Running an affiliate programme

The first step to recruiting good affiliates is to identify affiliates that would be a good fit with your brand.

Research potential partners thoroughly by looking at their traffic and demographics to ensure they are a match to your product. One potential way of finding suitable affiliates is to look at your closest competitors to see which affiliates they are working with. Tools such as SEMrush and Ahrefs can be helpful in this regard, as they allow you to see detailed information on where the traffic your competitors are getting is coming from. (see also How do I attract affiliates to a gaming affiliate programme?)

Once you’ve identified potential partners and made contact, it’s important to be transparent about what commission and payment terms you are offering, as well as your current conversion rates. Affiliates want to know that if they deliver traffic, there’s a good chance it will convert.

It is important to remember that the job isn’t over once you’ve convinced affiliates to sign up to your programme; retention is equally important. A common complaint from affiliates is that affiliate managers communicate with them regularly until they’re signed up, then far less often afterwards. Communication is a vital retention tool and is often a key factor in the longevity of an operator/affiliate partnership.

Keep in regular contact with your affiliates and respond to queries promptly. Where possible, be transparent with them. Another common gripe among affiliates is that they have little visibility over what happens to the traffic they send to their partners; sharing data can go a long way towards building trust with your partners.

Pay affiliates consistently and regularly, use reliable tracking tools, and keep them updated of any changes that may affect them, such as changes to your terms and conditions or software programs.

If you overlook the retention element of the partnership, affiliates may favour other partners over your brand. Most affiliates are signed up with a large number of programmes, some of which they may not actively be promoting. An iGB Affiliate Survey published in 2018 found that affiliates were signed up with an average of 41 programmes, but were only actively promoting 26.

One of the main gripes of affiliates is that turnover is high among the affiliate managers at the programmes they work with, and another is that communication after sign-up can be infrequent and inconsistent.

Therefore, any operator looking to set up an affiliate system would be wise to start with hiring a strong team of affiliate managers and focusing on staff retention. Providing at least basic training in SEO and regulation is also a good idea, given these issues are key challenges on both the affiliate and operator side of the affiliate business (see What are the challenges of life as an affiliate manager?) .

Getting the right software is another key component of building a successful affiliate system. According to a survey of 1,100 affiliate programmes carried out recently by StatsDrone, 17% of operators still use proprietary software, but some affiliates view this as a deterrent to signing up with a programme.

Affiliates generally feel there is a lack of visibility over the performance of the traffic they send to operators, but this is heightened when the operator uses its own software as there is no external verification of the data.

Using a highly regarded software programme that offers advanced tracking, for example, with S2S capabilities, may therefore be more appealing to potential affiliate partners. The StatsDrone survey found that MyAffiliates was the most widely used affiliate marketing software, with 16% of gambling operators using it for their affiliate programmes. Affilka was the next most popular at 11.8% and Income Access was in third place at 10.5%.

Once you’ve got the right team and software in place, the next step is recruiting good affiliates into your programme See How to recruit good affiliates .

If you are looking to recruit igaming affiliate marketers, Commission Junction is unlikely to be the best avenue as it takes a healthy cut of affiliates’ commission and most savvy igaming affiliates will know they can get better deals by going direct to a programme or via a network.

Where it may be useful is if you’re looking to recruit affiliates that specialise in other industries. If there are publishers in Commission Junction that you think could convert traffic to casino or sportsbooks, it could be a good avenue for some more outside-the-box deals. Compared to other industries, igaming typically offers higher commission rates, so affiliates without specialist igaming knowledge may be tempted to give a partnership a try if the user base is aligned with gambling verticals, or at least not opposed to it.

The most common way affiliates are paid is by bank transfer and many prefer this method. PayPal is also popular, though the fees charged can be a turnoff for affiliates. Research the payment methods with the lowest fees for the geographies you are operating in and consider offering these methods as fees are a factor affiliates will take into account.

Affiliates usually expect to be paid on a monthly basis, and most would prefer automatic payments rather than having to send invoices. That said, it has become common in regulated markets for affiliates to have to invoice before payment, so that alone is unlikely to stop affiliates signing up for your programme.

If you’re a new programme, you may need to consider some form of upfront payment to attract good affiliates.

Conferences have long been one of the primary networking tools in the igaming industry, with many partnerships between operators and affiliates forged and reinforced at such events, especially the annual iGB Affiliate conference. This has traditionally been held in London but moved to Barcelona starting from January 2025.

Although attendance at physical events did drop off during the Covid-19 pandemic, the igaming conference circuit is firmly back in full swing – in fact, 2024’s iGB L!VE event reported that unique attendees increased 16% on 2024, following a 35% rise the previous year.

Along with networking at events, it’s common for affiliate managers to connect with potential affiliates on social networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Skype, as well as via forums, though these are not as popular as they were five or 10 years ago. Many affiliate programmes also advertise with industry publications and/or undertake PR campaigns aimed at these outlets.

If you have read iGB Affiliate’s Meet the Manager series, or indeed any other interview where an affiliate manager is asking about the challenges of their work, you’ll already have noticed one recurring theme is regulation.

Changing regulation, and changing interpretation or enforcement of existing regulations, is a constant challenge for both affiliate managers and the affiliates they work with.

Operators’ affiliate programmes are regularly updating terms and conditions to reflect the changing regulatory landscape, and remaining compliant with these changes can seem like a full-time job for some of those involved. This is one area where some in the industry think AI might have some potential, as scouring through documents to detect changes in T&Cs is a time-consuming task that doesn’t necessarily require a human, at least not in the detection stage.

Another constant challenge is Google updates. The search giant regularly updates its algorithms in ways that can drastically impact an affiliate’s traffic, and therefore the number of players delivered to its operator partners’ sites.

Other challenges faced by affiliate managers may include managing partners in multiple time zones, as igaming affiliates are spread throughout the globe, managing multiple projects and maintaining a large number of relationships, while also looking to forge new partnerships.

There are a large number of software solutions aimed at helping affiliate managers. A good place to start for some of the best is the shortlist for the annual iGB Affiliate awards. This year’s Best Tech for Affiliate Programmes award went to DeepCI, which has recently been rebranded PartnerMatrix Intelligence and merged into the wider PartnerMatrix offering.

One of the reasons PartnerMatrix Intelligence has been so popular with programmes is that it provides useful statistics on affiliate traffic and therefore helps affiliate managers determine the best affiliate partners in various regions. Other useful tools for assessing affiliates’ traffic include SEMrush and Ahrefs.

In terms of tracking, a recent survey of 1,100 affiliate programmes carried out by StatsDrone found that MyAffiliates was the most widely used affiliate marketing software in the industry. The survey found that it was used by 16% of gambling operators, with Affilka next most popular at 11.8% and Income Access in third place at 10.5%.

The survey also revealed that 17% of operators still use proprietary software, although this can be seen as less trustworthy by affiliates as they believe there is no external verification of the figures provided by the operators.