How to find perfect affiliates for your online casino

Affiliate marketing is an indispensable part of your marketing strategy. While traditional digital advertising systems may limit or prohibit most gaming-related ads, affiliate marketing is the option that can be deemed as the best alternative for fetching new customers into your casino. At this point, you might need information about how to find affiliates for your online casino.

Well, the instances differ for every operator because experienced and famous operators find it easy to spot and connect to their old affiliates. Nonetheless, new operators need more time and effort to dig up new partners, arrange communications with affiliates and get the traffic they want. This is why we will discuss different ways of finding perfect affiliates for your online casino, which will help you to increase your traffic and gain new customers.

This article will guide you through the process of identifying, assessing, and partnering with the right affiliates for your online casino. If you want to learn more about how affiliate marketing works for online casinos, read the article – affiliate marketing for online casinos. To understand more about the marketing activities in the iGaming business, read the article about How to market an online casino.

Identify your target audience

Everything starts with marketing research and analysis of your target market. At first glance, it may seem like you know a lot about your target audience, understand what they are most interested in, know your competitors, and watch over their advertising campaigns. Nonetheless, you need to understand your surroundings better and create a well-conceived, structured plan to help you define short-term and long-term strategies and find your affiliates. Market research for online casinos is a different topic. To understand more about the given theme, read our article about How to conduct market research for online casinos. In the given article, we will discuss how to find perfect affiliates for your casino, research their qualifications and experience in the iGaming market, and how to define your priorities.

How to find top affiliates

Discovering top affiliates is crucial to boosting your online casino’s growth and profitability. High-performing partners can drive substantial traffic and ensure your brand’s success. To identify the best affiliates for you, start by analyzing your competitors’ traffic sources. This can reveal valuable insights into their partnership strategies and the affiliates contributing to their success. By targeting these top-performing affiliates, you can tap into their established audience and leverage their influence to promote your products or services.

Finding top affiliates through your competitors

After conducting marketing research, you will have a list of your top competitors. Now, you need to identify from what sources they get their traffic. One of the best ways of increasing traffic is to partner with affiliates, so it comes down to finding them. Thus, it is your concern to know which websites are your competitors’ affiliates, what kind of traffic your competitors get from them, which are the best-performing affiliates, and so on. 

1.  To analyze your competitors’ traffic sources, you can use SEO research and analysis tools such as Ahrefs, Semrush, and Similarweb. According to our observation, these sources have approximately 75% accuracy and give only 25% of error, meaning that you can still make significant insights from using their services and create a general image of your competitor’s traffic sources.
2. The next step is to define referral sources. Simply put, referral traffic means the visits to your site from links that appear on different websites. By using the tools mentioned above, you can identify the referral sources. Traffic derived from affiliates is visible in the list of referring domains. Thus, you can combine a list of affiliates from which your competitors get most of their traffic. Putting the ads of your services, or links to your products on these affiliates’ websites might be the next highest priority for promoting your online casino.  
3. There is another way to find affiliates for your online casino too. Check out what keywords your competitors use the most to position themselves. After entering these keywords in the search bar, check the websites’ ranks on the first page. See the affiliate websites that pop up when entering those keywords and look at their content. You might also want to position and promote your online casino on their websites. To put it simply, you can just google keywords like: “Best online casinos,” “Top 10 online casinos in 2023″, Best online sportsbooks,” “Latest casino bonuses,” and so on. Most of the websites Google will show up will be the affiliate ones. Since these affiliates are on the first page of Google, they might give you a considerable volume of traffic if you establish good communication with them.

Research the competitors of top affiliates

Now you have the list of top affiliates, but there are more. You can also find the main competitors of those affiliates and research their websites. The best way to do so is by using the competitor analysis tools of Ahrefs, Semrush, and Similar Web. Using these resources can give you competitors’ data, including website traffic, content, backlinks and keywords, PPC advertisements, and more.  Check out the traffic volume of those competitors and, according to this information, define how important it is for you to gain them as your new partners and affiliates. 

How to find new affiliates

New affiliates always come into sight, looking for operators who want to list their offerings on their websites. So, this might be the next shot for your online casino business. To find new affiliates, you need to research the organic keywords of the affiliate sites. Search not only for simple keywords with high keyword difficulty rates but also for long-term keywords that are less competitive but can be a good option for finding affiliates who just started to expand their service in the iGaming field. 

It might come in handy if you create a list of the new affiliate websites that use the keywords you researched to position themselves on the search engine results. Afterward, examine, evaluate, and compare the traffic of all these websites and define the most optimal option for you to connect with and engage in a partnership.

Affiliate Forums

Affiliates are available on every forum, whether it’ll be SEO groups or forums, advertising forums, social network forums, affiliate marketing forums, or iGaming-related forums itself. You can find attractive options on every platform. 

Initially, start with forums on which your competitors are active and searching for partners. To do so, you need to conduct a backlink analysis and find the main referring domains of your competitors. During this process, you may discover many forums, such as Bitcointalk, GPWA, Reddit, 4chan, etc. Register on every forum you’ll find helpful, post often, and communicate with affiliates operating in your market.

Adding your casino information to forums, directories, and blogs is a smart strategy, as it allows affiliates to discover you based on your preferences. You can also locate ideal affiliates for your online casino at the following iGaming affiliate forums:

• AskGamblers – With over a decade of experience, AskGamblers offers exceptional opportunities for brand promotion and shares the latest online casino information, including top-notch reviews and ratings from both experts and real players. It also has a directory of Affiliate Program Reviews and New Casino Affiliate Programs.
• AffPapa – AffPapa is a directory where operators can register, sign in, and search for affiliates according to preferred GEO-Targeting, commission models, product types, and visitors in months.
• GPWA – the Gambling Portal Webmasters Association (GPWA) promotes partnerships between operators and affiliates, having approximately 30 000 affiliate members on its portal at the given time.

IGaming exhibitions and affiliate exhibitions

There are various iGaming and affiliate exhibitions held worldwide on a yearly basis on which affiliates are present. These exhibitions are an excellent opportunity to reach affiliates, get to know them well, connect with them, and arrange communications. Affiliates are the top partners of your business. Accordingly, it is of utmost importance to always be available and show up on their radar.

In the beginning, you may not be able to initiate a partnership due to some misunderstandings or certain hurdles blocking the way to forming a successful collaboration. To solve such problems, you must meet them face-to-face and embrace direct contact. This will ensure your image as a reliable operator who is ready to form a goal-oriented, long-term partnership that won’t cease in a couple of months.

It is one thing that exhibitions help you to organize and arrange your communications. Still, on the other hand, they also give you the opportunity to meet with various affiliates who might be operating with different sources. You weren’t able to find them on the digital channels. 

To cut it short, affiliate and iGaming exhibitions are one of the best ways to form long-term business partnerships. The most famous and widely known exhibitions where you can find experienced and reputable affiliates are ICE London, iGB affiliates, Sigma Eurasia and Sigma Europe, SBC Summit Barcelona, etc. 

Commission structures for affiliates

To attract and retain affiliates, it is essential to offer competitive and attractive commission structures that fairly compensate them for their marketing efforts. By doing so, you encourage affiliates to prioritize your online casino and invest more resources in promoting your brand.

You can adopt several commission models, such as Pay Per Acquisition, Revenue Share, or a hybrid model that combines elements of both. It’ll be most suitable if you offer all of those options and give your affiliates an opportunity to choose the preferred one.

• Pay per acquisition: Affiliates receive a fixed amount for each new player they bring to your casino, which meets specific criteria, such as making a deposit or placing a minimum number of bets.
• Revenue Share: Affiliates earn a percentage of the net revenue generated by the players they refer. This model encourages affiliates to focus on attracting high-value players and maintaining their loyalty.
• Hybrid Model: Combines aspects of both CPA and Revenue Share, offering affiliates a fixed amount for each new player, plus a percentage of the player’s lifetime revenue.

Furthermore, you can also develop performance-based incentives to motivate your affiliates and reward their efforts. These can include tiered commission structures, bonuses for reaching specific milestones, or special promotions for high-performing affiliates.

Conclusion

Finding the perfect affiliates for your online casino is critical to building a successful and profitable business. By conducting market research, identifying your competitors’ traffic sources, researching the competitors of top affiliates, and growing your presence on online forums and iGaming & affiliate exhibitions, you can find affiliates that align with your brand and effectively engage your target players. 

Investing time and effort into finding and nurturing the right affiliate partnerships will enhance your online casino’s reputation and contribute significantly to its long-term success. Embrace the importance of strategic partnerships and leverage the power of affiliate marketing to expand your reach, attract new players, and maximize revenue in the competitive online gambling industry.