5 Reasons You Didn't Earn Money With Affiliate Programs

One thing that more affiliates should consider before they sign up at casino affiliate programs is what their chances are of making money with that program versus a competing program. Not all affiliate programs are created equally. There will be times where you just don’t earn money promoting a particular affiliate program.
Here are five reasons why you may not have earned money with a particular affiliate program:
#1 No one wants to play there.
Just because a product is put in front of a potential consumer doesn’t mean they will convert to being a customer. For whatever reason, some iGaming brands just suck from the viewpoint of the players themselves. They don’t want to play there. Even if the program itself is one of the best paying affiliate programs, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll have conversions.
A good example of this is Paradise Poker. In 2001 before the “poker boom”, Paradise Poker was the largest online poker room. Today, they are extinct. What happened? Well, among other things, the poker playing market eventually decided they just weren’t interested in playing there. No matter how hard affiliates may have tried, driving conversions to Paradise Poker was near impossible during its final years.
#2 You made a weak effort.
If your idea of promoting casino affiliate programs is simply putting up a few banner ads on your site and nothing more, don’t be surprised when you don’t earn money with certain programs. Creating conversions in online gaming requires an “all hands on deck” marketing approach. Text links, email marketing, exclusive promotions for your players, and social media marketing are among the number of ways to run a dynamic marketing campaign to drive sign-ups.
#3 You chose a bad commission model.
Affiliates get to choose how they are compensated by operators and not all options are created equal. You might seek out pay per lead affiliate programs when a revenue share model would have led to far more profits. Or you might accept a revenue share model with a fledgling casino that you would have been better off taking money from up-front through a CPA model.
#4 It was a rogue program that scammed you.
Like it or not, this happens in iGaming. You promote a program but your affiliate panel indicates you’re not generating any revenue from those efforts. This recently happened to Casinomeister with C-Planet’s affiliate program. According to his stats from them, he was earning no revenue. However, players from his forums were still indicating they played there. Casinomeister put two and two together and realized C-Planet was simply stealing affiliate revenues from him. These situations are rare but they do occur, unfortunately.
#5 Your players already have accounts there.
This can be a major problem in certain niches. For online poker affiliates, it’s sometimes hard to drive conversions to PokerStars. It’s not that they’re not a good product. They’re the best. The problem is, most people with an interest in online poker already have an account there. You could be better off promoting someone else.