Anyone have experience with exclusive deal/sponsorship?

[Ares]

Hello,

My site is an informational gambling site with no ads.
I do not want to transform it to a casino portal in order to earn some money. I'd much prefer a sponsorship deal. Does anyone have any idea what to expect (or ask) in a deal like this?
Thank you.

[feelthenoize]

Can you post your site so I can take a look at it. Sorry I don't have an answer to your question, but i'm curious to see what your site looks like.

[Ares]

Hello,

Here is an example of an informational site about roulette. The content may be a bit thin at the moment, but I plan to add more soon.

[wonderpunter]

Sponsorship would require some serious traffic, you might get cpm .50c to $1 per thousand views.. with low traffic rev share would be your best bet.

[Ares]

Hi,

Thanks or the reply.
You are telling me that in the gambling niche 1K views are only worth 0.5 euro? This seems too low compared to the keyword competition in google's keyword planner tool. If someone pays 20-30 euros for a click in google search, why would only pay 0.5 euros for 1K views that will ultimately generate more than one click?

[wonderpunter]

If you are an authority site with top notch content and awesome ctr with engaging visitors then you can get 20 euros or more per 1,000 views.. there are guys here that get 2-5 million page views per month so even if they charged 5 cpm, they can still make 10k from just 1 sponsor.. no one is going to pay big bucks for little exposure and small conversions.. and the reality of getting millions of views any time soon is very slim, hence why i said rev share would be a better option with little traffic.

[Ares]

Thanks for the info and the good advice. I agree that rev is the best option right now.
However I still wonder what would be a fair sponsorship deal in general. 20-30 euros per 1K views seem to me more fair than 0,5 euro, especially if we are talking about an exclusive deal.

[davemerry]

Hi,
You are telling me that in the gambling niche 1K views are only worth 0.5 euro? This seems too low compared to the keyword competition in google's keyword planner tool. If someone pays 20-30 euros for a click in google search, why would only pay 0.5 euros for 1K views that will ultimately generate more than one click?

People will pay €20 for that one click because it's direct and relevant traffic from a proven keyword that has converted for them in the past AND is from one of the most trusted ad networks in the world.

Due to the affiliation model being so successful for both affiliates and operators you'll struggle to get flat sponsorship deals without some history behind you.

Have you ever tried placing standard affiliate ads on your site? Without wishing to sound rude, if you don't earn from these, then it's unlikely you'll get a sponsorship deal worth your time and I'd focus on optimizing your traffic sources and content to get this in the future. If you haven't, then I'd do it anyway so you can understand your worth to potential sponsors.

Cheers

[Ares]

Hi davemerry,

You make some very good points. My point however is that there is are fundamental differences between portals, that offer to the visitor many choices and run many affiliate programs simultaneously, and an non-portal site that would like to have a specific (maybe exclusive) sponsorship. I have spoken to a couple casino representatives and although they understand the difference, they are not flexible enough to adapt to this difference.
I agree that the general affiliation model has been very successful, yet this success has as result that casinos are too hesitant to try new things and adapt to sites that are not portals. And they lose potential customers. Because what may work perfectly and be considered a good deal for a portal may not work as well for a non portal.
And yes, I know this a forums about gambling PORTALs.

[TheGooner]

As with most things in this segment - cash is king. If you want cash then you will have to explain what it is that the sponsor is getting.

"an informational gambling site" is a widely ranging thing. Your example looks OK - well done - but does it get trafic - what is the "sponsor" getting in return for giving you money?

You ask what the value should be without giving any basis for valuing the sponsorship rate on?
Eyeballs? Impressions? Actionable clicks? Anything tangible ...
Or were you expecting a random rate?

[Gamer]

Good points TheGooner. I know, some guys are dreaming about passive income mean flat payments.
You need a really good and big site to attract that kind of payments.
You have to be special in this crowded niche. Yeahhhhhh
How to do it????

[Ares]

Totally agree with you TheGooner.

Thanks for the comment on my site.
Indeed the site doesn't get many visitors, but the subject is more generic and not specific to this site I gave as an example.

I did explain the things you described very well. The point of such a sponsorship (not to the specific site necessarily, but to specialized strategy sites in general) is mainly awareness and credibility to a very well targeted and engaged visitor base. And yes since there is not widely established model I was expecting an offer. Well... the casino representatives were also expecting an offer from me, because they too are not very comfortable evaluating such deals.

Btw, have you noticed that just because casinos get most of their customers by following affiliate links the is no true image-awareness leader in online casinos like there is for example in soft drinks? I mean it is all fine to care about sales, but believe me building your brand is as important and can pay off in the long run. And yes, casino guys can vaguely understand this, but they are not prepared to actively pursuit such goals; they feel uncomfortable with such deals because that is not something they do very often. They prefer the tried and tested cookie-cutter approach that produces fast, measurable results; that is understandable, but I think that they miss some great opportunities to develop their brands further.

[Gamer]

"but believe me building your brand is as important and can pay off in the long run. And yes, casino guys can vaguely understand this, but they are not prepared to actively pursuit such goals; they feel uncomfortable such deals because that not something they do very often"

Saint words!
In this niche, only affiliate managers are active and they want to "catch" you as an affiliate.
They do not care about building brand awarness by building sponsorship (or any other relationship) with quality long-term sites.
... or you know any casino or gambling brand that do so?

[TheGooner]

While I agree with the thrust of what you have said - branding can be more than raw clicks and eyeballs - I still feel that you're in "airy-fairy" mode when discussing what it is that your site offers to help this branding process ?

I can assume by your reluctance to discuss numbers that the numbers are low. Perhaps you feel that the raw numbers are not the thing that YOU think makes the site special and worth exclusive sponsorship to help build a brand? If you want to attract a bid for sponsorship that you think is fair then you will need to move past your ability to talk generally about brand and actually demonstrate specifically HOW your site can help build a brand.

Is your site quoted in newspapers or journals?
Does it have respected and recognised experts writing on it?
What it is that makes your site different from millions of other sites online that has good content but goes unnoticed?

Kav, I have some experience in selling advertising space for monthly fees and - ultimately - like it or not - the numbers do matter quite a lot. If you are helping to build a brand - then you have to be seen. An advertising campaign, promotion, or sponsorship that is not seen will always be a very tough sell.

[Gamer]

"Kav, I have some experience in selling advertising space for monthly fees and - ultimately - like it or not - the numbers do matter quite a lot. If you are helping to build a brand - then you have to be seen. An advertising campaign, promotion, or sponsorship that is not seen will always be a very tough sell."
TheGooner rocks! Nothing else to say more. Sounds, you have a lot of experience.
... I must start eating kiwi and become smart as TheGooner soon.

[sweetbet]

Sponsorship would require some serious traffic, you might get cpm .50c to $1 per thousand views.. with low traffic rev share would be your best bet.

It really depends on the nature of the traffic. I'd be willing to pay top dollar for targeted gambling traffic, but then there are sites out there that can send you 1000s of real visitors for a few dollars, but this traffic will never convert because it is non-gambling traffic that is sent to your site via popups, etc

[Triple7]

It really depends on the nature of the traffic. I'd be willing to pay top dollar for targeted gambling traffic, but then there are sites out there that can send you 1000s of real visitors for a few dollars, but this traffic will never convert because it is non-gambling traffic that is sent to your site via popups, etc

And you also have gambling traffic and gambling traffic...