I think you’ll find a major difference between gaming and non-gaming ad sources is that you’re very much on your own when it comes to how you advertise. You can indeed get support from your network of choice, but how you implement the creatives, or search marketing, or email drops, is all up to you. You can have as little or as much support as you want. As well, most networks provide detailed enough stats, but the larger affiliates typically have their own stats tabulation in place to aide the analysis on their end.
Another major difference between industries is the huge range in campaign quality, that’s why it’s a good idea to become involved with the network you choose and see what’s hot or not. We have 200+ campaigns on our network, not all are good for search engine marketing for example… but some are. Some are more geared for email ads. Lots of testing is required, but your affiliate manager (all good networks should have one for you) can help you weed through the lower end campaigns and nail the best results. Different paying campaigns should have different strategies in advertising. There are many campaigns paying $1 – $2 CPA which have far larger earning potential than the big paying ads (which casino affiliates might tend to naturally gravitate towards), but the low payout might limit the amount you can spend to advertise it.
I can certainly see it all being confusing to gaming affiliates. Best way to learn is to just give it a try in a limited fashion to get your feet wet. If anyone wants to give us a try in branching out to more mainstream advertising, we’d be happy to help. If you’re unsure if your ideas will transfer well over to mainstream, by all means send me an email and I’ll give you an honest answer.
Thanks
JP Sauve
http://www.MaxBounty.com
In gambling, CPA stands for cost per aquisition and ranges from $100 to $500 or so. It is a bad deal because one of the partners loses, the casino if the player doesn’t play much, the affiliate if the player spends a lot. Actual player values can vary from $25 to tens of thousands over the “lifetime” of a player.
Implementing creatives few of us like to have guidance in, everyone has their own idea. A good selection of fresh, frequently changed creatives with good promotional offers are helpful though.
Statistics about what happens on my end I don’t need, I have those. I need to see what happens on your end, how many visits, how many of those go on to purchase, how much they spend etc. That helps identify good targeted traffic sources.
I guess it is all very varied in the retail sector, slapping up sites that deliver high volumes of leads is not much of a challenge or fun for me. I would be more interested in high ticket items that generate repeat customers and pay a percentage of sales for life. I am interested in creating communities of targeted customers that return to buy over and over again.
I am not looking to deliver quantity buys, but quality, long term returning customers. I guess the pickings of programs for that are far and between in the retail sector. It’s a totally different approach.
$1 to $2 CPA for leads – darn, that would take quite a volume to rival percentage income from repeat quality high end customers.
An entirely different target audience and a different approach. Volume, not value. Are incentivised leads permissible?