CPA vs Revenue Share

[gamingaffiliatesguide]

Most long term affiliates seem to work on revenue share. As the years go on with more programs going broke, rogue or whatever the situation, it seems that CPA is becoming a commission plan that might become more normal.

When you have situations like Refilliates being bought and having the affiliate program shut while still accepting players, it makes many people wishing they might have had a CPA deal instead. There are numerous cases of programs either closing or just closing affiliate accounts. The advantage of CPA over revenue share is it removes the ongoing contract where you don't know what that program will do in the future.

Added a poll on what commission plans you work with or prefer.

And for a long read on why gambling affiliates might want to consider mixing more CPA in with their programs:

http://gaffg.com/blog/cpa-over-revenue-share/

 

[Aeternus]

Rev. share every single day of the week.

The day you get a high roller dropping €10-20k+ a month and you are on CPA...

 

[onlinecasinoscloud1]

I also like Revenue Share where they are a good customer in a month sometimes give more than twenty per CPA, but it also has a bad side as the negative balance.

 

[DaftDog]

If you're in it for the long term and you support established, reputable programs then revenue-share is the only way in my opinion. With CPA you'll never know your players true earning potential.

 

[KasinoKing]

Rev. share every single day of the week.

The day you get a high roller dropping €10-20k+ a month and you are on CPA...

EXACTLY!
And I have been fortunate to experience that myself several times over the years
I would be totally gutted if I "sold" a high-roller to a casino for a paltry sum.

The other good thing about Rev Share, is you can take a "holiday" and do nothing for ages, but still have income.

KK

 

[LandofOz]

For me, it's Rev Share or nothing. I'd hate to think that I sold a high roller for a couple of hundred dollars.

 

[TheGooner]

There isn't a SINGLE GOOD REASON (*) to choose CPA over rev-share - all it does is lock in low-value payouts.

(*) = Well - perhaps if you are running a bonus hunter / freebie site where none of the visitors are ever actually intending to deposit then CPA is preferred.
But ripping off your partner programs with low value players is no sort of successful business plan

 

[slotplayer]

I see no good reason either.

 

[ThePOGG]

There isn't a SINGLE GOOD REASON (*) to choose CPA over rev-share - all it does is lock in low-value payouts.

(*) = Well - perhaps if you are running a bonus hunter / freebie site where none of the visitors are ever actually intending to deposit then CPA is preferred.
But ripping off your partner programs with low value players is no sort of successful business plan

There's plenty of good reasons.

1) I don't entirely trust the program's figures - CPA gives me a a guaranteed payout for each player when I'm no longer convinced that the stats are giving the whole story but can't prove that to be the case.

2) Other affiliate I trust have indicated that 1) is the case.

3) I think there's a fair chance that a program won't go the distance and may close, cutting off my historical revenue - CPA gets me value up front.

4) A program has a Minimum Activity Quota and I'm not convinced that I'll always want to work with them.

There are others.

On an interesting side note, an AM at a big brand that I happened to spend an evening with semi-recently told me they'd looked at the numbers and affiliates would actually do better on average per player if they paid them 100% for the first three months after referral then detagged the player. The particular AM had nothing much to gain, it's not a program that we work closely with or are likely to in the future, just a person I enjoy sharing a beer with. Assuming this is accurate it shows that lifetime revenue potentially isn't as valuable as affs think it is.

TP

 

[NDG]

Never settle for CPA. Revenue share is the way to go. You'll understand
why when you land a player that decides to deposit $50K in a month.

 

[gamingaffiliatesguide]

I mention many reasons for considering CPA in the article but by no means am I suggesting you take your most trusted programs and switch. Nobody here is suggesting to rip off your affiliate programs with low value players either. The main point is the industry is changing quite a bit and when Grand Prive did their grand prive and made that into a verb many years ago, the idea was shocking and almost unheard of. Now it seems to be happening more often and you have programs that have more t&cs that give them the right to terminate the contract or slash your commission rate down. Of course some webmasters are going to have traffic that will have higher player values than others so we all know that a CPA amount is supposed to be lower than what you would get for the lifetime payout of that player where the trade off is you get more of that value up front and guaranteed without needing the ongoing contract.

Looking at some histories of programs both recent and in the past we have:

- Affiliate Hub /skybet closing affiliate accounts (long discussion at gpwa here)
- Grand Prive fiasco, they were popular until that happened
- Pokerstars terminating revenue share on big affiliates after Amaya acquisition
- Smarkets terminating affiliates with a vague explanation
- Fortune affiliates enjoying traffic from hacked websites
- Rewards Affiliates adding cross promotion without tagging back in 2011 *
- sporting bet terminating their affiliate program and later reopening

* A representative from Rewards Affiliates wrote in private to inform that the company doesn't do this anymore. There is nothing in their terms and conditions that discusses their policies on cross promotion activities.

Looking at the recent issues that are hitting affiliates are affiliate hub virtually closing their affiliate program, for those that did start promoting the Smarkets betting exchange got a rude awakening with an vague email saying account is closed, most of the rival casinos are enjoying not having to pay affiliates anymore. I had a long discussion to Gary from Smarkets about their reasons and why I thought it was a bad road to go down. I'm disappointed that they are a new betting exchange and would have the perfect opportunity to clean up after programs like betfair and skybet have shafted affiliates.

Betfair has had their ups and downs over the years but seems they are more down of late.

There was a time when CasinoMeister had their Betvictor account terminated for not promoting them enough and tried to walk away with commissions. I believe they undid this after they went to the rogue pit and other webmasters learned that a program would terminate CasinoMeister's account.

We all know what the tradeoffs are when you compare revenue share vs cpa. The one thing cpa gives you is security. I wrote the article after I believed Smarkets wouldn't abuse such a t&c but they went ahead and did it anyways. Now they could have waited a year, picked up more affiliates and more players and still have done this so maybe some affiliates can be thankful the damage was done early and not after affiliates have worked hard to send players over.

For mergers and acquisitions, it seems the bigger the group is, the less they care about affiliates and these are the companies that have the money to buy out anyone.

None of us know when a program will go out of business whether they are new or have been around for 10+ years, we don't know when a program will abuse trust of affiliates and enforce terms and conditions that give them the right to terminate a contract or slash commission rates. When programs get taken over, it seems like contracts up until that point are thrown out the window. I'm sure we could all say which programs were happy with promoting and which ones we trust blindly but it comes at the expense of accusing other programs of not being as good and the way we vote for that is by promoting those types of programs less. It's really a big question of trust with questions like do you trust that program won't shave your players in any form, cross promote without paying that commission, adding phantom cashouts, enforcing min activity quotas that could reduce your commission rate, that they won't sell their program to another group or won't just shut down the affiliate programs, etc...

 

[TheGooner]

It's good to have a discussion on the subject - and to share views on the topic ...

However, I still don't see how CPA helps the situation for good affiliates ... How does accepting a small CPA payment help affiliates ?
All it does is GUARANTEE that you will get paid low value for your players ...


You write well - but I just don't get to the same conclusion that you have.

 

[slotplayer]

I doubt they'll even pay for the players if the players are low value and the account is losing money.

 

[DaftDog]

I would need a lot more statistical evidence to change my opinion in favour of CPA. However, I doubt I could ever change as landing a whale on rev-share is almost as addictive as tuna or marlin fishing.

 

[Rick Perry]

Interesting ideas guys. I preffer revenue share, because it seems to me like win-win deal for both sides. You can even ask for a few months fix or hybrid if you wish, but it depends on the manager..

 

[jiriprochazka]

Rev share is definitely better. For example, if you are forex/binary options affiliate, there is the problem. Brokers sometimes don't offer rev share, so all you have is the CPA model. The biggest reason to have rev share is money. I think that with rev share you can make much much money.

 

[ARZ]

RevShare is definitely the right way. When it comes to other offers, the only thing that seems reasonable is some kind of hybrid, which offers good RevShare percents and small CPA for FTD´s as well

 

[AidanLCFC]

I wouldn't even dream of going CPA, rev share all the way

 

[Edd]

Rev share is the way forward if you trust the casino...

Well that used to be my affiliate mantra but I've been rocked by the new fad of putting FTD limits on rev share %. I've been promoting Sky for years so have a large account, having to hit 6 FTDs before you get the agreed rev share deal is a nightmare. All that hard work over the years is crushed by a 5% ball ache!!! if you have a bad month.

If it were on a CPA I'd have the £££ in my account and wouldn't have to worry.

 

[TheGooner]

If it were on a CPA I'd have the £££ in my account and wouldn't have to worry.

But you wouldn't have £££ in your account - you'd have £ at best - and maybe just pp .
That's the whole point - CPA rewards are far less - it's like being locked into 5% from the start.