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I’m the owner of an advertising network mostly unrelated to online gaming. (MaxBounty.com). Given the recent law passed in the USA which effectively denies American surfers from gambling online, I thought I’d take a moment and make a quick post.
There’s a fair bit of buzz lately in the non-gaming affiliate world about you folks (casino affiliates). The general consensus is that there will be a horde of casino affiliates expected to enter mainstream advertising now that this law is in place. Needless to say, some are afraid of the competition. Those of you very successful in your field are expected to also be very successful with non-casino programs when you use your knowledge of marketing, search engines, etc, and apply them to other sponsors.
Are any of your really branching out? I’m available to answer questions in this thread or privately if anyone is interested in discussing.
Thanks
JP Sauvejp[AT] maxbounty[DOT]com
http://www.MaxBounty.comI think a lot of us are.
It is a quagmire out there though, lots of programs and affiliate care and payments don’t seem to quite measure up to what I am used to.
Gambling affiliates are used to fierce competition, but also to supporting each other in their endeavors, as you see happening here at CAP. We like to see affiliate relationships as serious contracts just like the brick and mortar world, and personal contact and responsiveness is a must.
Then there is the issue that a lot of the better programs I see in the non-gambling sector pay CPA – I hate CPA. I believe in building customer bases, in customer relationships, not in the “in and out” system. Of course other gambling affiliates don’t neccesarily feel the same way, the competition results in a lot of different business models and approaches, each with it”s own merits.
So, personally, while willing and able, I am lost. When reading posts at affcommunity, I find a lot of aff managers post links without even giving an idea of what they sell and to find out I would actually have to sign up. Very counterproductive, I turn and leave. I like to see info on clients and whatnot without having to sign up and getting spammed.
We are used to extensive statistics and constantly fresh creatives and new promotional ideas. I guess we’re spoiled, but rightfully so because it makes us most effective.
In short, the programs play a huge part in our success, it takes both parties to generate what is necessary to create efficient advertising vehicles.
The foundation of the whole thing is mutual trust and I have literally worked for years to establish that with the programs, fellow affiliates and customers. That’s what makes me tick. Again, that’s my approach, but the trust in the aff program is absolutely necessary for all of us.
Should you be afraid? Dishonest or shoddy programs should be afraid, we tend to out them. If you like a clean industry, you should be delighted. We are a powerful salesforce, on all levels.
Well for CPA campaigns (Cost Per ACTION), that action can be defined as anything… not just a LEAD which is generally thought of as CPA. The action could be a sale, which isn’t all that much different than a gamer putting a deposit down on a casino. Saying that, I’m surprised you dislike CPA. To me, CPA is the easiest way to earn.
I think you’ll find a major difference between gaming and non-gaming ad sources is that you’re very much on your own when it comes to how you advertise. You can indeed get support from your network of choice, but how you implement the creatives, or search marketing, or email drops, is all up to you. You can have as little or as much support as you want. As well, most networks provide detailed enough stats, but the larger affiliates typically have their own stats tabulation in place to aide the analysis on their end.
Another major difference between industries is the huge range in campaign quality, that’s why it’s a good idea to become involved with the network you choose and see what’s hot or not. We have 200+ campaigns on our network, not all are good for search engine marketing for example… but some are. Some are more geared for email ads. Lots of testing is required, but your affiliate manager (all good networks should have one for you) can help you weed through the lower end campaigns and nail the best results. Different paying campaigns should have different strategies in advertising. There are many campaigns paying $1 – $2 CPA which have far larger earning potential than the big paying ads (which casino affiliates might tend to naturally gravitate towards), but the low payout might limit the amount you can spend to advertise it.
I can certainly see it all being confusing to gaming affiliates. Best way to learn is to just give it a try in a limited fashion to get your feet wet. If anyone wants to give us a try in branching out to more mainstream advertising, we’d be happy to help. If you’re unsure if your ideas will transfer well over to mainstream, by all means send me an email and I’ll give you an honest answer.
Thanks
JP Sauve
http://www.MaxBounty.comoops, nothing edited here. I clicked on edit instead of reply… sorry.
I clicked through to your site and it is just like many that Dom referred to. There is nothing there to tell me what kind of programs you have or anything else. I have seen far too many of these types of sites and I just look somewhere else. Of course it is none of my business how you run your operation, but why all the secrecy? Feel free to PM me more info, as I am always looking for new ideas and opportunities.
Well there is no secrecy, but your point of not much info comes up often in these types of discussions.
There are networks like Commission Junction which have long term clients that rarely change. For them it’s easy to coat their front page with “Partnering with eBay” and the like because ebay’s been on their network for years, and will be for years to come. eBay doesn’t have campaigns, you simply advertise them… ebay IS the campaign. CJ’s clients tend more to be shopping cart type programs, and not CPA.
For CPA networks like ours, you might not recognize many of the client names since they are media companies, and CPA networks are so campaign-centric… we have many clients who have been on the network for years, but their campaigns change and update frequently… such is the nature of CPA networks.
There is no secrecy though. If you’d like to see a campaign list, we’d prefer an affiliate sign up to fully explore the campaigns (and be notified when new campaigns launch) but you can find the list here – http://www.maxbounty.com/showoffers.cfm
JP Sauve wrote:Well for CPA campaigns (Cost Per ACTION), that action can be defined as anything… not just a LEAD which is generally thought of as CPA. The action could be a sale, which isn’t all that much different than a gamer putting a deposit down on a casino. Saying that, I’m surprised you dislike CPA. To me, CPA is the easiest way to earn.I think you’ll find a major difference between gaming and non-gaming ad sources is that you’re very much on your own when it comes to how you advertise. You can indeed get support from your network of choice, but how you implement the creatives, or search marketing, or email drops, is all up to you. You can have as little or as much support as you want. As well, most networks provide detailed enough stats, but the larger affiliates typically have their own stats tabulation in place to aide the analysis on their end.
Another major difference between industries is the huge range in campaign quality, that’s why it’s a good idea to become involved with the network you choose and see what’s hot or not. We have 200+ campaigns on our network, not all are good for search engine marketing for example… but some are. Some are more geared for email ads. Lots of testing is required, but your affiliate manager (all good networks should have one for you) can help you weed through the lower end campaigns and nail the best results. Different paying campaigns should have different strategies in advertising. There are many campaigns paying $1 – $2 CPA which have far larger earning potential than the big paying ads (which casino affiliates might tend to naturally gravitate towards), but the low payout might limit the amount you can spend to advertise it.
I can certainly see it all being confusing to gaming affiliates. Best way to learn is to just give it a try in a limited fashion to get your feet wet. If anyone wants to give us a try in branching out to more mainstream advertising, we’d be happy to help. If you’re unsure if your ideas will transfer well over to mainstream, by all means send me an email and I’ll give you an honest answer.
Thanks
JP Sauve
http://www.MaxBounty.comIn gambling, CPA stands for cost per aquisition and ranges from $100 to $500 or so. It is a bad deal because one of the partners loses, the casino if the player doesn’t play much, the affiliate if the player spends a lot. Actual player values can vary from $25 to tens of thousands over the “lifetime” of a player.
Implementing creatives few of us like to have guidance in, everyone has their own idea. A good selection of fresh, frequently changed creatives with good promotional offers are helpful though.
Statistics about what happens on my end I don’t need, I have those. I need to see what happens on your end, how many visits, how many of those go on to purchase, how much they spend etc. That helps identify good targeted traffic sources.
I guess it is all very varied in the retail sector, slapping up sites that deliver high volumes of leads is not much of a challenge or fun for me. I would be more interested in high ticket items that generate repeat customers and pay a percentage of sales for life. I am interested in creating communities of targeted customers that return to buy over and over again.
I am not looking to deliver quantity buys, but quality, long term returning customers. I guess the pickings of programs for that are far and between in the retail sector. It’s a totally different approach.
$1 to $2 CPA for leads – darn, that would take quite a volume to rival percentage income from repeat quality high end customers.
An entirely different target audience and a different approach. Volume, not value. Are incentivised leads permissible?
Incentive leads are huge thing in mainstream and are allowed on certain campaigns. We have many merchants which do allow them (see the list I posted), and provide sub-ID tracking for you to handle the incentive part to your surfer/member.
Long term, lifetime commission programs do exist, but are somewhat rare. Webhosting merchants come to mind. They all deal outside of the networks, so I can’t comment on them much.
Thanks
JP Sauve
http://www.maxbounty.comThank you for answering all these questions.
What’s EPC? Per click?
Earnings Per Click
Thanks.
JP, thanks for posting the list. That helps a great deal.
Yes, I found some things of interest too.
We have both in-house managed campaigns for you to advertise, and merchants wanting direct relationships with you.
Whom are some of your merchants?
Dominique wrote:Thank you for answering all these questions.What’s EPC? Per click?
Hmm ..
If it’s like Commission Junction then EPC actually means :
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Commission Junction provides transparency by publishing the performance metrics of all advertisers, publishers and ads within the CJ Marketplace.This approach provides advertisers and publishers a way to gauge the value of their existing and potential relationships by using two key metrics – average earnings per 100 clicks (EPC) and network earnings.
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I did some work with Commission Junction – 2-3 years back – but never really found it worth anything much – did much better working directly for rev shares.
:lookarounThat´s interesting Gooner. I was wondering about commission junction. Basically, there seems to be a consensus on sitepoint that cj tracks fairly but there´s always some flamer who will claim the opposite so I´m not sure what to believe. It´s nice to have an integrated backend where all your stuff plugs into.
