There’s no doubt that the internet has opened up opportunities that simply didn’t exist before it. Whereas you would have had to live in a major city to build a growth startup before, these days, you can build one from rural Nebraska or a Pacific Island nation if you wish.
We’ve covered plenty of ways to make money with websites before on this site. Today, we’re going to take a closer look at making money as a gambling affiliate. What does it take? How much will you need to get started? What’s the earning potential? We’ll cover all of that and more here.
How Does the Gambling Affiliate Business Work?
This is a pure lead-generation business. Gambling affiliates aim to create content that online gamblers might be interested in and then promote casino bonuses and promotions. If players decide to take these bonuses, the affiliate gets a commission. Needless to say, online gambling is highly lucrative, so this is a highly competitive niche.
There are three main ways that gambling affiliates generate revenue.
● Rev Share
With this model, the affiliate makes a percentage of everything the player loses at the casino. The more players they send to the casino, the more they make. For example, an affiliate who sends 5 new depositing players to a casino might earn a 20% cut. However, an affiliate who sends 50 new players each month might earn a 40% cut. Rev share deals can be highly profitable, especially when an affiliate lands a high roller.
● CPA
This stands for cost per acquisition. In these cases, affiliates are played a flat fee per lead. For example, they might get paid $100 for every new depositing player. Some affiliates prefer this because it’s faster money, but it’s generally known that it’s less lucrative than rev share models.
● Advertising
High traffic websites can arrange their own media deals with large gambling site operators. For example, a website with 100,000 visitors a month could possibly sell ad banners for $10,000 per month or more. This cuts out all the risk associated with the other models and provides a steady, long-term source of revenue as typically only large operators with deep pockets can afford to buy these ads.
Some affiliates also run hybrid deals. They have a mixture of CPA, rev share, and media deals with different operators. This is a good way to go to diversify income and create multiple revenue streams for your gambling affiliate site.
How Much Can Gambling Affiliates Make?
It’s a big tent, and there are levels to the gambling affiliate game. The top affiliates in the industry rake in millions of dollars per month, while small operators running niche sites might make anything from a few hundred dollars to a few thousands. Everything in between those two extremes can also be earned.
The top gambling affiliates sites have sold for $15 million+. Generally, it’s expected that they sell for 30x monthly profits, but top sites with lots of growth ahead of them can sell for up to 50x monthly profits. That should give you an idea of how much you need to earn per month and how much you can exit for when the time is right.
How To Generate Traffic As An Online Gambling Affiliate
In regulated markets like the United Kingdom, you can buy clicks from Google and other search engines. It’s also possible to advertise on Facebook and other social media platforms with special permission. You’ll pay for every click, and for the top terms like “best online casinos”, expect to pay hundreds of dollars per click.
Most affiliates opt for SEO - search engine optimization. It’s an all-out-war to try to rank top of Google for the most lucrative terms. Doing so is a whole other topic for another day, but it’s a combination of having the best content, the most authoritative backlinks, and an SEO-optimized website with an awesome user experience.
To reach the levels of the top affiliates, you’ll need a budget of $100k or more. However, a quick browser on the gambling affiliate forums will reveal that some affiliates claim to have spent nothing other than the domain registration and hosting costs and routinely earn thousands of dollars per month. Others claim to have spent tens of thousands on SEO with weak results. This is clearly not a niche for beginners.
Getting Started As A Gambling Affiliate
If you’d like to dip your toes into the gambling affiliate industry, here are a few final tips.
● Select a domain with the keywords you want to rank for in it. This is a huge advantage from the outset. It’s worth paying premium prices for a domain like this.
● Expect to spend a year before you make any money. Google doesn’t like gambling sites and it takes time to earn its trust. Steadily add quality content, earn authoritative backlinks, and have patience.
● Find a few affiliate programs you can trust and stick with them. Make sure they’ve been around for a while and have a good reputation. If an affiliate program collapses, they take your players with them.
Good luck as a gambling affiliate. It’s a tough business, but our research shows that if done correctly, it’s one of the most profitable industries online.
