Large Football Blog - new to affiliates

[JC-72]

Hey,

So I'm going to keep this really transparent and hope someone has some nuggets of information that will help me get started.

I'm not looking to start a portal; I have a website already, but it's 100% news, opinion and statistics. We've been open a few years, have a ton of paid content writers, and lots of users. Hopefully, the plan is to keep the current display advertising, and integrate some affiliate through content marketing - so an article on XI-utd should show the odds on their next match, or to win the season, etc.

May: 436k unique; 928k sessions; 1.35m pageviews. 85% UK with 3% Ireland.
June (1-10th): 310k unique; 473k sessions; 652k pageviews. 83% UK with 2% Ireland.
July is always our best month, and with June projected to hit 1.75m and around 900k-1m uniques, I'd love to get something in place.

I suppose my questions are:
1. Is there any tips from converting a strictly display advert site into a affiliate-aimed site, whilst still retaining the users that are there for the content? I want affiliate to be a welcome addition, rather than a slap in the face.

2. Is there any clever ways of getting started? I don't really want to start at the bottom because the site isn't new, and I think the follow we've built it worth more than starting at a 20% revshare.

3. I know it's different for everyone, but an idea of some numbers would be great. My CTR% for the advert range from 3% on the sidebar, 5% in content, and 8% below content, and this is just for basic display ads. I think I need to know the industry standards - like the CTR%, the sign-up% of those that click through, and the industry average monthly user loss (I had a bookie quote me a monthly net figure but I'm pretty sure that was too high). I just want to calculate the potential of it really in a best and worst case scenario.

You know, I'm not looking for a get-rich-quick cheatsheet, but a little push in the right direction would be fantastic - I've spent a while reading the forums and some reviews, and would be good to get more involved.

I'm going to copy in some of my 30-day demographic details, and see if these shed any light on how valuable my traffic is, and how to best approach it.

Demographics

Age:
45-54, 25.85%;
55-64, 23.05%;
25-34 16.89%;
35-44 14.79%

Gender:
96.39% Male.

Geo:
UK 84.49%;
Ireland 2.13%;
USA 1.66%;
Australia 1.38%
(no-one else above 1%)

City Geo:
London 18.22%
Leeds 6.6%;
Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield all about 3%.

Device:
Mobile 54%;
Desktop 26%
Tablet 20%;

55% Apple, compared with 39% Android.

Thanks to anyone who got this far through my babble.

[Sherlock]

Hi, amazing approach. I like it. I agree with everything.

It is hard to make any suggestions, but I have some:
1. Sign at bet365affiliates
2. Do not change "almost" anything. You have a lot in stake. The way how to start is to put the odds to bookies as links inside of the text, and I would not do anything else for a while. See if you get conversions. It is tempting to write specialised PR articles just to have ads there, but even those articles dissolve trust into your website. You can always start with them later. Just instruct your copywriters to always, when it fits, to put odds with your affiliate link(s) inside of blog posts.
3. Stick with your current display ads 95% of time, but try to switch them to affiliate banners during busy times like 1st round of EPL, when they convert much better.
4. Take this as tasting. It will not cost you much on lost income and you will not bother much your readers, but you will be able to create a mental image and evaluate for yourself, if affiliate marketing makes sense (I am almost sure it will). Your CTR is very very good, which means you have dedicated readers. You should not gamble with them. Really do not ask about industry standards, I know you need to feel something, but your site is different. Try doing what I said and you will see on your own.

[JC-72]

Cheers Sherlock. Thanks for taking the time.

I mean, a lot of articles can be geared a certain way with so much ease. We write club's season previews anyway, so there's no harm in going for a promotion or relegation odds in there. We actually use to do it and just be like, 'you can get 5/1 at Skybet - head over there'. And I suppose I want to give my readers the opportunity as an added bonus, rather than slap them with an offer; I don't want it to seem like I'm selling out my page on top of display ads, it needs to be a new feature we're rolling to make their lives easier. A tip when reading the news - maybe Blackpool FC have got a cold in the lockeroom, and Oyston can't afford the tissues so their main man is out - take a bet against them.

You're probably right about the softly softly approach; I do good money on display ads, but I know there's potential out there, y'know.

I tried out the Amsterdam Affiliate Conference, and after speaking with bunch of the top bookies, came home a bit depressed. Coral literally shrugged her shoulders at my pageviews and uniques. I'm like, this is about 1-in-40 blokes in the UK in June ...

I suppose my follow-up question, is how do I make myself more appealing to bring in one key affiliate partner?

I was probably hoping you'd tell me something like, an average site converts at X%, converts then into X% depositors, who lose on average £XX a month, and on a X% revshare with an £XX CPA, I would make $$$$. Nothing ever had a set formula, but an inkling would be good.

I have a few other sites I can use as a training ground. Maybe that's the way to go and them go for a full-on attack with the right formulas in place for my main site.

Like I said, appreciate your reply mate.

[Sherlock]

If you already write about the offers, there is really near zero harm if you put affiliate link under the offers. Just be careful about recent development in the UK and the activity quotas.

I think your approach is determined by your relationship with readers. If it is really sincere, you can (later) consider other thinks. Like specialised page, where you explain that people who already bet, can support you if they register through listed bookies. You can even openly write there what affiliate marketing is about. If you have the relationship with them, you can write there all your doubts clearly open. People lack honest approach online more than other things.

I am fairly big affiliate and I never go to conferences. Now it is even worse as I see various **** ad companies going there just to disrupt affiliate marketing even more. Just send some traffic to bookies and convert it. For the best affiliates it is the real proof. Do not be scared to lose a little bit of your traffic. Be a gambler a bit Coral especially are **** (treated me like ****), even when they have good weekly or daily offers. I would go 1st with the best bet365, just fill the 5 players quota and you will be fine. You will know you will not lose your commission probably ever.

Nobody can advise you with the exact numbers. Most people here have portals, which is something else than you have. There is no dedication as sport blogs have, but their traffic is already refined to people who are looking for betting. My experience is that even much smaller projects where the webmaster puts his soul on the table have incredibly good yield. You do not have to ask about average site, because your site is far above average in terms of interest of people, but on the other hand, they are not all dedicated bettors. You have to experiment. Do not go with CPA for sure ever, but pick up the right programme(s).

Also with revenue share forget about the CPA/display ads instant income. Your revenue is discounted for many years. If you see +5 pounds or -20 during first month and nothing special during first months it does not mean anything. In 3-4 years it can be in 4 figures/month range. That is how revenue share (where people start with bonuses) works.

[JC-72]

What's the activity quota?

I must have spoke to 10 companies there that let me talk for 5 minutes, and then said, 'sorry we don't have a UK licence'.

I think if I can stay away from banner advertising, and so let me display ads income run as standard, then that's ideal. A single display ad unit can be between £1.20 and £30 per 1000 views, so really important to keep my spaces open. But using in-content links and a footer banner to convert would be ideal. No risk.

Not sure if I can hang around 3-4 year to get a good monthly rate though if I'm honest. I'm up for the long game, but I like the reward short and consistency long. I'm a terribly impatient gambler. Would it be impractical to expect 300 signups a month from 600k-ish average uniques? That's only 0.05%. One in 20,000 users?

Another option would be, instead of inflicting this on the main site, make a sub-site portal, and redirect our traffic there from some extra internal display ads, links in articles, and our Twitter following ... I feel like this would appear cheap though to my current users.

Thanks for hanging in here, Sherlock!

[Sherlock]

Just google online who has online licence, read this forum. Activity quota is synonym for stealing. Recently proposed by Skybet. There are another synonyms for thievery, e.g. legal/tax deductions. Paddypower went this road.

As for your uniques and pageviews. Somehow I think it is wrong. 310k unique / 652k pageviews is crazy and there is something wrong with the stats. It would mean that there is only 2 pageviews per unique visitor under the assumption no visitor would return! I would expect something like 30K uniques for 600K pw. But if there is really 600K unique people, the 300 signups should be achieved with ease. Even 300 real depositors and players.

[JC-72]

Those analytics are absolutely correct.

It's a drop-in drop-out style news site. Really hard to convert people to regularly returning visitors; need some sort of user retention plan.

It also helps that we're aggregated on Google News for every club in the UK, and on the other big aggregator ... Means we can be right at the top of google, above the official club site, if we have a big story, an exclusive, or they search it in a narrow time window. Similarly, we also rank really well on Newsnow.

It really is for people reading their clubs biggest news story of the day. One of the biggest bounce rates that I (as a UX/UI designer, basic developer) have seen. Serves it's purpose though, and explains why our CTR% is that large - it's not the same people ignoring it, it's new people actually making the click. And what's more, we have 40% new users every month, compared with the last.

I suppose, a really loyal core (twitter) and then the aggregated readers.

I would imagine this is ideal, along with our demographics, for signups though. I hope at least.

[DanHorvat]

Interesting demographics - maybe you should consider hearing aids affiliation.

[JC-72]

Interesting demographics - maybe you should consider hearing aids affiliation.

We got us a smart guy.

[Sherlock]

Then I am taking back what I said about slow approach. You should be more aggresive with ads and interlinks. The only thing that should hold you back is big drop of your recent revenue of ads you serve now. No need to be afraid you will disgust your (already bouncing) traffic. It is probably not possible

But it is really up to you. Either you will experiment or you will stick with your display ads. I believe there is a space for affiliate links where it fits. Same applies for CPA/revshare. Maybe you will get some s*** CPA deal and cash out early, but hardly anybody will tell you it is a wise decision. One thing is certain: if you have no patience, you will not squeeze the best of the gambling affiliates.

[JC-72]

One thing is certain: if you have no patience, you will not squeeze the best of the gambling affiliates.

I just mean, circling back to where you said in 3-4 years you can make 4 figures a month - I'll push on with display ads if it will take me that long to earn £1k a month,

You're absolutely right with being aggressive though. There's about 30,000 loyal followers that you can see visiting on the live demographics. Just put up an article, tweeted it, and I have 650 live readers from Twitter right now. That's what I mean about not being aggressive. But the bread and butter is the high-bounce aggregated content style user, so maybe I should just target them hard.

Sherlock, sorry I can't reply on PM - I need a bigger post-count apparently! But I appreciate it

[Sherlock]

No tbh, I think if you really have that much uniques, you can for sure aim much higher than 4 figs. I was assuming that the 6 figures pageviews are correct and from that derived 5 figures uniques. Because this pattern is more likely for blog like websites. It was my bad assumption. But apparently you are different with those crazy bounce rates. You should see some decent results sooner, if you can affect that many UK people.

Twitter is probably something else but I have no experience with that.

I can only repeat, try bet365. Right now there is EURO, tomorrow England is playing. There can not be better time to test. Maybe you will see something.

[JC-72]

Thanks Sherlock,

Some great advice - hopefully what this forum is all about!

Appreciate it bud.

[Syndicate]

May i ask what makes it a ''drop-in and drop-out site. Afterall, it sounds like you have some sticky content? If that's the case you might want to link articles and try sending users to the next one - Instead of being a stand-up coffee shop, put some table and chairs inside - They might help your user stay around for a bit of cake and leave a nice tip.

Mind you - UK is hard because of market saturation and limitations of licensing. Still, with those numbers you might be able to get the best of both worlds with a bit of Hybrid + Revenue share.

Like sherlock already mentioned - check that agreement ''good'', because their is a lot of reneging going on nowadays.

Those analytics are absolutely correct.

It's a drop-in drop-out style news site. Really hard to convert people to regularly returning visitors; need some sort of user retention plan.

It also helps that we're aggregated on Google News for every club in the UK, and on the other big aggregator ... Means we can be right at the top of google, above the official club site, if we have a big story, an exclusive, or they search it in a narrow time window. Similarly, we also rank really well on Newsnow.

It really is for people reading their clubs biggest news story of the day. One of the biggest bounce rates that I (as a UX/UI designer, basic developer) have seen. Serves it's purpose though, and explains why our CTR% is that large - it's not the same people ignoring it, it's new people actually making the click. And what's more, we have 40% new users every month, compared with the last.

I suppose, a really loyal core (twitter) and then the aggregated readers.

I would imagine this is ideal, along with our demographics, for signups though. I hope at least.

[JC-72]

Hey Syndicate!

May i ask what makes it a ''drop-in and drop-out site. Afterall, it sounds like you have some sticky content?

The very nature of what it is causes us problems. We cover dozens and dozens of teams, and whilst the team produce 50 articles per day, that's not enough for every club to have 1 news story.

Fans come, read their club's most interesting news article of the day, and leave. No point in reading yesterdays as that's no longer relevant news. No point clicking the "up next" popup or the "related articles" as it's ONLY their club they're interested in.

So they come to the site from Google or NN usually through the story title via their club name search or category search, read their 1 story, and leave.

User retention is a real issue. We've tried Newsletter signups, Follow-on-Facebook interstitial, a side-draw slider for the next story when you're half way down the page, etc. It'd be great to have everyone come back once a day (650,000*30) but whoever could come up with that solution would be a very rich guy.

We're ranked well inside the top 1000 soccer sites and well under 10,000 of UK sites. I just need to make the next push - whatever that is.

[makegg]

Hi JC-72,

Firstly congrets to your success so far.
IMO if the retention rate is not as high, I would try and start soft advertising within the news, test and see results then improve to ultimately draft a PR campaign articles for the bookmakers. After all, the sample size is big enough for you to get a real picture of your audiences, and to make decisions.
A question for you if you do not mind - Where to look for content provider/ copy writers in your case? I am new to remote hiring and found it hard to find the right people. Many thanks.

[JC-72]

Hey,

Thanks; I think throwing odds in news is the way to go, with some occasional in-content odds banners. Do you suggest going harder the first few months, as some bookies run the 60/50/40% revshare for 3 months (ActiveWins).

Our content writers are big fans of their respective clubs, and normally get in touch with us to contribute. We do sometimes send out a tweet asking for writers, paid £(x) per 1000 views they generate, net7 days.

If I had to start all over again, I don't know how we'd get to where we are. A lot of luck, I'm sure.

[wonderpunter]

How much of the content is betting related? a lot of page views doesn't mean it will convert if there is not a good match, do you know the demographics? how much of the traffic is 12-18 year old kids looking for their favorite team? conversions will be a lot less than display as they are not as targeted but you should expect 0.5 to 1% at least. My advice would be to start a dedicated betting category in which you can push banners and maybe trial test a few zones on main content to see how you go. Typically it takes me on average 50-70 click through's per sign up and most of the inbound traffic is coming in off betting related traffic. some however will convert at 15 to 1.. then you also have % of deposits per sign ups.. it can take some real tweaking before you find the perfect combination to your traffic..

[DanHorvat]

We got us a smart guy.

No mate, actually, we got us a guy who knows what he's talking about.

If you're running a site that attracts guys who are nearing retirement, it's dumb to try to sell Bet365 to them. I'm sure you're aware that in gambling affiliation only the first referrer gets paid. If the guy is already a customer he can click your affiliate link every day and nothing will happen.

Bet365 in particular are suffering from low conversion rates as practically everyone in the UK is a member already. And you intend to try to sell Bet365 to an audience that was exposed to their banners for the last 10-15 years of their lives. Nice plan.

I personally don't think your site can do well in gambling affiliation, not even with these traffic numbers.

[doovde]

A few years back, when google news was a free for all, I owned a site which I built intentionally to get into google news and cover betting related content with the aim of referring visitors to gambling affiliate programs. The traffic numbers can be seriously impressive but I'm pretty sure you're going to find that it's not easy to convert those visitors into real money depositors.

If I had your traffic numbers and just ran betting related content and previews all the time I'd expect to do around 150-200 depositors per month (assuming the site was fully targeted to the purpose of generating depositors).

Given that your current traffic isn't betting related your conversion rate is going to drop substantially. Couple that with the fact that the main advertising on the site does not have the goal of referring to affiliate programs and that number drops again.

You probably don't want to answer this question but without the answer it's impossible to provide the correct advice.

How much money are you making now?

Without knowing that it's impossible to determine how worthwhile the switch would be for you and what the best angle of attack might be.