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Harsh post kkiely, I agree with some of what you have to say, especially the mass marketing portion. The biggest poker rooms online are would have never gotten as big as they are without taking a mass market approach.
But you are way off base on the mass marketer not needing an affiliate program. That just doesn’t make business sense. An affiliate program supplies new customers at very little expense to a company. The cost of running an affiliate program is a minor expense when you consider the number of customers that a company would not have had. Take Amazon for instance. They were the 800 pound gorilla for selling everything online. They spent money mass-marketing like it was going out of style. Then, they instituted an affiliate program. Why? Because it makes perfect business sense for them. Hire an army of marketers to send you business, pay them nothing to provide exposure to their brand, then share the profits if a new customer is sent from the marketing partner.
Regardless of the current actions of some casino affiliate programs, affiliate marketing is here to stay. It makes a ton of sense for an online casino. Their cost of scaling is much lower than a company like Amazon that has to physically ship products, deal with returns, manage their product mix on a daily basis, etc. If an online casino has more business, they hire a few more customer service people, and maybe another bookkeeper or two, maybe even add another server. Scalability is easy, which is why the online casinos can offer 25-35% of the profits back to an affiliate. 65% of the profit from a gambler they would have never had is way better than 0 with such low overhead.
i apologize if I seemed somewhat harsh with my reply but I believe until you have dealt with bodog and been screwed over you won’t know what it’s like. Their affiliate manager Shenaz Shamji is a real jerk. I was disabled from the program without being notified and started promoting them – when I found out I already had 2 players depositing and perhaps more converting. This was the email I got:
Since you are disabled you cannot earn on those players. Do you have a player account? If you do, I can transfer those two players over to your player account and give you the refer a friend bonus which is 40% (up to $200) of their initial deposit. *(I only got paid for 1 player)
This is the best I can do for you.
To join our affiliate program, you must re apply by visiting http://www.bodog.com/affiliates. We will take a look at your website and let you know.
Thanks,
Shenaz Shamji
BoDog do have a, shall we say, odd approach to their affiliates, that’s for sure. I promoted them for a little while about 3 years ago and kept getting emails from them saying ‘we do not see any banners or creative on your site…please add some or you’ll be deactivated’. This despite the fact they were all over the site at the time. Having pointed this out to them a couple of times and still received the same emails, I dropped them.
Shame really as they do have a very good reputation as a sportsbook among players.
I have to agree with kkiely’s statement, if not the “harsh” tone of it.
I’ve said the same thing for years, if you went to business school, they would likely tell you the best affiliate program is one that ends quickly after having made the product/service a household name. The same B-School will tell you that being an affiliate markerter is great way to build a business at a low cost and with little staffing. They’ll also tell you in the long run, you’ll find that you are selling a commodity and need to own your brands to avoid the stuff (term changes, “Exclusive” affiliate programs) we’ve seen recently.
Amazon constantly restricts how they pay commissions, to the point where I doubt any small site website can money. I make about $1500 a quarter, because I have 4 automated sites that have thousands of pages, that generate hundreds of sale a month and (more importantly) work with trackers from a guy who does $350,000 a year with amazon, so I get paid 6% instead of 2 or 4%. The point of their term changes? >dump the under producing affiliates. And remember under producing is below average, each successive “tightening” will hit bigger affiliates.
Consolidation comes to every industry. over 100 car manuafacters in the US in the 1920’s, in 2005 there about 20 manufacturers of cars in the US and all but 2 are from outside the US. To survive consolidation in our industry you must grow bigger or find and own a profitable niche and all this while battling it out in the SEO world.
We have a consolidator here in our midst: Tovey, who saw this trend a year or two ago and started growing his business. Congrats on a job well done! :cheers:
We just had all of our sites approved for their program so will be interesting to see how things go. In a way I’m glad they’re selective on who they accept and hopefully this will add to the integrity of the program. I guess they just don’t want to see their banners plastered on B grade advertising billboards as this only detracts from any marketing efforts. I know when I see some of the sites out there full of banners and rubbish bonus promotions, the last thing I want to do is click through to any site that’s involved with them. Anyway will keep you informed on our “Bodog Affiliate Experience”.
While I haven’t been in the affiliate business long, I just wanted to add that my best promotions are through Bodog. While they don’t have automated stats and you actually have to contact your manager with any questions, they are usually very responsive. I’ve never had them threaten to cancel my account, and have always been paid on time. If you can get into the program and get a good manager, they aren’t tough to deal with.
Kevin1980 wrote:I will say that the competition on Bodog Poker is unbelievably bad, and most intermediate to advanced players can absolutely clean up on it. That will be a big draw for certain players, so maybe it’ll be worth it to stick around as an affiliate there.This is true, I have been KILLING it at the bodog tables.
I have also got an affiliate account there, but have not started to push any traffic yet because of the limited statistics reporting.
Any word on if bodog will be CAP Certified?
Haha, everyone I’ve talked to seems to come to the same consensus regarding Bodog – those games are SO juicy!
As for your question about Bodog becoming CAP certified…I would have absolutely no knowledge of relations between CAP and Bodog, but I will say that Bodog has always seemed to do its own thing in regards to marketing and development, so who knows.
But I have to agree with StillShadow, I’ve found the affiliate manager at Bodog to be great…very responsive and helpful.
Scandle5 wrote:With all the Casinos out there, they should consider
more help from the affiliates. I really don’t get them
either. How can they stay in business if they aren’t
getting the traffic they need? :crazy:Bodog may need many things, traffic isn’t particularly high on the list. Fair play to them for being selective. And I haven’t found them rude, just driven. Nothing wrong with that.
Anyone notice that Bodog removed the link exchnage link from their site. You can now register for an exchange but you will not find the page with exchanges anywhere on their site.
By the way I am new hear and this is my first post. Great site, one of the only good gambling webmaster forums I have found.
I’m pretty new to promoting sports betting but I have done well so far. Here’s my take on this.
I dont exactly care how big or successful an operation is. If they treat webmasters like this than they are not worth promoting. I have done well promoting vipprofits.com and 9am.com If I have a question or concern they respond to me in a timely manner. This friendly support was available back when I was signing up 1 player a month.
And the communication is just as good now that I am actually signing up a good base of players. This month I signed up over 800 players. Had 9am or vipprofits being rude to me when I initially promoted them there’s no way i would have sent those players there. Instead they treated me and my traffic with respect. I was considering promoting bodog, but any affiliate program that treats my fellow affiliates like this will not be getting my traffic. We have to stick together. For all they know the affiliate that is sending 10 hits a month now could be the next so called super affiliate.
Yes bodog has to protect its image, but they can protect it in an ethical manner. That means if an affiliate signs up and they do decide to ‘terminate’ the account for lack of traffic, they should pay monies earned on all recruited players and give a notice of termination before the fact.
HAHAHA Bodog are idiots. I applied to see if they are as bad as everyone claims they are and it is true!
I was the #1 affiliate last month for the most sign ups at 9am. I was a top 10 at vip profits… yet they sent me this rejection notice:
‘Although your website does offer brief content in
this respect we were concerned about the quantity and quality of web
traffic your website can generate for us’And they also want me to reapply in 6 months! Dont they realize affiliate programs are a dime a dozen. Reject me once and I will promote your competition. Idiots need a lesson in affiliate marketing! What do they expect that I will come back begging in 6 months. And to think that I was actually considering attending the bodog conference.
This is what I think of Bodog :grunt:
HAH! :rollover:
Oh well — Bodog’s loss is someone else’s gain.
Bodog can do whatever they like. They have a good player reputation and I don’t think they are hard up for players.
They decided they like a certain type of portal and are sticking with it. That is a branding thing, not a “generate the most players” thing.
It’s a different type business model and one that is quite rare in this industry.
They have bought out all the ads at the wizard of odds….
I agree tha they want to protect thier image. But then they have no right going to these affiliate conferences and pretending that they want to sign up affiliates.
The small affiliates that you alienate now are going to become the large affiliates of the future. Yes they do offline marketing well, but they are ignorant about affiliate marketing.
