Just a few years ago iGaming affiliation was more of a niche hobby than a legitimate job. You had thousands of webmasters who generally did not have any full time employees, but rather owned a couple of websites to generate leads to a variety of online casinos.
Fast forward to 2018 and the industry is dominated by major publicly traded companies like Catena Media and Better Collective who have been acquiring seven or eight figure assets for quite some time now.
These companies have market caps heading into hundreds of millions. But does that mean that the days of running a small affiliate operation in this space are over? Not quite – and in this article we’ll explore why and how that is.
Is There Still Hope for the One-man-band?
Absolutely. However going head-to-head against companies 100x your size and budget is not exactly the best idea.
Having that said, there are still plenty of niches big and small that are much less competitive, but still valuable if you can rank among the top three sites.
Examples? Let’s imagine you are starting a new website in one of the most competitive industries in the world – online gambling.
The most common mistake many newbies, and even seasoned marketers, make is casting too wide of a net. This can end up with your operation trying to “ball before you crawl”.
In this context that would mean starting a website about everything casino related rather than going for a more narrow niche that targets a specific game.
That could be a site about live blackjack or roulette, as both of those have been increasing in popularity over recent years.
Remember that by choosing to make your “casino site about everything”, you are essentially competing against just about every other casino related website in the world.
Some of these competitors will have dozens or even hundreds of employees, along with seven-figure budgets. Going into a more narrow niche is thus instrumental in your potential success as a startup. You can always go for the juiciest bigger fruits after you’ve become practiced at picking the low hanging varieties.
Anticipating Search Volume
This is a tactic that can be hit or miss, but also one that does not usually require a big investment in terms of time or money. Yet, the rewards can often be extraordinary. It all depends on what specific topics or events you target and how much search interest they gather.
A good example of this strategy at work would be new slot machine releases. When a big online provider like NetEnt announces a new slot machine, they often create a lot of hype around it by teasing a few key details about it during conferences or other events attended by the press. This was done at ICE conference in London for their Guns ‘N Roses slot.
Ranking for related terms on launch day and months to follow was valuable, with surprisingly little competition. However the next musically-themed slot releases, Jimi Hendrix and Motörhead, did not generate anywhere close to the prior levels of interest. So any effort put into getting leads from those was far less profitable.
For a second example, consider the live dealer casino niche. This market has been on the rise in the past few years and popular companies such as Evolution Gaming are regularly releasing new products.
If you act fast, or have some contacts at the company, it is possible to anticipate what the new games are going to be and what levels of interest they might attain.
Their latest games have included Lightning Roulette and the most recent release, Infinite Blackjack. If you manage to rank top three on SERP for or either of these two, it should provide you with a decent player base to build your business upon.
So How Do You Actually Own a Niche In iGaming Affiliation?
In simple terms? By offering the best and most valuable product for your target audience. This brings us neatly back to our previous point: it is better to build a great website about a single game, category or genre than it is going too wide and failing at everything.
Here are five easily digestible bits of advice that will put you in the right mindset, and give you a strong strategic base to start from.
#1. Give yourself a chance to get rich.
Even though I advocate going niche, some people take this to the extremes. It’s unlikely that you’ll be able to make bank from a site about the best £1 minimum blackjack games in Manchester.
However a website comparing the minimum deposit amounts offered at different online casinos might be worth going for. You might not get the highest value players but you should make up for that in terms of volume, as a lot of people are looking to play at online casinos for small amounts.
#2. Know the niche better than your competition.
While this might be very obvious to some, very few iGaming marketers actually do this. This is really the main reason why going with a big website covering “everything casino” often fails. You end up skimming the surface of many topics, but not actually offering any actual in-depth or insightful content that provides value to potential users.
Be an authority source for whatever it is that your website covers. This may mean putting in the thousands of hours required to become an expert. That’s a pretty solid business plan, to craft your content into something better than anyone else’s (on the subject of your choice). It may take some work – but no-one said it was going to be easy!
#3. Work on it every day for a year. Then reflect on the results.
If your chosen method of traffic acquisition for your website is based on SEO, it will take time. A long time. If you want to give this business a fair shot be prepared to make a commitment for at least one year. Work on your website on a daily basis for this amount of time, and you should see a lot of progress in terms of traffic and rankings. Also keep in mind that a typical affiliate site starts to gain traction and reach their level of maturity past the 15 month mark.
#4. Do not branch out until you are the #1 in your niche
We’ve done this a few times ourselves. What happens when you grow too quickly and try to be everywhere? You’ll probably end up getting nowhere. You can of course invest in side projects. But we only recommend that for after you’ve crushed your core niche and are #1 in rankings for your desired keywords.
It’s also worth pointing out that oftentimes, going from position 3 to 2 or 1 on Google is worth a lot more than getting a new website to rank within the first 10.
#5. Don’t go crazy with buying links
While everyone is busy telling you how content is king, the really successful affiliates are also aware that links are still absolutely vital for achieving high rankings.
A great general rule to keep in mind is not following the pack. In regards to SEO this means that you should try not buy links from the same sources as every other affiliate marketer.
In fact paying for links exposes you to multiple risks. The owner going rogue and taking them down or the link losing value after 50 other affiliates buy it are just two examples. And then there’s the ongoing expenditure to think about as well.
Generally these links are sold on a yearly basis, so you might be digging a hole for yourself when buying them. How? If you drop multiple links it might be an obvious signal to Google that they are bought.
