Top 5 Lessons Learnt

[clearlyportals]

Hi Folks,

Not sure if another similar thread exists, but would love to hear peoples top 5 (or couple) of lessons learnt from running a caisno affiliate site.

For instance, what did and didn't work for you? What did you spend too much time when looking back you should have been doing something else. Were your expectations too high, etc.

Really like to hear peoples experience

[Justin-SA]

As I'm not an affiliate myself I can't answer your questions, but a great idea! I'd love to hear what affiliates have to say!

[MCLUB]

Im an affiliate myself and one of the greatest and more correct decisions i made when i started 5 years ago was to start by centering my "business" on one affiliate program to grow my players database, when a database is created, you should join some other affiliate programs to satisfy all your players needs.

Spending to much time to find several programs only dispersses the possible "numbers" you can generate, and one of the things that motions the relations between affiliates and affiliate programs besides professionalism are numbers...

Just my 2 cents...

[clearlyportals]

Thanks RPessoa,

This is something I am interested in. On any caisno affiliate sites I do I sometimes wonder if i'm doing to much content, too many reviews/casinos

Do you think it is possible that too much choice can put visitors off/confuse them?

My lessons so far have been to perhaps spend less time on design/launch early and improve your site while its live rather than trying to create an all singing all dancing site.

The benefits being is that you get to work on your SEO/indexing from an earlier stage and you at least give yourself a chance to start earning.

[GamTrak]

I've been an affiliate since 2001 what came to mind is I wish I would have kept more detailed stats from the start and not just how much I made that month.

I would have recorded new players, depositors and clicks for each month in a spreadsheet in order to have a better ideal on things like which software players prefer, which brand produce better running the same software and stuff like that.

Back then I would have also created my site using more CSS, less banners and a whole lot less color on a black background. lol

P.S. YES, I believe that you can have to much content and confuse the visitor.

[pgaming]

Looking back I would have done many things different. Not in any particular order but here’s my top five.

1. Trust very few programs and always assume you being ripped off.

2. Content to link ratio is important.

3. Organization your site in such a way changes can be made quickly and efficiently. Make it simple but effective minimize bloated HTML junk mark up code. The HTML should be as clean as your site.

4. Keep ownership of your sites private or at least your best ones. Try not too grandstand.

5. Do what comes naturally; build a site you believe in and budget your time.

Likely could list another 100 but these 5 entered my head first. Been an affiliate for five years three of them I expected to earn more than $10.00/month. Well I earned nothing despite having good quality targeted traffic.

Either the program is honest or their not this will likely be the hardest part of being an affiliate. If you find yourself in this position your better off dropping the program rather than speculating if they are treating you fairly.

The web is a very fast paced environment to waist it on bad programs.

JMO

greek39

[MCLUB]

Thanks RPessoa,

...

Do you think it is possible that too much choice can put visitors off/confuse them?

...

Exactly, as a web user, i search for quick, fast and quality info, if a user searches for something, he already has something in mind, and if he finds a multiple information site (With too much info), he will surely search again for something more especific.
In my opinion you should focus on one to three credible affiliate programs and work with it them, u have more than one confidence aff program you would like to pormote, open a diferent site for more detailed info, the serch engines will do the rest...

Pass the pub, i was fortunate enough to find as one of my first affiliate programs sharethechili.com, i have all the good things to say about all the team and to thank all of them for they'r help when i was only a newby, as they help me in every way i can think now that i have a more specific idea how the market works, and we still work till this day and i have no intencions to change...

[LiveCasinoPartners]

Here's the first 5 things that come to mind.

• Find a trustworthy affiliate program. If one is not converting for you then try another. For me, I nearly didn't make it promoting a bad program.
• Patience. It takes a while of persistent work to make money.
• Emulate those who are successful (without copying).
• Build more content (always)
• Build more links (always)

[Marit VS]

This is a really useful thread - although at what point do you say 'I have to drop this program' and try another? and how many program do you go through before you start thinking its something to do with your site?

ie. as a start-up affiliate, how many months do you give programs? With no experience its easy to assume that its your site not attracting the right kind of traffic rather than a program? How do you test if programs are being fair or not?

[TanyaEverest]

Thanks RPessoa,

This is something I am interested in. On any caisno affiliate sites I do I sometimes wonder if i'm doing to much content, too many reviews/casinos

Do you think it is possible that too much choice can put visitors off/confuse them?

This seems to be a common theme for many affiliates. I'm curious to hear what you have found to be the "magic number". How many affiliate programs will you work with at a time? From my experience it seems that it some affiliates have created a cap and only work with x number of rooms at a time. Any thoughts?

Tanya

[JaqiC]

This is really interesting for me, since I find that I am constantly learning new information about websites and seo status that I had no clue about this same time last year. For every one thing that I learn, there are at least two more just waiting to be discovered. The most important thing that I have learned is that it is a good idea to bounce ideas off of people that you trust and who are in the business before making any big changes. They can save a whole lot of time and resources, if you just talk first and act later. (Thanks WagerX)

[Justin-SA]

I wonder, are some affiliate programs that bad as not being trustworthy? And ripping affiliates off?

I can understand perhaps programs having conversion problems. But that is a completely different story then ripping the affiliate off.

Also, there are two sides to an affiliate program. Conversion and Retention. Obviously conversion is a big thing, but have you found affiliate programs that convert very well but have terrible retention? What about those who have great retention but bad conversion? Do many programs excel in both fields without a problem?

Ok, sorry for all the questions, but as an affiliate manager I really want to know the thoughts of the affiliates!