How long did it take for you to score your first conversion

[BrandonH]

Hey Gentlemen and Gentle-ladies, I was wondering.

How long did it take before you scored your first conversion from the first site you ever created.

I know a lot of you have been in this for years, but I think this might be good motivation for some noobs, to continue fighting the good fight and not give up.

So to start it off, I will say I have Just turned 4 Months old, traffic increasing, no conversions yet.

But when I do get one, I'll be buying a few beers for some of you guys who have given me some good advice.

[wolfie]

It took me 3 or 4 months, I was so very happy and it really gave me the motivation to push forward. Turned out a year later that is was my brother who saw me working so hard with no rewards and wanted to motivate me, bless him. Luckily, more players started trickling in a few weeks later. First one a week, then 5 a week and after nearly three years of hard work I am up to 15 ndp's a day.

[10best]

I actually saw a very early conversion, it came just a few weeks after I launched the site which made me very surprised as I didn't expect to get any traffic in the beginning.

It was a visitor who came from one of the links i built in the early stages but it really helped to keep the motivation up. As for SEO-traffic it's taking some time though, hoping to see more soon though

[allfreechips]

Took less than a week, but much different times in 2004 when you could post on 35 free forums ext.. When I was up $12 after my first month I knew this was the ticket!

[casaffiliate]

Less than two months I believe but that was some years ago and I was lucky that my first player was a mid roller. The first player gives you a huge boost in motivation.

[Mattbar]

I got lucky and had a conversion in a few weeks but they were few and far between for the first 6 months.

[Doolally]

I think I was about 6 months but I hadn't a clue what I was doing.

[BrandonH]

I feel a boost of confidence reading this. Hope to see something in the near future.

[Fortune Palace]

Took me two months and came when the site was really quite rubbish! But I still have a copy of that first commission cheque which was only for a few hundred pounds, but proved that this 'pie in the sky' idea actually worked! Although it took a lot longer to get the second cheque, and years before it became a little more stable, it was enough motivation for me to continue.

Hope you find the same...

[dinaharrison]

I think I was about 6 months but I hadn't a clue what I was doing.

Hahaha. I can totally relate. Sometimes, you just don't have a clue.

[baff]

2 months so far and not a nibble I know it's a long term thing really, just have to wait it out

[golfbettingsystem]

Got my first one after about 3 months, however it was about 9 months after I started and the first Open Championship that I covered when I got my first multiple FTD day and slowly started to learn how this incredibly complex and exciting game works

[RacingJim]

Aug 2009 - My first site, a football tips site: Fresh out of uni, I built it on Joomla but found Joomla so fiddly I spent a LOT of time just trying to get basic layouts to work properly, I didn't know how to get traffic or drive conversions so I gave up after a couple of months and it failed and I got a job in an internet company for a couple of years = 0 signups. £0

Sometime in 2011 - My second site, a boxing betting site: Again on Joomla, this time I was a bit better at the Joomla fiddling AND the articles. But unfortunately I chose a very narrow niche and apart from a couple of big fights I struggled for traffic again. I got about 2 signups and gave up again, making zero withdrawable money due to thresholds etc, I think my affiliate earnings stood at about £10.

Nov 2012 - I worked full time in another job, but in my spare time I read Dealer Dan's Affiliate Bible and loads of other stuff and learned about how to get traffic and conversions. I got an Indian freelancer to build me a site (for £200!) around a yearly event and lo and behold the breakthrough happened for me. I got my first solid traffic and a bunch of conversions and made about £170, which whilst only covering the cost of building the site, opened my eyes and taught me a lot. Conversions 100-200ish.

Apr/May 2013 - With the success of the single event site, I now knew how to get traffic and how to convert so I went into a broader, higher traffic, higher competition niche. This is where I went for a Wordpress site (best decision ever), again using a Freelancer to build me my dream site with some unique features (that everyone in my niche has now copied). Conversions went absolutely through the roof - dreamland had been reached, full time affiliate status was achieved within 2 months of launching that site and the rest is history.

Feb 2017 - Been a full time affiliate now for over 3 1/2 years, not gona be quitting anytime soon unless I get totally bored and sell up and get out.

Motto of all that I would say,
- Don't give up, this is a lucrative industry and there is money to be made for those who are talented and persistent.
- Learn from your failures
- Don't be afraid to rip it up and start again with a new idea if it's not working out.
- Read Dealer Dan's affiliate bible and all the stuff on here and on other sites. It was reading Dealer Dan's site that got me to try out a special event site, which paved the way for all my other successes, so I owe that man a pint or 10.
- Spend more time reading at the start than just jumping in to develop straight away, time spent learning at the start will provide the basis of all your future success - don't think you can just jump in there and it'll all just work out.
- Learn SEO and how to drive traffic.
- Learn about conversion and CTAs etc.
- I could have saved myself a lot of pain if I'd found better resources to read and maybe someone to give me help/advice during the first 2 failures I had, rather than jumping into development because I wanted to make a pretty website.

[casaffiliate]

@RacingJim. Excellent post. Just shows how much trial and error there is and how important persistence is.

Found an excellent quote in one of the older threads. "Being a gambling affiliate is the hardest easy money I've ever made." Here is the thread: How much a beginner casino affiliate can earn (post #32)

[Miles_Videoslots]

Once ran my own affiliate sites thought it was easy money took me 7 Months to get my first player I have a new respect for affiliates and just how hard it can be.

[poc]

This is all really interesting reading for me. I've started a couple of sites with some friends and former colleagues. We've done well so far but converting traffic to NDPs is a real hurdle to jump. We've changed our approach slightly to try and capture the right sort of traffic that will hopefully convert.

Could anybody provide some guidance regarding what you would class as a good conversion rate? In terms of visitors into the site > clicks to casinos > registrations > deposits.

I am sure it's a tricky question to answer but it'd be great to get some views.

[casaffiliate]

First of all you shouldn't rely on click numbers in the affiliate system. Some programs show inflated click numbers because they apparently count bot traffic. This is especially true for programs that are using the myaffiliate platform (Betsson Group Affiliates, iAffiliates ..). You should therefore implement your own click tracking to get more accurate data.

Now ... talking numbers. Of course this depends on many factors but I'll try to give you my views.

For quality casino traffic from search engines: 3% - 8% click to signup and 20% - 40% signup to FTD. In my experience a casino signup is much harder to convert into a FTD than a signup at a sportsbook. For sportsbooks signup to FTD should be 40% - 60%.

Some factors to take into consideration:

• How satured is the market? UK is obviously supersatured so it's harder to get new players.
• How satured is the brand? Promote bet365 vs. some new sportsbook and you'll see that everbody and their grandma already has a bet365 account.
• What are you promoting? A player looking for a no deposit bonus will probably convert at a rate of <5% to a FTD.
• Some extremely targeted niche keywords can give you click to signup rates of >40% but the problem is of course that search volume is very low.

Ultimately it's all about competition and player value. Speaking of player value ... my observation is that higher player value strongly correlates with higher rankings in the search engines. Needless to say that you will not only get more customers when you rank higher, but those customers are also worth more.

Here are two more threads that are helpful to answer your question ... and you will see that numbers in these threads are totally different. Everything is relative ...

1. Conversion rates
2. How many visitors for 20 FTDs?

[BrandonH]

@racingJim, great post, I really appreciate the timeline of your experience.

@casaffiliate, Thanks for the wealth of information as usual.

[DanHorvat]

Excellent post by RacingJim.

I'd like to add one key aspect of all this, as Jim mentioning Joomla fiddling reminded me of the years of my life I lost down the drain due to the same reason. And here is my key advice:

Learning as you go will take years, will be painful, will take a lot of time you could be using to do push your business forward, will cost you a lot of nerves, and crucially - will forever keep you dependent on Google and on Stack Overflow.

Do get proper education on the things you're interested in. Learn the concepts and learn the things you need to learn to be confident in that area. Learning only when you need to fix your immediate problem is wrong.

E.g. if you started fiddling with PHP, don't just Google for the answer when you get stuck, but if you notice your skills aren't good enough, stop what you're doing and go read a PHP book or take a PHP class. Take yourself to the next level, otherwise you'll forever be a parasite who Googles for answers from those who did take the time to learn something.

Same goes for SEO, marketing, social media, server management, security, etc. There's no substitute for knowledge, and trial & error is the slowest way to get it.

[zalozite]

5-6 months.