The online casino industry is booming. It’s booming like a DJ booth in Ibiza where some celebrity is hosting a party with bubbles. But, you don’t have to go all the way to Spain to get a taste of the online gaming industry. You can become a casino affiliate from your own home and make passive income.
We’ll get into the nitty-gritty of how to become a casino affiliate and how you can get started. Don’t worry, it’s not as hard as it sounds unlike the bass coming from the speakers at the bubble party in Ibiza.
A casino affiliate is an intermediary between the players and the online gaming site. As an affiliate, your role is to send customers to the betting site after which you earn a commission. You are essentially a betting partner who markets the casino site and in turn, you earn money for each player you send over.
When looking to become a casino affiliate, you’ll need an understanding of how these programs work. You’ll be given a link from the online casino you’re an affiliate of. That special link tracks each player that goes from your site to the casino and that’s how your earnings are calculated. Your payout is dependent on an agreed-upon commission structure. These are the most common: Rev Share, CPA, and hybrid.
For those interested in long-term passive income – when your commission isn’t based on a flat fee – this model is for you. The Rev Share model sees your earnings paid based on the amount of money a player provides for the casino. Let’s say a player makes a $500 deposit and then doubles it by winning multiple hands of online poker and playing slots so successfully that you think it’s rigged. It’s not rigged. It’s impossible since online casinos use random number generators for fairness. We could geek out on that techie stuff all day but we digress … Anyway, once the player’s $500 deposit becomes $1000, you get a piece usually expressed as a percentage anywhere from 10-40%.
The CPA model allows you to make a profit on every player acquired by the online casino. When you become a casino affiliate the cost-per-acquisition earnings method allows you to net a flat fee based on every player you send to the casino that makes a deposit. Because this is a flat fee, you don’t have to worry about how much the player deposits or which currency they use. They could fund their account with Bitcoin, American dollars, or even Monopoly* money and it wouldn’t make a difference because you’ll get paid anywhere from $100 to $300 per player.
*Monopoly money isn’t real, as much as we would like it to be.
Like an Oreo which combines cookies with whatever the middle bit is made of and somehow it’s delicious, a hybrid deal is a mix of CPA and Rev Share. Instead of simply getting a cut of a player’s deposit or the revenue they generate for the casino, you get both. Keep in mind that with the hybrid deal, since you are getting revenue from two types of models, your commission will be lower. But, this is great for beginner affiliates as you determine which commission type is right for you.
At this point, you’re probably ready to become an online casino affiliate. Great! But first, how do you spot one to determine how to model your site?
Become a casino affiliate in five easy steps! That’s an example of a CTA that we mentioned in the previous section. A CTA is only a small part of the strategy for becoming an online casino affiliate. Below, we’ve outlined each step and what you need to do to achieve it.
Who are you targeting? This is one of the most important questions to ask yourself when it comes to the affiliate casino world. The online gaming audience is mostly made up of people across the globe who range in age from 18 years old to 35 years old. This demographic is made up of men, women, and non-binary people who want to have a little fun playing casino games online or betting on their favorite sports. This may seem like a broad target audience but like a linebacker’s shoulders, broad can work in your favor. Instead of having to market your affiliate site to a small set of people, you can target everyone in the gambling industry.
We’re connected to our tech 24/7. Have you gone anywhere without your phone lately? Chances are you haven’t because we live our lives via that little box of microchips – or whatever phones are made of, we’re not in the smartphone business, we’re in the casino affiliate business. Your website needs to look great on every piece of tech available (phone, tablet, laptop, desktop). Luckily, there are content management systems (CMS) that do that for you. Programs like WordPress have special templates that allow you to design a responsive site easily without hiring a web developer or graphic designer.
Your website will need:
To become an online casino affiliate, your content plan needs to be solid because content is king! (Not like King Charles but more like LeBron James.) You need to become the content GOAT. The better your content is, the more you’ll draw in potential players to funnel to the casino and get your commission. Your website should have a blog and news section to give readers updates on the casino industry. You will also need guides to explain how to play different games, and reviews of the various online casinos in your affiliate network. For inspiration, look at this site to see the different sections we offer. This will give you an idea of how many pages your site needs, the word count, and how detailed you need to be. If you’re struggling, there are artificial intelligence programs that will write content for you (as long you add human touches to what the AI produces so it doesn’t sound like a bot wrote the words).
Once you’ve built out your content plan, it’s time to optimize. Search engine optimization (SEO) may sound scary but in reality, once you get the hang of it, it’ll become second nature. SEO is all about defining key terms that your audience is searching for. You don’t have to guess. There are programs available like SEMRush and Ahrefs that can help you find out which keywords to target. These keywords need to be present in your content so search engines like Google and Bing know which pages from your site to serve up to potential iGaming enthusiasts, beginners, and those who want to learn about the latest mobile casino games. With a tight SEO strategy, you’ll be able to bring in organic traffic to your site (all those who are literally typing in key terms into the search bar on their device). For non-organic traffic, you’ll need a marketing strategy.
Marketing your affiliate site is the last step to becoming the top affiliate of all the affiliates. Think of all the ads you’ve seen in your lifetime. Which ones stick with you? The most effective marketing is memorable and creates conversation. Since you’re marketing a website, your focus is the Internet. There are several marketing strategies you’ll need to employ:
The online casino you’ve partnered with will give you special links. These are called affiliate links (we touched on these briefly above) and allow the casino to track who you’ve sent to their site. This link doesn’t only track who you’ve sent, it also tracks what the potential player has done at the casino to know what your commission payout will be. Have they created an account? Have they made a deposit? Have they played a certain amount of games? Have they bet on sports? Once all that info is taken into account on the casino’s side, your commission will be calculated.
Your payout can be sent to you in the following ways:
Your payment frequency will determine when you’ll see your earnings. Most online casinos payout at these intervals:
Finding the right affiliate network to hitch your wagon to involves a bit of research. We’ll outline some of our favorites below but first, let’s get into how to choose the right one for your needs.
With all the online gaming sites, it can be hard to determine which are the best casino affiliate businesses. Our favorites are BitStarz, Bet 365, Ace Revenue, Gamesys Group, and Betsson. Each features great commission structures and extras to keep their affiliates happy. Moreover, they are world-renowned enterprises that continue to garner rave reviews because they’re licensed and have a vast roster of games and sports betting options to keep customers happy.
Now that you know how to become a casino affiliate, we’ve put together some tips to help you get started.
As we said, the online casino industry is booming and there’s money to be made. Once you’re ready to become an online casino affiliate, don’t wait. The faster you can get your site to market, the faster you can unleash your earning potential.
When you’re starting out as a casino affiliate, you’ll probably take in about $1000 each month. Once you make a name for yourself in the industry, you could net around $100,000 monthly and eventually make millions each year.
Yes, affiliate marketing is legal as long as you adhere to the rules and regulations in your jurisdiction. Additionally, if the casino network you’re partnering with is licensed then they’ve already taken care of the most important legality.
Becoming an affiliate is worth it if you want to make passive income that over time, becomes a full-fledged business endeavor. This is income that you earn by maintaining your website and continuously updating your marketing and content to reach new players.