Casino Affiliate Programs – how to choose
August 26, 2005
Posted by admin in : General , trackback
There are so many flashy programs out ther promising the moon – picking the ones you want to promote is a daunting task anymore.
Even large, established affiliates who have been in the business for years have trouble keeping the right properties on their site.
First of all, you need to be able to trust the program. If they treat players or affiliates badly, chances are they will treat you badly too. Stay away from blacklisted casinos. There is a list of them here: Blacklisted Casinos.
Now you need to read the Terms and Conditions very carefully. I know it’s a pain in the you know where, but recently there have been so many programs changing their T&C’s and much to the worse, that there are some unpleasant surprises in store for you if you don’t pay good attention here.
Red flags
I would avoid programs that have the following clauses:
1. Clauses that say that you have to send at least one player in a given time period or else! The “else” could be that your contract gets terminated, that you are paid a smaller percentage, that you will not be paid at all until you send players again and more.
This clause contradicts the usual promise that players are yours for life. It allows the program to take the players you send and then refuse payment if you have a bad month, slip in the search engines, get sick or whatever bad luck may befall you. BEWARE OF THE ONE PLAYER IN A PERIOD CLAUSE!
2. Clauses that say that all the casinos represented by this program are bundled together for accounting purposes. That means that if you have one winner in one casino, it wipes out all your income at all the casinos. You want a program that accounts for each casino seperately, so if you promote all their casinos and you have a winner in one of them, you still earn money at the other casinos.
This clause can wipe out all your income month after month. We all want to see winners – we want happy players. You don’t want to be trapped in a program that makes you hope your players will lose. Yopu want to help them to win – winning players are happy players and will come back. There is more profit in winning players than losing ones – unless you are signed with a program that bundles.
3. Contracts that do not include the words”for life”. You want the contract to spell out that you will own the player’s account for life. That is the only way to make a go of this business in the long run – to accumulate happy players in your account. It is why you will make more money and grow as you go. You build up a player base.
Contracts that do not spell this out often remove players from your account at will. They usually justify it and say that the player hasn’t come back in such and such amount of time and won’t come back anyway. So why bother to take the player out of your account? I call it stealing!
Please check back here often for more on the affiliate business. I will write new columns from time to time, and you will also see special affiliate offers on a regular basis.
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Comments»
Hello Dominique,
Wanted to leave a short comment. On this casino affiliate news page you wrote:"I would avoid programs with…clauses that say that all the casinos represented by this program are bundled together for accounting purposes". It is a fair and wise comment. But at the casinoaffiliateprograms’ web site you praised BrightShare which has exactly the same bundled program. I found it contradictory. I personally like the BrightShare’s program on the whole and Lloyd in particular, it is a pleasure to deal with the company, to promote it. But, of course I would rather prefer them account for each casino separately. It is simple.
What is your opinion as an experienced casino affiliate about Affiliate Lounge program (I noticed that you promote it)? I rarely meet any reviews of it by affiliates. Looks like it is not that popular. Thanks for the opportunity to speak out.
Hello Stan,
Thank you for posting.
Games and Casino carries many, many programs, Affiliate Lounge ( http://www.affiliatelounge…. )included. Many of these are not optimal programs. They all are, however, properties that treat the ultimate customer, the player, well.
Brightshare (http://www.brightshare.com/… ) carries casinos that are good to players, Lloyd is an excellent manager, the casinos seem to convert nicely and I have had no cause to doubt the accuracy of accounting. So I do recommend Brightshare. They do have a big flaw – the bundling. This is shared by many programs, and it is bad for affiliates.
You are going to find few perfect programs, if any. You end up weighing pros and cons and then picking.
There is also no such thing as a universally applicable recommendation – different sites draw different types of people, who will prefer different types of casino offers, and after all is said and done, you will do best when you offer your visitor exactly what they want. You can have the program with the best T&Cs, but if your visitors don’t like the casinos, you are working for nothing.
Re. Affiliate Lounge, I have them listed I believe, and I have no player complaints. But they haven’t "lifted off" for me. I give all reputable properties a basic listing on the Bonus Links Page ( http://www.gamesandcasino.c… ). If I see conversions I move them up or to other pages. That, in a way, constitutes the players voting. I admit, some luck is involved here too.
Affiliate Lounge also offers a nice set of free games which I use on the Free Casino Games Page ( http://www.gamesandcasino.c… ). These are quite popular and many affiliates use them.
I hope this answered some of your questions.
Hi Dominique,
Thank you for such quick and detailed response, I appreciate it. I hope you don’t mind if I ask you a couple more brief questions.
As far as I understood from your reply, the lower a casino on your links list, the less conversions it gives you. Did I get it right?
Can you name a few casino affiliate programs that do not bundle casinos together for accounting purposes? Just from the top of your head.
Referback is one of the "non-bundling" programs that I know. I actually was going to sign up with them. But I found a lot of bad responses, complaints from their affiliates on various online forums. So, as you correctly put it, an affiliate has to weigh all pros and cons while deciding who is going to handle his referrals. It is not an easy task I have to say!
I would also like to comment on importance of program-affiliate relationships. I am doing my first steps as a casino affiliate, started just a month ago. But I have already noticed that quite often bad programs "help" themselves by simply ignoring potential new sign ups. Out of my own experience I can say that only 50% of all the programs I wrote to replied to my initial inquiries. Other half did not even bother themselves to answer my questions. Do these companies really expect to become successful by treating their potential money-makers, their "wallets" this way?…
Talking about Affiliate Lounge and BrightShare, I have only good things to say in regards to the companies’ communiction with their affiliates. Both companies’ managers have been very responsive and supportive for me. They always reply to my e-mails within 24 hours. For a novice affiliate this kind of co-operation not only very helpful, it is also very encouraging and stimulating. This is a very healthy sign. What the point for an affiliate to sign up with a huge company that has many wonderful casinos to promote, a high conversion rate and ingenious marketing tools to use if there is no respect, no confidence, no trust in its relationship with affiliate partners? For me good organizational and communication skills, punctuality and trust are very strong "pro" points. Of course, the program that you choose has to have nice products to sell as you correctly noted. That is why I asked you about Affiliate Lounge. I have noticed that it gives me much less customers than BrightShare despite approximately equal exposure on my websites. Maybe because most of my visitors are from the US, and Affiliate Lounge is more Europe-oriented?…
I was going to leave a short comment… Nice blog btw. Your site has been a good example of a successful affiliate for me. You have put to life many good ideas within just a few years!
Anyway, thanks beforehand for your time.
Stan
Emmm, not quite.
It’s not the lower the property is, the less conversions it gives me. That may hold true for sites that operate on the principle that you need to get the customer in, get them to click, and get them out fast. That is not the type of site Games and Casino is or ever was intended to be. I like people to come and linger and look around and read up on various things. I want everyone who clicks on one of my links to make this a conscious, educated decision. When the visitor arrives at his/her final destination, I would like to know that it is exactly what s/he was looking for. This makes for a happy customer and one that will come back. Games and Casino has over 70% return traffic. This traffic doesn’t necessarily come back to choose another casino, they may be completely happy with their choice and enjoy the loyalty points there. But s/he may be looking for more info on how to play their favorite games etc.
Both approaches work, the "quick click" and the "library". I just always preferred the library approach.
Programs that don’t bundle – yes, Referback ( http://www.referback.com/in… ) is one. I like Referback – they have made their share of mistakes over the year but they have generally been quick to correct the problem. They are also responsive and helpful. Fortune Affiliates ( http://www.fortuneaffiliate… ) doesn’t bundle either. Roxy ( http://www.roxyaffiliates.com ) is an excellent program and it stands alone.
Wager Profits ( http://www.wagerprofits.com… ) comes to mind as non bundling RTG and equally helpful. I am trying to think of a playtech program that doesn’t bundle but none comes to mind – except of course Action Affiliates (http://www.action-affiliate… ) which only has one casino, and everything represented by Income Access ( http://www.incomeaccess.com… ). I am sure there are many more, these come to mind off the top of my head.
Re. the responsiveness of affiliate programs – I agree. I have said it repeatedly at conventions where I speak – if the program doesn’t give you the time of day, drop them. There are plenty others who will really work with you and help you and they can be invaluable in helping you get on your feet.