Affiliate sites perform a vital function in the online casino business. Casinos are huge spinners, both offline and online. But to succeed in the crowded online space, a casino has to be able to attract new players.
This is where affiliate marketing enters the picture. They act as the connecting link between paying customers and an online casino. You can earn big bucks as commission every time you gain the casino’s new players.
In this guide, we will teach you everything you need to know about this challenging but extremely lucrative field.
Table of Contents
What is Affiliate Marketing
All businesses need to find ways to attract new customers through various marketing strategies. This job performed by marketing divisions inside the company, or by external agencies, or by a combination of both.
Affiliate marketing is performed by third-parties who act as partners with the firm, which in this case, is an online casino. There are many businesses online that benefit from affiliate marketing – Amazon retailers are a famous example.
Affiliate websites or partners are encouraged to bring new customers/buyers through an incentive program. This program rewards you based on your performance – if you bring more buyers, you earn more as commissions.
How casinos do affiliate marketing
In the online casino business, the casinos usually establish their own affiliate networks. Third parties can join this network, usually for free. These casino affiliate network programs don’t have many stringent terms and conditions.
Joining one is quite easy. The hard part is what follows next – getting new players to the casino website. You only get paid once they start gambling for real cash at the site. This is important – you don’t get paid if someone just visits a casino site from your affiliate website!
Casino affiliate rewards can be quite lucrative because they often share a cut of the amount that players bet at the casino. This could be anywhere from 20 to 30% of the total bet amounts. Top performing affiliates can even earn up to 50% or more, depending on the number of players they send to the casino.
Things you need to get started
As we already noted, getting started in this business is quite easy. But if you hope to earn a lot from affiliate marketing, you need certain qualities as well as resources. Here is a list of the important stuff that you need to get started:
Experience & Knowledge
A successful marketer is someone who knows how to influence their target audience. In this case, that audience is online casino players. You don’t necessarily have to be a seasoned gambler yourself, but some intimate knowledge of the product you are selling is essential.
Do some deep research on successful online casinos and their top features. You should also try playing for real money at a few casinos to get a feel for the whole thing. Try sampling the different games, software, and casino bonuses to identify the good ones.
With in-depth knowledge of the business, you can basically kill two birds with a single stone. The most important requirement for success in affiliate marketing is a trustworthy casino partner. Once you learn how to identify the good ones from the shady operators, you are set up nicely for future success.
And that success ultimately rests on your ability to sway as many players as you can with your marketing content. Experienced gamblers can easily figure out if you are talking out of your hat. To attract them you need top-notch content, and that requires at least some knowledge about the casinos themselves.
Website Development Skills/Money
In these days of Toptal and Upwork, you can easily hire experienced web developers online without burning a hole in your pocket. You will require their services as an affiliate marketer needs a good quality website.
Do note that it is not essential to have a website up and running when you join an affiliate program. You can build one at your convenience later on. But it is still an unavoidable requirement for running a casino affiliate marketing business.
If you have a sizeable budget to work with, you can outsource the website work to professionals. But it would be much, much cheaper if you learn some basic HTML and site maintenance skills. You cannot afford to have a static affiliate marketing site in this business.
If you take a look at some online casinos over a period of weeks or months, you will see them updating stuff like bonuses and promos on a regular basis. Things like new free spin offers and quality no deposit bonus offers are a big drawcard among players.
Affiliate marketers have to stay on their toes all the time, making changes to their own content to reflect these frequent casino updates.
Maintaining a regular web maintenance team is practical only if you have a large, well-funded business model. If you plan to start small, it might be well nigh essential that you acquire some HTML skills for a more hands-on, DIY kind of approach.
Content & SEO
Having a well-designed website is not enough to get ahead in the affiliate marketing game. On the web, content is king. You need to rank high on search engine results to get traffic to your own site. If you can’t do that, you will not find enough players to send to your casino partner!
You need a good, focused domain name for your website to start things off. It should be short, but rich in the right keywords related to the online casino business. From then on, it is a long grind involving Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies.
You should either get yourself well versed in SEO, or hire folks who are SEO experts to handle the content part of the website. Avoid filling your page with casino bonus info. Those change from time to time, and updating them can be a real pain in the rear side!
Instead, look for informative and entertaining content related to the casino and its games. Avoid sugarcoating things, and try to provide an unbiased view without going overboard with the criticism. People value honesty and will come back to you if you don’t rip them off with fake reviews and information.
Some important tips for consideration
1. Always choose your casino partner wisely. The online casino business is vast and lucrative, and it can often attract the wrong kind of operators. These are out for a quick buck and will not honor agreements and contractual obligations.
2. So always make it a point to partner with legit, licensed, and reputed casinos for best results. Remember to sample their services before you join. If the casino is something you cannot use yourself or recommend to your friends, then it is not something you should ideally be selling to others online.
3. Patience is essential in the online marketing business. Often, it will take you months or years to reach a decent web search ranking and traffic inflows. Try to avoid underhand tactics to bump up your search rankings. Algorithms at Google and other search engines are sophisticated enough to catch those.
4. A good option is to try and build organic backlinks with other casino sites. Try to find strong incoming links. For this, you can try buying links from other gambling sites. The internet is full of savvy online marketing strategies. Update yourself with the latest info to succeed in this business.
