Choosing a Casino Affiliate Program

This guide on choosing a casino affiliate program will give you the insights of selecting the right programs to work with.

Affiliate marketing is an amazing way to earn extra income out of a website or social media traffic. This practice is very common in the online world since it allows brands to promote their services with the help of affiliates that earn monetary compensation for promoting an online casino brand(s) on their websites or social media.

But, since there are millions of online casinos (and affiliate programs as well) out there, how can someone choose the right one? Is there an ultimate affiliate program hidden behind a lot of below-average or mediocre programs?

To answer these questions, we must ask ourselves another question first:

What makes an affiliate program a top tier affiliate program?

There are several aspects of an affiliate program that can determine if it is a gold mine or if it is just another program like many others, if you want to identify and distinguish a great opportunity from a bad one, then you should focus on these 5 topics:

The Brand(s)

A top tier affiliate program will always promote top tier casino brands, and this is a fact!, so a great way to know if an affiliate program is worth your attention or not is to always check the brand(s) that you will promote before even considering joining an affiliate program.

Of course, this generates another problem, how do you know which online casino is the best one? Well, thanks to the internet this is an issue for history since there are a lot of online websites dedicated to creating reviews about online casinos, their bonuses and promotions, games, and many other interesting topics that involve the iGaming world.

Our recommendation to start your journey as an affiliate would be through 777 Casino affiliate website to get an idea of which affiliate programs they work with. A few of their top recommended brands are Volt Casino, Slot Nite and PlayGrand casino which are part of Volt Affiliates, Full Cream Affiliates and Playgrand Affiliates. 

The Perks

Let’s be honest, an online casino can’t survive on games alone, so, you will normally see that the best online casinos have the best bonuses and promotions, the best VIP program, payment methods, and any extra perk that they would like to add for the players.

These perks are incredible marketing campaigns made with the sole purpose of attracting new players while retaining already existing ones. This is also known as retention and conversion rates; we recommend that you always look for affiliate programs with high conversion and retention rates as these will ensure that your time and effort to get that brand-new depositing customers are paid off someday shortly.

Also, there are even affiliate programs that offer inside bonuses for their affiliates or that include VIP or loyalty rewards programs. These are always a great option as they offer affiliates a chance to get paid according to individual development inside the program.

The Payment methods

The main reason to join an affiliate program is to make money, right? So, one of the most important things to check out is the affiliate program payment methods, since you don’t want to be in an awkward situation where you had an amazing month but then you realize that the program does not support any payment method that you currently use.

Also, affiliates should check the payment pending times, some affiliate programs take around 7 to 15 business days to process a payment, where others make them instantly, and some make them at the end of each month.

The Target markets

This might be the most important aspect to consider before joining an affiliate program since the brand’s target markets will define everything from offered games, payment methods, perks, bonuses and promotions, and marketing tools and campaigns.

it is a waste of time, effort, and resources to join an affiliate program that targets players from Canada and Australia (for example) if your website gets a lot of visits from countries like Italy and Germany.

So, unless you have a way to attract players from specific markets that your website or social media doesn’t target already, then you should avoid joining certain affiliate programs even if they have all the points mentioned before.

How to choose the best affiliate program

Now that you know what makes an affiliate program a top tier affiliate program, let’s talk about the three things to look for to make sure that you select only the best affiliate programs to join:

Life-time deals

Many affiliate programs offer life-time deals, which means that an affiliate will get compensation if the referred player keeps playing at the casino.

More important than life-time deals (since most affiliate programs offer them anyways) is to choose a deal model that suits your business better.

The most common models are Revenue Share deals, where the affiliate gets a percentage out of the casino’s net revenue (generated by the referred player), Cost per Action deals, where the affiliate gets paid a fixed amount every time a referred player completes an action (like depositing at the casino) and Hybrid deals that combine both of the previously mentioned deals.

Here’s an example of what Revenue share deals and CPA deals look like:

AffAlliance affiliate program

Commission Kings affiliate program

Cookie duration

This is a very important aspect to consider since the casino will keep track of which customer from which site via the cookie that’s stored on that said client’s computer.

Unfortunately, cookies don’t last forever, and most of them are set to last only 30 days; and even if you might think that this is a lot of time, just think about all of those unfortunate cases where a player that your referred manages to make a deposit or create an account at the casino on the day 31 or 32…

These scenarios are more common than you might think, the good news is that affiliate managers can set the cookie duration as high as they want, so you should always look for affiliate programs that have high cookie duration times.

Negative carryover policies

This is a breakpoint when it comes to affiliate programs, usually, you will see that most programs have a no negative carryover policy.

A no negative carryover policy means that the affiliate won't’ be affected if any of its referred players manage to go home with a jackpot, and since affiliate marketing offers you a share of the casino’s net revenue (the player’s losses) having a no negative carryover policy available will save you from an unlucky strike that could lead to months of “free work” before even looking to a single penny ever again in your account.

However, there are affiliate programs that offer insanely high revenue share deals with the catch that there is a negative carryover policy active behind them. Unless you feel like testing your luck, we recommend avoiding these kinds of offers.

Summary and conclusion

To end this guide, we must mention that unfortunately there is no such thing as “the best affiliate program”; there are a lot of affiliate programs where some of them are above average and some others are just ok.

The only way to find the “perfect” affiliate program is to investigate and identify which ones suits your model of business the best.