I feel like I'm getting screwed...

[nacco532]

So I've had a website open for around ~8 months now and have generated a total of 2,500 clicks from the following sportsbooks:

USA Customers are served these sportsbook banners:
5Dimes
Bovada

European/ROW are served these banners:
Bet365
JetBull
SeanieMac
SBOBet
SkyBet
WinAffiliates

I haven't had a single deposit. I've had a few signups but not a single deposit. My target audience is looking for sports betting tips so they are definitely betting, and I'm beginning to wonder if I'm purposely being screwed because I'm from the USA and our laws are hazy at best regarding profits from sportsbook advertisement. Can anyone recommend a solid/reliable sportsbook that I can trust? Perhaps one that I could be a sub-affiliate of you and you could make sure they don't shaft me/us?

 

[paulajardine]

I personally like Intertops because they seem to have good retention for me. I also like them because of the diversity (poker, casinos) they have. I don't want to post an affiliate link here of mine as I think affiliateguarddog should get the credit since it is his forum.

 

[nacco532]

Thanks for the recommendation. If affiliateguarddog wants to post a link here, I'll click through and try them out.

 

[paulajardine]

Thanks for the recommendation. If affiliateguarddog wants to post a link here, I'll click through and try them out.

Here is a link where you can sign up to intertops under Andy Intertops Affiliates Casino Affiliate Program Review

 

[nacco532]

Thanks, just registered a new account. Can you tell me what kind of conversion rates have you gotten with them and are they USA-friendly (PM if you're more comfortable)?

 

[Online18Casino]

I use Bovada on all my sites and do very well with them. I however only promote their poker room and casino, with nearly all the profits being from the casino side. From what I hear its much harder to get conversions promoting sports then casinos. If you feel something is wrong with your numbers.. Try a few test sign-ups to ensure your sign-ups are being tracked. I very much trust Bovada as much as you can trust an affiliate program, as they have never given me a reason not to. I've also heard good things about 5 dimes.

I have no idea what would be considered a good sign-up to deposit ratio for sportsbetting, but I can tell you for me (casinos) 1 deposit for every 6 sign-ups has been the average lately, with some programs being lower and others being a little higher. It will also depending on the programs you work with, country you target and much more.. But if you have only had a few sign ups, while your defiantly moving in the right direction, it doesn't necessarily mean your getting screwed.

 

[TheGooner]

You feel like you are getting screwed by EVERYONE?
It's unlikely that there is some sort of global conspiracy to pick on you nacco532 so it's got to be something else.


I work with both Bovada and Bet365, and find that both outfits convert quite well from registration to signup at about 35-45%, so I do NOT think that these two places are setting out to scam you.

Here are a few possible things to think about that might be causing problems.

1/ Inflated click count
I notice that you say 2,500 clicks but only a "few" signups. How many is a few?
Search engine bots will wander through your website and follow every link, including affiliate links, unless to disallow them through your robots.txt. file.

If you had a googlebot visiting once a week and going through your main pages, how many affiliate links would it hit? How many "clicks" are not real people? Depending on how often bots visit your site, you might have to accept that 10-20 clicks per day were not initiated by people at all.

Over the course of 8 months - that adds up to a lot of falsely counted clicks.

2/ Bad Geographic match
I can see that you are doing some sort of geo-routing serving different ads to different regions which is good. But have you checked all the geographic restrictions that some bookmakers have? eg, Bet365 don't accept Belgium, France, Turkey, Italy, Netherlands.

If you serve the wrong ad, or don't explain the restrictions in your review, then it will drive down numbers.

3/ Unprepared or undecided customer
All clicks are not equal. A click from a specific bookmaker review where you have explained benefits and bonuses is much more likely to succeed to registration stage than a click on a banner in a sidebar - because the customer in that case still probably wants to shop around.

==============

Remember that different websites will have different dynamics and statistics depending on the sort of traffic they obtain and the way they present information to customers. We have bookmaker reviews, but the majority of our traffic comes from related content (sports previews, betting news offers etc.).

Our ratio of Clicks -> Registrations -> Depositors is something like Clicks (3% Sports / 10% Casino) -> Registrations (45%) -> Deposits.

So our sports traffic clicks are less likely to signup than average, probably because we suffer a bit from point #3 above (we get clicks from sidebars from unprepared customers), but once they do signup ... we convert to deposits better.

===============

In summary, it's VERY unlikely that EVERYONE is cheating you. You have registered with some good programs.
But it is likely that your click count is inflated by "bots", and that your clicks are "undecided customers" ... thus reducing your signups.

So you got 2500 clicks ... but how many were customers ready to register?

I hope that helps ...

 

[AussieDave]

So I've had a website open for around ~8 months now and have generated a total of 2,500 clicks from the following sportsbooks

Gooner offers some excellent insight.

For argument sake taking the total 2,500 as real player "clicks" and spreading that total over 8 months, is 312.5 clicks p/m. Now subtracting the "bots" and other false clicks, that figure of CPM will be drastically reduced.

My suggestion is to reduce the number of books your promoting to the EU market. Hard to give anything but generic advice, cause I don't know your url. But given the thread and the post, I'm thinking your fairly new. Like I say to everyone, spend some time looking at your competitors. If you can offer something they're not, which will adds stickiness and people bookmarking your site, then it's a positive step forward.

 

[KasinoKing]

So I've had a website open for around ~8 months now and have generated a total of 2,500 clicks from the following sportsbooks:

USA Customers are served these sportsbook banners:
5Dimes
Bovada

European/ROW are served these banners:
Bet365
JetBull
SeanieMac
SBOBet
SkyBet
WinAffiliates

I only promote casinos - not sports books, and I don't work with all those you've mentioned -but I would like to give you little bit of advice about those I do work with:

5Dimes: They wont pay you 1c until you get 5 depositing players - no matter how much they owe you.
I've been promoting them 2 years (stupid me didn't see the quota when I signed up) - and I only have 2 depositors.
My advice - this group is for BIG affiliates only.

Bet365: They have NCO (Negative Carry Over) - one big winner could leave you in the red for YEARS. (Been there - got the T-shirt)
As above: Only OK for BIG affiliates. Small or start-up affiliates should NEVER work with NCO IMO.
(Others you list might have NCO too - definitely worth checking)

SkyBet: Never had any problems working with them - I trust them 100%. Not sure if they have NCO on sports though...?

KK

 

[paulajardine]

I only promote casinos - not sports books, and I don't work with all those you've mentioned -but I would like to give you little bit of advice about those I do work with:

5Dimes: They wont pay you 1c until you get 5 depositing players - no matter how much they owe you.
I've been promoting them 2 years (stupid me didn't see the quota when I signed up) - and I only have 2 depositors.
My advice - this group is for BIG affiliates only.

Bet365: They have NCO (Negative Carry Over) - one big winner could leave you in the red for YEARS. (Been there - got the T-shirt)
As above: Only OK for BIG affiliates. Small or start-up affiliates should NEVER work with NCO IMO.
(Others you list might have NCO too - definitely worth checking)

SkyBet: Never had any problems working with them - I trust them 100%. Not sure if they have NCO on sports though...?

KK

Good info to know about 5dimes. I did not know about their quota, but it's definitely good info to know. Thanks for sharing that KK

 

[nacco532]

Thanks for the post, TheGooner (you wouldn't happen to own GoonersGuide?). You make a fair point, but from 2500 clicks and no deposits you can see why I'd be tearing my hair out for an explanation. This gives plenty to think about, maybe it's time to set up a sportsbook review page to better explain the benefits/bonuses of each book. That will probably improve conversion based on your points 2 and 3.

@Bet4You
The traffic has grown over the last 3 months so most of the traffic/clicks are split over a smaller time period.

@KasinoKing
Thanks for the advice regarding Bet365 and 5Dimes (I had been pushing Bet365 pretty hard), will adjust the promotions accordingly

 

[tryme1]

One other point on your choice of sportsbooks - SkyBet are excellent, but they are very, very limited in terms of which countries they accept players from.

Basically, I would only push them to UK and Irish punters, though I believe they do accept registrations from Finland and a couple of other places.

Also, brand recognition is an important part of converting sports betting customers. I'm in the UK and have never heard of SeanieMac, for example.

Research which bookmakers are known in which countries and you should see that registration > depositors ratio increase.

 

[AussieDave]

@nacco532 - It's hard to give personalized feedback without the URL. Adding it will help members help you figure out why there are no depositing players

 

[bonustreak]

That is correct he does own GoonersGuide and has been around for years & years.. I hope things turn around for you! I also work with Intertops but more for the casino so I cannot compare them on the sportsbook. Bet365 is really good I give them a great recommendation!

 

[AussieDave]

If this is you, then maybe that's why things are working against you: blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/members/643417-nacco532.html

just sayin

 

[TheGooner]

Thanks for the post, TheGooner (you wouldn't happen to own GoonersGuide?).

Yes - that's me. If I ever find where to actually EDIT my profit here then I'll update it.
But I only seem to be able to view it at the moment.

You make a fair point, but from 2500 clicks and no deposits you can see why I'd be tearing my hair out for an explanation.

I certainly understand Nacco532 - and that's why I replied. I have / had a similar issue with a bookmaker that is for Australian players only (well they accept international players that provide a certified / notarized copy of ID but no-one is going to do that.)

Over the course of 1 year, I had delivered 650,000 impressions for 2260 clicks, 17 signups, 8 depositors and ZERO profits over a year. Let's just say that this performance was very underwhelming and I could not believe that everything was reporting correctly, and that I'd let it go on so long.

Then I did a "country report" on the clicks, and found that just 190 (8%) were from Australian IPs - EIGHT PERCENT! Suddenly it was clear that this was not a problem at the program end - I was sending bad traffic. I had not restricted bots (forgotten), I had not correctly filtered the ad display in some cases.

If I allow for Google.com.au bots wandering over my site for a year (150 clicks?) then my 190 australian clicks might be as little as 30 or 40 REAL Australian players, and then the numbers of 17 signups and 8 depositors suddenly looks very good ... although the ZERO profits is not (but that's another problem).

It always pays to investigate AMAZING numbers, because with a little bit of research you usually do find a good explanation.

 

[TheGooner]

* Of course I meant if I can find where to EDIT MY PROFILE then I'll update it (not my profit) ...

 

[edgarf76]

Gooner i think you need five posts here to get into the edit profile. It is on the top left, my profile/settings/website

@nacco - I have the same issues with tons of click throughs. Whenever I get frustrated I look at the jetpack plugin to see how much of my traffic is coming from my target key phrases.

If you promote football and your keyword is bet on football but you are getting hits from "week 11 links pro football" or something like that, it most likely is not going to monetize. I get a lot more hits from weird key phrases than my targets.

This is why IMO Alexa rankings are not the best tell. Since I have been getting a lot of traffic my alexa ranking is very good.The truth is my best website gets tons of traffic but monetizes on very little of the traffic.

It takes a long time to really get things rolling, I see you mentioned 5Dimes, they are a good company. They are best for medium to large affiliates IMO, but they do state that that you need 5 funded accounts.

Don't beat yourself up about it, this is a learning process. Learn from you mistakes, next affiliate program you sign up for print and read the TOS over and over. Ask people in forums about their experiance with the program. Good luck with your sites!

 

[AussieDave]

This is why IMO Alexa rankings are not the best tell.

Traffic figures generated by Alexa are not 100% Kosher.
I keep my plugins down to the barest min (super quick load times), so I don't use jetpack either. Instead use Google analytics, combined with GWT.

This gives me everything I need.

The weird searches, the longer your site is around, your long tail keyword phrases will increase. These are super targeted searches. While they may only produce 1 or 2 searches each per month, it's the sheer volume of these "long tails", which can and likely will produce the real interest and help increase depositing punters.