Today we look at what types of affiliate marketing affiliates are. We hope that the article will be useful to beginner affiliates.
Immediately make a reservation that affiliates are classified into various categories to a certain extent conditionally. Very often affiliates work on the borders of several categories at once, forming some kind of their own unique specialization. The main criterion for dividing affiliates into different categories is the way they invest in their business.
So:
SEO Affiliates
The acronym SEO stands for search engine optimization. This is a category of affiliates generating for operators of players by listing their affiliate sites in the tops of search engines. Such affiliates can generate a lot of players, but at the same time have no idea how the gaming world works and how slots differ from poker.
This they do not need. Their main task is to study how search engines work, and the attempt will adapt to their algorithms. Or cheat them, which is more often. SEO affiliate sites generally have no value to players. This can be either a very simple site or a doorway, roughly speaking a site with artificially generated content.
In conditions of fierce competition, the activity of SEO affiliates is often just one step away, and sometimes intersects, with openly hacking activities. Buying links from hacked trust sites, uploading your content to hacked sites and so on. This is known as the so-called “black hat seo”. For those who want to know in more detail - the network has a ton of information on black seo. Including open access.
Most affiliate programs in gambling, in accordance with their rules, do not accept traffic from doorways, and absolutely all declare a complete rejection of traffic received through hacks of various resources.
In practice, if a “black seo affiliate” generates a large number of players, the affiliate program tries to turn a blind eye to all violations. Naturally, not all affiliate programs do this, but very, very many.
SEO affiliates invest considerable amounts in their activities. SEO affiliates have to invest in domains, hosting services (in particularly competitive areas where download speed is critical, buy virtual and dedicated servers) expensive backlinks, in the purchase of their own PBN (Private Blog Network - a network of secondary satellite sites that link to the main site and trying in this way to artificially increase his position in search engines), in the purchase of drop domains, and often very expensive auction domains. What are "drop domains" and "auction domains", those who wish can also find detailed information on the network.
In addition to the monetary component, SEO affiliation requires very deep knowledge about the mechanisms of search engines. Otherwise, in a tough competition, SEO-affiliates simply cannot survive, even with large budgets.
SMM Affiliates
From the abbreviation Social Media Marketing (Social Media Marketing). These affiliates get players for casinos and bookmakers from social networks: VK, FB, Twitter, Instagram, etc. They can also buy paid traffic on the networks, thereby intersecting with arbitrage affiliates. In general, the border between SSM Affiliates and Arbitration Affiliates is the most blurred.
Telegram Affiliates
A kind of SSM affiliate when affiliate attracts players through its telegram channel / chat. The method is mainly characteristic of Russia, the countries of Central Asia and the Middle East.
Arbitrators
A very large area, combining many sub-categories. These are affiliates working with contextual advertising systems Google AdWords and Yandex.Direct (mostly illegal), and affiliates buying traffic from banners from non-thematic sites, affiliates buying traffic from teaser systems, push notifications, pop-up and pop-under ads (this such intrusive pop-ups).
Previously, there were still affiliates specializing in buying traffic through the so-called PPC (Pay Per Click) systems. Traffic there was usually sold by black door-seoushniks, and affiliates-arbitrageurs bought out. Over time, the amount of doorway traffic decreased due to the tightening of Google search algorithms, as well as due to the fact that black SEOs began to prefer to directly pour on the affiliate program.
It is this category of affiliates (arbitrageurs) that most often becomes the victim of various kinds of fraudsters.
The fact is that the threshold for entering traffic arbitration is relatively low. No need for deep knowledge of search engines, like seo-affiliates, no need for deep knowledge of gambling, like affiliates of the classic direction. Registered in the sales system of a particular type of traffic, made a deposit, and we are waiting for $ in the account of our affiliate program.
Of course, there are some very cool arbitrageurs. But the number of people with low IQ in arbitration is also off-scale.
Arbitration affiliates are bred the way no other group of affiliates bred. The reason is simple. If the SEO affiliate is zero, there is no sense in breeding it. It just has no traffic. There is nothing much to breed.
With arbitrators, the question is different. The arbitrator buys traffic for his own money, and pours it onto the affiliate program. Even if, as a result, the arbitrageur goes into a tough minus, the affiliate program will receive a profit in the form of free traffic, traffic selling systems will receive traffic fees, etc. In a word, everything will work with a guarantee, except for the affiliate arbitrator.
That is why the category of arbitrage affiliates is constantly under the gun.
There is a whole industry for the production of so-called “fake cases” when stories are invented about “success stories”. Typical headlines, “How I earned $ 30,000 in 3 days with gambling affiliates with an ROI of 800%.”
As we wrote earlier, only a mentally abnormal arbitrageur will start firing his schemes in front of a wide audience.
But fake arbitrage blogs of this kind are full of stories. Moreover, fake cases are in demand. If you carefully study these fraudulent blogs, you will find that they are willing to pay money to those who will write such fake success stories for them. Not really big money, but they pay.
Another reason that among the affiliate arbitrage, there are a lot of former players. And just as before they were bred for deposits in casinos with different pseudo-winning systems, in exactly the same way they continue to be bred for deposits from traffic selling systems, and for affiliate traffic and affiliate programs.
Classic Affiliates
Classic affiliates are those who offer truly useful and unique gambling content. From all other affiliates, classic affiliates are distinguished by the fact that their resources are designed so that visitors go there more than once. In other words, this is gambling media, that is, blogs, forums, etc. Resources that are interesting in themselves, and are not just an intermediate link between the player and the operator.
The classic affiliate must be well versed in all aspects of gambling. Classic affiliate sites are ThePogg, LatestCasinoBonuses (Lsb.org), AskGamblers and similar sites. They may be honest or not honest, but they must necessarily provide visitors with a wide and varied information.
Classic sites can be combined with other forms of affiliation. Let's say AskGamblers has a large and fairly strong team engaged in search engine optimization. LatestCasinoBonuses.com (Lsb.org) at one time quite actively bought traffic on PPC.
At one time, one of the classics was considered the site of the legendary affiliate Yury K., OnlineCasinos.ru of a Man named after the father of Russian gambling affiliation. The level of the site is evidenced by the fact that at one time even authoritative Russian media referred to it, such as Kommersant and others.
Unfortunately, in 2019 in Russia and certain countries of the post-Soviet space, classic affiliate sites were almost completely killed by state Internet censorship, which, most likely, will only increase.
At the moment, only those classic affiliate sites can develop and make a profit - whose brand has a long history. Let's say the same TTR has been known in the gaming world since 2005 or 2006.
Accordingly, visitors will look for such sites using mirrors and VPN servers, etc. Because they want to not just read the review of the next casino, but to find out what grade it was given to him by TTR or Jura K.
As for the novice know-how, they are doomed in the Russian market. The Russian system of Internet censorship will simply kill such sites at the stage of their development.
If we are talking about Western markets, then the classic affiliate site is always harder and harder to develop. But he has one plus, in comparison with all other areas of affiliate activity in gambling.
Capitalization.
An affiliate using a classic site not only makes money on affiliate programs. He can sell this site. There are precedents in the Western market when affiliate sites sold for more than $ 10,000,000. That is, as the site becomes more and more successful, it not only brings money to its owner in the form of an affiliate commission, but also as an asset. In theory, a seo scheme or arbitrage bundle also costs money, but this product is much less liquid compared to classic sites. And the multipliers are smaller.
And here we again return to runet. Even a hypothetically successful classic affiliate website in RuNet will not interest serious Western buyers. The point is to buy sites in a market where Internet censorship is strong and tightens the screws more?
Filtering foreign traffic, filtering search queries, instant exclusions from search results - this is unfortunately a highly probable future of Runet.
Email Affiliates
Gambling affiliate email marketing has historically been more developed in the western market, mainly in North America. Historically, this is due to the fact that in terms of understanding the business, affiliates from the United States are the most competent. It so happened. On average, an American affiliate always starts building a business more correctly, trying to do everything right from the very beginning. Own base of players with whom you can maintain feedback is a powerful marketing tool.
Despite the messengers and social networks, email is still one of the most important means of communication.
Naturally, an illegal segment occupies a huge place in email marketing. Well-known "Spam". Spam is handled by both individual affiliates and affiliate programs themselves under the guise of affiliates.
Formally, mail spam is a criminal offense in most Western countries. Accordingly, in words, all affiliate programs are strongly opposed. In practice, most will close their eyes to the last.
There is also a legal part of email marketing. The so-called legal mailings, when the user himself entered his email and confirmed it by clicking on the link in the confirmation letter.
Sometimes such bases gather at the junction of various affiliate directions. For example, via email collector sites. This is such a landing page with a design made in the gambling style. But instead of advertising casinos and bookmakers - an email input form. Traffic to the site comes mainly from purchased sources. Initially, the conversion on such resources is lower, but at a distance the collected player base becomes the strongest marketing weapon. In addition, affiliate capitalization is increasing. Like classic sites, player bases always have value, and the market for them is even more liquid.
Affiliates Streamers
In terms of affiliate business, casino streams have one drawback. Streamer can earn a lot, but this is not a business. This is a high-paying job — but a job.
The fact is that streamers cannot use wage labor, a necessary component of any capitalist enterprise.
The streamer may have assistants, but he is forced to produce the main product himself. To all other types of affiliates, their schemes and sites can be profitable 24/7 without their participation. They can use employees, they can scale, they can increase the capitalization of their business. For the streamer, these roads are closed.
Streamer cannot stream more than 12-16 man-hours per day. Any other affiliate can scale a business to tens, hundreds and thousands of man-hours per day. No streamer. A streamer cannot sit streaming another in his place. He cannot sell the channel and retire, because the latter is inextricably linked to his personality. Thus, streamer affiliates can earn a lot of money, but in terms of earnings they will always lag behind top affiliates in other categories.
On the other hand, the streamer has advantages. Low threshold for entering the business. Although once again we make a reservation: streams are a good job, good money, but this is not a business. Unless the streamer works to create its own brand in a different category, that is, when the brand can work without the participation of the streamer. Alternatively, advertising using the streams of your affiliate or gambling site. Then a kind of “umbrella” brand is created> channel> affiliate site> casino (bookmaker).
Offline Affiliates
There are some. Those who are not friends with the Internet, but have good connections among offline players.
Here it is easier to show an example. You have great connections among offline players, you want to earn money as an affiliate, but with online you are exclusively on “YOU”.
Let's say you want to send players to the TTR casino. All you need is to register in the affiliate program. An affiliate manager, in theory, can do this for you, if it’s very difficult with online.
Next, you will need to buy a domain name. Let's say 805805TTR.com The main thing is that it is easy to remember.
Buying (or more precisely renting) a domain name is extremely cheap, around $ 10- $ 15 per year. The purchase process is elementary, with the registrar. In extreme cases, you will be helped to do this.
Then you get a link from your affiliate manager with your affiliate code. Next, in the panel of the domain registrar, configure forwarding (or ask to do it for you).
Anyone typing 805805TTR.com in the browser panel will automatically be redirected to the TTR Casino mirror. You will get a percentage of the profit from such players.
The entire online purchase procedure, setup takes about 3 minutes. You will be happy to make it for a maximum of $ 10. Another $ 10- $ 15 domain name rental per year.
Then print offline business cards with the address 805805TTR.com and distribute them to familiar off-players who want to try their luck online. You can also throw sheets with the address 805805TTR.com in mailboxes, write on fences and asphalt. Or hire services that will do it for you.
For online affiliates, this can cause a smile, but it is not so simple. Written on the fence 805805TTR.com with good visibility can bring more players than other online media buying. You can earn anywhere in the gambling business and all. It would be a desire.
As an addition to the domain address, you can add a QR code, although in Russia they are not very popular.
In addition, the domain address will appear offline, which will allow him to live longer under the supervision of ILV. Again, the player who dialed him will not see him, he will be instantly redirected to the nearest mirror.
Of course, drawing on fences is not suitable for everyone, for moral and ethical reasons. And we are not calling on anyone to do this. But this type of earnings exists. If there are good connections among off-players, handing out business cards is not a problem. You can make very good money for this simple action.
Rakeback Affiliates
Affiliates specializing in poker, and return to the player part of the commission. Affiliate commissions are paid as% of the room commission (rake). Hence the name of this variety of affiliates - Rakeback affiliates. Such an activity requires good connections among online poker players. Moreover, professionals. Rakeback is one of the necessary components of a positive game in a number of poker disciplines.
This type of affiliate is slowly but surely dying due to the decline of online poker.
Super Affiliates / Master Affiliates
It is designated in two terms. We prefer the latter - Master affiliates. These are those who are gaining other affiliates (sub-affiliates). Another name for Super-affiliates is not very correct, since there is often confusion, and by Super-affiliates they simply mean affiliates from any other categories that make large volumes of players, or large affiliate companies.
Suppose a streamer “Vitus” tried to become a master affiliate, gaining other affiliates through his referral links.
Master affiliate, one of the hardest types of affiliate. Just because there are very few good affiliates. But master-affiliates, if they managed to become serious players in their class, represent a very impressive force. These are just those who set the direction for the market.
In most cases, attempts to become a master affiliate are not serious. At webmaster and affiliate forums, these are contemptuously referred to as “referrals”, sellers of “whitefish”, absolutely unprintable expressions, etc. Because they pop their sub-affiliate links everywhere. Sometimes they are simply banned for annoyance.
Of course, such persons have nothing to do with serious master affiliates.
The main quality of a serious master affiliate is that he does not just give you his sub-link. He provides you for registering by his link - a service.
Let's say there is an affiliate program that gives affiliates a ceiling of 40% for large volumes of players and pays a commission only for scrill or by bank transfer, and in addition does not have Russian-speaking affiliate managers.
A true master affiliate is one who has his own interface and gives you his own links where to send traffic. And although the affiliate’s ceiling is official 40% for a maximum of players, the master affair provides you 40% or even 42% for any number of players, and also pays you in bitcoin, which the original software does not. He leads all negotiations with affiliate managers.
Key benefits of a true master affiliate:
- 1.) Payout percentages are almost the maximum, maximum, or higher than the maximum than in the original affiliate program.
- 2.) Takes all negotiations with affiliate managers. This is a very important point, as many of the affiliate managers do not speak Russian, or simply people who are difficult to communicate with. And when such 20-30-50 it becomes a problem.
- 3.) Anonymity of affiliate. Master affiliates enable you to work anonymously. Officially, your data in the affiliate program is not available. Very relevant for some jurisdictions.
- 4.) Master affiliates do not take everyone into their sub-affiliates.
- 5.) These Master affiliates are either minimally public or completely private. One of the main functions of a master affiliate is to keep secret information about the affiliates working under it.
- 6.) There are fake master affiliates who give conditions either similar or worse than in the original affiliate programs. In this case, this is a form of dishonest business practice. Designed for affiliates who are unable to find the necessary affiliate program and read its terms.
Suppose an affiliate arbitrator wants to earn 1 million rubles to drain traffic to some bourgeois market. And there is an affiliate program with 30%. But he is too lazy to look for her, too lazy to read information, he does not know English. And in general, too lazy to broaden their horizons. So he is registered with a fake master affiliate, which gives him 20%. As a result, he merges, maybe even what he gets, but with his commission the fake master affiliate gets 10%. Win-lose situation. In the case of a real master affiliate, he would bargain for the conditions of 35%, and the situation would be for both the affiliate and the win-win master affiliate.
Agents
Agents are the same gambling intermediaries as affiliates. They are often confused with affiliates, but this is not so. Affiliates, strictly speaking, are a stripped-down version of agents.
At one time, activists of the Russian GypsyTim Poker Forum tried to launch their own poker room, PokerGrand or PokerGrant - as you can see, the wrong name for the brand makes it impossible to remember it.
The project died because the players were engaged in it, and not specialists in the field of online gambling business. Among the huge number of mistakes, starting from launching a project on a dying market, and ending with many others, there was one.
They placed at the bottom of the page of their room a link for affiliates. But they called her not Affiliates, but Agents. They thought they were synonyms. But this is not so. Affiliates came and saw the name, left. Because they are affiliates, not agents.
Agents are gambling intermediaries that provide players with a certain service in addition to information. Associated directly with the game process. As a rule, these are 1.) advanced payment methods 2.) increased bet limits 3.) to keep the player’s name anonymous when it is required.
Agents - let's say another universe of gambling mediation. Requiring a separate article. Unlike affiliates, agents keep players under their control. Agents accept deposits and pay out winnings (freeing the casino and bookmaker from all the headaches with payments). Agents with certain models also invest in a bank of a casino (bookmaker's office), participating in the turnover with their own funds (the so-called “risk percentage” model).
The phenomenon is usually distributed in Asian markets. There are also some bookmakers (casinos), which work with players only through agents. Classic Agent Example: AsianOdds88.com
Agents can have their affiliates. The structure of agents resembles affiliate, there are master agents, there are sub-agents. Sometimes a system can contain several levels.
M&A Affiliates
M&A stands for Mergers and Acquisitions. This category includes those affiliate business people who are no longer directly involved in site development or traffic mining.
This is the highest category of affiliates. These are those who create large affiliate networks, buying up other people's affiliate sites and thus capturing part of the market.
Their work: the absorption of other people's affiliate sites, raising capital (sometimes through issuing their own securities), building a structure.
Accordingly, this is already a pure 100% business, the maximum opposite point from the part of the field where the streamers are located.
Sometimes such M&A affiliates become former ordinary affiliates. But this is optional. For M&A affiliates, the most important quality is to be a good organizer. Because under the control of M&A affiliates, ordinary affiliates work (as a rule, after buying the former owners of affiliate sites they leave work on sites at a salary =% of profit), financiers, lawyers, etc.
Conclusion
We hope the article was useful. Despite Internet censorship in Russia and regulatory problems in Western markets, anyone can go from conditional streamer to M&A affiliate. The only thing needed for this is desire.
Desire is the most important reactive factor in any business. You can not have a set of necessary qualities, but to achieve a goal at the expense of desire. If there is no desire, a real desire to achieve the goal, it is better not to waste time and not go into any affiliate business or any other.
by TRIFONOFF