How much $$ do YOU make?

[Guard Dog]

Do you make money online with casino advertising?

Here are some common questions I have heard over the years. Most of these questions are the very questions I asked myself and others when I began in the industry.

• How easy is it to make money advertising casinos?
• How much money do I have to spend before I start making money?
• Exactly how much money do people make?

How easy is it to make money advertising casinos?

I would say that in the past years, it was extremely simple to earn money as a casino affiliate. Today there is a lot of competition and Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is not very easy (Google, Yahoo, MSN do not allow casino advertisers - except recently in the UK). As a result, it takes time.

If you are looking for 'easy money', it may not be your thing... However, if you are willing to put in the time - it will very likely pay great dividends.

How much money do I have to spend before I start making money?

NONE. You absolutely do NOT have to spend money to make money as a casino affiliate. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise. You do not need to pay for hosting, you do not need to pay for SEO, you do not need to pay for articles.

What you need is an 'address on the web' which will allow you to properly promote casinos! Blogs are a great way to start off in the industry without having to pay for hosting costs. Check out blogspot, msn spaces, blogger.com, wordpress and many others for free spaces.


Exactly how much money do people make as a casino affiliate?

I have created a poll attached to this post, but can tell you from knowledge of people in the industry that affiliates can make as much as they wish. You will see affiliates making $1k / month, $10k / month, and even much more than that. It's real and possible - if you put in the time.


New Affilaites - Here is how you can start quickly and without money

Becoming an affiliate is simple. Take a look at the programs here at AffiliateGuardDog.com and you will quickly see that our certified section lists affiliate program that are WORTH promoting. These programs have favorable terms, will pay you on time, communicate with you if you need help, and have quality brands. Sign up at their website to get going, but feel free to ask us all questions about how well they convert.

Get in the game - quickly

There are several ways to get your site ranked quickly, though, and those methods can give you a jump on your competition.

Method 1: Blogs. Use them. Blogging, in many cases, is completely free. You do not pay for the blog itself (hosting costs) and all you have to do is update your blog frequently. An additional factor with blogs are their ability to immediately show in the blog search engines. This not only gives you a link to your site, but allows blog searchers to get to your site before it becomes mainstream on the web.

Method 2: Link exchanges - Ask a casino webmaster (via email or other) to exchange links. This means to put YOUR site link on their site in exchange for the same type of link on your site. There are still quite a few affiliates who use link exchanges very successfully to garner more traffic. Not all webmasters will respond, so you will have to be extremely patient.

Method 3: Social Tagging and Networking - There are a ton of social networks out there including Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Digg, Furl, and so many more.. Each one allows you to link to your website. Again, these are free services. If you use them appropriately, you might get a few more clicks to your site. This is the name of the game.




That's my time for now and I sincerely hope that affiliates new and old take a little bit out of this post

[pdjoe]

Cool post Andy!

One thing for sure for me, it wasn't fast and it wasn't easy. In the long run it does pay off.

How easy is it to make money advertising casinos?

Working with many people over the years, I tell them to not think about the money in the early stages. It's better to set your sites on collecting a good size player base. Eventually that will turn into the paychecks. I would set a few goals, to make maybe $100 with one or two programs and build up from there. After a few years of hard work you may work with 10 programs and if you make a $100 at each one, your doing okay. Just my opinion.

How much money do I have to spend before I start making money?

I started out using a free AOL site. After making a couple of bucks and knew I wanted to dtay in the affiliate fiels, I decided to get my own server. So Andy is correct once again, you can do it with no cost involved!

Exactly how much money do people make?

I don't think I should answer that directly lol. I do make enough to support my family and get the bills paid. Who'da believed it lol.

Thanks Any and the service you provide for the industry!

Good luck to all of my affiliate friends.

[pdjoe]

Thanks Any and the service you provide for the industry!

Typo lol. tried to edit but I get an error page. Should be "Andy" not Any. Sorry Dog

[WagerX]

Andy,
Great post. I see these questions a lot with friends and family. I agree with your answers 100%.

How easy is it to make money advertising casinos?

I do not think it is easy at all. It certainly wasn't easy for me. Fun yes, but not easy. I think that nothing worth while comes too easy or fast. For me it's lots of fun so it doesn't "feel" like work. It took about a year to start making anything, and from there I've seen steady growth sticking to white hat seo techniques and doing what Andy mentioned in his post.

How much money do I have to spend before I start making money?

Your right Andy, you do not have to spend anything other than simple hosting ($5/month at goddady). I am convinced if you really wanted to do it for nothing you could. Writing good content is the way to not only a reader base, but also build links.

Exactly how much money do people make?


When I started I thought it would be unrealistic for webmasters to make $5000 a month. Now I know that it would be realistic for some to make in excess of $100,000 per month if done right. I don't make any where near that amount, but I can certainly see that it can happen with enough time, work and patience.

Great post Andy.

Cheers!

[TheGamblingGuru]

Great post Andy and all three of your main point methods there were exactly correct, at least in my case anyway. As some of you already know me from other forums around the net I have been involved with the online casino industry as a player and somewhat of a player advocate now ever since 1996 but just this year finally decided to become an affiliate.

I always had said to myself if I ever actually did step into the affiliate mix I would only promote casinos that I had personal experience with so as not to get my customers involved with shady operations.

The first of the year I started my blogspot site that is in my signature below and I guess it was just coincidence that I did everything that Andy had suggested in his post above, not because I read his post first as I had already done all of this the first of the year. I guess being around and involved with the industry for such a long time I already had a good idea and model in my head of a quick fast start up using all of Andy's suggested methods above.

The social networking sites have been the ones that have payed off the fastest and quickest in my particular situation and I have also found that my videos that I have created have gotten fast front page listings on the various search listings too. My first month in the business I had acquired approximately 10 depositing customers and made approximately around $925 profit. My second month my customer base has now doubled and the profits have also approximately doubled even with a couple of nice cashouts by a couple of customers.

This could be due to the fact that I had a clear cut aggressive marketing plan that I had been planning for several months before I actually started the site or it could be as simply as pure dumb luck but in any case I like what I have seen so far as returns to my efforts go. So now I am currently working on my main hosted site that I am trying to get live within the next couple of weeks.

As far as profit returns go do you guys think what I mentioned above is normal, average, high, low....thoughts please...

EDIT: The part about only promoting casinos that I have had personal experiences with may soon change in order to branch out more to more defined geo specific areas.

[Guard Dog]

As far as profit returns go do you guys think what I mentioned above is normal, average, high, low....thoughts please...

For a 1st and 2nd month - high Most affiliates (untrained / not having a good plan) wait about 6 months or more for a first payment. I think it was either 6 or 9 months before I even got a player signed up.

So - you are doing quite well, IMO. And having an aggressive and planned approach is very likely what has made you successful.

[TheGamblingGuru]

For a 1st and 2nd month - high Most affiliates (untrained / not having a good plan) wait about 6 months or more for a first payment. I think it was either 6 or 9 months before I even got a player signed up.

So - you are doing quite well, IMO. And having an aggressive and planned approach is very likely what has made you successful.

Thanks for the encouraging words there Andy, I do hope that this first and second month trend does not fall off and take a nose dive now. I think it will also help more too once I get my main site published and getting traffic but so far I am pleased with the initial results.

[Guard Dog]

Thanks for the encouraging words there Andy, I do hope that this first and second month trend does not fall off and take a nose dive now. I think it will also help more too once I get my main site published and getting traffic but so far I am pleased with the initial results.

Once you have your site READY (I mean fully running, content already there, and set up how you want it to look moving forward), post information about it on your blog with a link to it. That will help the SE's get to it more quickly I'm sure you knew that already, but worth saying.

[TheGamblingGuru]

Once you have your site READY (I mean fully running, content already there, and set up how you want it to look moving forward), post information about it on your blog with a link to it. That will help the SE's get to it more quickly I'm sure you knew that already, but worth saying.

As far as inlinks go, so far I have 158 showing up that are directing traffic to my blogspot. Now since I am still new at this, I don't really have a benchmark gauge established on whether this is also average, high, low etc., can I get your thoughts on that one please.

[Guard Dog]

As far as inlinks go, so far I have 158 showing up that are directing traffic to my blogspot. Now since I am still new at this, I don't really have a benchmark gauge established on whether this is also average, high, low etc., can I get your thoughts on that one please.

You have 158 according to Yahoo, yes. There is no benchmark on how high this is in relation to ranking. Some feel that the more inlinks, the better the ranking. I can tell you, though, that is not the case in MY experience.

While an AGED site with lots of links can certainly outrank most sites... that isn't the end-all.

I have sites which outrank similar sites with way less inlinks It really depends upon structure and how you do your marketing, IMO. Everyone, though, has a different process whereby they get their sites ranked.

Initially I did the inbound linking idea and did fairly well with it. However - it took me awhile to have enough link power to rank. Mainly because I did not target keywords well and my site seemed a jarbled mess of different topics