Gambling Affiliate Help

This section provides more in depth comments that the affiliate tips. The subjects discussed below will affect how much you earn from your sites.

COOKIES

Find out about how the casino or sportsbook uses cookies. Some place a cookie on the potential player’s computer that expires after 30 days. That’s great if the player clicks through your site, thinks about it, then signs up a couple of weeks later. But it’s bad news if there is already a cookie from another affiliate site on their computer already.

Ever wondered why some portals have a pop up that shows the whole casino site rather than just a banner? It is their way of getting the cookie on to the visitor’s computer. A more malicious method is to use a small dot (eg 2×2 pixels) that is virtually invisible to the visitor and has the same effect as the previous method.

Don’t deal with sites that place cookies for longer than, say a few days. Many were pressured to stop using them altogether which eliminates the effectiveness of the scenario outlined above.

REGULAR STATISTICS

Only work with programs that provide online statistics or weekly/monthly updates by email. Everyone needs feedback on their performance and if you don’t know whether you are getting sign ups you can’t assess how your placements and promotions are doing.

NEGATIVE BALANCES CARRIED FORWARD

In the early days, any negative balances has to be offset in the following months before a payment would be made. If you happened to get a winner then it wasn’t much of an incentive to keep promoting the casino or sportsbook. People would stop promoting, or just open up a new affiliate account and start from scratch.

Eventually many changed their terms and conditions to say that negative balances wouldn’t be carried forward and if you finished the month in negative then you start the next month at zero. Some don’t openly state it but if you contact them and say you will start promoting their site again if they wipe the negative balance they sometimes oblige. worth a try.

MINIMUMS

Read the terms and conditions in realtion to the minimums you must achieve. Often there are minimum deposit amounts for gross programs, others have minimum number of player conditions and some have both. There’s also minimum payment amounts which usually range from $25 to $500. The top end is just ridiculous and should be negotiated down. A good place to start is the commission you would receive if the player deposits and loses $1,000. For example, at 35% the minimum is $350, assuming no other deductions. Even better is to use $500 rather than $1000 as the benchmark.

RECEIVING PAYMENTS

As written elsewhere, get a NeTeller or similar account as this is often the most effective and cheapest way to get your payments. If bank wires are free this is also good. Look out for those that want to charge, as that $50 minimum payment might suddenly be $30.

Another trap is when the money is deposited into a player account and there is a different set of charges for getting your money, unless you use it to have a flutter yourself. This can also work in your favour if there is a NeTeller or similar option for player accounts but not for affiliate accounts.

SCUMWARE OR SPYWARE

You know those free applications such as Gator and Kazaa that help you do things with only the minor inconvenience of monitoring the sites you visit and similar? Well they are also responsible for stealing your traffic and potential income. These products exist by earning advertising revenue from the likes of caisnos and sportsbooks so when a visitor click on a link to a casino from your site, it may pop up another casino link as well, without your affiliate information.

Many casinos and sportsbook operators have changed their policy and no longer purchase traffic this way. Others have committed to letting current campaigns run, but not renewing them, Some are going to continue screwing their affiliates this way.

The best way to clear your computer of known scumware and spyware is with a free tool called Ad-aware. Get further details from the Affiliate Resources page.

BANKING

If you are not based in the US, or have a US dollar bank account, find a bank that accepts foreign currency checks with minimal negotiation fees. Consider increasing your minimum payment amounts if you are charged a lot for banking them. Why give the banks more money than you have to give them. There are a few programs that will pay you in a number of currencies and there are increasing sites that will pay in euros if necessary.

MULTIPLE CASINOS AND SPORTSBOOKS

Sometimes a company will have more than one site. If so, see if one affiliate account covers all their sites. The benefits are less statistics to monitor, easier to reach the minimums and less checks to bank.