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Managing Expectations and Creating Realistic Projections in Affiliate Marketing

Managing Expectations in Affiliate Marketing 

One of the most common mistakes made by potential affiliates or affiliates who are trying to get to the next level in terms of revenue generation is being able to manage their expectations and creating a realistic projection of what the numbers are going to look like in future months.

For example – if an affiliate is already running successfully with one specific casino that brought them a good 15-20% conversion rate, which is on the low side but for the sake of this article will be used – they would expect that same result to come from other new deals they set up which is an unrealistic way to look at it.

When you’re looking specifically at casino traffic – there is an advantage for a brand to be at the top of the list and there’s also a big difference in the player signing up first versus second, third, and so on. A player tends to make their decision on a number of factors when selecting a brand to play on. A big part of the decision process is the recommendation of the affiliate site.

As an affiliate though – your challenge is that the best brand is not always the one available to start or the one that offers the most money and this causes a mixture of results. A brand for example that converts really well may have very high admin fees, something that isn’t always outwardly communicated to you by your affiliate manager.

For example – if you have chosen to work on a 50% revenue share deal – which on its surface is a very attractive deal, the reality is that most brands charge anywhere from 10 to 30% on average off your deal making your earnings more like 30-35%. Add taxes that you may or not pay and your margins have gone down quite a bit.

Some things to consider

Another factor to consider when managing your expectations is the geography of your traffic. Not all players may have the same option when it comes to payment methods and a lot of countries make it hard to deposit with credit or bank cards, which means that you may effectively lose a big part of your players due to faulty payment processing on the side of the operator. While this can be frustrating – it’s unfortunately a normal part of the process of learning that this is a marathon and not a race when it comes to reaching your goals.

Another important aspect of having a successful career as an affiliate – which ultimately means a good rapport and relationships with your affiliate manager is creating projections.

Affiliates historically are known to embellish their numbers quite a bit as far as what they are able to send a program or brand. What this tends to do is create some initial excitement and the affiliate managers tend to offer the affiliates a higher deal based on those projections due to the affiliate managers potentially earning off these wonderful results the affiliate will bring.

However, after over 20 years of these relationships being developed, it is a common understanding among management and affiliate managers that the affiliates like to embellish their numbers creating a lot of skepticism and in many cases some unnecessary tension and resentment.

Key things to look out for

In the advanced affiliate course that NCZ affiliates offer – you will be taught and explained that giving arbitrary numbers that would seem too high in the eyes of an affiliate manager or their director will lead to a very quick decline of the deal or a lot of questioning that includes checking on their side places like semrush.com, and other SEO-related tools that show them what the actual traffic looks like and if the discrepancy is too high between their tools and what the affiliate says, the program tends to find ways to reciprocate by either ghosting the affiliate or eventually lowering the deal of the affiliate because they didn’t deliver.

The best piece of advice that can be offered here is – do not commit to a number, let the affiliate manager know that the number they can expect as far as new FTDs is based on the brands’ performance in terms of conversion rates and that only time will tell. This way you won’t have the pressure of delivering something that for all you know, you are set up for failure as many brands could have some of the issues mentioned earlier, including payment processing failures and complaints by players that turn other players off and cause them to not trust the brand.

Overall – the affiliate gaming space is a cutthroat one with a lot of sharks in the waters. This is why it is a good idea to learn and create a foundation within the industry by giving yourself at least 2-3 months to understand what it takes to succeed.

A team of experts with over 15 years of industry knowledge and experience in affiliate marketing – start by scheduling a call with us to find out about our 1-1 training offers at a time to suit you, or drop us a message if you have any questions about how to get started with a lucrative second income.

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