Affiliate Marketing in the Gambling Niche – Risks You May Face
Combining online gambling, sports and eSports betting, iGaming is a fast-growing industry with a constantly increasing annual turnover. Thanks to the improvement in the quality of gaming products and platforms, the increase in internet infrastructure bandwidth, the growing number of mobile users and the relaxation of legal restrictions, online gambling is gaining momentum year after year. While the opportunity to win real money is one of the attractions of gambling, there are ways to make money from iGaming without risking your hard-earned cash, and affiliate marketing is one of the most promising.
Instead of playing online slots or poker, you can join a casino affiliate program and promote iGaming platforms receiving a portion of the operators’ profits as commissions. Although this is a very competitive niche, you still have every chance of becoming a successful gambling affiliate earning round sums of money. However, it is not enough to simply place an affiliate link on several resources to earn juicy commissions. If you are a newbie who wants to try affiliate marketing, you need to be aware of the marketing risks. We are here to tell you about the mistakes made by iGaming affiliates so that you can have a successful start in this area.
Regulatory Challenges
Although legislation regarding online gambling in general is becoming more and more lenient, there are still many countries where iGaming platforms are prohibited. Therefore, the first mistake that you can make as a gambling affiliate is not doing enough research on the specifics of the legislation regarding online gambling in the region or country where you are promoting gambling platforms. Here are a few things you need to pay close attention to:
- A license from a reputable regulator. In most countries where online gambling is legal, only operators licensed by the competent authority are allowed. You should work only with licensed operators having certificates from independent auditors to avoid undesirable consequences.
- Restrictions concerning the advertising of iGaming products. Since betting on sports and gambling can be addictive, many countries have introduced restrictions on gambling advertising. In addition, similar restrictions have been imposed by social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. When creating your marketing campaigns, you should be aware of any restrictions to avoid being blocked.
- Taxes on gambling profits. Familiarize yourself with the tax laws of the country where you work to know what deductions you have to make.
People who prefer gambling are always looking for a reliable iGaming platform that operates in full compliance with the current legislation and provides a fair and transparent gaming environment. Therefore, your goal as a gambling affiliate is to choose a reputable platform and declare it as reliable and trustworthy. Is affiliate marketing safe – depends on the right choice of operator and affiliate program.
Quality of Copy
Although average gamblers are unlikely to spend hours reading articles and watching videos about casino games, content is something you cannot neglect as a gambling affiliate. Surprisingly, many affiliates – including experienced players in the market – still do not pay proper attention to the quality of content they publish on various resources. Since iGaming is a very competitive environment, there is always a need to provide up-to-date information about games, bonuses and promotions, tournaments, prize draws and other things that attract the attention of gambling enthusiasts.
Regardless of the type of content you publish, it should carry clear, truthful and useful information. From blackjack rules to explanations on how to fulfil wagering bonus requirements, there are plenty of content ideas that you should utilize. If you don’t have a large budget and resources to write content, you can use handy tools such as chatbots based on machine learning.
Providing Inaccurate or False Data about Operators
One of the dangers of affiliate marketing is working with dishonest online casino and sportsbook operators. To succeed as a gambling affiliate marketer, you need to focus on creating a credible brand as well as building trust with potential customers. By choosing a reliable iGaming platform that operates legally and honestly, you won’t have to invest a lot of time and money in branding. So, you need to publish content that represents the promoted casino brand accurately and provides the latest information about offers and updates.
Neglect of Intensive Market Competition
Market oversaturation is one of the risks of affiliate marketing that you must realize. Simply put, there are too many affiliate marketers out there today who want to earn commissions on promoting iGaming products. Due to the high level of competition, you may face problems such as low conversion rates, increased cost of advertisements and overall low profits from your marketing efforts. To minimize the risks associated with market saturation, you need to focus on high-quality content, capitalize on SEO and social media marketing, offer unique propositions and build relationships.
Failure to Comply with Affiliate Marketing Ethics
Not following ethical standards is another serious mistake you should avoid. By ignoring ethical principles, you risk losing trust and credibility, having problems with regulators and generally causing reputational damage to the industry. Therefore, your marketing efforts should focus on providing only honest and accurate information, promoting responsible gambling practices and prioritising the safety of your potential customers.
Neglecting UX
To make your campaigns work for you, it’s not enough just to create quality content. You also need to make sure everything is working properly from a technical standpoint. Broken links and busted interface elements are common issues that lead to lower conversions. So, be sure to test everything about the user experience to make sure it’s working accurately and correctly.
Black Hat SEO
While black hat methods of search engine promotion may have a temporary effect, you will always be on the losing end in the long run. By using black hat SEO, that is, creating low quality spammy content that prioritizes search engine manipulation, you risk losing credibility, getting penalized and banned by search engines, and generally having a negative impact on user experience. Black hat SEO tactics may seem like a shortcut to earnings from affiliate marketing. However, in practice, this approach results in wasted time and financial resources.
Bad Linkbuilding
The world of linkbuilding in gambling affiliate marketing involves many challenges including regulatory restrictions, black hat SEO, building relationships with websites operating in the gambling niche and a quantity-over-quality approach. For quality linkbuilding, you need to create great content, link to relevant websites, leverage social media, and fix broken links in a timely manner.
Summary
As new technologies are introduced and ranking algorithms change, affiliate marketing will become increasingly complex. This means that simply creating quality copy is not enough to succeed as an affiliate. So, it’s time to audit your marketing strategies and find out if you’re making the mistakes listed above in this article.