Booting out the duffers!

[slotplayer]

As a new affiliate hearing these things is very discouraging, which programs do you promote? If establish guys like you are having trouble making money with a lot of these programs , how will new affiliates fair with them? And then you have those going rouge, and those going out of business and then there is google who is your worst nightmare. What is happening to this industry?

My guess is much of this has to do with world economies.

 

[Lloyd Apter]

A few interesting comments that I can answer. I won't quote because everyone in the thread is receiving the replies anyway.
Regarding the affiliate industry - like travel people are always interested in unbiased advice and travelers will use mega sites like trip advisor as well as focused sites like about a specific type of travel or place to visit in sometimes just one language. Of course the mega sites like the supermarkets take a big chunk of the business but like small food stores have been replaced by people looking for niche food such as organics there is always room for the creative small player.
Regarding which casinos to promote, their strengthens and weaknesses etc. :
Firstly, there are major differences between the international markets and especially Canada and Australia here and Europe. Europeans didn't like to download and it was always a big issue for the English market casinos ex UK casinos that we're all download. Players are attracted to different venues not unlike real casinos. The new online casinos like we have are born out of Europe and growing in international markets (still dominated by download to desktop software) specifically in the fast growing mobile space where they offer more games as they are multi vendor and don't have the download disadvantage on mobile. There are always new casinos coming into the market as well as ones dropping out - this isn't new.
So which casino to promote and which to boot
Firstly, it depends on the market you focus on and the niches of players you attract. Players first look for advice and then click to take in a general impression of the brands they are recommended to checkout - like or not like, then compare to see which is giving the best offer - shouldn't be too good because that shows that the casino may be desperate and untrustworthy and then if they decide to go for it they will look only at the performance of the site, the quality and friendliness of support and promos (yes segmented and personal is the way to go and is something we are also developing at the moment) and of course where they feel comfortable and lucky!

 

[Lloyd Apter]

One or two more points:

Firstly, while the welcome offer of the casino shouldn't be too generous it needs to be aggressive because money talks... And the other subject brought up re TV ads - a few points here. Firstly, it's extremely expensive for casinos and not half as effective as good affiliate traffic, especially because it's performance based but more important than that when a potential customer surfs for the casino after seeing an ad and they find a good link to an affiliate review that is great for affiliates too.

 

[casinonewbie]

One or two more points:

Firstly, while the welcome offer of the casino shouldn't be too generous it needs to be aggressive because money talks... And the other subject brought up re TV ads - a few points here. Firstly, it's extremely expensive for casinos and not half as effective as good affiliate traffic, especially because it's performance based but more important than that when a potential customer surfs for the casino after seeing an ad and they find a good link to an affiliate review that is great for affiliates too.

Yes Lloyd when you speak about costs of some programs that advertise in a big way i think about how much the likes of BGO spend on having Paris Hilton & Mini-me on the payroll, my rule of thumb is the programs that advertise to such excess like this is a good reason to not promote them as their is nothing left on the table for affiliates (we booted the BGO duffers out some time ago)

 

[Lloyd Apter]

I guess it depends a lot on how successful the relevant casinos marketing and advertising campaigns are. If they are doing well and getting a good ROI on their advertising and marketing spend it won't cause a cash flow problem that can negatively effect other activity. A good idea is of course ask other affiliates (here you need to know who to ask) and also to check the relevant casinos traffic stats using webmaster tools and then make a judgement call.

 

[Aeternus]

I have actually had good results with Guts and Mr Green with my sites targeting country specific traffic (not uk), so I guess it has a lot to do with what country you are targeting. Casino Cruise is not working for me at all in the countries I am targeting, but may work well with others.

Interesting read none the less, and valuable to know what programs to use with UK traffic.

 

[Lloyd Apter]

Hi Aeternus,
Please email or PM me your affiliate ID, username or email so I can check into this.

 

[Frank]

Success varies from site to site, depending on what type of traffic you pull, I noticed some programs mentioned on this thread as non performers yet for me one of those mentioned brings in huge amounts of depositors, to me pushing a brand is a sales process which requires closing the potential player throughout the content not just a banner link and offer deal.