Category: Marketing

OTHERWISE

You will have to market the site. The better you market, the more traffic you will see and traffic is king, or so ‘they' say. The truth is TARGETED traffic is king. While it may be exciting, at least for a while to watch your counter numbers spin, the excitement fades when the bank account numbers don't. ONE visitor that converts to a player is worth more then 10,000 that do not. If your player base, and by extension, your income increase as your traffic increases, great, you've got it, if not, start again and find where you went wrong.

Well regardless of what you do or how good you do it, if your visitors can't trust you or your content it wont matter long. Make sure you put honest information and factual content on your site. There are far too many ‘webmasters' in this business that will put anything they can to try to draw traffic. Sure a flash and trash ad saying GET $200 FREE – NO DEPOSIT will draw lots of people, but they expect you to deliver. The problem ends up being that you have short term traffic that is mad, rather then a long term satisfied visitor that will come back. The net is viral, good or bad news travels fast.

• WHAT IS AFFILIATE MARKETING
• SEARCH ENGINES
• FEW BASICS
• PPC SE POSTIONING
• DIRECTORIES
• PAY PER CLICK SEARCH ENGINES
• MARKETING COMPANIES
• CASINO BANNER EXCHANGE

Good question. With a very simple answer, at least for our purposes here. You will be paid to advertise, market and ‘sell' a casino. You don't become a real ‘partner' although the term is thrown around a lot. You wont need to worry if someone wins the big one, you just market. Period. The casino will take care of the rest. And marketing is sales. iI sales isn't your thing then you need to move on because that's all you will do. And not just the casino. You have to sell your site, your information and ultimately, yourself. You will find links to some great affiliate marketing resource in the MISC RESOURCES section. We are not going to try to reinvent the wheel here.

One thing to note, while it is, in it's most basic form all affiliate marketing, you will find it is not the same as selling books from Amazon.

CPA, CPL, CPE, CPC, NET, GROSS, WHAT THE ….

So what do they mean? Well you better learn them because that's how you will get paid. Which is best? Whichever makes you the most money for your effort. There is no BEST way. Just try them all and find what works for you.

The alphabet in a nutshell:

CPA – Cost Per Aquisition
You get paid X dollars for every person who clicks through from your site and signs up as a real player and deposits a certain amount. The amount will vary from program to program but $50 – $100 deposited is common. The amount you can expect will vary from $25 – $200 so make sure you sharpen your negotiation skills. You will find the first offer is not carved in stone so make sure you get what you are worth, not just what they want to pay. This is a classic case of “If Mommy said no, ask Dad”. If ‘John' offers you $40 put him off and call/email the marketer back and ask to speak to someone (else) and see what they will give you. Don't feel bad for them, they get paid the same whether you get short sheeted or not. And this is why.

NO

Did that hurt? Of course not. So what if they say no. It doesn't hurt and I guarantee you they will say YES far more often.

CPL – Cost Per Lead
You will be paid for each LEAD that comes to the casino via your site. This could require an email form to be filled out or a much more in depth informational questionaire. The visitor will not need to sign up as a real player at the casino or make any deposits. Payment on these is generally low, in the $1 – $5 range and is not found that often any longer in the casino affiliate area. This is done by casinos so that they can market the prospect themselves and save on affiliate payments over the long haul.

CPE – Cost Per Email
No different then the CPL above, just a different acronym. They wouldn't want to make this easy on you now would they.

CPC – Cost Per Click
Just what it says. You get paid for every, usually every UNIQUE, click that comes to the casino via your site. The casino tracks the traffic and determines what click is unique and what is not. This is th elowest of th epayment plans, usually in the .02 to .25 range so if you don't have a lot of unique traffic this will take a long time to add up. One comment on this form of payment. Casino traffic is worth FAR MORE then you will get with almost any CPC plan. Once you start paying for traffic you will hurt your sides laughing when someone offers you this ‘deal'.

GROSS
This is probably the best deal if you can get it. You get paid on all GROSS DEPOSITS into a players account. You have no concern whether or not they win or lose. If they deposit $100, you get your % no matter what the outcome of the play. Understandably these are not all that common and when found are of a lower % pay out as compared to the next, NET.

NET
This is by far the most common form of pay out for the casino affiliate today. You will receive a ‘net percentage' of the casinos take on the play. this is not as simple as it sounds as casinos will have a different definition of just what ‘net' is. Kind of like what the definition of ‘is' is. Meaning they will not hesitate to use it to their advantage as shown below.

Net = Deposits minus payouts
Net = Deposits minus payouts minus bonuses
Net = Deposits minus payouts minus bonuses minus chargebacks
Net = Deposits minus payouts minus bonuses minus chargebacks minus royalty fees*
Net = Deposits minus payouts minus bonuses minus chargebacks minus royalty fees minus reserves
Net = Deposits minus payouts minus bonuses minus chargebacks minus royalty fees minus reserves minus credit card processing fees

Like life, the higher up the food chain above you are, the more you will make.

Are all these charges real?

Sure, they are the cost of doing business. Just because you don't pay rent doesn't mean you don't have expenses.
Are all these charges JUSTIFIED is what you need to ask. There the answer is maybe. Depending on the way the casino set itself up and how it is managed they may very well be valid. BUT You will find casinos that are popular with affiliates and players and profitable that don't shove you down the food chain. Why? Dunno, but it pays to look and deal with those that are run well enough and care enough about you as an affiliate to put you higher up the ladder. Respect and trust are two of the most important ideals between affiliates and affiliate programs and, based on the list above, it falls drastically the further down the list the casinos put their affiliates. READ the TERMS AND CONDITIONS of every program you look at and UNDERSTAND them. They are intentionally cryptic. If you aren't sure what it means, send an email to support and ask. if you don't get an answer, well then they probably weren't going to pay you anyway, and move on. They WANT your traffic. They NEED your traffic. Far more then you need them, they need you. With about 1500 casinos online now and more opening all the time getting good placements on good sites is getting much harder for casinos of questionable character.
YOU control the market. YOU have a big say in what casinos survives and which casino fades away. Don't forget that.

I didn't forget…..

* Royalty Fees 101 – A casino uses a software for the games that the buy/lease/whatever. There are sometimes ongoing fees imposed by the software company that the casino has to pay. Normally this is based on total dollar played. The percent varies between software companies and casinos based on how big they are in the market ie MGS will normally charge more then Playtech and what kind of deal the casino was able to hammer out.
Not all casino pass on the fees to affiliates. Even if they use the same kind of software. Why, again, dunno, but in many cases it does seem to be just another profit center for certain casinos. if one can manage to make money and pay affiliates without charging it, or charging a very small % of it, why can't the other. Simple question with no answer I have been able to get. With this fee, some casinos will tell you that they will pay you 40% of the net. Unfortunately the net is far down the ladder and you will really get about 14%. OUCH. Hurt, didn't it. This is one of those ‘bend over and smile' moments in the casino affiliates world. Ask a casino why and they will tell you all about the history of the world, but wont answer your questions. Push them for an answer, and they stop answering your emails. This is the voice of experience speaking so listen, or not, it's up to you.

• SEARCH ENGINES
• FEW BASICS
• PPC SE POSTIONING
• DIRECTORIES
• PAY PER CLICK SEARCH ENGINES
• MARKETING COMPANIES
• CASINO BANNER EXCHANGE

SEARCH ENGINES: A no brainer. Currently, Google is the king of the hill in SE traffic. The importance of a good listing in Google cannot be stressed enough. Learn all you can about it and what it likes and dislikes and give it what it wants. A top listing there is as good if not better then a top listing in Overture for $1-$20 less per click. Google also now supplements AOL search results and this is another large block of traffic you wont want to ignore. Other search engines of note are: Alta Vista, MSN ( included via Inktomi ), DMOZ ( though they have some issues to deal with in this category ), Fast/All the web, Mamma and Excite. Some of these will charge you a fee for listing your site and some offer free submissions. Gambling Crawler (bingo)is a gambling/Casino specific search engine that can provide some traffic.

DIRECTORIES: Yahoo is unquestionably the highest traffic directory on the net today. Tomorrow, maybe. Listings there are no longer free for this type of site. Check the T & C to see what the current fees are. You will pay for a REVIEW of your site with no guarantee that it will be listed. A good listing in Yahoo should far outweigh the cost but a poor listing is money wasted. Looksmart is another large directory but it's importance in the search world is fading. They also feed MSN which is about the only thing of value they have left to offer.

There a MANY niche directories on the net. Some are gambling related and some are general. Some of the better gambling related directories to get listed are in no particular order: Casino-on-line.com Gambling.com, Askgamblers. Listing in most of the directories will be free but you will be required to provide a link back to the other site.

POP UPS/UNDERS/DOTS:This is very popular with the rip off crowd. They offer to sell you GUARANTEED POP UNDER EXIT TRAFFIC. Yeah right. What you will get is a huge bump in your hit counter and ZERO conversions. Why? Because no one will ever see your site. Many of these hucksters run a simple script that opens your website in a 2×2 pixel ‘dot' at the bottom of another page. The visitor never even knows it has happened. With this set up traffic is normally bought from high traffic adult sites, points at target sites on many hosts that in turn run the script to show a ‘hit' to your site. Used in this way, one porn visitor can be turned into 10-20 even 50+ hits on the poor suckers sites that fell for this line of crap. This program and sites that promote them could even be found for sale almost daily on the major online auction sites. Jimmiesmegamillionhitsaday.com is NOT where you should put your marketing dollar.

One of the telltale signs of a ‘possible' scam is that you are not allowed to have any pop ups on YOUR site, and the guarantee. It will refund whatever % of your money for the hits they fail to deliver. Why? Well the first because if you have any pops then the visitor who is unknowingly providing the ‘hit' to your site will see it and know something is up. And the scammer run anywhere from 2-10+ sites at a time and doesn't want 20 popups hitting the unsuspecting visitors. The second reason being, there are a lot of people running this scam and you can't always get the traffic inventory when you need it. Too many thieves crowding the market these days it seems. Know your source and you will not need to worry about losing your cash.

A VERY STRONG NOTE. Not every pop up/under broker is dishonest. Not at all. There are many that will provide you with good, clean, honest traffic. It is up to you to do your homework and check them out before spending a cent with them. Check out the WHOIS on the site. Are they new, using an obviously fake address, a free email address, BS phone number? If so, move on because you probably just saved yourself some money.

AN EVEN STRONGER NOTE – WE are evaluating a traffic program at this very minute. If it is as good as it looks, we will be making both TARGETED and UNTARGETED traffic available to our users in the very near future. So watch for it (possibly) soon.

Very similar to the exit exchange above except in this case you will be showing a banner, usually a 468×60 in size in exchange for your banner being shown on other related sites. The use of lotto traffic is probably far more prevalent in this area then in the exit exchange area based on the poor click through ratios you can expect. It also has to do with the ‘less than prime' placement members give the banners. But when you are just starting out this is something you will want to consider and once your traffic has reached a point you can live with, DUMP IT. Again, know who you are dealing with. Shaving here is done by many of the exchanges clear down to your bones. Affiliate code hijacking is also done, that is, your code is removed from the link and they replace it with theirs, so be careful. It is an unfortunate price with the ‘coming of age' in this business.

Content is good, advertising is good but more of each is not. Not everyone has high speed connections to the net so keep the page size reasonable.
CHECK YOUR SPELLING. This is a webSITE not a webSIGHT.If you are color blind, or people ask you if you are, get help with the colors.
You are trying to market here, not make a statement about your tastes, or lack thereof. You may think you have created the slickest 500K flash animation in the world and everyone will want to see it. Well you would be wrong. Flash or trash is far to common on the net and people burned out on it back in the 90's.
See how your SITE looks in different screen resolutions. Absolute tables and layers will sometimes turn out not quite how you expected.

OK, now your site looks fine, your spelling is readable, so where to market? We are not going to go in too deep but will provide a few ideas and some great resources that will help you get started.

MAILING LISTS : This is by far the most target and best converting traffic you will have. These people WANT to hear from you and get your offers. In this case we are talking about OPT IN. Where you have a subscribe function on your site for visitors to enter their information and receive your newsletter, promotions, bonuses etc. PAID FOR email names is covered in the TRAFFIC section.
A quick definition of the most common.

SINGLE OPT IN: This is where the visitor enters their information on your site and is automatically subscribed to your list. It is the most common and most prone to abuse. Anyone can enter anyones email address and subscribe them to your list even if they hate gambling. You will get a % of complaints using this method. It is up to you if you want to deal with that or not. Your host may have less patience for complaints of spam then you do so take that into consideration.

DOUBLE OPT IN: The safest way to collect names because you will KNOW the person subscribed is the person who wants to be. The visitor you sign up on your site and an email is sent to them. They must reply to the email from the address they subscribed under in order to be added to your mailing list. All but no chance for some vindictive person to add a name to lists that they have no desire to be on. The extra step does seem to cause the sign up percentage to be lower, but with this method you will have a clean list of names that are really interested in what you have to say.

Whether or not you handle the list yourself and do the mailing on your own or outsource to a commercial mailing list company will be up to you. If the list is small, doing it yourself will probably be the best way to go to start. There are many great mailing programs available that you can install on your site and run your list from there. There are many programs available. You will be able to find them on the MISC RESOURCES page at many of the scripting sits but one of the best, and free, is MOJO MAIL. Lots of great features.

Single or Double Opt In setting and a low draw on the server resources (this will make your hosting company happy).
For outsourcing your list after it gets to be larger then you want or are able to handle, you will find many companies available. Prices vary widely as do the features and functions they provide so find one that suits your needs and don't be afraid to move from one company to another as your needs change as your mailing list is a very valuable commodity and you need to treat it as such. There are some that will do it free, but they will add their own ads(some will add several) to your mailing and all we can say about that is , Tacky, Tacky, Tacky.

PAY PER CLICK SEARCH ENGINES (PPC): This is where you will probably start. Unless you want to wait 1-3 months for your listing to show up in the free SE's you will pay to get your site in front of potential visitors.The king of this hill is Oveture or as you will eventually learn to call it, Overcharge. This used to be the Goto site. They changed the name and did some house cleaning. Bids here will cost far more then a pretty penny. Some gambling related terms will get bids of over $25 PER CLICK. Your best bet here will be to find some related multi word search terms that can still be had for a reasonable bid and settle for less traffic. The traffic there is very targeted and the results are now shown on most of the major search engines as sponsored links. It costs but can pay off nicely.

Find What would arguably be another in the top tier. Pricey, but not as much as Oveture. There are several other Minor Majors and the bids, and traffic drop accordingly. Ah Ha, Go Click, Search Feed and others can provide some traffic at a reasonable cost. Just be careful to make sure the traffic is good. Many SE's have been known to deliver what is affectionately called ‘Crap Traffic”.One area needs to be covered in the PPC section. There are 100's of them. They are popping up like weeds in a garden. Most are totally useless.

PPC sites are sold daily on ebay for less then $100 and there is a free/cheap program out there that makes it easy to run your own PPC. When you are at a PPC you have never heard of put your mouse pointer over a search term. Now look at your status bar in the browser. Do you see /smartsearch.cgi somewhere in the URL? While I am not taking anything away from the program, most people that use it have this idea that they will be the next Oveture and get rich ( from YOUR money I will add ), have NO traffic, have the SE on a $5 a month hosting plan and have NO security to protect you from bogus clicks. If you are bored and want to submit to them, go for it. Most will give you $5-$50 free in your account to try them out. Even with the free cash, most of these are still over priced. Your time is worth more than the traffic you will get from them.

These are popular with casino and affiliates both. When a visitor leaves your site without clicking through to your sponsors they are presented with a pop under loaded behind your sites window. This shows a member of the exit exchanges sites. You will get a corresponding pop under for your site when the same happens on another members site. The usual ratio is 2-1, meaning you will have to show 2 sites to have your site shown once. You can find a 3-2 ratio at times but don't settle for less. Since you may be new and have no real traffic to get views of your page you will want to go back a section and read it again in case you missed the answer. Understand, that you are not the only person doing this so the general pool of traffic will be of less quality then one may expect but it is still a better then totally untargeted traffic. Probably one of the largest and oldest in this area is:

Casino Trade
As with all traffic you buy, make sure you know who you are dealing with and check them out. Some casino exit exchanges are reported to shave you closer then a 3 blade razor.