Here’s just a bunch of tips that are in no particular order and have are based on mine and other webmasters’ experiences. Feel free to disagree with some as they may be personal, and some may seem like common sense, however, we all need to be reminded every now and then.
If it smells fishy it probably is. Casino and sportsbook websites with spelling mistakes, pages not found and forms that don’t work are probably best left alone. If they can’t pay someone to ensure their site works and looks professional, how are they going to pay the players and you?
Check the support email address works. Ask a simple question about their software or program or something similar and see how long it takes for a response. If you don’t get a response then steer clear because when you wish to follow up about an outstanding payment, you probably won’t get a response either. Worse still is when the email bounces and can’t be delivered. Had that happen a few times myself.
Don’t spend you affiliate earnings until you have cleared funds in your bank account. Some programs don’t show chargebacks separately and then when you ask where the money is, you get the answer that there was fraud involved and you won’t be paid. I’d guess about 10% of my earnings are affected by this and I just accept it as a cost of doing business. The good programs separate all the components of your payments.
Subscribe to the affiliate and player newsletters as it is the quickest way to keep up to date with bonus changes. Spam is unavoidable in this industry so just deal with it and accept that you will have to delete a lot of rubbish.
Try and be polite to people that have no idea the world has different time zones and telephone you at 2:00am. Not everyone lives in the United States of America.
Sign up for a NeTeller, PrePaidATM, 900Pay or similar service. Often this is the fastest and cheapest way to receive your affiliate payments. Bank wire is best other option and many programs will now do this for free. Check is probably the slowest form of payment. The advantage of the internet payment services is you can collect a number of small payments and transfer charges are reduced because it’s only one transfer rather than many.
Read the terms and conditions of each program you sign up for. Whilst they may all look like standard boilerplate agreements (which are often the same when similar software suppliers are involved), their maybe subtle differences in the minimum payments or minimum player sign ups.
Keep a database of all your login ids and passwords because you will accumulate a lot. If you have one or a few standard passwords then best to have at least six characters as this seems to be a popular minimum amount.
Have an email address with just one word, eg affiliate@xyz.com rather than affiliate.name@xyz.com, as some email address verification programs don’t seem to like the latter.
Save screen shots or print out pages if you have a significant amount showing in your statistics. It helps when chasing the payments.
Participate in some webmaster forums because they are the best way to keep up to date with problem casinos and sportsbooks, as well as new programs.
Not much in life is free and comes without work. Treat your affiliate marketing as a business and you will earn money like a business. There’s some things that you might not enjoy, such as updating the bonus information pages, but it has to be done and it is the dynamic content pages that will help with repeat visitors.
Check the whois details of the casino or sportsbook and if the information looks fake or is missing then give them a wide birth.
Use popups, popunders and similar at your own peril. Some people swear by them whilst others don’t. So much depends on your visitors.