How much $$ do YOU make?

[Thomas Andreas]

lol, true that
If you are making that kind of money you must drive huge amounts of traffic. So I presume you also have fixed deals in place that you sell to the highest bidder. I am curious to understand when is it possible to start asking for fixed deals. I read that if you do more than 100 FTDs per month for a casino you are considered big and important. So lets assume you are doing 100 FTDs would that mean you can ask for like 1000 or 2000 euro per month... anybody has any ideas?

 

[ShanonStevenson]

Guys, you have made a great business! Kepp it up, and make more money. I think you can get 10000$ per month...

 

[eenzoo]

who the hell should live from 10k?!

 

[Thomas Andreas]

Depends on your expenses

 

[BetReels]

We get contacted several times a week now by affiliates wanting to work with us. Then, they ask for £300 CPA + 30% Hybrid deals or and/or £1000 to £5000 listing fee. Naturally, we can't afford that, so we decline, but my question is does any casino pay these high amounts?

 

[AidanLCFC]

We get contacted several times a week now by affiliates wanting to work with us. Then, they ask for £300 CPA + 30% Hybrid deals or and/or £1000 to £5000 listing fee. Naturally, we can't afford that, so we decline, but my question is does any casino pay these high amounts?

guessing some must do to the real big ones but my guess and from what I've seen in the past it also can be chancers trying their arm thinking companies are desperate for affiliates and they promise the world, especially in casino, especially when companies, and no disrespect, aren't the real big major players.

 

[Frank]

We get contacted several times a week now by affiliates wanting to work with us. Then, they ask for £300 CPA + 30% Hybrid deals or and/or £1000 to £5000 listing fee. Naturally, we can't afford that, so we decline, but my question is does any casino pay these high amounts?

Any good aff site is already sending multiple 7 figure numbers in deposits every year, has the site is already configured to produce huge streams of revenue with programs that convert and they trust, 1-5000 is actually extremely low.. from a aff point of view why should he or she send 6 figure monthly deposits to a new brand for a mediocre deal.. to get the best like most things in life you have to pony up cash and %..

And yes Casinos do pay this.. actually much more

 

[Kadabra]

We get contacted several times a week now by affiliates wanting to work with us. Then, they ask for £300 CPA + 30% Hybrid deals or and/or £1000 to £5000 listing fee. Naturally, we can't afford that, so we decline, but my question is does any casino pay these high amounts?

Personally I don't work on fixed deals but seems i was selling myself cheap when it comes to hybrids

 

[betizen]

To maintain 50-100 sites (even just 10 sites) you need a considerable size team and funds to keep the operations running.
I see that large sites often get acquired by groups and networks. I think this is where the affiliate sector is headed, many authority sites will be d by large media companies.
The challenge is to stay alive if you are a "lone-wolf" and doing everything yourself.

I'm also interested how the industry veterans holding up nowadays.
I can still see a ton of old-school sites around with strong SEO rankings and many of these sites don't even have responsive designs.

First, hi! I am very new here. So I think that’s true, it certainly has been the case for the new Latin American market. I started around five years ago, out of luck and due to the small competition (this is relatively still true compared to EU) with few ugly sites and could build up from there. Now there is more money involved and European players joining the party which is making competition harder and sites better and (unfortunately for those who are starting of) more expensive. After considering leaving the industry due to feeling uncomfortable about how players are abused (it’s worldwide but it’s harder in latam) I decided to build something with that in mind. So I think the future is for innovative affiliates and user/community centered sites and less the old banner clocked annoying disrespectful one, which by the way still live and thrive but I think that it won’t be for long.

 

[Biti]

Any good aff site is already sending multiple 7 figure numbers in deposits every year, has the site is already configured to produce huge streams of revenue with programs that convert and they trust, 1-5000 is actually extremely low.. from a aff point of view why should he or she send 6 figure monthly deposits to a new brand for a mediocre deal.. to get the best like most things in life you have to pony up cash and %..

And yes Casinos do pay this.. actually much more

Agreed.

We also ask a fee to get listed without any top exposure. Affiliate programs sometimes forget that it simply costs resources to update reviews every time they change the bonus, restricted countries, etc. Also trying a brand and have it reviews is costing resources.

9 out of 10 brands are simply very average products or even worse. We're not going to review, update reviews, KYC, respond "urgent" UKGC compliance mails, put promo offers, etc for free. Plus: many programs are quite bad in informing affiliates about relevant changes, like markets that are closed, payment methods that are removed, etc. We have to find it out by trying. Before we've found out because conversions were dropping or by luck. Now we try.

The amount of "paperwork" is increasing. To keep everything up-to-date you almost need a full-timer if you're having 100+ brands you're working with. Everybody wants his bonus offers updated within 2 days, always more and different KYC documents, us confirming all kind of emails, etc. Fine, but that's costing money.

The only exception we're making now is if a brand is that interesting that we really want it on our website. That's the case if it's an outstanding product or an interesting keyword.

Not going to spend for free resources in a poor/average product of a brand which in itself is not an interesting keyword.

I also do not believe a lot of those new white labels popping up will be a factor in the future. Daily brands are closing or programs are closing accounts because of all kind of silly excuses.

Retention and conversion at many brands are also very poor. However, every affiliate manager will tell you their product converts awesome. Lately, I had a brand with a very poor product full of bugs. Informing around I learned they were having a conversion of 0,1%. I mean, what do they expect? Us working with them with top exposure on a revenue share deal? If you know the conversion of other brands, you can calculate what they're wasting with their 10%.

It might sound all harsh, but I simply do not believe (anymore) in "Hey, let's make money together" and like if we're on the same boat. We're not. We're both on our own boat. It might work if ships are heading somewhat in the same direction.

 

[24hoursaday]

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.

In the beginning it is difficult but you only get back what you put in

Sent from my SM-G955F using Tapatalk

 

[Jon Sand]

Per month, about 100-200. But then bad months can have -400. i think i have a problem

 

[Jon Sand]

In the beginning it is difficult but you only get back what you put in

Sent from my SM-G955F using Tapatalk

I'm still waiting to get to this point

 

[AussiePunter]

I posted in this thread and voted honestly back then, ever since I've been getting email alerts to come back and read the latest posts in the thread but I haven't for quite some time. Until about 2017 I had a reasonably good outlook for smart affiliates who didn't put all their eggs into one basket, kept up with the latest trends and worked hard, kept learning and basically just took the good with the bad as always, and an opportunity would always present itself if you didn't give up trying. I remember when I first started, I would spend days reading nothing about SEO because that's what I knew would make me money. I was reading all I could and I thought I knew so much, but it turned out that Google had already been released and I was reading how to get an advantage in AltaVista and Lycos and Yahoo Directory and Dmoz (maybe that was later, actually, with Google, but I digress).

I won't end that story there because I ended up doing very well from Google, especially after learning about PageRank, not being particularly mathematically minded made it harder for me than others perhaps, but I got the gist of how it worked and early on, it was quite simply put probably the strongest ranking factor out of maybe 100 or so by a large margin. If I hadn't dedicated myself to learning all of the oudated info about keyword density, keyword stuffing, titles with hundreds of key words and other totally nonsensical ideas today, I may not have ever even tried to master Google. I was determined, not because I'd failed I don't think, I had learned a lot of useful things along the way researching the older search engines as well, but because I had I was just hungry, I think, and determined to not fail.

I found some forums where really clever people gathered and they'd discuss each dance and their theories, never giving away answers, it was kind of like trying to decipher a code in a way, but there were people I learned to trust and those I'd ignore, just like in real life and I'd implement what I'd learn each dance and eventually I saw my rankings getting close to the first page, then up into the top 5 and eventually even the very top position for some really profitable keyphrases in my market. That's another thing I don't see today, the cooperation between people. Everyone seems to be in a more selfish mindset than back when I was learning the ropes, but perhaps that was just who I was helped and mentored by.

I didn't expect the hate and anger that brought upon me. When I was gaining in the top 10, I had friends on my ICQ galore, it never stopped "uh oh"ing, but that's when I learned a hard lesson about life and about the nastier side of SEO, (gosh I wish CoudFlare was around then) my site was DDOS'd constantly and my hosting provider and I had to part ways.

Anyone whose changed hosts knows how painful it usually is. Well, it's more painful when you switch from a Windows to a Linux box (don't ask, it was my first host and I felt I had a loyalty to him since he was only a two man shop himself).

I had a several month long spam email campaign initiated against me, and even though I'm pretty confident I know who the culprit was at the time, he was in a country that wouldn't have done anything about it, so I did the best I could with those spam blockers and tried my best to whether the storm but that was a really rough time in my career.

Just like the old adage, no matter how big you are, there's always someone bigger than you, and like that, no matter how much money you have, there's always someone with a lot more money willing to take you down in order to benefit. Why wouldn't that be the affiliate program if they can get 100% of the sale instead of whatever they have to pay you? I've had that happen to me with an AdWords campaign early on, I'd stupidly sent traffic directly to their landing pages, back when that was allowed. So they were getting the exact keywords that were most profitable and after a month or two they figured why not just outbid me and save having to pay me at all.

I'd suggest it is much harder now than it's probably ever been in many ways, but there's also a shit-ton of new opportunities too, there always is. Finding out how to harness them consistently is what makes the job hard. Then, when that stops working, you have to find something else to consistently milk until that cow runs dry, and so on.

But not impossible to start right now and earn a living as an affiliate - but the primary factors to your success would probably have to do with how much you enjoy what you are trying to do/sell/promote. How long you can work damn long hours for very little, if any return because if you want to build up anything, an email list, a blog audience, a podcast, twitter followers, facebook likes, youtube subscriptions, twitch subs, Patreons willing to pay for your art, or read the millionth casino or poker site review that's been written, then it's going to take a long time to build something from scratch without spending a shitload of money - and I guess it goes without saying, if you had a shitload of money, you wouldn't be looking to get into affiliate marketing, especially in 2019. Damn, I'd have said that probably at least 2015, and maybe not for the first time. If you are looking at casino/poker/gambling - then you at the very least would need something different than the rest of the community. Just having another bestcasinosites.reviewsonline with a stock Wordpress or Joomla template and the same old promise that "this is the damn best online casino in the world, they'll give you free spins and you'll be a millionaire, click here" simply won't work today. You need something different.

In saying that it's possible, I personally wouldn't recommend it, but I've been burned a lot and it hurts, I might not be the type of person who can keep getting kicked in the guts over and over again, and still walking back to get another kick in the guts.

But if that sounds like you, I think tge primary difference between the affiliate programs of the past which could have given you a decent recurring revenue stream and the ones of today are that they're more concentrated in the hands of fewer owners in most industries, purely conjecture on my part but that's how I think it's been heading for a while now and in the industries I have been involved in it's certainly the case.

There's fewer programs and a lesser need for them to need affiliates in order to bring in business. Believe me, once they don't need you, they will kick you out and spit on you on your way out. As well as lesser competition between the few larger companies controlling the majority of the traffic/sales/advertising and their percentage of the pie is smaller than ever before due to big tech companies demanding their share of everything, governments all over the world wanting a cut of everything and those very generous angel investors wanting profits to go up forever.

There are also increasingly costly rules and regulations in many markets which are forcing small, single mom and pop style affiliates and affiliate programs out of the market with only those who have access to a large amount of capital each year for the price of entry and if a business is relying on ever decreasing profits to survive, it's hard to stay in business.

Globalisation has caused a lot of great things for many people, but there's no doubt that it has also hurt some people since a computer engineer in Bombay can bid on work for a company in London and since his cost of living is less than that of many western countries and often his resume and skills are quite comparable, why would a company pay more for labour or a specific task/program/script etc. than they need?

If they are a public company, their shareholders demand more profit. It's also worth noting that in every industry across the internet, the big tech companies are taking their slice of the pie first, before the end user even gets to see the top organic listings on search or social or market place or web store or whatever traffic source you are targeting.

Another thing that has affected me recently and somewhat soured my attitude towards the longevity of small to medium affiliates is that large affiliate programs can and do change their terms and conditions on a whim when they want more money, YouTube is a great recent example that doesn't affect me but affected plenty of others overnight.

Some managed to adapt to YouTube's changes by moving to Twitch, however that seems like jumping from the frying pan into the fire, others managed to remove a lot of previous content and promise overlord YouTube to evermore alter their content substantially for the advertising gods, others still with hugely loyal fans moved to services such as Patreon, which I think is something that could only exist on the internet and is absolutely great for true artists woth enough motivation (being able to eat is usually enough motivation for most people, I suppose), or in the case of some not so savoury characters, I heard that they even now promote themselves on adult webcam sites for money, even though they stay clothed the entire time and do exactly what they did before, flap their mouths with controversial views in order to get attention, just on a different platform.

Adapt or die has been the nature of the beast since the earliest of life, and whether you are on our first company or your fiftieth, I don't think that it's a stretch to find that most people would agree.

I've been around for a long time and due to a domino effect that started from one unfortunate effect, I've lost 10 years of my life and literally almost all of my $xxx,xxx annual income within a few months. Don't think it can't happen to you, this was my other basket too - so when the golden goose died, I still had something to fall back on and concentrate on but I didn't think I'd need to plan for another devastating series of events so quickly, and that is why my personal view on affiliates going on to become millionaires as they have many times over in the past, may be a thing of the past.

Now it seems you need to either be born with absurdly good looks, lucked out into a country not in war but in some super rich family in a major power, or have (pretty boring) sex on a grainy video tape and leak it to the media (although hopefully that one's finally been dealt its death knell thanks to a Mr Hogan and a large group of expensive lawyers backed by someone with a grudge), or just get really, really lucky with a kind of shitty dance and become an insta-famous fashion/backpack wearing idol or some kind of influencer being paid, not unlike affiliates but usually pushing pretty average products to a bunch of young fans who don't really know how the world works yet.

It really does seem to be getting worse for the smaller, individual or independent affiliates, and I think the same can be said for the smaller, individual businesses and workers around the world in general. I've seen PPC come and go and come again, perhaps we'll see some normalcy again, but I have a strange feeling we didn't take the path not travelled, but the timeline that shouldn't have been conceived.

I cut this post in half in an attempt to remove my tangents as to why I think the way things are the way they are, sorry it's still so long. I'm gunna add one last thing.

My final word in this subject is the fact that if you want to own your business, you have to own your customers. There's no point getting millions of visitors to your websites over their lifetime and never once getting any info from your potential clients. If you sell onions, and there's two onion shops in town. Try and at the least get a name and email addres from them before you tell them which Onions are the best to buy, because when a third onion shop opens, you can send them an email saying "Hey! I found some really sweet onions, you should check them out", and if you can keep them on your onion list by giving them tips about onions, what goes good with onions, jokes about onions and even the occasional free onion, they won't think of your email as a spam email, they'll think of you as the online onion dude who gives them onions and had that wicked onion pie recipe. But if you get their email, let it sit in a database for 6 months and then email them, they'll either not open it, think it's spam or unsubscribe because nobody wants to just get sold to in their emails every day.

Take email and apply that to whatever the new thing is and you can do it, but it will be hard. To be honest, you'd be better off setting up your own online store, keeping your own customers to yourself and maybe even starting your own little affiliate program, at least then they can't take away 10 years of your life and hundreds of thousands of dollars because they can. And they do.

 

[casinoportal]

About 10 years ago a lot but I have just come back into the industry after selling my network back then, hopefully I will see some results within 6-12 months. I'm not expecting to earn the crazy amounts like back then but the skys the limit.

 

[EU Affiliate]

It's not easy in this business these days.
"Not paying", or at least delaying, has became a normal thing for many casinos.
All in all, I'd say, 60% of all your casinos will never really convert all signups you'll bring to them.
Or they will convert small amounts.
At least 20% will convert but never pay. Or you'll have hard times, trying to get payments.
So you need to aim for 20% reliable brands, which will convert and pay in the end.

I'd say, with new brands - it's always a risk. so putting up older brands might be better.
However, they will most likely not offer you such high revenues, exclusive bonuses etc.
But still, better get 3 new FTD's per brand/month and get payed then bringing 1000's of signups and almost no conversions.

 

[AussieDave]

To be honest, you'd be better off setting up your own online store, keeping your own customers to yourself and maybe even starting your own little affiliate program, at least then they can't take away 10 years of your life and hundreds of thousands of dollars because they can. And they do.

Aside from CPA and straight Media-Buy, where your selling each referred player, and thus hold no claim to these players, other deals such as Rev-Share, Wager-Share and or Hybrid Deals, are akin to an open ended lease agreement. However, every program; never known 1 to think otherwise, believes once you refer a player, then that player becomes their sole property. That's where the problem lays.

if you want to own your business, you have to own your customers. There's no point getting millions of visitors to your websites over their lifetime and never once getting any info from your potential clients.

Hence being a smart pirate - will make you a richer pirate

 

[EU Affiliate]

Aussie Punter, nice breakdown of the situation.
The gambling market online today is very saturated and still very wild. Gouvernments want their share, more and more. Yes, revenues will be cut down even more with time, but at least (on long term) market will be completely regulated.
In few years, maybe we (affiliates) will have only 10% revenue shares. But ok, at least we'll know, we'll be payed for our work. As all rotten casinos will be wiped out. Hopefully.
What the use of 40% share if they don't pay? And one day they just disappear? Am I going to look for them in Siberia? Or maybe Curacao? Sure not. And they know it.

You can gather milions of players for one casino, but one day they just close down.
Take all your emails, open a new casino and use emails there. With no rev-share for you, of course.
Other may very well cross-promote your players at their casinos.
They all say, no, we don't do it. Yeah, how can you know it for sure?

On long term, online gambling area needs only few casinos, that will be 100% reliable.
Like selling at Amazon, for instance. Low profit, but 100% transparency.

As for SEO and Google - seems like it will be an eternal struggle.
We all know, 80% of all traffic comes from Google. They own the internet.
Like it or not, we need to seek ways to Google top.
And yes, it's truly annoying when they just change their algorithms as they wish. Like on 12th of March, lately.
They can and they will do so in the future. With no clear answers, as always. It's up to us then, to learn constantly, invest in testings - spending time and money.

Seems to me, having an "online SEO consulting" might be top business in future.
More and more people will seek these.
Like they look for doctors in need. For medicine. Or even for fortune tellers.
Why fortune tellers? Because even top optimizied pages are no guarantee for top rankings.
We know it, but 99% of people still need to find it our for themselves.

 

[Biti]

True, EU affiliate, it's tricky business and like almost every business, it's not endless.

The time that brands are going to pay you an unconditional lifetime 50% of the revenue of a player is over. Regulated brands are applying more and more NCO plus quotas.

Unregulated brands then? I think affiliates will be more and more forced to make a choice between regulated brands and unregulated brands. And not doing both a bit. I think many unregulated brands will have to fold. Their .com website with just a Maltese or Curacao "license" doesn't serve anymore in DK, SE, UK, IT, ES, SUI and next years either in NL, GE, a lot of them already closed AU. It will be less lucrative to run such a casino.

Web browsers have had their best time. Young people use social media, YouTube, etc to check their things and less web browser.

Regulation means also more rules. Affiliates will waste more of their time in complying.

Like said, we depend on Google with their algorithm. That's also tricky.

And we depend on affiliate programs. Besides the above, we also depend on their stats. Privacy settings, tracking issues, apps pushed, etc. It's all bad for conversion. And I guess we all underestimate the part that programs shave in the backend.

We all know a bit what the value of our traffic is. I'd suggest everybody take the biggest part of that value within a few months after the traffic is sent and not depend too much in models that pay the value in years.

 

[forumsaddict_reboot]

who the hell should live from 10k?!

$10k per month is very good money.