Payment models and making money

Once a player follows an affiliate link and performs a set action, the casino or sports betting site pays that affiliate a pre-agreed commission. It’s worth noting that affiliate marketers are not generally paid immediately (though there are exceptions) but rather on a monthly basis, in line with contract terms and conditions. The action required to earn the commission is usually a player registering or depositing funds with a gambling site, although in rare cases affiliates may favour being paid for clicks, a model that Traffic Label’s Phil Blackwell builds a compelling case for in ‘Done fishing’. However, it’s worth noting an affiliate would likely have to be very established to be able to demand such terms. Alternatively, they might find these terms from a new operator (see What is a new betting affiliate programme?).

There are three main payment models for igaming affiliates: cost-per-acquisition (CPA), revenue share and hybrid, which is essentially a mix of the first two.

Under the cost-per-acquisition (CPA) model, affiliates are paid when a new player they introduce to an online casino or sportsbook completes a set action. In igaming, this is typically registering with a site or making a deposit. It’s less common, but they may also be paid if a player simply clicks on the casino or sportsbook’s site after being directed by the affiliate. Under the CPA payment model, affiliates are paid once when the specified action occurs, with the amount paid based on pre-agreed terms.

Under the revenue share model, frequently abbreviated to revshare, affiliates receive a share of the revenue generated by the players they direct to casinos or sportsbook instead of a one-off payment. Many affiliates favour this payment model as it provides a continuous payment stream. It’s important to note that the headline percentages offered typically refer to net gaming revenue (NGR) rather than gross gaming revenue (GGR), so it’s not simply a percentage of player losses. Operators typically make a number of deductions from the GGR, such as promotional costs, payment fees and other administrative costs, before splitting the NGR with affiliates. ‘The reality of revenue share’ according to some affiliates though is a lack of transparency regarding the real percentages - often referred to as effective revenue share – that they can ultimately expect to receive.

Under the hybrid model, affiliates are paid a mixture of CPA and revenue share. Therefore, they receive a payment when a player completes a specified action, as with CPA, and also a share of that player’s revenue afterwards, as with revenue share. Many affiliates consider this the best of both worlds, as they are compensated both when a player first signs up and also as that player continues to play.

One key question to ask regardless of the payment model is at what point does the CPA kick in, sometimes called the kicker or trigger figure. In other words, how much does the new player have to deposit for the affiliate to get paid? If this figure is too high, you might not get paid even if a player makes a deposit.

The answer to this varies wildly, from nothing to thousands of dollars. If you send a player to a partner casino or sports betting site and that player doesn’t convert into a new paying player, you won’t make anything.

If you send a player who does convert and the deal you have negotiated is CPA (see The cost-per-acquisition model), you’ll make whatever amount you’ve agreed with the partner in question. The amount offered on CPA deals varies significantly between operators and regions.

In some countries, for example, the US and Switzerland, CPA deals are the norm so if a player converts, you know exactly what you’re going to get. Rates for the former could be anything from $100 to $1,000 while rates in the latter are typically from CHF 150 to 300.

In regulated European markets, CPAs are typically €50-100, while in African countries where the spending power is much more limited, CPA figures could be as low as $5 (though some programmes may pay up to $50).

However, in many European markets, revenue share (see The revenue share model)

and hybrid deals (see The hybrid model) are more common than CPA, so it’s more difficult to predict how much each lead will generate.

If you negotiated a hybrid deal with an online casino in the UK, you might be offered £50 on a CPA basis and 25% (after deductions) on a revenue share basis. Therefore, you would receive £50 after the player’s first deposit, and then 25% of their losses after that. If that player lost £1,000 per year, you’d be paid £250 each year by the online casino.

This varies depending on the payment model and a number of other factors, including the partner, the geography, the number of players provided and the quality of the players provided.

The revenue share or hybrid percentages offered to affiliates typically range from 20% to 50%, but there are a number of caveats to note here. First, the headline percentages offered typically refer to net gaming revenue (NGR) rather than gross gaming revenue (GGR), so it’s not simply a percentage of player losses. Operators typically make a number of deductions from the GGR, such as promotional costs, payment fees and other administrative costs, before splitting the NGR with affiliates.

Some affiliates feel there is a lack of transparency about the real percentages affiliates can expect to receive. Though this article was based on a piece of research undertaken a few years ago, a quick glance at affiliate forums such as Affiliate Guard Dog reveals the issue remains a big one in the industry today. Therefore, it’s important to look at not just the headline percentage offered, but also the deductions. Some smaller affiliates may feel a fee of 20-25% after all deductions is fair, while others will demand higher rates if they have a large amount of traffic to send.

This refers to the rate at which affiliates are converting website visitors into players who complete the specific action required for the affiliate to be due a payment from a partner. If 100 people visit a website and five of these deposit funds with a casino partner, the conversion rate would be 5%.

In the gambling industry, these players are typically called either new depositing customers (NDCs) or first-time depositors (FTDs). Though people use these terms interchangeably, there is a slight difference in meaning. NDCs refer to customers who sign up and make their first deposit in the same month; FTDs simply refers to any player who has made their first deposit in any given month, regardless of when they first signed up to a gambling operator website (therefore it could be two or three months between them registering and actually making their first deposit).

For igaming affiliates, a conversion rate of more than 5% would generally be considered high. The average rate for affiliates is more likely to be 3-5%. Conversion rates for igaming affiliate marketing are generally higher than affiliate marketing in other industries.

You would be very unlikely to find a traditional igaming affiliate marketing programme that pays for just impressions rather than registrations or depositing players.

However, some affiliates are now also acting as influencers or bloggers and for this activity, they may be able to negotiate deals whereby their gambling partners pay based on impressions. (see What is another name for affiliate marketing?)

This is more likely if you have an established social media profile or expertise of some kind, with an engaged audience of regular visitors.

These are tracked via the platform being used by the programme, but affiliates have long reported tracking and reporting issues when working with operators. Most affiliates therefore use a separate system to verify the tracking information provided by their partners and to provide a backup method of monitoring their commissions.

Tracking links are also frequently broken for various reasons and using their own method of tracking helps affiliates identify any broken links and rectify them quickly. A common issue for affiliates is that operators update their tracking links or software, but that this information is not relayed and so the affiliate continues to use a link that is now invalid and therefore doesn’t make any money from the partnership. Other issues can include programmes or operators shutting down and bonus deals expiring. Tracking links are also frequently broken when used in social media platforms such as Facebook or Instagram. A good standalone system will identify these link issues, which helps affiliates stay on top of any changes to make sure potential revenue is not lost.

However, even when affiliates use tools to make sure they are on top of all their links, they still face the challenge of being reliant on operators to share information about conversion, whether the player signed up, how much they spent, etc. This is an area where many affiliates feel there is an imbalance in the relationship as they have little visibility on player behaviour after they’ve clicked through to the operator’s site.

That said, affiliates tend to track the performance of all of campaigns regularly and are well aware of the average conversion rates (see What does conversion rate mean in affiliate marketing?) and the average value of their revenue share deals. They also tend to discuss programmes with other affiliates and compare notes. If they are not converting at the expected levels for an operator or are making less from players than they’d expect, and especially if feedback from other affiliates reveals similar experiences, they will probably start wondering if the operator is being dishonest, or if the operator’s own site and services are lacking and therefore deterring potential customers or leading to signed-up players moving on. Either way, the affiliate is likely to stop working with them if the situation continues, so operators have a strong incentive to behave ethically towards both affiliates and players.

See: What is the best affiliate tracking software for igaming?

The most common way for affiliates to be paid is by bank transfer, though there are also a wide variety of other payment options available – 1XBet’s affiliate programme claims to have more than 200 payment methods available, for example.

To work with a variety of affiliate programmes, it’s a good idea to be set up to accept payments via more than one method, so having an account with PayPal and an e-wallet such as Skrill in addition to accepting bank transfers, for example.

One reason it’s good to accept payments via multiple systems is because some countries have restrictions about banks or other payment services facilitating gambling transactions.

There have been instances where there have been sudden crackdowns of such rules, with banks and payment providers suddenly refusing to work with gambling companies in certain countries.

Payments are usually made to affiliates on a monthly basis, though there are exceptions and it’s worth asking about payments before signing up to any programme. Some affiliate programmes require affiliates to send invoices in order to get paid, while others pay automatically, with the trend moving towards the former in regulated markets over recent years. However, automatic payments can be better for affiliates as they cut down on admin time and also ensure payments are made no matter how small monthly earnings are.

The caveat to the last point is that some programmes have minimum earnings levels before they will pay out. If this level is too high, you might have to wait a long time for payments, so it’s worth checking this when assessing a programme.

Another thing to check is that a programme does not apply negative carry-over. If it does apply negative carry-over, this means that if one of your revenue share players is an overall winner one month, you’re in negative territory and this carries over to the next month and affects future payments.

An increasing number of igaming affiliate programmes will pay affiliates with Bitcoin. These include BC.Game Affiliates, RocketPlay Partners, Wolf.Bet Partners, 247 Partners, Affiliate Edge, Betplay, 500 Casino, RioBet Affiliates, Slotland Affiliates, Bspin Affiliates, Winz Affiliates, Crashino Affiliates, Coinplay Partners, Bona Fides Affiliates and Affgoldmine.

This list is not exhaustive and a growing number of affiliate programmes, both those that are linked to crypto sites and those linked to non-crypto sites, list Bitcoin as a payment option.

Earnings potential

Being profitable as an igaming affiliate is no different to being profitable in any other business. The key to success lies in spending less running your affiliate marketing business than the amount of revenue you generate from your affiliate marketing activities.

It may sound simple, but particularly for an affiliate using paid advertising to generate traffic, this isn’t necessarily the case as it may be paying for traffic per click but being paid only when those clicks turn into paying players at its operator partners, so there’s a real risk of spending more than is brought in. For paid campaigns, it’s especially important that affiliates manage their campaigns well. See How do I manage affiliate marketing campaigns?

The igaming affiliate marketing industry is more lucrative than many other affiliate marketing industries due to the large commission rates paid by casinos and sportsbook and their heavy reliance on affiliates. However, it’s also very competitive and igaming affiliates have become much more sophisticated and professional over the past 10 years.

The largest of the igaming affiliates for which we have visibility of earnings, Better Collective, pulled in €371.5m in revenues in 2023, with an after-tax profit of almost €35m. However, it is the market leader by some distance, with its closest rival Gambling.com having revenues of US$127.2 and Gentoo Media (recently renamed from GiG Media, as reported in ‘GiG Media rebrands as Gentoo following split’, reporting sales of €122.8m. These numbers show the potential, but they are a long way from what a small affiliate would expect to make.

In 2018, iGB Affiliate carried out a wide-ranging survey of both affiliates and operators and found that the average affiliate had revenue close to $150,000 per month. However, this amount was dragged up significantly by the 14% of survey respondents who had more than $400,000 in revenue per month. Because the affiliate sector is dominated by a few large players, any average earnings figures will always be heavily skewed by the few companies making large sums of money.

At the other end of the scale, in the iGB Affiliate survey, 9% had revenues of between $100-$999 per month, 14% had revenues of between $1,000-$4,999 per month and a further 14% between $5,000-$9,999. Beginner affiliates are more likely to be making revenues in line with these figures.

Casino is generally considered to be more lucrative for a number of reasons. First, earnings are more consistent as sports betting is seasonal in nature and casino is not. Making an impact with content is also more difficult with sports betting because there is so much competing content in the market, not only from affiliates but also media outlets and other businesses. Casino is also generally more lucrative for operators, therefore they are usually willing to pay higher commission rates.

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