gambling affiliation

Ins and Outs of Gambling Affiliation

Almost every online casino works with so called affiliates and in most cases it’s the most important traffic source for new players. Gambling affiliates are private individuals and companies referring players to online casinos. But how does this form of online marketing work? We did our research into this growing market less known to most casino players, and will provide you with all the Ins and Outs of the multi-million market.

The Basics – What is Gambling affiliation?

This website is the perfect example of an affiliate website. For every player OnlineCasino1.com refers to an online casino there’s a potential profit for us. Once you click on a banner or text link via this website a cookie is placed on your device, giving the online casino the ability to track player accounts created back to the source of origin. There are several places to advertise:

  • Online Gambling Portals (this website is a perfect example)
  • Mailers – Fortunately the amount of Spam reduced with GDPR
  • Google Ads / Facebook / Twitter

Is this new for you? Surprise your favourite casinos with a visit and scroll down to the footer of the website. There’s a high probability you will find a text link referring to “Webmasters” or “Affiliates”. Below you can find a perfect example of an affiliate banner as can be seen on OnlineCasino1.com – hover over the banner to assess the url, it’s not the usual URL but a dedicated link for affiliates to track website visitors.

Play at Fun Casino

Payment structures for Affiliates

Usually the rule of thumb is that bigger the affiliate is, the higher the reward will be. Starting off with one website? There are many so-called super-affiliates that have good deals in place with loads of online casinos giving both affiliates and casinos an advantage. Online casinos have one individual or company to make deals with and affiliates can start immediately with a good deal even while volume is lacking. Logically the Super-affiliate will take a small percentage for being the middle-man. The most common deals for Gambling Affiliates can be defined by 3 reward structures in the industry.

Revenue Share: Reward in the form of a percentage of total player losses

The most used form of rewarding affiliates is Revenue Share – this is attractive for both affiliates and online casinos due to sharing of risk. Once a player wins both the affiliate and the online casino will lose out and vice versa. Revenue share deals are mostly offered for lifetime and the percentage given is largely depending on the size of the affiliate (amount of new depositing customers per month) and the deal made beforehand. Only in rare occasions affiliates will accept the standard revenue share deal given by online casinos. This form of rewarding affiliates is the best pick if you have trust in the brand you will promote for a longer period.

revenue share example
Flat30 – Rate of 30% given by Energy Casino over Net Revenue. Flat = Fixed, some programs also work with Dynamic percentages based on NDCs or Net Revenue generated.

When negotiating a fair deal check all elements. What costs do casinos calculate from their Gross Gaming? Is there a minimum number of players to send? Is there a Big Winner Policy? Does the casino have No Negative Carry-over? Those are important questions to ask before giving any exposure to an online casino brand. Energy Casino gives a very bad deal compared to industry averages in the example above a – as indication, always aim for 40% or more.

CPA: Fixed reward per new depositing player (also: NDC)

CPA (Cost per Acquisition) is the best pick if you want to be sure to make a fixed amount per player. In rare occasions casinos will also pay per lead (sign-up without deposit). The risk is taken by casinos as they cannot know the player value beforehand. For this reason, CPA is mostly tested on a small batch of casino players. Once the quality of traffic is determined, the CPA deal will either be stopped or continued. Bonus forums and Free Money websites often pick CPA due to the low quality of players. For normal website like onlinecasino1.com you can expect better CPA deals for exposure, one single depositing player represents between 200 and 450 EUR CPA.

Hybrid Deal: Mixture of fixed CPA amount and a Revenue Share percentage

This is a smart pick to create a healthy balance between the risk of Revenue Share and the Security given by a CPA. There’s also a significant amount of large online casino portals asking for placement fees and absurd Hybrid deals. We have put our hands on an offer forwarded to affiliate managers by a stock-exchange listed company from Sweden:

catena absurd

To demonstrate this crazy offer:

  • 2500 GBP Listing fee
  • 120 GBP CPA
  • Revenue Share (most likely about 40%)

Basically, they state that the average NDC deposits 300 GBP on average and the CPA is 120. This indicates that they already state their selves that it’s not possible to make any profit on their deal. Those kind of deals makes affiliate shaving the norm which is bad news for every loyal affiliate – without shaving normal operating casinos will have no profits but make losses on this deal.

The Darker sides of Affiliate Marketing

Shaving in online marketing

Unfortunately, you cannot trust everybody in the world of business. Shaving of income happens also with marketing online casinos. As an affiliate, there’s hardly any control over your players. How do you know if a casino doesn’t delete them from your account? Did the casino really track all players correctly? Those are questions in the mind of every affiliate. We can tell for a fact that shaving happens, maybe not on purpose, at every single casino. For that reason, it’s important to work with companies that can be trusted.

Affiliate Fraud – Casinos need to be Wary with CPA deals

CPA is the biggest risk for online casinos. Imagine I bring a group of friends to an online casino providing them all with 10 EUR or equivalent to deposit and play. If the CPA deal is larger than 10 EUR, it’s a guaranteed profit for the affiliate. For this reason, casinos need to be careful when giving out CPA deals and need to cross check on a regular base with the security department. If all players just deposit 10 EUR with one specific payment method, it could lead to a fraud investigation – basically checking patterns. Affiliate managers have groups to cross check affiliates on Skype and Facebook.

facebook affiliate group

How to become an Igaming Affiliate?

Do you like online casino games, are you very determined and do you have a passion for writing? Being an affiliate can be very rewarding but there’s loads of guidance needed to be successful as it’s a competitive market. What affiliate programs are on the market and how do you know to select the right casinos? Start with visiting one of the bigger I-Gaming conferences held on a yearly base in Macau, London, Amsterdam and Las Vegas and talk with the market leaders in person. It’s becoming increasingly more difficult to get a substantial market share in any country so if this is your dream – act quick, build up knowledge and it can be highly rewarding if you focus on the correct niche markets.

We can give you a kickstart!

Send us an email via our contact form to get in touch with us today indicating that you seek help to become an online casino affiliate. We can offer you a text writing job showing the Ins and Outs of affiliation generating key-information for your own start-up! As the work consists of many topics you will familiarise yourself quickly with everything an affiliate website has to offer.


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