Chapter 2: Understanding Gambling Affiliate Program Terms
The casino affiliate marketing model is simple to describe but, in practice, it’s really quite a bit more complicated than send-players-get-money. You’ll also find that affiliate marketing professionals use a lot of industry-specific terms you won’t hear anywhere else, but need to know nonetheless. Here are a few of the gambling affiliate program terms you’ll want to get familiar with:
- Bundling – Some companies pool the revenues you bring in from their various brands. That can leave you with a negative carryover if you’ve got a winning player at one casinos, but losing players at the rest. (See: Ring-Fencing)
- Conversion – Any time you get a site visitor to do something you want, like deposit at a casino or even sign up for a newsletter, you’ve converted them.
- Free Rolls – Usually refers to promotional poker tournaments that don’t require a player buy-in. These are great player retention tools that can really build your brand.
- Negative Carryover – If your players win more than they lose, some casinos will take those winnings out of your cut and give your account a negative balance. This doesn’t always happen, but if it’s something you’re worried about you’ll want to stick with programs offering no negative carryover.
- Rakeback – Some online poker programs offer players a deal to get back a small percentage of the rake or pot whether they win or lose. It’s a great deal for players and makes your programs that much more appealing.
- Ring-Fencing – To counter bundling practices, some casino firms keep the revenues you generate at their various brands separate to prevent negative carryover.
- Rogue Affiliates – Affiliate forums use this term to identify programs that don’t treat their partners very well. Sites like CAP label certain programs as rogue to help protect affiliates from falling for their scams.
- Shaving – Some casinos like to nickel-and-dime their partners by undercutting their revenues in small increments. Sometime this is the result of a technical glitch, other times it’s overt player stealing. Affiliates need to closely watch their stats to avoid shaving.
- Tracking Code – Tracking codes and links are used to connect you to the players you’re sending to the casinos. They also help you chart how much your individual players are winning and losing over the course of time.
For more Casinos Affiliate terms, check out the CAP Glossary.