Fundamental Requirements For A Successful Sports Tipping Affiliate Website

[Oracle]

Hey folks,

I would like to discuss the aspects that make a sports betting affiliate website successful and get input and discussion points from those that have developed a successful site and others that are currently in the trial and error stage to improve their site.




Firstly, what exactly would a visitor expect to receive from a sports betting affiliate site and why would they return?


1. Regular Tips posted on the website, probably at least 4 days per week so that when they visit there is new content.

2. Tips should be free. There are too many decent tipsters out there providing free tips that your actual target market neither have the funds or motivation to pay for tips.

3. A clean, well laid out website.

4. Betting strategy articles.

5. Bookmaker comparisons.

6. A social media presence with a decent number of followers to add a 'genuine feel' to the website.

7. Other attractions, e.g betting calculators.

8. Interesting news in your chosen sport.

9. Community feel, e.g website forum or wordpress articles with comment section

10. A website that helps the visitor, not one that attempts to sell something to the visitor.

11. Provide competitions where visitors can win something and allow them to compete against other visitors.

12. Provide a fun 'tone of voice'.









I have been considering the expenses required to provide such a website in Year 1 for new affiliates who provide the layout, images and articles but lack the necessary expertise to design a fully fledged professional affiliate website:

Amounts are rough estimations in euro.


Wordpress developer including plugins: €800
Wordpress Premium Theme: €45
Hosting: €150 (Hostgator Shared Business Plan)
Email List: €660 (Aweber mailing list, 5000-10000 subscribers)
Forum: €320 (vBulleting 5 + Mobile Suite Bundle)

Total: €1,975

Now that you have the site you have to spend time and money to let people know about it.









I would appreciate any input or discussion on what makes a good sports betting affiliate site with a good business strategy.

 

[tryme1]

I think the two critical things for a sports betting tips site are twofold:

1) Credibility and dealing with the Elephant in the Room - If you can't answer the following question credibly, then no one is going to take you seriously:

"Why should I trust your tips when your income depends on me losing money?"

2) Winning tips - If your tips are rubbish, then why would anyone come back to your site.

Other things to consider are:

3) Position in the marketplace - There's loads of betting tips sites. Mostly they deal with football of one kind or another. This would be NFL in the USA, Aussie Rules in Australia and soccer in the UK, but definitely 'football'. I guess because everyone thinks they are some kind of expert.

So the question becomes: what can you offer that's different. Real knowledge of sports other than football would be a major plus. Prove that you or your team know a lot about, for example, Moto GP or Superbikes and you'll attract an audience who will keep coming back.

4) Monetising your site - if you can really provide winning betting tips, then a secondary question needs to be answered which is:

"Why are you even running a website when you could be a professional gambler".

For a real tips site with winning tips, you are going to have to think way beyond the usual '25% of rev share' type thing.

 

[Oracle]

A main source of income I am thinking about and more than likely is that this website will attract a lot of people to the site to use the various features, read the articles and see that days bet while discussing their own bets in the comments section.

The real thing I am interested in is behind the scenes in the 'forum'.

Some of these readers will be poor gamblers, losing punters and will provide a relatively small affiliate income. The good gamblers who come to my site will already have accounts at my advertised affiliate bookmaker and won't affect my affiliate income. If it pays for the site and a decent amount of advertising I will be very happy.

What I really want is the good tipsters to join the team. The benefits to being on the team is that you get all the tips from the team while only one tip is posted a day to the public.

I have 8 very good gamblers who make a sizable amount of money each year as the starting base.

The forum will have a very basic layout will have one section for new members who run their own betting logs for a few months in order to prove their ability and join the team and in private part of the forum where we share tips and strategies among ourselves. This is where the real money will be made when you have a good collection of bettors numbering 20-30 who regularly contribute who are the 1% of gambling forum users who get lost among the nonsense of the other 99%.

That being said the website and tips that are made available to the public have to be of a very high quality to convince the good gamblers who visit the site to partake in the betting log trial process.

I am willing to spend a couple of thousand to put some sort of infrastructure in place that would allow such a team to be compiled.

Long term there are many opportunities to grow the revenue options of the site and if this team supplies 5 tips a week with a ROI in the region of 15% which is delivered to the customers inbox free of charge (accompanied by an affiliate ad of course) there is a good chance that upon receiving multiple emails from me, with an opening rate of 85%+ that I could potentially get a lot of conversions as most people in the UK and Ireland open their first account with the land based operator that they are most familiar with and can be swayed to Bet365 sooner or later.

 

[Vladi]

Ah the eternal conundrum of a sports tipping affiliate site...

Step 1. You provide tips.
Step 2. If they are good, visitors keep coming back to the site, keep betting and winning and you don't make much money.
Step 3. If they are bad, visitors lose money, don't come back and keep betting because your tips suck, and you won't make much money.

:smellie_lol:

That is why I think the best tipping sites are the community focused ones that let the visitors do the tipping. They have an endless supply of tips, both winners and losers, there can be no accusations of bias or ulterior motives against the site owner, and the tipsters get an ego boost by being able to tell everyone why they are so great and why they are tipping team X or Y, and they can also see where they rank against their peers.

 

[KasinoKing]

4) Monetising your site - if you can really provide winning betting tips, then a secondary question needs to be answered which is:

"Why are you even running a website when you could be a professional gambler".

This is the crunch question for me and just makes any sort of tipping service a total mockery of itself.
It's just the same as those idiots trying to sell "guaranteed winning roulette systems" - if they really work, just shut up & get rich for god's sake!

KK

 

[Oracle]

Ah the eternal conundrum of a sports tipping affiliate site...

Step 1. You provide tips.
Step 2. If they are good, visitors keep coming back to the site, keep betting and winning and you don't make much money.
Step 3. If they are bad, visitors lose money, don't come back and keep betting because your tips suck, and you won't make much money.

:smellie_lol:

That is why I think the best tipping sites are the community focused ones that let the visitors do the tipping. They have an endless supply of tips, both winners and losers, there can be no accusations of bias or ulterior motives against the site owner, and the tipsters get an ego boost by being able to tell everyone why they are so great and why they are tipping team X or Y, and they can also see where they rank against their peers.

It is not that black and white.

You could have 1,000 affiliate customers and give each of them profitable tips and yet at least 850 will still lose money over the year. The other 150 customers will have their accounts limited or closed by the bookmaker.

This is the crunch question for me and just makes any sort of tipping service a total mockery of itself.
It's just the same as those idiots trying to sell "guaranteed winning roulette systems" - if they really work, just shut up & get rich for god's sake!

KK

A profitable tipster can make money from betting their own tips and make an additional income from the same work through an affiliate income.

Why limit yourself to only one source of income when the opportunity is there to make more money?

 

[Oracle]

To be fair it is pointless having this debate on the pros and cons or a sport tipping affiliate website. I am sure this has been discussed 1000+ times on this forum.


Of much more interest to the members of this forum is how to make a sports tipping website successful so as to open up different ways to earn money that are not just affiliate income.

 

[Viriatu]

To be fair it is pointless having this debate on the pros and cons or a sport tipping affiliate website. I am sure this has been discussed 1000+ times on this forum.


Of much more interest to the members of this forum is how to make a sports tipping website successful so as to open up different ways to earn money that are not just affiliate income.

back on topic i would try to set some media deals for exposure purpose, this way you can se partners apart, because if they fuss about 200 or 300 bucks then probably you better lay them off, a partner serious about your site will pay for extra exposure imo. Since you are serious about it seems this would be a good way to get some of your upkeep on check.

Also i would be careful on my expense, depending on the way you want to go, google or ads, you will need quality content much more than you might need a fancy design imo...

Im not sure about you but 2k to launch a site, if not to buy a great domain name, i find it steep... then again im a cheap ass myself

 

[Oracle]

I really thought this topic would generate a decent bit of discussion as it is relevant to almost all the members on the forum.

 

[AussieDave]

I really thought this topic would generate a decent bit of discussion as it is relevant to almost all the members on the forum.

Albeit it's a good topic but most affiliates here are casino based. Also, you might want to consider thanking people for their input using the "like link"... just sayin

 

[Oracle]

Thanks for your input

 

[WBX Affiliates]

One option that hasn't really been discussed in this thread is to promote your successful tips to be made on betting exchanges.

WBX pays 50% revenue share that comes from the commission paid on winning bets, so you will be rewarded when your tips win and it doesn't affect your affiliate earnings when they lose.

 

[Oracle]

I have not looked much at WBX but there is very poor liquidity and less options for accumulators on WBX which is very profitable for affiliates.

On top of that most people lose their money fast so it is usually better to get commission on losing bets than commission on winning bets.

 

[WBX Affiliates]

hey Oracle, appreciate your reply. The liquidity is improving as the exchange grows in popularity. There are cricket markets right now where people can bet over $10-20k on some of the options, so it can comfortably accommodate the average punter to get their bets down.