iGaming Affiliate Marketing: How to Find Affiliate Partners to iGaming Business?

 

For a business in any sector (and the modern online gambling industry is no exception), staying put spells stagnation, lagging behind the competitors, and eventual extinction. In order to thrive and outstrip your rivals, you have to expand your sway by targeting and involving ever new customer strata. iGaming ventures miss no opportunities to make their presence on the market known to as broad audiences as possible, hoping to find as yet untapped consumer pool.
The gamut of promotion instruments and techniques in the Internet-driven business world of the 21st century is extremely wide. Aggressive advertising, robust presence in social networks, holding offline events, tailoring your activities to fit the latest trends in the niche, leveraging the best SEO practices – all of these are jigsaw puzzle pieces that form a comprehensive picture of marketing strategy. Its overarching aim is to promote an online casino of yours, reaching out to the maximum number of gamblers.
Today, the biggest and most forward-looking igaming sites launch or at least start thinking about affiliate gambling program . Why? They choose the affiliate system because, among the plethora of promotion methods employed in the industry, the igaming affiliate marketing channel is one of the most effective ones in terms of ROI.
 

What is the Meaning of Affiliate iGaming?

Affiliate partners are people and organizations who participate in online casino affiliate programs honed to bring more traffic to your gambling site in exchange for a revenue share. To do this, an igaming affiliate places banners or links on their own website driving their online casino affiliates’ referral traffic.
Gambling affiliates approach the traffic-driving task in various ways. Alongside the mentioned tactics, they may utilize a direct CTA (like urging to register in a certain online casino), provide information on casino rankings, publish iGaming guides, share the nitty-gritty of online gambling, etc.
How are such third-party activities supposed to attract the relevant audience and why are gambling affiliate sites likely to have credibility among the gambling community? Having considerable experience in the realm of building gambling sites , we at Multi-Programming Solutions are sure that affiliate success is attained through the choice of appropriate igaming affiliate operators.
 

Who are the Best Online Gambling Affiliates?

Who would you trust when you want to know more about a product or a service? Certainly, those who have been regular consumers of the said product/service for a long time and know all nuts and bolts of the sphere in question.
So while choosing the most suitable candidate for an affiliate who is likely to bring high conversion rates, think popular gamblers or poker players. They may be well-known streamers, bloggers, or vloggers with a significant number of subscribers who are active in Twitch, YouTube Live, TikTok, LinkedIn, or any other media that are frequented by the relevant public. Their popularity makes them heavy-weight influencers in the sphere whose opinion is held in great esteem and whose pieces of advice are readily followed.
Another viable option of affiliate marketing for online casinos is to enlist a person who is well-versed in the other side of the story – the operation of igaming ventures. Being an expert in how the system works is a valuable asset that is sure to foster trust among gamblers at large.
Resellers and re-publishers are also effective igaming promoters. Since the B2B sphere is the one with an extensive offering, such platforms can augment your audience tremendously.
Specialized networks and portals are an excellent source to address, searching for online gambling affiliates because they focus on the respective niche and know everyone and everything in it, which makes them the ultimate point of reference and trust among the punters.
 

Top iGaming Affiliate Networks to Choose from in 2021

All affiliate networks can be categorized into B2B and B2C platforms. Let’s have a closer look at each type.

1. B2B Affiliate Platforms 

The chief purpose of these portals is to serve as a meeting venue for operators and affiliates to get to know each other. To give you access to their databank, you will have to either pay some fixed amount or display your brand in their directories.

• GPWA. Celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, the Gambling Portal Webmasters Association facilitates affiliate cooperation among 15,000 industry stakeholders. The latter can choose between a free or a paid program and get a subscription to two editions and access to discussion forums. Once you opt for the paid plan, the GPWA website and brands extend to you its promotional opportunities.
• AffPapa. This is a directory site where gambling operators pay €700 for the access to affiliate partner database (who subscribe for free). Several search tools and filters can help both to find each other in accordance with the cooperation model preferences.
• Affiliate Guard Dog. This trailblazer in B2B affiliate marketing uses an entire range of valid metrics to award certificates that can make sure you deal with a reliable partner. Both free and paid options are available to participants.

2. B2C Affiliate Platforms

These are more numerous and are honed for sports betting or online gambling site promotion, typically taking moderate commissions for their services. The most popular among the online casino-related ones are: 

• AskGamblers. This platform is a proud winner of multiple awards in the industry with over a decade of history behind them and close on 80,000-strong community. It furnishes opinions and ratings not only by fellow gamblers but by experts as well (both the site crew and outside buffs). You can easily promote your igaming business leveraging the forum and the loyalty program launched by the site.
• Bojoko. It serves as a free virtual venue for avid igaming fans to meet and share their gambling experience. Besides, it contains a roster of licensed gambling sites from which punters can choose any to their liking after using smart sorting tools and reading user reviews.
• Casino Horse. Its team of seasoned niche developers, editors, and writers set up an excellent source of unbiased information on igaming. Visitors can employ filters to choose the online casino sites that will suit them to a tee.
• SlotsCalendar. This resource aims to get a hands-on UX in igaming and tell prospective gamblers what it feels like. It monitors the web to detect new games being released, gets a demo version, and checks out how it works. Then it publishes slews of details on the best ways to play it, unlocking bonus features, jackpot options, etc. A separate listicle section updates the reader on the vendor, volatility, bet level, reel setup, and other facts related to the site in question, which turns it into a second-to-none promotion opportunity.
• Affiliate Future. It is a platform that features a multitude of tools to be used as a low-risk advertising environment for igaming vendors. The special bonuses of the site are ad monitoring and sales performance tracking options made available via its dashboard.

Also read: How to start an online gambling business
 

Why is Affiliate Marketing Effective?

Affiliate marketing has unquestionable plus points that make this way of igaming ventures promotion much more effective than other channels online casinos use.

1. Reputation Bolstering

The high authority of affiliates translates into rising the gambling site’s repute and credibility among the public in the industry. As a result, brand awareness and recognition receive a powerful boost.

2. Payment for the Outcome

When you place advertising on social media or hold a presentation of your brand, you can never be sure that these would have the expected effect. Here, the money that gambling affiliates earn is well spent since vendors pay them based on their performance. This cost per action (CPA) model presupposes paying the affiliates for registration or (more often) participation in gambling of every new site visitor. No conversion – no payment.

3. Measurable Performance

With other promotion activities, you can only guess how effective they are. Affiliate marketing mechanisms enable the precise calculation of new punters who gambled at your site and the amount you earned from it. Moreover, the specialized igaming affiliate software module provides an opportunity to track the performance of different partners and see which of them are doing their job better.
 

How to Find Affiliates?

There are two principal approaches to finding affiliate partners for your online casino – inbound and outbound. 
The first is simpler: you launch an affiliate program on your site and wait for candidates to come. This tactic greatly depends on the landing page you will have on your site to attract prospective affiliates. Go Gamble Developers’ team of professional developers recommends including the following information in it:

• Commission size;
• Payment terms (how and when it is disbursed);
• Duration of cooperation period;
• Limitations (prohibited traffic sources, violations, etc.);
• Promotion guidelines (logo employment, brand message, etc.).

And remember to place a link to the affiliate program landing in the conspicuous place on your main page for all and sundry to see. 
Outbound methods require more dispatch and verve since you have to try a number of schemes to reach out to affiliates.

• Word of mouth. Start with people in your immediate environment. If you have been in this business for quite a time, your network of acquaintances and email contact list are likely to be quite large. Leveraging the grapevine, you may find what you need without having to search far.
• Current customers. Alongside your colleagues, friends, and relatives, there is one more group that knows a thing or two about the industry – your existing clients. Send out volleys of emails inviting them to become affiliates or at least to refer people who will be willing to participate.
• Influencers. Finding them isn’t that hard. Apply Google search with your chief keywords and you will get a list of bloggers and info sites that don’t actually offer similar services but rather write about them. The odds are that they will be interested in cooperation (although at a higher commission, as a rule). 
• Affiliate networks. This is a specialized venue for such contacts, so potential affiliates hang around such sites and are open to pitches.
• iGaming forums. This is another virtual place with a narrow specialization where your target audience resides. 
• Social media marketing. In the epoch when people lead at least two parallel lives (one in the physical world and the other(s) in the virtual ecosystem of social networks), neglecting this domain is a felony. You should find gambling-related Facebook groups and address their administrators or look for users of other social media discussing igaming.
• Online ads. Since your casino is an online venture, you should focus on internet-powered media to build rapport with prospective affiliates. 
• Printed media. Although paper publications are quickly losing battle with digital ones, advertising via some niche magazines and newspapers can still be a viable option in the affiliate hunt.
• Offline events. Various get-togethers and exhibitions related to online gambling are an excellent chance to meet potential affiliates face-to-face and persuade them to partake in your partnership program.

Once you managed to get someone interested, make sure you provide them with tools for effective marketing endeavors (real-time statistics, analytics, etc.), institute a transparent and problem-free payment procedure, run a system of bonuses, cash backs, and loyalty programs, and furnish 24/7 online support. You should approach each of them individually, learn about the type of cooperation models and payment options they are familiar with, and select a partnership mode that will be comfortable for both sides. In this way, you will nurture your affiliates and obtain the best possible outcome to the mutual benefit.
 

To Sum It up