Affiliate Program for Online Poker Operators

Poker affiliate programs can acquire an international reach & become one of the major promotion strategies. While sharing revenue, an operator shares responsibility to attract new users to their poker room as well. How does it work?

Operators normally use a certain variability of channels for their poker room advancement. The traffic in the world of online gaming is attracted via:

• SEO;
• Advertisements;
• Sites;
• Social networks;
• Affiliates.

Main traffic is still regulated with the help of affiliate programs. Affiliates can gather and drive traffic to the poker room, using the exact same channels for potential users, such as SEO, social networks, even personal contacts. All available methods come in handy. 

The key value in the online poker sphere goes to affiliate traffic, and there’s a definite reason why. In many countries it’s simply prohibited to post ads of any sort connected with poker, or it’s complicated to place such ads. Trust barriers could be extremely high among the players due to much fraud in the niche. 

Depending on how traffic is driven, affiliates can be:

• Established. Those with a number of personal contacts, followers, well attended sites and social networks by the poker community. 
• Brand-new. Usually with few or none personal contacts yet and little experience in the sphere, who target any kind of traffic to a poker room. 
• Geographically defined. They aim at players in a certain geographical area and community. 

At times, the percentage of affiliate and agent share could go up to 80%, which is indeed a significant number. When such an affiliate leaves a poker room, it causes losses of the greatest part of income and mature poker room owners recall similar cases. So, partner programs are vital for successful operation. 

Powerful affiliates can combine both operator and affiliate functions, working in close connection with players and their LTV. Those responsibilities can include money exchange service, software setting, personal manager, guarantees, support, and more along with rakeback payments. 

How do poker sites work with affiliates?

At EvenBet, we highlight two main methods of motivating partners to attract more traffic. One of the ways to stimulate affiliate activity is revenue share. Usually this index is set by operators according to their marketing and financial strategy. An affiliate gets rake percent from an attracted player. E.g.: a player puts a $100 bet, room gets 5% rake – $5 and pays 50% from this rake to an affiliate – $2.5. An affiliate might have sub affiliates, the system is similar to MLM-organisations. If so, they share a certain rake percent with them as well. 

Another one is called “cost per action” (CPA model). This time, an affiliate gets fixed profit from each action a user makes. E.g.: registration of a new player, first deposit, deposit over a certain sum of money, etc. Sometimes it’s possible to use the combination of those two ways to encourage a partner even more, as CPA-model can work both with revenue share, or separately. The choice goes to the poker room owner. 

Who is an agent and what is their role?

The difference between the gaming world and online poker is that the poker sphere is generally more socialised. One can easily imagine how much interaction players have during the poker game, and even more. Professional players are widely known among poker aficionados. This level of socialisation influences poker partner system as well. 

While the basic goal for an affiliate is to drive more traffic, agents provide deeper interaction with players. They are not just sites, but opinion leaders and influencers. On top of that, agents’ responsibilities expand and include payment acceptance, rake payments, support, etc. 

Poker affiliate agent program is a pinnacle method for a poker room to grow and engage a community of real poker players, therefore productively increasing the revenue for poker room operators. 

Most likely agents already have their own community of players, furthermore they might have worked in one poker room with their players or transferred to another one earlier. In the majority of cases, poker affiliate agents know players. Besides, all players’ questions are solved with the agent help. Poker room itself may not link with players much in this case. 

How is the affiliate program realised in EvenBet Gaming?

EvenBet Gaming is a turnkey solution for operators who dream of making business in online poker. We may create the best gambling affiliate program for you based on our cutting-edge platform. We can do the program differently and adjust it to your own preferences and vision on promotion strategy. 

At EvenBet Gaming, we have powerful support of different affiliate programs, including multi-level one with sub-affiliates. We’ve developed all possible settings: from registering them to making affiliate detailed reports in the back-office.

Affiliates get personal accounts in the system, where they manage accrued bonuses, see reports on attracted players and sub-affiliates. Agents have wider opportunities, which include setting of tournaments, work with users, and more. 

Conclusion

Affiliate programs bring the main traffic to a poker room and could be a key to mastering online poker business. Agents require a deep understanding of financial management along with trust, as partners rule their part of players. The revenue share with agents can be substantial, but it goes along with the higher quality of traffic. 

Affiliate programs have an undoubtedly important role in poker room promotion and traffic generation. We develop and improve this feature regularly.