Gambling Affiliation

So you’re interested in getting into the gambling affiliation. Online gambling comes with certain regulations, so it is important to know some of the rules of the game and what to look for to be on the safe side when promoting online gambling services. Furthermore, as an affiliate in online gambling there are several marketing options to choose from, so we will cover some of the basics here to give you an understanding when selecting an affiliate program to work with.

As in any other affiliate vertical, activating in gambling affiliation requires access to an audience to promote to. This means that you need either a website, an email marketing list, a mobile app, a social media account with followers or any combination of above. If you have none of these, than you can check our guide to creating a website as this is the simplest way of starting. But given that you already have something that generates access to an audience, than you are one step away from becoming a gambling affiliate.

Getting Started with Gambling Affiliation

To successfully promote a gambling service, it is best your audience is either interested in gambling or has a complementary interest. What does this mean? Well you may be running a website about casino game strategies. In this case, your audience is directly interested in casino games. On other case, you may be running a sports news website, in which case your audience has a complementary interest to sports betting.

What is Gambling Affiliation?

First of all, gambling industry includes a wide range of games that are to a certain level games of luck. This includes sports betting, casino games, poker, scratch cards, bingo and keno, lottery.

Identify the Best Program to Promote

Activating as an affiliate in gambling requires the promotion of such gambling products. First of all, you need to properly identify the product that would best cater to your audience. Hence, if you have a website with sports previews and news, then promoting online sports betting would be a better option then promoting bingo.

Being a successful affiliate means to promote a service or product to the right audience, otherwise would just be a waste of your resources – working with an affiliate program that caters to your audience would assure the best conversions and therefore the best earnings potential.

Check our gambling affiliate programs directory for a list recommended programs.

Selecting the Product Type

slot machine So, if your main audience is sports related, it only makes sense to promote a sports betting product, but that doesn’t mean you can not also have some sections for casino or poker as a cross sell. That is why is ideal to work with some brands that provide their users a complete experience like sports, casino and poker – when a user you referred to one of these products and starts playing on any of these verticals, you will earn revenues on the player regardless of the product he’s playing (this is the case for revenue share deals).

Selecting the Brand

Selecting the brands or operators you will work with are of importance from a few points of view.

Partner and work with a trusted program and brand. Working with such a brand ensures that your commissions are fairly calculated and your earnings are paid out in time. In this case the brand you want to work are regulated in trusted jurisdictions such as Malta or Gibraltar which are great online gambling hubs for companies operating on the European market and beyond.

Legal reasons are another point to keep in mind. Most countries around the world do not have a proper legislation in terms of regulating online gambling – so promoting to users in those countries is straightforward. But there are selected countries that have a regulated framework for online gambling – in which case, promoting to users in those countries must be refrained to brands with a license to operate in that region. Check below for a list of countries you need to be aware of local regulations:

Country List with Legal Frameworks

United Kingdom – promoting online gambling to UK users must be limited to brands with a UK Gambling Commission license. Such brands are: Bet365, Unibet, William Hill, Ladbrokes, Betsafe
Netherlands – at the moment the Netherlands has banned direct advertising of online gambling to its users until a legal operational framework is set. This refers to promoting any online gambling products in dutch language, promoting in English seems to be accepted.
Belgium – promoting online gambling to Belgian users must be limited to brands with a Belgium Gambling Commission license. Such brands are: Unibet, Ladbrokes
France – promoting online gambling to French users must be limited to brands with a France Gambling Commission license. Such brands are: Unibet, Betclic
Spain – promoting online gambling to Spanish users must be limited to brands with a Spanish Gambling Commission license. Such brands are: Bet365, William Hill, Betfair, Luckia, Sportium
Portugal – promoting online gambling to Portuguese users must be limited to brands with a Portugal Gambling Commission license. Such brands are: Betclic
Italy – promoting online gambling to Italian users must be limited to brands with a Italian Gambling Commission license. Such brands are: Unibet, Bet365, William Hill, Betfair, Eurobet
Romania – promoting online gambling to Romanian users must be limited to brands with a Romanian Gambling Commission license. Such brands are: Unibet, Betfair. NOTE: you will require to get a license as well to promote in the Romanian market.
Australia – promoting online gambling to Australian users must be limited to brands with an Australia Gambling Commission license. Such brands are: Unibet, Bet365, Ladbrokes, William Hill, Betfair
Bulgaria – promoting online gambling to Bulgarian users must be limited to brands with a Bulgaria Gambling Commission license. Such brands are: Betfair
Denmark – promoting online gambling to Danish users must be limited to brands with a Denmark Gambling Commission license. Such brands are: Bet365, Unibet, Betfair, Karamba
United States of America – promoting online gambling to American users must be limited to brands licensed in several US states. Users can play only if they are in those states. Such states with licensing regimes are: New Jersey (for brands like Virgin Casino, Betfair Casino), Nevada US (for brands like William Hill)

You may also want to work with brands that promote responsible gambling. On that matter, you also share the same responsibility if you promote gambling products and services, in which case we recommend including a link/logo in your webpages towards an organization that offers info on gambling and helplines to users, like gamblingAID.org. Promoting in regulated markets is a necessity to provide access to your users to such info and helping organizations.

Payment models

Revenue Share – widely present among affiliate programs. This means you will earn a share of the revenues generated by the players you referred. Each program may calculate a bit different the revenue share, but it is basically the net revenue as amount lost by the user – amount won – bonus costs. The revenue share model may generate the best returns for the affiliate, but on a wide period of time.

Revenue Share Models

Revenue Share with negative carry over: if the players referred win more than they lose, than the monthly revenue share will be negative – but this does not mean the affiliate needs to pay the operator anything. It just means that the affiliate will get paid after the players generated enough revenues to cover the loses
Revenue Share with No negative carry over: with some operators the negative balance of revenue share is not carried over from a month to another, but it resets to 0 at the end of the month. This means a bad month will not affect your earnings the following month.
Revenue Share Lifetime: the lifetime policy means you will be earning from players referred for as long they keep playing at the brand
Revenue Share Set Period: in this case the affiliate gets paid a revenue share for the players referred for set period of time; the period is set individually for each player, so playing after the set period will not be generating revenues for the affiliate anymore

CPA – the CPA model is popular mainly among casino, poker and bingo brands. On the CPA payment model, the affiliate gets paid a predefined amount for each new player referred. Different qualification criteria may apply for the payment of CPA. Opting for CPA model may generate faster commissions for the affiliate than compared with revenue share.

CPA Models

CPA qualification criteria: new user that registers for the first time with the brand, making a minimum first deposit, playing through. From an operator to another and from a product to another, the CPA qualifications are a combinations of the above rules.
CPA one time payment – the CPA gets paid one time to the affiliate per referred player. So if a referred played starts playing at different products on that operators (casino, poker, bingo..), the affiliate gets paid only the first time.

Hybrid deals – these are a combination of revenue share and CPA models and are mostly available to a few affiliates that manage to generate a high number of sign ups per month and good revenues.

Start your Marketing Campaign

Now is time to start your marketing campaign. Based on the type of audience you have, you can start creating content and publishing affiliate links and banners so you can refer new users to selected gambling affiliate programs.

For website owners – the implementation requires content and integration of promoted brands within that content. Just publishing some banners may not give the best results – so it best to go the extra mile here, and be innovative in terms of how you promote the gambling brands to your users. For example, as a sports betting affiliate you may write different match previews – include some betting odds from your sports betting partners along with your affiliate links next to them. For any brand, you may also try writing a product review and explain your users why they should register and start playing.

If you have a mailing list – then this requires creating an email template and content with a call to action for your subscribers to register with the brands you’re promoting.

After you have made all implementations and started the marketing campaigns, continue your work to improve your content and website and also check the affiliate statistics on a regular basis to see what happens; optimize your campaigns based on the results you get. Make sure to note down what works best, around what time of the year or sporting events so that you can replicate your results with other similar occasions.

PROS

lifetime revenue share – for affiliates opting for lifetime revenue model, you can create a nice revenue stream over time when you get paid for the lifetime of your players’ accounts
CPA – for affiliates opting for CPA model, you can get a quick and maybe massive cash flow in if you have access to an audience that you can promote to quickly
regulated and clearly legal in selected countries

CONS

different regulations and restrictions on certain markets
markets reached a certain maturity already, which means that there are already many affiliates and there is a high competition for getting traffic and converting

FAQ

Here are a few frequently asked questions by new affiliates in the gambling affiliation, together with our answers:

Can I work with an affiliate gambling program if I don’t have a website? Yes, you can. If you have access to an audience like mailing list, social media group, or maybe you will simply buy out media (banner placements, pop-unders, interstitial..), you can still work with an affiliate program. However please note that spam is not tolerated, and if you will be buying media placements, then speak with the brand representatives for approval.
Can I work with multiple affiliate programs and/or brands? Yes, you can. Affiliate programs in gambling do not restrict you in working only with their brands. There are however some programs that may offer you a better deal if you will be working exclusively with them.
Will I really get paid for the lifetime of the players I referred? Yes, with the programs supporting the lifetime revenue share model. This means that you will receive commissions for all players you referred on lifetime revenue share model for the entire period they will play at selected brand.
Can I create my own player account from my own affiliate links? No, you should not. Affiliate programs will de-tag your user account if caught doing that, and in some cases will even get you accounts locked as this is a manipulation of terms & conditions.
Can refer my friends to the brands I am working with? Yes, you can. This is absolutely fine with all affiliate programs. However this is OK only for referring new users – if a friend of yours already has an account with the brand promoted, you will not be able to get it under your affiliate account.
How does the affiliate program know which are the players I referred? The most common way of tracking users is through the use of affiliate links. These affiliate links set a cookie in the visitor’s browser when clicking on that link. Cookies are small tracking files that are used widely by all websites for various purposes, affiliate tracking included. Cookies have an expiration date, so that means that if someone that clicked on your link registers with the brand at a later time (not same day clicked on the link), you will still be credited for that client. Cookie duration differs from a program to another but most are going for around 90 days validity to lifetime.

Website Examples in Gambling Affiliation

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