Casino Affiliate Guide
As a casino affiliate, I get asked a number of questions by players who fancy a shot at earning a buck from the affiliate side of the game. For those who don’t know, an affiliate is a webmaster who runs a site that promotes, reviews or offers information on products and services in return for a commission. In the casino and poker game, it’s big business and highly competitive, but for a player who also has the skills to put a half-decent website together, it can be lucrative given time.
I intend to do a series of articles on what it takes to be a good casino affiliate. I’ll deal with content, domain names and the art of search engine optimisation (SEO) in due course, but by way of an intro, this article lays out the basics…the information you need that will help you decide if it’s a course you wish to follow. If you get it right, there is no better business to be in. You simply drive traffic to your sites and refer them to online casinos who then do the work of retention and everything for you. However, that isn’t to say you have no responsibilities: you need to put the player first and it does require regular attention, but once established it’s a while-you-sleep business, with no direct customers and no phones ringing!
Who Does It Suit?
First off, I say you have to have to basic requirements: you need to understand what a player wants, and you need to know how to put a website together. My own philosophy is that it pays to be honest. When a prospective player hits your site, it is their interests and yours to make sure they end up playing at a casino that meets their needs. You need to be able to determine this and understand what those needs are, and in my opinion, only a player can do this effectively.
The Website
Setting up a website these days is easy. You can do as this blog does and use software like Wordpress, or you can design an HTML site yourself using a host of tools. If you already have the technical nouse, then this part of teh article is probably wasted on you, although I will say that whatever route you go, there are two important factors when starting out: the domain name and the design of the site with a view to SEO. If you build a site without consideration for these two factors then you could be wasting your time from the off.
Regards the domain name - you have two choices, and I’ll deal with these in more depth on a future article (bookmark this page). Esentially though you have to decide if you want to go the “brand” route, or the “keyword” route. Or put another way , pick a domain that is easy to remember - or that the search engines will dish out the love to. This domain is a “brand” domain, but most of my sites work off keyword domains, however the latter are hard to get without laying out some cash at a place like Sedo. I think keyword domains work best for pass-through traffic - volume - while brand names work best if your content is truly interesting and aims to attract visitors back. Your call.
Regards SEO, again something I’ll go into a lot more depth on later, I’ll simply say that you need to read up on this subject before you start. Understand it and how the design of your site will ultimately affect it’s ability to rank in the search engines. I would start at Webmasterworld, and be prepared for lots of reading, especially in the Google forum. It’s an art but one that if mastered could make you very well off indeed in the longer term.
The Content
This is where playing yourself really helps. Many, many affiliate sites just dish out the same old blurb provided by the casinos and poker rooms. It’s easy to spot because basically it’s promotional text about how wonderful everything is. It’s total b*ll*cks because no casino is perfect, and not every casino suits every player. Some players like fast cashouts, some like bonus slots, others single-deck Blackjack, some prefer lots of bonsues. You have to know what’s what. More importantly, you want to make sure the player ends up at the right place - because if they don’t, then you’ve lost a customer.
The content therefore should show the prospective player the good points and the bad points of a casino so that they make their decision while you still have them as an audience, not after they left and find out that where you sen them isn’t for them. This assumes of course that your site is focusing on casino reviews. Many do, but there is a lot of milage to be made in focusing on games, types of or specific ones. Or maybe on cashouts and deposit options - that’s an area that causes a lot of heartache, especially to players in countries like the USA where the law is set to try to make life difficult for online gamblers.
Where To Start
Assuming you think this is for you, then I can recommend a couple of places you should visit to read up…these are forums where other affiliates share info on casinos and every aspect of affiliation. You’ll find affiliate program managers there too. What I would advise however is not to take the advice on who you should represent from other people…by all means use their feedback, but do not base your decision on which affiliate program pays most, or quickest. The key is how the casino itself performs. You want to represent casinos that retain players - this shows they know what the player wants - and casinos that you play at yourself. A player will respect an affiliate more if they show a detailed knowledge of playing there.
So check out the forum at Casino Affiliate Programs and again at the GPWA. Ignore things like “Certification” and “Sponsors” - these are paid-up advertisers and while they may or may not be great to work with, at the end of the day, you need to be choosy based on the above criteria. The minute you base your decisions on how much commission a casino will give you, then you start to lose your competitive advantage. Player trust and player loyalty are key factors that you need to earn.
Finally, keep an eye on the tools section here as I’ve a number of recommendations for software and online tools that will help webmasters with content and design.