Affiliates!!! The Good!!! The Bad And The Ugly

[Consultant]

I have not much experience as an affiliate, but I think a good affiliate is like a good business man (or woman):

1. Action oriented
The best 1 word business plan: Improve. Many people have ideas and visions that could make them rich. Nobody has ever planned not to be a succes. The key is to get going. A good day is one where you realized part of the plan. You should always be selling, not strategizing about selling.

2. Make meaning
Profit should be an incentive, a desired by-product, but never your guideline. The goal of your business should be to make meaning. It's really quite easy: Solve a problem or make something good better or last longer.

3. Be unique and customer centric
Your goal should be to provide value to the customer (players) and be unique in doing so. There is no point in ranking casino's by the color schemes of their homepages, nor is it useful - let alone profitable - to clone a leader.

Many internet concepts are network related. Only one affiliate can dominate every niche. It offers zero value to start a small copycat network of an existing big network (e.g. casinomeister forums), and it's pointless to clone an unsuccesful network.

4. Polarize but never compromise your integrity
Good brands have lovers and haters. Your goal should be to ignite passion. Some people love Ryanair, others hate it. Some people love the Virgin brand, others think Richard Branson is overrated. You can give countless examples. What they all have in common is that people talk about them.

There really is no such thing as bad PR, as long as it's reversable. If people think your site is ugly or stupid, no problem, let them and learn from it. Certainly don't block those people! Engage with them, but keep 80/20 in mind. What you should avoid at all cost, though, is losing your integrity. If you commit fraud, send spam or operate a scam operation, people will find out and you lose your reputation forever. Those things are irreversable.

5. Incorporate and put the company first
If you are serious about business, you should incorporate. Get a job on the side if needed to pay for those costs. Making it all more official gives your trading partners confidence and forces you to work harder and be more professional. You might get stuck with higher costs if your business doesn't go well, but burning your own ships is a good way to make you fight harder. If you feel incorporating is overkill, maybe you should question how serious you are about this entire affiliate thing.

Also, put the company first. You are an entrepreneur, not a CEO. Your goal should be to build a great business, to realize the business vision, not to remain 100% owner. Few people, if any, manage to become billionaires without sharing equity and surrounding themselves with a great team. Equity is like shit. If you pile it all up, it starts to stink. If you spread it around, nice things start to grow.

6. World domination in theory, niche by niche in practice
Rome wasn't build in one day. Microsoft didn't start out as the operating system giant, and Google didn't have dozens of features from day one.
As soon as you know what you want to realize and how this is unique and value adding, you should start splitting up the master plan in short term goals. Determine milestones and make assumptions. This should lead to clear tasks. Test and learn. Rinse and repeat.

7. Understaff, but outsource
You are constantly selling by now, and the next part of the master plan is always around the corner. Avoid the temptation to overstaff. You should remain agile. Comfort is the enemy of creativity. If you don't know how to fill your day, something is wrong. Your organisation should remain agile. So keep on going, but outsource selectively. Succesful people often demonstrate the ability to be maniacal in what they do best, and outsource all the rest to reputable people. Pay for value if you outsource. Building a business is a group effort. The quality of your business depends more on the quality of the weakest link than on the greatness of the best man behind it.

One area where you should not understaff is customer service. Your clients (players) put the food on your table, so there is no excuse not be available to them. You can outsource in fractions of FTEs using sites such as oDesk.com, elance.com, guru.com and rentacoder.com.

8. Have fun doing it!
Life is a marathon, not a sprint. Building a semantic search engine might be a billion dollar opportunity, if you don't see yourself doing that, it's a zero dollar opportunity to you personally. Warren Buffet rightly says life is a snowball. Find a place you like with a lot of snow, find it early and let your little snow balls turn into an avalanche.

This is how I see being an affiliate, or doing business in general. In short, the key is to get going, make meaning, add unique value, ignite passion, incorporate, niche thyself, stay agile, work with the best and - most importantly - HAVE FUN!

I honestly believe that if you live life like this, you will also find yourself admired by your peers, loved by your friends and family, and without regret later on in life.

Now, please excuse, I have to get going!

 

[TOC]

OH MY...

I tried not to respond to this thread but it's SO SELF SERVING I had to jump in. Most of the senior posters here run portal casino's, yes the one with banner after banner trying to get you to click the link. And yes they make money if you lose. I know of NO affiliate program if your winning TONS of money, you the player that affiliate gets paid. I agree with several posters that there are good portal affiliates at this site but from my experience many of these webmasters attack white label casino's such as mine and we promote the same system. Even though our casino is supported by CM's accredited casino the attacks fly. Do I need proof, OK heres the link.

https://www.casinomeister.com/forums/threads/need-advertising-spots.32427/

So, in short if you click a link or enter an affiliate website remember the the money is spread around. If you enter the casino directly, the casino gets it all. I do support affiliates but I don't like the portal vrs. white label, it's the same!

 

[dominique]

. And yes they make money if you lose. I know of NO affiliate program if your winning TONS of money, you the player that affiliate gets paid.

In many cases this is true, but for instance at Casino Rewards one is paid by wagering and win or lose is irrelevant (and they have a ton of casinos), and Slotland pays a percentage of deposit regardless of win or lose, and almost all programs have CPA which pays per player sent and win or lose is irrelevant.

And in those programs where the affiliate chooses revenue share and win or lose does impact revenues, it is still financially advisable for the affiliate to choose casinos with LOTS of winners. If you don't realize that happy players are the most important asset to an affiliate you are missing the point.

Re. white labels, I am not all that versed in them but there are many variations that demand different degrees of responsibilities from the person running them. There are those that are simply premade websites looking like a casino, but any and all things are handled by the issuing casino. In that case, the issuing casino is what needs to be trusted, and the affiliate is irrelevant to the player. Unless of course s/he engages in spamming or blackhat techniques to promote the place.

Others are full fledged licences and the person running them has huge responsibilities financially.

And I assume there are a lot of others operating in the area between those two extremes.

 

[lots0]

I tried not to respond to this thread but it's SO SELF SERVING I had to jump in. Most of the senior posters here run portal casino's, yes the one with banner after banner trying to get you to click the link.

That is insulting and just not true.

 

[lots0]

How would the affiliate make a living under a program like that Lots0? Or do you mean as a whole that the organization would not promote any casinos but yet the individual affiliate still would?

The affiliates would be members and run their business as normal. The Organization would not promote casinos or have any appearance of conflict of interest and only operate off of member dues... much like many professional organizations.

 

[RobWin]

The affiliates would be members and run their business as normal. The Organization would not promote casinos or have any appearance of conflict of interest and only operate off of member dues... much like many professional organizations.

That sounds like something that may be a worthwhile consideration then..

 

[TOC]

what ever

Join the crowd, sorry I look outside the box!

That is insulting and just not true.

 

[Casinomeister]

I tried not to respond to this thread but it's SO SELF SERVING I had to jump in. Most of the senior posters here run portal casino's, yes the one with banner after banner trying to get you to click the link. And yes they make money if you lose...

You are making assumptions since there are many ways to advertise casinos. Besides, this thread was started by a player trying to get some interesting responses - so it's not really self-serving. Yeah sure, many of the senior members and above become webmasters or affiliates. That seems to be the nature of the game. I'll bet you a beer that 90% of affiliates begin as players many of whom have been members here for years.

Join the crowd, sorry I look outside the box!

Whatever this is supposed to mean - I have no idea.

By the way, you should join the Webmeister user group - you'll have access to the Webmaster's section. Just let me know.

 

[BingoT]

I'll bet you a beer that 90% of affiliates begin as players many of whom have been members here for years.

I think your going to get that beer too CM
The old days of Planetluck & Starluck & Party Bingo & Party Poker The very first one's I did.

A great player at that started it too "Lauriejim"

 

[lots0]

That sounds like something that may be a worthwhile consideration then..

The response has been Luke Warm at best. I think most affiliates are kinda cynical when it comes to being organized.

There has never been a non-profit/non-aligned professional association of casino affiliates. But IMO it is just what we need...

 

[TOC]

CasinoMeister's reply

Your probably correct about the 90% being players before an affiliate, you've been around this biz a lot longer than me, I respect that so I won't take that challenge.

I also appreciate the invite to the webmasters section but it appears someone has stopped me from posting new threads on the CM site since the RTG Rocks thread, maybe recently, not sure.

>>TOC, you do not have permission to access this page. This could be due to one of several reasons:

Your user account may not have sufficient privileges to access this page. Are you trying to edit someone else's post, access administrative features or some other privileged system?
If you are trying to post, the administrator may have disabled your account, or it may be awaiting activation.<<


I thought that thread rocked and brought a bunch of posters out of the woodwork! Just my opinion. So in short hope there was no hard feelings but like I said I do like to look outside the box. Basically I like to look at things somewhat differently than normal assumptions inside the box and explore alternative rationalization outside the box. That sometimes bring on strong debate.

BTW - I'll drink a beer for you tonight, how about that? Cheers!!

 

[jetset]

The response has been Luke Warm at best. I think most affiliates are kinda cynical when it comes to being organized.

There has never been a non-profit/non-aligned professional association of casino affiliates. But IMO it is just what we need...

It's an interesting thought that could help bring affiliates together on a range of common purpose initiatives.

What would you consider to be the 5 main functions of such an organisation, Lots0, and the level of subscriptions?

 

[Casinomeister]

@ TOC - not being able to post new threads could have been from a couple of reasons - perhaps you were in the "less than zero" user group, or you were trying to post in a thread that has been closed

But you're out of the neg zone, and I'll add you to the Webmeister clan. There is a webmaster newsletter as well that you should subscribe to.
https://www.casinomeister.com/newsletters/

 

[lots0]

It's an interesting thought that could help bring affiliates together on a range of common purpose initiatives.

What would you consider to be the 5 main functions of such an organisation, Lots0, and the level of subscriptions?

Organizing groups and setting group goals are both way outside my comfort zone.

However, I'll bet you have some ideas about this...

 

[GamTrak]

Personally, I think the idea is viable and could be a possibility with the proper folks behind it with an organized plan.

The response has been Luke Warm at best. I think most affiliates are kinda cynical when it comes to being organized.

There has never been a non-profit/non-aligned professional association of casino affiliates. But IMO it is just what we need...

 

[dominique]

It is something I have been tossing around...

 

[Casinomeister]

It is something I have been tossing around...

And unfortunately, it's an idea that just won't manifest itself. If viable, it would have been done by now. We've had CAP, we've had different flavors of the GPWA. We have AGD, APWC, and a number of smaller webmaster get-togethers. If an organization is to be strong with dedicated staff, it will need to be well funded. So who is going to do the funding?? Members working on a strictly volunteer basis is fraught with complications and potential pitfalls. The aspect of this being a global enterprise is also seeped in problematic situations. If it was a plausible solution, it would have been done by now.

At the moment, this is about the best as we're going to see it. Too bad CAP is flaccid, but the GPWA seems to be well organized and connected, AGD seems to be monitoring terms, APWC is doing their webcasts...and <ahem> there is this place keeping tabs on such. I'm afraid this is about as good as it gets.

 

[lots0]

And unfortunately, it's an idea that just won't manifest itself. If viable, it would have been done by now. We've had CAP, we've had different flavors of the GPWA. We have AGD, APWC, and a number of smaller webmaster get-togethers. If an organization is to be strong with dedicated staff, it will need to be well funded. So who is going to do the funding?? Members working on a strictly volunteer basis is fraught with complications and potential pitfalls. The aspect of this being a global enterprise is also seeped in problematic situations. If it was a plausible solution, it would have been done by now.

At the moment, this is about the best as we're going to see it. Too bad CAP is flaccid, but the GPWA seems to be well organized and connected, AGD seems to be monitoring terms, APWC is doing their webcasts...and <ahem> there is this place keeping tabs on such. I'm afraid this is about as good as it gets.

The problem is that CAP was not just flaccid it was corrupt, the gpwa while not corrupt has an inherent conflict of interest between affiliates and casinos.

The APCW is owned by gpwa so it has the same conflict of interest problems that the gpwa has.

The AGD (from what I've been told) is run on volunteer basis and is in fact non-profit.

The funding would come like like all professional non-profit organizations from the members dues.

Bryan the problem has ALWAYS been that groups like CAP, gpwa and the APCW have a financial interest that creates a conflict of interest. These groups were NOT created or started to help affiliates, they were started to make the owners of the groups money.

We as a group NEED an organization that we can ALL trust, and that just does not exist right now.