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It really all depends… as an affiliate manager, I used to routinely pay one affiliate 80-125K a month, and that was under poker, not casino.
For a casino affiliate I used to pay one affiliate 25-40K a month.
btw.. great work on getting your earnings to do 3-4K a month. Keep it going, keep adding new players and it will grow.
@roulettecouk 231663 wrote:
Hi Folks
What’s the biggest monthly earnings you have made, or someone you know has made being an affiliate? Roughly
Our site has just started, but mine has been around £3/4k with another project.
There are a few (less than 10) members of this forum that have earned over $1 million USD per month in commissions. The ones I know personally have been in the biz a long time (pre-UIGEA) and obviously had a large base of US players. Their income might be down now, but there are still others who are completely non-US and are at this level.
@Warren 231693 wrote:
There are a few (less than 10) members of this forum that have earned over $1 million USD per month in commissions. The ones I know personally have been in the biz a long time (pre-UIGEA) and obviously had a large base of US players. Their income might be down now, but there are still others who are completely non-US and are at this level.
The most I have heard an affiliate make from gambling in their very first year was about 150K. The affiliate had a great idea, and he marketed it well, really looked after his players – and he became a case of word of mouth, and being referred to by players. His business took off.
@Rak 231695 wrote:
The most I have heard an affiliate make from gambling in their very first year was about 150K. The affiliate had a great idea, and he marketed it well, really looked after his players – and he became a case of word of mouth, and being referred to by players. His business took off.
$150k in the first year is about average (out of producing affs, anyway)…just an avg of about $12k/mo
at any rate – the guys who do make the serious cash won’t be identifying themselves in a public forum anytime soon :shhh:
I remembered receiving a payment for $52k usd from a UK based site in 2003 for one month, which kept me in the industry ever since.
Pokerlistings was at like $3mill per month or something like that about a year ago. Not sure if it included their entire network of gaming sites. Personally I don’t put them in the “affiliate” category.
@rabbithunter 231712 wrote:
Pokerlistings was at like $3mill per month or something like that about a year ago. Not sure if it included their entire network of gaming sites. Personally I don’t put them in the “affiliate” category.
Pokerlistings (Unilistings is the parent co.) actually does north of $100 million per year (that’s in excess of $8 million per month). Most of their revenues now are non-gambling related and come from businesses such as MortgageLoan.com and other financial ventures. I agree with you as far not considering them an “affiliate” – they are a substantial media company with 300+ employees.
That’s kind of what I remember the 8ish mill but they had like 70% expenses or something crazy. Dunno.
@rabbithunter 231735 wrote:
That’s kind of what I remember the 8ish mill but they had like 70% expenses or something crazy. Dunno.
Exactly. Any newbies reading this post don’t get discouraged if you’re not making 6 figures a month.
Do some people clear $200,000 their first year – or even month – in the business? Yes. But there’s always a catch: they might have had to spend $150,000 on PPC and media buys to do it, leaving them with $50,000 in money that actually goes into their pocket. Don’t get me wrong, that’s still a nice income compared to working a desk job 50 hours a week.
I would say one should gauge earnings based on how much they spend. If you spend nothing to advertise and run your websites, but make $10,000 a month, that’s really good.
On the other hand, if you spend $10,000 to advertise/run your business and make $2,000 after expenses, I would say you need to reexamine your budget.
There are actually lots of expenses that add up: web hosting (a big one) can be expensive if you run a high volume website. Someone spending $150,000 on PPC will probably want a dedicated server with the fastest processor possible, plenty of RAM, and a ton of disk space. These types of servers start at $500 bare minimum per month. Throw in RAID and a backup hard drive, and your cost goes to $600, which is $7,200 a year. Reseller hosting won’t cut it for this project.
Don’t forget payment processing costs. In this day and age, especially for US based affiliates, one can lose 5% – 6% a month of gross revenue just getting paid. This doesn’t include the occasional rogue affiliate program that slow pays or doesn’t pay at all. No one is immune to bad affiliate programs. If you’ve been doing this for a while, no doubt you’ve been ripped off once or twice already, if not more. It’s part of the game.
Other things cut into earnings as well: if you work at an office, how much is rent? If you work at home, what’s your mortgage payment? Do you outsource content writing, if so, how much does that cost? If you do most of the work yourself you can save some money, but there’s a limit to what one person can do. We all only get 24 hours a day.
What list of expenses would be complete without taxes? If you’re in the USA, chances are you’re paying 25%-30% taxes a year if you are truthful on your tax return. European affiliates pay even more: 35%-45% isn’t uncommon in some countries with socialized health care and medical insurance. These costs definitely add up and one must put money aside each month to pay the government its fair share.
The upshot of being an affiliate is that the business model is scalable. Someone can start it as a hobby and given time can make it into a full time job. After that, with further investment and maybe some employees to help run the website those 6 and 7 digit incomes are possible.
In the meantime, be both patient and stubborn about improving your earnings. This is a competitive vertical and short of landing a million dollar whale player, it’s going to take time before you can really lay claim to making big money.
Scalability is a very important aspect. I started to run affiliate sites as a hobby while playing poker professionally. Then it started to make enough to be my “job” (although I still played poker professionally) and then in about the 3rd year it made enough to give me and my husband a full time job too. I still play poker professionally and the only time my affiliate income was more than my poker income was when I was on maternity leave and didn’t play poker at all
However, if I stopped playing now, I have a business that can make my living (not a very good living just yet, but more than most people who work in a job).
