Reasonable prices for top listings

[Jay Hooks]

Hey guys

Been asked by a few affiliates now to list them on our front page. As we have never done this before, that is, to take payment for "renting" out our top listings - I have no idea about pricing and other deal agreements.

Any advice, thoughts, tips on how to approach this for a newbie?

 

[Biti]

You're affiliate and want to list casinos? Or what's the idea?

 

[Jay Hooks]

You're affiliate and want to list casinos? Or what's the idea?

We are a casino listings site, and growing daily. We are an affiliate to many casinos already, but so far only with deals for rev share, CPA, FTDs etc. So casinos have begun contacting us for top listings and are wondering what our numbers are (which are not that great - yet) and what offer we want from them.

Sorry for the complete lack of information.

 

[KasinoKing]

We are a casino listings site, and growing daily. We are an affiliate to many casinos already, but so far only with deals for rev share, CPA, FTDs etc. So casinos have begun contacting us for top listings and are wondering what our numbers are (which are not that great - yet) and what offer we want from them.

In my experience, which is not extensive, programs who offer to pay for top spots are generally the "dodgy" ones.
i.e. typically operators from Israel who would shave you as soon as look at you

So my only advice is be careful who they are, as I don't personally sell spots on my sites.

KK

 

[Biti]

It depends on the value of the keywords you're ranking at. Exposure at a page on page 3 for no deposit terms has less value than a page ranking top on money keywords.

I'm usually not going to provide brands with all kind of details. Usually, that leads to endless more questions, discussions and many of them have affiliate websites too or are somehow involved in it.

If you're having a money website ranking on expensive words, I think it's normal to ask a fee or at least a guaranteed payment.

We all know Google is sometimes very volatile. A website that today is at the top, perhaps you'll find it a year later on page 2 or 3. And with all those operations going rogue, ceasing, quota, etc. I'd go for a quick and sure buck.

Top traffic must be paid. I was a Rev. Share guy, but you cannot rely 100% on that anymore. A fine mid-way is a hybrid deal with a guaranteed amount. You don't want position 1 traffic to be wasted because of high fees, some winners and a bad conversion.

If a casino wants a commercial on TV, they have to pay upfront too, no matter the result and no way a tv channel will give them their money back if there were not so many ftd's

 

[NDG]

Don't give out too much information about your web site, because some people are just fishing for information
with no real intent to pay for placement, etc. You could request a "listing fee".. where you guarantee to position
the casino in certain spots for X amount of days or months in exchange for an upfront fee. The listing fee
would give you an upfront payment while you could still receive the revenue share generated by players you refer.

There have been times where we've added casinos to a site, only to find out a week or two later, that
they've already closed. All of our work to add them to the site was a waste of time. With a listing fee,
you have something upfront.. so you are not entirely out if the casino doesn't convert or goes under.
This also helps to separate the casinos that are serious about placement, from those that are just
sending our e-mails to hundreds of sites and hoping that some of them will agree to sign-up.

 

[melcb]

I agree with NDG, while your traffic is still growing its better to ask for a once of listing fee to add a review for the brand.

Once you are more confident in your numbers ask for flat fee per month plus your rev share deal and never offer any guarantees for FTD numbers. Affiliate managers will hound you if the results are bad and will ask for you to 'make good' on the deal if they have not made ROI. You also dont want to make a name for yourself in the industry of taking flat fees and not delivering.

Also always only offer these placements to casinos with good reputations, rated highly by players and with little to no complaints. You want your site visitors to trust you and your recommendations, if you list dodgy brands and a player is mistreated then they will not trust what you say and never visit again. It is important that the top exposure levels go to the good brands.

 

[betizen]

With all due respect I find many unfortunate that affiliates sell listing positioning. It disrespects your visitors/users, which will normally expect to find the best products ranked first (assuming that you ranked sites according to some kind of quality parameters). For rankings to be trustworthy (and to contribute to the industry) should be based on several of those user experience parameters (plus others like the license used, the honesty of their aff program, etc), not just blind money. Of course there are always honest ways to present featured content to your visitors/users.

 

[Jay Hooks]

Some of you mention what I would refer to as "selling out" to poorly rated casinos just for a quick buck or really any buck. This is not what we want to do, rest assured! And I have to thank you for reminding me of this.

But this would also mean that we have to seek out and find the affiliates we want to front, which requires much more work. At the time, our affiliate manager (me) is also the copywriter (..me). So, for now, I have been discussing pricing with any affiliate that asks us about listings. I am more a creative person than I am a salesperson, so I find this task a bit difficult due to my personal integrity. Any advice on these negotiations? They all want to hear our numbers and I give them the peripherals. I just wish they would tell me

As for reviews, we have already written a lot of them before we even made affiliate deals. We just needed content and would make deals along the way. But I have been contacted by affiliates who want to be fronted on our site, and I have written at least one of those reviews because I considered it to be a high-quality casino.

How do you consider what is a good quality casino and what is not? Is Askgamblers.com a valid benchmark?

Thank you for your excellent answers so far.

 

[betizen]

Some of you mention what I would refer to as "selling out" to poorly rated casinos just for a quick buck or really any buck. This is not what we want to do, rest assured! And I have to thank you for reminding me of this.

But this would also mean that we have to seek out and find the affiliates we want to front, which requires much more work. At the time, our affiliate manager (me) is also the copywriter (..me). So, for now, I have been discussing pricing with any affiliate that asks us about listings. I am more a creative person than I am a salesperson, so I find this task a bit difficult due to my personal integrity. Any advice on these negotiations? They all want to hear our numbers and I give them the peripherals. I just wish they would tell me

As for reviews, we have already written a lot of them before we even made affiliate deals. We just needed content and would make deals along the way. But I have been contacted by affiliates who want to be fronted on our site, and I have written at least one of those reviews because I considered it to be a high-quality casino.

How do you consider what is a good quality casino and what is not? Is Askgamblers.com a valid benchmark?

Thank you for your excellent answers so far.

IMO what constitutes a good casino is a combination of this things ordered by importance:

• User experience. Not only talking about the design but how client support works, how fast/slow is the brand to pay, which game providers they use, etc.
• RS deal and as a whole how trustworthy their affiliates program is (fees and hidden fees included). How long do you have to wait for an honest answer from aff manager.
• Which license they use to provide their service.
• How well know they are / or how much they invested in brand awareness (aka. how big the existing user base of the casino is already, which will make more of less difficult to provide new quality users).

 

[Jay Hooks]

I appreciate the answers. I am complete newbie to this affiliate stuff. I was hired to be a content creator, but in a startup you gotta do what nobody is doing, I guess.

So some casinos are open to do a flat fee for any top listings etc. But we would like to have a deal in addition to that, like RS or CPA.

What are your guys takes on these paths of income, and what demands can I make and what will they require from us? We haven't done this yet (rent out top listings) and so we have no benchmark numbers.

Would love some more viewpoints on how to proceed here.

Jay

 

[JohnSmithelJackson]

If you have like a few hundreds of organic visitors per day, you could charge like 500$ at least.