Online Gaming and Affiliate Marketing. What The….?!
Come on guys you have to do better than this. Online gaming is a huge global multi billion dollar enterprise, right? So why do most online gaming affiliate programs suck big time?
Couple of obvious examples:
William Hill
One of the biggest high street bookmakers in the UK. A huge business that has been around since 1934. So why oh why do they have the worst backend system I have ever seen? If you are a Will Hill affiliate then chances are you have had to use it at https://bas.willhill.com/login.aspx. Words fail me to be honest on this one. The stats just don’t make sense, and I can’t perform basic functions like checking how many new players have signed up over a certain period of time. The backend is also full of terminology that just doesn’t make sense, no matter how I try to interpret it. To be honest I have all but given up on Will Hill which is a real shame as they are by far one of the biggest brands in the UK. Why is that not reflected in their affiliate programs?
Ladbrokes
Again, just as big a brand and a business as Will Hill…and just as crap an affiliate program. Where to start? Ok, I have to have separate logins for Poker, Sports Betting and Casinos. Yes 3 logins and 3 passwords. And are sales cross tracked? No. To be honest this is just disgusting. Especially as most of the other gaming affiliate programs track sales across platforms. So if a player who signs up via your poker site decides to play the casino then you get the commission. Not with Ladbrokes though, like I say, an absolute disgrace, especially as I earn a very healthy commission from players who do this on other platforms.
Some other things that really annoy me about being an affiliate promoting include:
Dollars. You operate an affiliate program in the UK in £UK pounds sterling. So why display my stats and payment in $US????
Neteller. Why can’t you just pay my hard earned commissions into my bank? I don’t want to have to open a Neteller account to receive payment.
Invoices. Don’t make me have to create 3 separate invoices for Sports Betting, Casino and Poker and expect me to mail them to 3 different parts of the world.
Is it just me or does affiliate marketing for online gaming have to be this hard?
What I’m listening to right now: Macy Gray - “Big”
Thursday, April 26th, 2007 at 11:36 pm and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Welcome to my blog. My name is Kieron Donoghue and I run UK Offer Media Ltd. I thought it would be fun to post a daily (well hopefully daily) blog, writing about my experiences in Internet Marketing and more specifically Affiliate Marketing. I'll include some personal stuff too, probably about my other passions, music and cars. Please feel free to post your comments and thoughts too.
April 27th, 2007 at 11:50 am
Hi Keiron,
I think perhaps for the best interface and access to stats you need to sign up with the BIG online gaming co.’s that used to focus on the US market.
Partygaming, 888 etc. This is where you’d prob find the most aggressive programs and cpa deals.
cheers,
April 27th, 2007 at 11:50 am
Great post - William Hill is dreadful, back in January I emailed them as I’m getting lots of traffic for the term William Hill Bingo. I got nothing decent to link out too, no Bingo creatives or way of dropping traffic to the actual Bingo front page. There’s a few hundred quid gone begging for me and traffic for them - I linked out to Ladbrokes instead as a result.
Ladbrokes isn’t too bad, but I only do Bingo so I don’t have those issues. I just got my first cheque from them without invoicing and at least they have specific Bingo creatives.
The affiliate stuff that really annoys me in the gaming arena is the Globalcom interface - it’s dreadful, you can only see 90 days of stats and I’m yet to see any money via one of the sites, despite having close on a grand of commissions at the one. Naming no names…
But, worst of all. Several of my best programmes only update my earnings once a month, so, I spend a months worth of PPC money fairly blindly with no way of monitoring all those lovely little things we like to look at. Fortunately the programmes are lucrative enough that it’s not an issue, but it does really cheese me off.
April 27th, 2007 at 11:58 am
Anonymous, the problem is I want to promote UK gaming merchants in £UK pounds. I agree that the US have some great networks but surely the UK can catch up?? I never thought gaming was so backward in this country.
April 27th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
Kieron,
Sure, agreed. The UK is still quite behind the US.
I remember the good ‘ole days in the US when almost everyone you knew was promoting online poker…friends, family, inserts in poker books..it was crzy!
Hopefully in time the UK will catch up. I have been hearing underground murmurings of quite a few BIG US affiliates slowly pulling more and more UK traffic.
April 27th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
Completely agree Kieron, I have given up with those two mentioned a long time ago. Pitty, it could be a win-win situation.
If they need an example what`s a web 2.0
affiliate tracking system they could checkout for exapmle Expekt`s affiliate backend.
cheers
May 2nd, 2007 at 8:15 am
Just curious, how do you promote these gaming programmes? Isn’t most of this stuff banned on Adwords?
May 2nd, 2007 at 3:24 pm
anonymous - yes you are correct that you can’t promote gambling sites via Adwords. My sites gather traffic via SEO.
May 16th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
Last I heard, you could promote gaming sites on Adwords, just needed to request an exception. Has this changed?
May 16th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
affiliate marketing blogger - this has never been the case. Google do not allow you to bid on keywords that send users to sites where you can gamble online.
May 7th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
SEO is the way to go. There are very few ways to promote gambling related content so you have to capture the visitor first time else they’ll just click somewhere else.
We use TD for ladbrokes now and they have it all wrapped up into one tool so there are no multiple logins etc. Although the main Will Hill site has improved a lot their affiliate site is poor and the stats are practically useless as they tell you nothing useful!