
As we mentioned, in most cases, the affiliates who will be involved in your promotion are well known in the iGaming world. Thanks to this, they have their own trusted audience and strong status. Thanks to your partnership, they will also help increase the presence and reputation of your brand.
If you want to receive high-quality traffic for online gambling, you need to understand which traffic sources in affiliate marketing are the most demanded.
Affiliate Casino Programs
The leading social platforms for gaining traffic in gambling are Instagram and Facebook. Though, affiliate marketers must consider the right ways to work with these traffic sources. Facebook can ban an account with direct gambling advertising due to its rules, but there are several workarounds for that. Affiliates can lead traffic to special applications or messengers like Telegram, for example. Although it isn’t the easiest traffic source, social networks can bring you a large solvent audience.
Applications aren’t only a direct traffic source but also a useful tool to convert traffic from Facebook and Instagram. Besides, the app can be a mobile representation of an online casino that is always at hand. The ability to send players push notifications is another plus of applications as a traffic source. Push notifications don’t require many investments and can provide powerful results.
Some affiliate webmasters can develop their news and analytical gaming sites where they publish banners, native ads, or other promotional materials. Of course, the gambling affiliate doesn’t need to own such a site. He can just cooperate with a specific source that permits him to post promotions for online casinos or sports betting services.
It can be YouTube, Twitch, or any other streaming platform that allows affiliates to play some of the games live and promote online gambling through referral links. Video content created on YouTube or another similar platform can be stored online after live streams and continue to bring new traffic. Also, you can always find famous video bloggers who have an audience relevant to online gambling.
How to Create a Successful Affiliate Program in Gambling
Free Casino Affiliate Websites
The main thing is that your program should stand out among the many other similar gambling affiliate programs. But before creating your affiliate program, you should determine the way to manage your program that will work best for you. Depending on this, your gambling program may be managed by an affiliate network, you can use an all-in-one cloud-based solution, or create an in-house management platform from scratch.
The best option would be an affiliate platform that already meets iGaming industry standards and your needs.
The next step for creating a gambling affiliate program is the choice of an effective payment method that can be flexibly configured for different affiliates. Next, you need to provide your affiliates with promo materials for your online gambling offer promotion. On the contrary, you can write a series of recommendations for affiliates to create their own creatives. It can also be beneficial for online gambling affiliate programs to set traffic restrictions, for example, by geolocation.
These are the basics that should be addressed before creating your own gambling affiliate program. Yet don’t forget that the reputation of your brand and recognition among the players will play the main role in the success of your program.
How to Find the Best Affiliates for Online Gambling
When your iGaming affiliate program is set up, it’s time to find affiliates to kickstart your marketing campaign. There are many ways of making long-lasting partnerships with gambling affiliates.
- You can just include a link or banner to your affiliate program landing page on your website’s main page. This is the typical place where affiliates look for affiliate program information.
- Don’t forget about your existing customers. Send an email series to motivate them to earn money by recommending their friends your iGaming service through referral links. You also can include in your email signature a short description with the link to the affiliate program landing page.
- Go to affiliate marketing forums or communities that discuss online gambling brands and their affiliate programs. List and promote your affiliate program there. Note that you can communicate with potential affiliates at these forums and communities and with existing partners.
- Outreach influencers and gambling bloggers to review your service. Introduce them to your affiliate program individually and try to build a long term relationship with such affiliates. Some media make listings of the most lucrative affiliate offerings, so place your affiliate program there and make it attractive to prospective affiliates.
- Take part in iGaming affiliate conferences. Affiliates and other online gambling advertisers attend affiliate events to communicate and to find new partnerships. Besides, you can learn about new marketing trends, strategies, and technologies out there.
- Last but not least, you can find the best online gambling affiliates through a partnership with affiliate networks that act as an intermediate between the advertiser and the affiliates.
It’s highly important to have a reliable technological solution for successful iGaming affiliate marketing. Perhaps the most effective option would be an affiliate platform that already meets industry standards and your needs.
Casino Affiliate Marketing
An essential part of the online gambling affiliate program is a strong analytics capability of affiliate software. You must have the ability to analyze the effectiveness of the payment method, traffic sources, and many other stats of your affiliate program by having the complete data and smart statistics design.
Online gambling is an industry with its own specifics. A lot in iGaming depends on geo and various external factors, such as law regulations, different banking, and financial matters. In this regard, the software must provide operators with all the necessary tools to configure the gambling affiliate program for all these requests.
A ready-made affiliate platform must make the process of creating and managing affiliate programs much easier with automation tools, CPAPI, ad fraud control, etc.
Your gambling business can reach a whole new level with the help of affiliate marketing. There are unique payment methods tailored specifically for the iGaming industry. The performance-based approach practically deprives you of any significant risks and, in return, brings you quality customers and guarantees a positive ROI. A wide range of traffic sources will increase recognition and trust in your online gambling brand. All that is required from you is to create an attractive affiliate program that will bring good affiliates. Then, subsequently, monitor and improve results using a reliable management platform.
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Edgar is a Content Marketer obsessed with analytics & performance statistics. Edgar loves leveling up professionally and search for new effective ways to deliver quality content. After that, he’ll take every opportunity to take on exciting adventures with his GF.