Create an account or contact a manager?

[Ares]

Hello,

I wonder if one could negotiate better commission by contacting an affiliate manager instead of creating the ordinary aff. account following the aff. site link.
No I'm not an established portal, but on the other hand this means my site is still clear and not burned out.

[xecutable]

Not really. You may develop a better sense of who you are working with, but usually better commissions are based on past performance. In order to have past performance (history) you have to have some promoting done.

However, contacting a manager and discussing better landing pages for better conversion which leads to bigger profits is a good option. Percentages nowadays mean nothing mostly cause 50% of 0 converted traffic is still 0.

Suggestion? Do both. Register and contact them.

[Ares]

Not really. You may develop a better sense of who you are working with, but usually better commissions are based on past performance. In order to have past performance (history) you have to have some promoting done.

However, contacting a manager and discussing better landing pages for better conversion which leads to bigger profits is a good option. Percentages nowadays mean nothing mostly cause 50% of 0 converted traffic is still 0.

Suggestion? Do both. Register and contact them.

Great advice.
I especially liked your "50% of 0 converted traffic is still 0" comment.

[F-L-C]

You have nothing to lose and it only takes 5 minutes so why wouldn't you try

[Miles_FTA]

Its very Difficult to get a better deal if your not a proven affiliate and can back up the talk with proof of just how good you are .. there are programs that give more % as a start but then your commission dwindles over time as you get penalized for Non Delivery etc Just be very Careful Of who you choose to partner with .. Get the right Information and ask the right questions .. Good Luck

[Marc Weinberg]

I feel that the best order in which to do this is: 1. Open an affiliate account with the program and then 2. Follow that up with a personal email to your manager once your account is approved. We frequently get emails from affiliates trying to negotiate a deal but they haven't bothered to sign up yet, and it's a case of "putting the cart before the horse" since we don't know anything about you.

Then some of the questions that are posed in the email asking for a better deal or for info about us would be answered by opening an account or at least visiting our website.

That being said it is definitely a good idea to send that second email telling us about who you are and what you want. I personally like proactive affiliates who are willing to hustle for extra commission. It augurs well for how they run their business in general.

[wonderpunter]

On the sports betting side I have a different experience to the above posts.. usually they contact me and offer more.. No proof needed.. probably because they got to me by a certain keyword, but with Hundreds of affiliate programs out there and only 10 spaces on Google for the best keywords you don't always have to prove to them.. If they don't want to do a deal then go to the next one.. Remember neither party loses by negotiating.. it's whether they want those extra $$$s with less of a margin or not.. Good business sense always says turnover in front of EGO.. Casino might be different.. But for sports build something great and people will beat down your door, but you have to be popular... someone who gets 120k of organic betting visits commands much more power than a guy with 4000 social media visits and 1000 organic low value keyword visitors... As your rankings improve your Email box gets bigger with offers..

[MMM]

Without a doubt - first contact, then sign up. The reason is simple - before you sign up you have more leverage.

To stress the point: you can sign up, place them on number #1 and then try to discuss the commission plan - you can imagine how it will go...

Of course the best way is them to contact you, as Wonderpunter said, but you need to grow traffic and become visible for that to happen.

[PaaskeUK]

You can contact me
adriana.kirsch@outlook.com

This person or outfit are spammers and prob scammers. Stay well clear. I hope GPWA will take action as same person is now using casinomeister for their own agenda asking if anyone enjoys playing at (inbet88 - inetbet (which if you take by name) should ring alarm bells. If not then your clearly not in this industry

http://casinomeister.com/forums/showthread.php?t=68715

if not allowed to link for gpwa then I am sorry but can inform I have given casinomeister link to you guys so hope okay. Please do something as we don't want people like this in public forums!

[marina.boomtown]

Do both: First sign up an account, then contact the affiliate manager telling more about your activities, and how you are planning to promote the brands; and negotiate the deal. Better deals are based on nice numbers Good Luck kav!

[Sam_IncomeAccess]

Do both: First sign up an account, then contact the affiliate manager telling more about your activities, and how you are planning to promote the brands; and negotiate the deal. Better deals are based on nice numbers Good Luck kav!

I would definitely agree.

Having an account already active is also great to wrap up once a deal is finalized. The manager can go right in and alter the commission structure without more back and forth emails

[casinogod]

This really does depend on what you are doing as an affiliated.

IF you have only just set up a site in a niche and have no or little traffic etc then you need to sign up to give yourself something to promote and you can talk to the affiliate managers but if you don't have much traffic they are not going to give you anything other than the regular commission rate so I would say just open an account. However the affiliate managers will usually still be willing and able to help you in many other ways, they might have resources they can help you with (we got tons of help from Referback and Fortune Affiliates in particular when we were starting out many years ago). Or they might be able to review your pages and advise on layout what is more likely to convert, what works well for their other affiliates etc.

Now at the other end of the scale when you have been in a niche a long time the last think you ever want (or need) to do is sign up to a new program, they will bombard you daily with requests to sign up and trust me you do not want to work with everyone. Once your in that position you can choose your own terms and the programs will be coming to you, paying you for inclusion (in advance) and agreeing a commission rate / deal that suites you. Not just that but once you are in that situation even the programs you just signed up to at the beginning will be happy to offer you better deals.

But do not just rank programs based on what commission rate they offer that is not the be all an end all. From an income point of view your number 1 key metric you should track is, "How much money do I earn on average per unique visitors I send to this program".

When you are not sending much traffic OR when you have only just added a program (as generally with casino programs that key metric tends to start lower and grow as your referred base of players grows), then other useful metrics to watch are:

1. How many unique clicks does it take me to get 1 new depositing player?
2. How much am I earning in commission on average per player?

With the above you can give like for like comparisons, one other thing to remember is most programs count visits to their casinos differently so if you are only using the affiliate programs own traffic stats to work out which convert best you are not looking at the real picture, it is best to have your own adserver so you can see exactly how many visitors left your site and went to any given casino (you will be surprised at the massive variance from program to program between what you actually sent and what they claim you sent if and when you track it).

On top of that you should also check for skimming, by having people open real money accounts and make deposits (and do not just do this yourself or only with people in the same country as you or only in the first month) do it sporadically ongoing and see if those new players show up in our account. Once you catch a program skimming drop them immediately and contact your affiliate manager about he (he/she will almost always claim to not know anything about it and will deny their company skims but sad truth is that it happens not all programs can be trusted and the relationship you need to be an affiliate is one of absolute trust).

Hope that helps.