The rise of professional affiliate companies

[RacingJim]

Just noting in a few of my niches the same guys keep popping up. They are a pretty big company with 50-100 employees and specialise in targeting the betting sector.

I've noticed they are taking a total domination approach, i.e. creating 4,5,6 similar websites targeting the same words to try and totally dominate search results.

I know there will always be room for clever smaller affiliates to fill gaps and do things in a clever way, but it seems harder to compete with these guys nowadays. I just looked at their company page and they have a team of developers, content writers, designers, testers etc etc. Coming to a niche near you soon!!

What are your thoughts, is this where our industry will go? As more people learn about affiliate marketing will it go out of the bedroom and into more corporate arenas? Has it already?

[Deano99]

I had my idea for a football stats/betting site over a year ago, before I had even heard of affiliate marketing. I thought it was going to be difficult to monetise through the usual channels, until I stumbled across the revenue share model for betting affiliates. To me it was like the best kept secret in online monetisation, and what surprised me more was that there were no large affiliate companies, like you mention, sucking up market share and taking all the top spots.

Lately I have been seeing more and more affiliate banners on some bigger brands and football sites. Although maybe these banners have always been there, i'm just more aware of it now.

However the key thing for me is that my website is borne out of an idea, just like any other business idea, that you hope will take off. Maybe the problem with many newcomers is that they see the affiliate model and they want a piece of the pie, and they try to shoehorn themselves into the juiciest market, with a strategy led by profit motive and not much else.

As has been said on here many times, it's probably more difficult than ever before to make money as an affiliate starting out. But maybe we should look at it another way - until now it has been too easy to make money from affiliate marketing in our sector. Is the industry is changing, or is it just catching up with everybody else?

I'm not experienced enough to know, but to be honest I don't care, an idea is an idea, and a business is a business. If you have a good idea and run a good business, the affiliate stuff will look after itself..... (I hope!)


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[eenzoo]

What are your thoughts, is this where our industry will go? As more people learn about affiliate marketing will it go out of the bedroom and into more corporate arenas? Has it already?

I´m sure thats the way to success. For different reasons. If you are an affiliate, a one man show or with some freelancer in background, you are extremely limited in resources like time, men power and money. You have to finish a lot of jobs. Your have a knowledge about lot of things. But probably you are not really a Pro in more then one. A bit SEO, a bit content marketing, a bit social marketing, some basic coding skills. But not able to beat a professional of one of this services.

But if you take some (more) money and if you have a plan, leading skills and time, if you hire professionals for all services you need, for sure you will rule the targeted serps and niches sooner or later.

[RacingJim]

The ideas I came into this industry were not unique, bu they were doing things in a slightly different way and I've done well at that. It is a struggle though when one of these big companies figures out your niche/angle and starts to churn out 5 very similar sites aimed at one set of keywords.

[RacingJim]

I´m sure thats the way to success. For different reasons. If you are an affiliate, a one man show or with some freelancer in background, you are extremely limited in resources like time, men power and money. You have to finish a lot of jobs. Your have a knowledge about lot of things. But probably you are not really a Pro in more then one. A bit SEO, a bit content marketing, a bit social marketing, some basic coding skills. But not able to beat a professional of one of this services.

But if you take some (more) money and if you have a plan, leading skills and time, if you hire professionals for all services you need, for sure you will rule the targeted serps and niches sooner or later.

Yeh I agree, it's hard being a small company competing with people who have big pro setups. that's not to say it's impossible, but I have noticed in some niches it's getting harder. I got into aff marketing as a way to get freedom, so I'm not gona burden myself with 10 members of staff and a proper setup anytime soon, but hoping I can find some decent online workers to help me compete on a bigger level.

[RacingJim]

PS I just read that this particular company has over 1,000 affiliate websites. Wow.

[eenzoo]

you could pm me the company ?

[eaton2003]

Several companies with 50-100 and even more staff has existed for years and as long as I remember but it does appear that they are starting to dominate the scene more.

[Triple7]

Yes, this will be the future of affiliate marketing. Just like McDonald's took over the hamburger-market. With dozens of content writers, they write dozens of content more than somebody that is writing alone. A lot of them also hire cheap content writers, as quality content is not their goal. They just need content. A lot of content. I also saw some of them just re-writing articles of other websites. Some of them have links with casinos too and they're always fishing for key words, so be careful with who you share your tactics, key words and stuff.

Each employee has its own speciality, that's why they do things more effective and more efficient than many affiliates that work alone or in a small team.

Curious what the future will bring. Skinny websites will be off first. I hope quality websites telling players the truth about casinos will keep at least some place on the net. Players have the right to get objective information and not just information published by marketing companies and written by people that don't even know what they're writing.

Some of them are also buying a lot of website. The goal clear. Dominating. And there's not so much you can do. The same thing you see with other companies. Smaller companies are closing because the big hypermarket takes their clients. Some of them survive, because some people prefer to pay a bit more and spend a bit more time to buy breath at the baker, vegetables at the vegetables seller, meat at the butcher, etc. Online gambling is a billions and billions market. There's no way bigger companies will not dominate this market. The most effective and efficient way is just dominate keyword after keyword. Especially with al that different markets with each their own license and stuff.

The advance of a smaller affiliate who knows what he's doing, is that hist costs are also low. You really do not need that much players to get a reasonable income. I also think it's not good to depend just on gambling.

[RacingJim]

Triple 7 - To be fair these guys aren't even spamming in the sense that the articles are long. They are doing high quality content + overall good SEO strategy. Just doing it on a large scale with big resources of manpower, technical power and money. I even suspect these guys of dirty tactics such as CTR manipulation bots etc. They are 'spamming' in the sense though that they are creating 3-4 very similar sites for 1 money keyword.

It's still not to say that we can't compete with these guys, there's always room for small, stealthy companies. I am better than any 'paid employee' at what I do, because I will be obsessive and go the extra mile, whereas they will go home at 5 and have their tea.

I will break down how and why they are ranking and I will come up with a plan to do it better.

[alin04]

We can do this. Imagine what 10 or 20 GPWA members can do: One big site, 6 on content, 2 on back links and 2 on social networks for promotions. The site will be translated in many languages for each country. We can change the world.
And I am in for something big. I hope that I am not the only one.

[Triple7]

@Racing Jim: Yes. They all use different tactics. I know just a few of them, but there are dozens out there I think. For small affiliates going extra miles, there will always be some space. The piece of the cake they're battling for will be smaller though, but there will always be. Just like somebody selling quality hamburgers does have its clients that are not going to McDonald's.

@Alin04: Good point. Always interested, but I think a big difference between this kind of joint venture and they way bigger affiliate companies are running is that bigger affiliate companies have another organization structure. They have a few people in charge. Let's say a few captains at the boat. A joint venture of 20 people will have 20 people in charge, 20 captains on the boat.

[wonderpunter]

Triple7 is right, they do push it quality content in the aspect that guides, reviews etc are all written but again it's the same ol same ol, nothing unique but most importantly there is no creativity in what they write at all, no passion or personality goes into the articles and ultimately in the end this is what denotes the sign of an authority site. one thing i have noticed with my sports site is our domain name is used with conjunction of most keywords so the reader is specifically looking for us, I have thousands drop into the site this way alone 69% of our traffic is now return visitors.. why? because they like the content and my writers relate to the reader at a level instead of just giving info and numbers.

I think the traditional way of building a site is being exploited and will be tough to go in at their level as its doing the same as everyone else but offer something different and be the first to do it every day you never have to worry.

[alin04]

@Triple7 and @Wonderpunter lets start a new site. And everybody else is welcome. We can choose a boss and lets do this. We dont have nothing to lose. And it will be a great story for GPWA members.

[RacingJim]

@Alin04: Good point. Always interested, but I think a big difference between this kind of joint venture and they way bigger affiliate companies are running is that bigger affiliate companies have another organization structure. They have a few people in charge. Let's say a few captains at the boat. A joint venture of 20 people will have 20 people in charge, 20 captains on the boat.

Agree with this, it's about personality types as well as abilities. Most of us on here I presume are enterpeneurial, freedom seeker types who want to be in charge of their own thing and have the freedom to take it in the direction they want to go. I can't see 10 of those people working together in a company working very well. There would probably be lots of arguments about direction and strategy.

I would assume that the best people to work with would be those who have some good skills and talents in what they do, but who aren't really that type of person who wants to be in charge (at least not yet) i.e. the sort who just wants to know they are going to be paid and respected for doing a good job but who doesn't want the pressure of being in charge.

If I was looking for staff that's the sort of people I'd look to take on, I'd be scared of other entrepeneurial types who might come in, see the main ideas of the biz and then think 'hey I can do this myself' and off they go.

[Triple7]

@Wonderpunter: I notice that too. I got visitors that come and read daily. After that the articles they have red appear re-written somewhere else. They change some words, they add a bit, they delete a bit and ready is their article. Like this they write dozens of articles a day.

@Alin04/Racing Jim: That is my point too. 20 captains on a ship, it's difficult to make that working. I am interested in a joint venture project, but if I look at myself: I started to work for myself because I was fed up working at a financial where the whole day was about meetings, talk, etc. Nothing was processed because dozens of people had their opinion about dozens of things. In the end things are not moving forward, because a lot of people have to agree about the direction and keep on discussing about the direction or even irrelevant details. That's also a thing a lot of independent workers are allergic for.

The most ideal situation is to hire the best people for every piece of the work. The big advantage of that is not just that you're having the best people, but also that this people have landed yet. They have their speciality, made their income of that and are not looking for other sources of income. They just want to get paid for the job they're doing. No matter if you're making revenues with their content or backlinks. They want to get paid. The problem is: this people are hard to find and are expensive, because everybody is looking for them.

So than you come to the category of people that didn't reach their landing phase yet. Why should you hire them? I agree with Racing Jim that a lot of them might be looking for ideas for themself. Give someone who's dream is not be a full time content writer some keywords and he'll use it too for his own projects. Or, it are people that are not working for themself, neither start their own project, because they miss some needed skills. For example: somebody good in SEO, will make websites for himself. Why should he work on commission base somewhere if with relatively cheap content he can do the same job even better?

I am always interested in joint ventures, but it's more difficult than it seems. For example:
- there must be agreement about the strategy and direction. It makes no sense of some people quite in a month, because revenues aren't coming in yet.
- all needed skills must be available in the team
- legal and financial things must be agreed clearly. Most discussions between business partners pop up because of money. There need to be an agreement how revenues will be received, how they will be paid out and for example what to do if someone wants to quit.
- there's a lot of overhead to do. Somebody must coördinate things like for example the financial administration, manage the bank account, etc. For example with 20 people, one needs to be paid out with Neteller, another one with Skrill, another with invoice at the bank account, etc. It is more complex if people are everywhere around the world. It's easier to manage if you have an office in for example Serbia.

But one thing is sure: bundling skills and powers, people doing the things they're good at, leads for sure to better revenues and better deals with affiliate programs!

[alin04]

All of you speak like the leaders of all the countries in World War 2: I dont need anybody, I am strong and I can do what I want.
Until Hitler will conquer your site in 2 weeks.

I feel like I am in an apologies contest. We can t do this because...

[Triple7]

Than I didn't express myself wel or you misunderstood my post. I am interested and I do find it a good idea, but I just give some points of concerns / factors that are making it a bit more complex. 20 people that are used to run their own business at one ship, it can be complicated. Not impossible, but complicated.

Also going to war needs well preparation and coöperation. It makes no sense if for example country X who's battling the enemy at the ground is bombed by airstrikes of country Y.

[MMM]

RacingJym, do you mind pointing to who you referred to?

20 captains - indeed problematic. Our opinions are so different in so many categories: modus operandi, design content, deal types, affprograms to work with, etc. Not saying it cannot be done, but things need to be set in advance. There needs to be 1 captain.

Btw, some of these companies, at least the ones I've noticed, actually give an amazing product (of course there are others that just bombard with boring 1000 words articles) but some are really good and creative.