Aff. Conversions

[Rostick]

Firstly I know this might not fit very well in the SEO section, but it does have something to to with the targeting of google traffic and I did not find a more relevant section to post this.

Now, I have a betting tips website (the one in the signature, betdistrict.com) and I know these kind of sites convert extremely hard. However, I am getting frustrated with the low conversion rate, I think it`s unreasonably low, so I must be doing something wrong. I reckon the site is pretty well organized, the content has quality, I am using banners, text links, even targeted articles with bonuses & promos, all without being too intrusive (I think).

In these conditions, with about 1500-2000 visitors per day and increasing (yesterday I had almost 3000), I don`t know if I`m making 100 bucks / month from affiliation, not even enough to pay the tipsters. Luckily I found some other monetization methods (especially front fee to promote certain bookies), but they are not long term. I am a full time affiliate and putting in A LOT of work on the website, but the results are poor. The website is already 1 year old and I was expecting that by now it would have started to make a steady income.

The problems I identified
- betting tips websites do not convert
- very high bounce rate (~70%)
- very poor tips in the last two months
- I`m not really bringing anything new to the table aside from maybe my betting-related articles which I think are solid
- direct traffic increasing too slow (probably in relation to the above point)
- did not build a mailing list (but I refuse to believe this is the only way to succeed)
- zero investments in promotion (but that has more to do with traffic)

The solutions I identified
- keep on working hard (but how long can I do it, I have other things to attend to)
- keep trying out different things
- try to improve the tips
- try to capitalize on the World Cup (unlikely)
- slowly building a mailing list
- built another website (e-commerce)

I will keep on trying but it`s starting to be extremely hard and frustrating. Surely it can be done, since there are betting tips websites out there which are going strong after 10 years. Of course they did not do it right away, but for me the traffic I have should be enough for a decent income via affiliate. 2000 hits/day with 70% bounce rate is decent I reckon, or am I wrong?

I would relish some advice from seasoned affiliates (and from everybody else, of course). I feel I don`t know as much about the industry as I thought.

[edgarf76]

Sports have been converting slow for me too. I made slots sub domains, I am also going to be building more casino related sites. During football season my traffic was nuts but we know that doesn't mean anything, it's just about funded accounts.

I also prioritize companies that convert well, for me, vietbet does very well. I


IMO I would start more sites that are casino related, and split your focus. Casino sites convert better but good sports bettors bring I a lot of money. I would buy more domains and make simple wordpress casino sites my two cents


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[Rostick]

Thanks for the input. I am not specialized in Casinos and I doubt I could make any noise in such a competitive market, but nevertheless it is an idea for the future. i`m not ready for that now.

[chaumi]

Is traffic global? Is it possible the countries giving you the largest number of visits might have betting restrictions?
Can you tell how they are getting to the site, which search terms? May give you a picture of what type of visitors you're really getting.
Are the bulk of visitors all hitting the site via a handful of pages? If so, is there anything you can do with those to improve the landing impression?

[casinoSasa]

If I am on your place I will enable click tracking with GA events and implement geotargeting. Then you will be able to do testing of clicks (call to action buttons, text links, banners) and send visitors to sites where they can play. You will be suprised to know how much of traffic is wasted because you don't use geotargeting.

Regarding bookies you promote I will only stick with Bet365, 10bet, Betfair and Unibet (maybe Pinnacle in case you are not on their great HOT/COLD revenue). Why are you promoting Gamebookers? They are open to few countries only.

Hope this helps a bit

[DanHorvat]

What country are the majority your visitors coming from? Is it a rich country or a poor country?
How many clicks on aff links do you have per month?
How many signups per month?
Are you on revenue share or CPA?

[WATP]

I like your site! Nice layout, good info etc. Your situation reminds me of a few projects I've done where I've spent a lot of time preparing the site, good designs, content, then they rank and start getting a few hundred hits a day... yet sometimes I'll only get about 2 or 3 depositing players a month from them. The amount of times I've seen a good day of depositors and I've gone "ahhh yess, must by my new site bringing players in!". I've then excitedly checked deeper into my stats, and realised the new players have all come from another old site or a portal I've had for years and the new project sits at zero.

I echo the comments above about country targeting, what type of keywords are coming in etc and rev vs cpa. If you could line up side by side the conversion for hits searching for "Nadal Djokovic Today" vs "Nadal Djokovic Odds" or something, I'm sure you would see the 'odds' would win while I'm sure the first keyword would bring plenty of traffic, there's no indication those searches are people remotely interested in betting.

Of course, there's always other factors such as trying to get a rough idea of how many of your visitors already have accounts at the bookies you promote, mobile visitors, country restrictions etc etc. A little thing, worth a try I guess. All your tips pages have a <title> of "BetDistrict | Betting Tips", maybe better to set them in the format of 'Honefoss BK vs Tromsdalen Betting Tips' ?

One thing to note, and I've seen this before on another GPWA member's signature site. When I load your site, i get a little popup "ok/cancel" box that says "Click OK to bet online: Place bets on Sports, Horses or play Casino games online. Get your Free bet!" - is that meant to be there and does anyone else see it, or have I got some hidden spyware going on!?

[Scampi]

One thing to note, and I've seen this before on another GPWA member's signature site. When I load your site, i get a little popup "ok/cancel" box that says "Click OK to bet online: Place bets on Sports, Horses or play Casino games online. Get your Free bet!" - is that meant to be there and does anyone else see it, or have I got some hidden spyware going on!?

I don't see it, sounds like a virus. I got a pop-up asking to join his Facebook page.

With regards to the site; it's really nice and clean, tidy layout. I have no idea about sports betting, but your site comes across to me as a news site, and I doubt sports news readers convert too well. Maybe you could submit it to Google News, but again, they probably wont convert too well.


Going back to what other people have said regarding geo-targetting. Have you considered using Google Adsense on geo-targetted pages? Britain allows gambling ads on affiliate sites, a few other countries are also permitted.
2000 views per day with a CTR of 4% = 80 clicks per day.
Average value of a gambling ads is 44p = 44x.80 = £35.20 per day = £1000 per month.

They are rough calculations, but it is possibly something to consider, especially if it gets listed on Google News.

[DanHorvat]

You probably got an audience that is broke and is just reading your previews for free and then betting 5 € when they get a free voucher somewhere. They're like mice, trying to find a free crumb to eat.

These guys who play tipster competitions don't have any money.

[Rostick]

If I am on your place I will enable click tracking with GA events and implement geotargeting. Then you will be able to do testing of clicks (call to action buttons, text links, banners) and send visitors to sites where they can play. You will be suprised to know how much of traffic is wasted because you don't use geotargeting.

Regarding bookies you promote I will only stick with Bet365, 10bet, Betfair and Unibet (maybe Pinnacle in case you are not on their great HOT/COLD revenue). Why are you promoting Gamebookers? They are open to few countries only.

Hope this helps a bit

Yes, your suggestion is good and I will work on that. I don`t quite understand how to set things up but it shouldn`t take long to learn.

Regarding bookies - yes, I thought about promoting fewer. BUT - 3 bookies have payed a front fee to be on betdistrict, so they will remain there (necessary compromise to help me pay the bills). Regarding Gamebookers & Bwin, they produce some 20 dollars/month since 5-6 years now from an ex-website , so why not put their links on Betdistrict as well in the bottom of the page - no banners or heavy promoting. Anyway, since 2 months now I am only heavily promoting 4-5 bookies, the rest are just with the reviews - still no results.

[Rostick]

Of course, there's always other factors such as trying to get a rough idea of how many of your visitors already have accounts at the bookies you promote, mobile visitors, country restrictions etc etc. A little thing, worth a try I guess. All your tips pages have a <title> of "BetDistrict | Betting Tips", maybe better to set them in the format of 'Honefoss BK vs Tromsdalen Betting Tips' ?

One thing to note, and I've seen this before on another GPWA member's signature site. When I load your site, i get a little popup "ok/cancel" box that says "Click OK to bet online: Place bets on Sports, Horses or play Casino games online. Get your Free bet!" - is that meant to be there and does anyone else see it, or have I got some hidden spyware going on!?

I am a beginner in coding, bought a wordpress theme and edited it the best I could. The betting tips format was coded by me from zero in php & sql and there were some big problems as in the beginning the tips were not even getting indexed in google. I payed a specialists to sort things out and he did pretty good, but the title wasn`t sourted out. I don`t even know if I can change the titles without starting all over again. It will remain like this until I rebuild the website next year.

I`m pretty sure you have some malwere there .

[Rostick]

With regards to the site; it's really nice and clean, tidy layout. I have no idea about sports betting, but your site comes across to me as a news site, and I doubt sports news readers convert too well. Maybe you could submit it to Google News, but again, they probably wont convert too well.


Going back to what other people have said regarding geo-targetting. Have you considered using Google Adsense on geo-targetted pages? Britain allows gambling ads on affiliate sites, a few other countries are also permitted.
2000 views per day with a CTR of 4% = 80 clicks per day.
Average value of a gambling ads is 44p = 44x.80 = £35.20 per day = £1000 per month.

They are rough calculations, but it is possibly something to consider, especially if it gets listed on Google News.

Thanks for your kind words. Until 1 month ago the website was a little bit less news-like, but I tried to make my (I think quality) betting articles more visible, since I think it`s the only thing that I bring new to the table compared to other tips websites.

Really, Adsense works? I was sure it was forbidden for gambling. 6 months ago I would have never put adsense on the website but now I`m willing to try anything and I`ll surely look into that, thanks!

[Rostick]

To your general inquiries:

25% from my traffic comes from Romania and the UK (in equal measure), the rest is spread. Also countries like Germany or Italy are in the top 10. I`m making just a little bit more money from affiliate than I did with an old Romanian language website with 180 hits/day and a catastrophical google ranking.

Google traffic is mostly based on "team 1 - team 2 preview" related searches. I am well aware that these terms do not convert, BUT the good part about tips websites is that getting traffic is a bit easier than for other niches. If I keep going I`m expecting over 10.000 hits/day in the future. I do not expect to make big money with 2000 hits/day but I was expecting at least some movement, say at least 7-8 signups, 3-4 depositors per month and more than 50-100 bucks in revenue. I don`t even have that (aside from one lucky month here and there). Hell, I was expecting at least 2-3 high rollers from that kind of traffic, despite the keywords. I feel the results are unreasonably poor.

@danhorvath - I`m not sure about clicks, as the numbers seem a little strange to me. For example this month Sbobet 100 clicks, Bet365 25 clicks, both promoted in about the same manner. I think I also have some links that don`t track clicks. I agree with your second input but still ... I don`t feel the results should be so poor, come on, can`t I get a 0,1% of that traffic to convert?

I got some good ideas so far, after I`m done with the pre-World Cup work I`m putting I`ll look into Analytics geo targeting and Adsense. Further advice is always welcome Sorry for the long replies, I`m just looking to provide the best insight about the website and the problems it has.Thanks mates!

[TheGooner]

Really, Adsense works? I was sure it was forbidden for gambling. 6 months ago I would have never put adsense on the website but now I`m willing to try anything and I`ll surely look into that, thanks!

Let us know how you go.

Google keep asking me to join adsense every quarter, and when I reply to ask about rates, click throughs etc, they reply saying that after review they can't accept my site because of the gambling content ...

I point out online gambling is legal in the " FREE world" (not US) ask why they invite me to join on a regular basis then?
But don't get a sensible reply - seems a pre-canned cut n paste response that is just weasel words.

Google is big and far too automated I think.

[chaumi]

It's possible you could be losing some UK visitors too quickly because of the mention of 'romanian market' top right. Anyone making a snap judgement might see that and think it's a Romanian focused site...and if they don't think that and scroll down to see more I think it's too busy and they may not be getting a real flavor of the site.

Though it's a well written and well formed site, I fear some visitors may just not be 'getting it' quickly enough.

[DanHorvat]

Some thoughts that might be helpful:

If your bounce rate is 70% then you don't really have 60.000 visitors per month but 18.000.
If you only got 125 clicks in a month on SBO+Bet365 then your problem is obvious. Do something to make the links stand out. I visited the site and all the bold text at the article ending stands out more than the bookie link.

By the way, is this intentional? If it isn't, you're hacked. If it is, I don't like being tricked into signing up.

[Rostick]

@chaumi "It's possible you could be losing some UK visitors too quickly because of the mention of 'romanian market' top right. Anyone making a snap judgement might see that and think it's a Romanian focused site"

that`s an interesting fact I did not considered. I was just trying to establish a "brand story" and to dilute the feeling of inexprience because of Betdistrict`s young age. Anybody else thinks this could be a problem?

[Rostick]

@thegooner

well, just like facebook, they are just too big. I do feel their help is very poor but I understand why they can`t really improve it on a personal level. I`ll provide feedback when I`ll have the time to look into it.

Gooner, you are a man with a lot of experience in the betting tips websites market, I know your website for a long time and it keeps on going. If you don`t mind "helping out the competition" I would like to send you a private message with a couple of questions when I have some time to sort out what exactly I want to ask. Would that be ok?

[Rostick]

Some thoughts that might be helpful:

If your bounce rate is 70% then you don't really have 60.000 visitors per month but 18.000.
If you only got 125 clicks in a month on SBO+Bet365 then your problem is obvious. Do something to make the links stand out. I visited the site and all the bold text at the article ending stands out more than the bookie link.

By the way, is this intentional? If it isn't, you're hacked. If it is, I don't like being tricked into signing up.

Noted! I wanted to improve user experience but I`ll try on some fonts and colors, maybe placement, I think you are right. By the way, the clicks were for this month (so 8 days).

So the popup problem is real, you are the second to encounter it. Now that`s a problem, it`s not intentional. If you could be kind enough to re-visit www.betdistrict.com now and tell me if it appears again I would highly appreciate it. I tried something, if it does not work I will contact the hosting company. Thanks for the screenshot!

[edgarf76]

Securi is good malware removal Rostock


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