If I Was Just Starting In This Industry

[ramchip]

I have been working as a gambling affiliate for around 4 years and had a conversation with somebody who has been a gambling affiliate for around a year. The question I asked him was if you could turn back the clock what would you do?

To be honest he had made the same sort of mistakes I had made and I guess many of you have also.

So what mistakes do gambling affiliates make?

1. Too Many Sites

I think many of us make this mistake at first. How many of us are guilty of having sites that we don't even work on sitting on our servers? For someone new to the industry I think you should start with just two sites as the more sites you build the more you dilute your content creation and link building.

2. Find A Quality Niche

I think too many focus on buying a domain with an exact match key phrase and so don't give themselves scope to open up the niche. Affiliates that make decent money have sites that have hundreds of long tail key phrases. I have seen many sites that have been built on an exact match key phrases which have limited scope to expand. I's rather go for a domain name that I can brand and target 100s of long tail key phrases.

For example lets look at bingo sites. Top bingo affiliate sites include Bingo Port, Bingo Street and Bingo Base. These domain names IMO are far better than the likes of No Deposit Bingo or Foxy Bingo Bonus etc. Think big! Open up your niche!

What Market To Target?

Poker is a bloody hard market to target and I will also say is not as financial rewarding as bingo and casino. Lets say we have a rev share deal with a poker site, a casino site and a bingo site and on each site a player loses $1000 on each site. Lets say for each site we have a 30% rev share deal

Revenue For The Poker Site

For poker we only recieve 30% of the rake generated by the player. Depending on what stakes the player was playing and how long the player was playing we might only recieve a few dollars for this player.

Revenue For The Bingo Site

If a player loses $1000 then we would get $300

Revenue For The Casino Site

If a player loses $1000 we would get $300

I do realise that sign up bonuses etc would be deducted but long term bingo and casino players will earn you more!

I'm from the UK and I can tell you that we have a mssive bingo boom. Prime time TV is crammed with commercials for Online Bingo sites plus all the newspapers are also full with ads for bingo. Bingo gets far more exposure than poker or casino. I can guarantee that when any of the bingo sites I promote run a TV or Newspaper campaigne my signs up at least treble!

Bingo is such a great product to promote because anybody can play it. The main reason bingo is such a great money maker is that for the first time ever women are the main targets. I would say that for poker and casino the ratio of men to women is far higher than for bingo. In general men are brought up to learn about gambling and are more "street wise". Many women who sign up to bingo sites have perhaps never gambled before in their life.

Inexperienced gamblers make gambling affiliates good money!

Remember bingo sites are in reality casino sites. Bingo is just a hook to get players playing casino type games.

Bingo still has plenty of growth to come during the coming years. Spain and Italy are already great markets but there are plenty more countries you can target that will boom during the next 5 years.

So anyway back to the original question. What would the affiliate do if he could turn back the clock?

Well he said he would have limited the sites he built and made his made site a bingo site.

[Strider1973]

It's difficult for me to give advice to others as I don't have a proven track record yet.

But I fully agree to your point about brandable domain names:

If your site ever ever could evolve into anything larger than a 10 page mini-site, I would go for a brandable name.

Some other examples:

thecashgamers >> smallstakespoker
tournamentcube >> turbomttstrategy
pokervariants >> rushpokerguide
datingstreet >> onlinedatingcoupons

So think about where you plan to stand with your site in 6 months and in 3 years before you start registering exact match domains blindly ;-)

[pokeraussie]

It depends on your marketing strategy.

mini site = exact match domain
large portal site = brandable domain

Both strategies have their advantages and disadvantages.

[doovde]

I dunno who that newb you were talking to on the phone was but if it was me , like I said if I could turn back the clock to when I first started in the industry knowing what I know now I would have done things different for sure! I'm sure most people would though.

I'm kind of on the fence still about a brandable domain name. Personally I'd like to hit some middle ground in which you can build the brand around the domain name which is also a good match. This is easy if you have a really premium domain name like bingo.org or onlinebingo.co.uk. I own onlinebingohalls.org which is the kind of site I'm talking about a good exact match but still plenty of room for expansion because it's all inclusive.

I mean you can't deny you'd rather have bingobonus.com than bingobonusland.com or whatever.

Anyway back to the real question, I'd start out building one main authority site spend about 6 months of my time on it, build it out, build links and then after about 6 months I'd keep adding content but on a less regular basis and I'd start to build mini sites within the same niche. Probably on exact domain names and like 20-30 page sites. I'd do a small amount of link building for them and move onto the next one spending about 60% of my time on my main site and the other 40% on the mini sites.

By the end of the year you'd hope to have one really good authority site, or a site that's on it's way to that position and 4 or 5 mini sites below it targeting phrases which the main site doesn't target.

Then it's just a case of time and analysis.

[ramchip]

I mean you can't deny you'd rather have bingobonus.com than bingobonusland.com or whatever.

I would not pay a small fortune for a domain like bingobonus.com so I guess I would prefer something linke bingo bonus land. I think the trouble with those new to the industry who buy domains like bingobonus.com is that they put all their eggs in one basket and just target the key phrase bingo bonus.

Google "bingo bonus" and see what type of domains have the top rankings.

I'm not of course saying exact domains don't have there uses as I know from experience they can make big money. I'm just trying to say, perhaps not in a clear manner that those new to the industry should think big and not worry too much about an exact match domain.

[doovde]

What I meant by "I mean you can't deny you'd rather have bingobonus.com than bingobonusland.com or whatever." was that if it was a choice between the two independent to cost you'd take the bingobonus.com every time. I'm not saying that the owner of bingobonusland.com couldn't have just as much success with their domain.

In the top 20 I see 3 domains that are bingobonus dot something.

Also I don't think just because you have an exact match domain you can't think big. Some exact matches will limit you, some won't and some will allow you to dominate mini niches within the niche you are targeting.

To be honest as long as new affiliates get a decent domain name then they should be ok, it's what they do with it that matters.

[CK]

I own onlinebingohalls.org which is the kind of site I'm talking about a good exact match but still plenty of room for expansion because it's all inclusive.

Doovde personally I would take a branded domain over one like that ONLY because I want repeat visitors. I want people to remember my site and not second guess it when they see it in the serps. You cant do that with an exact match. And I dont think they are worth as much unless you can get into the top 3 - and even than I would want 1st of 2nd place. Anything less and it's a hit and miss. With a brandable domain you can expand your site beyond just onlinebingohalls. Sure you can do the same with your site but it doesn't always make sense to do so. idk I dont think you have to invest into an exact match to do really well - of course anyone who wants to hand me onlineslots or onlinecasinos because they want to be super nice, I wont turn them down.

anyway an exact match unless its a premo (examples above) isn't worth it when you can do the same with a well named site. You could do the same thing with Bobsbingohall.com but the difference between the two would be people will remember to type bobs bingo hall into google. Online bingo halls might bring a bunch of random sites where your caught in the middle.

Ramchip - If I had to give a tip to a newbie thats just starting my tip would be - shut up and listen! Way to many new affiliates assume they know it all and refuse to listen to the help that's given to them for free. If new affiliates would be more open-minded they would progress at a much faster rate and likely make less mistakes. my 2 cents

[ramchip]

Kaus I agree with you 100%. I always enjoy helping people but I guess sometimes I'm just wasting my time. Dave, working on the domain onlinebingohalls.org long term is a big mistake when you could have got a decent brandable .co.uk or .com.

For those new to this industry who want to try this let me give you a big tip. Forget about either buying a new domain or a matched domain. New domains do get sandboxed so they can slow you down.

It is possible to buy aged domains for a few bucks and in some cases with back links.

Look for a domain at least 2 years old that has not been dropped.

To search for aged domains go to: https://auctions.godaddy.com/

To check the domain age go to: Whois lookup and Domain name search

Don't buy any domains that have been dropped!

To check backlinks go to: Site Explorer - Yahoo! Site Explorer

If is possible to pick up some decent domains 5 to 10 years old for just a few bucks.

I will get back to building my network. Hope the above helps somebody!

[doovde]

Kaus I agree with you 100%. I always enjoy helping people but I guess sometimes I'm just wasting my time.

I hope you don't think I'm not listening because I am in agreement with you. All I was trying to point out is there is good scope to achieve good results with exact match domain names.

Here is an example of a site I think uses an exact match domain name to target a niche within a niche really well. Casino Signup Bonus | Best Online Casino Bonuses | Online Casino Bonus Directory

[ramchip]

I hope you don't think I'm not listening because I am in agreement with you. All I was trying to point out is there is good scope to achieve good results with exact match domain names.

Here is an example of a site I think uses an exact match domain name to target a niche within a niche really well. Casino Signup Bonus | Best Online Casino Bonuses | Online Casino Bonus Directory

That's a nice site but how is that domain helping the site? Is is ranked for Casino Signup Bonus? If not how many daily searches will it get if it hits top 3?

Just look at some of the top sites in the main gambling niches.

Bingo

xxxBingoport.co.ukxxx
xxxBingobase.comxxx
xxxbingostreet.comxx

Casino

xxxcasinochoice.co.ukxxx
xxxonlinecasinosuit.comxxx


Poker

xxxwww.pokerlistings.comxxx
xxxwww.pokerjunkie.comxxx

They are using names they can brand for a reason.

For some reason, and I'm not talking about you Dave, those new to this industry think that have to find an exact match domain. In reality unless they get a prime domain name they are going to get little traffic from the actual key phrase of the domain.


For example looking at the bingo domains, the site owners did not worry about getting any traffic from the exact phrase of their domains as they were more concerned about building a brand. Building a brand is IMO vastly ignored by new affiliates and that is my point.

By tomorrow I will have forgot what the name of the casino site you posted was.