How to rock on Sports Betting? Full affiliate guide

Would you like to try your hand in Betting affiliate marketing? Right choice! Betting is one of the verticals of affiliate marketing that remains active forever. Gambling people will always place bets, and bookmakers will need new players.

Let’s figure out how to work with it in common and how to drive push ads for Betting.

What is Betting?

People have been betting on sports since primitive times and nothing has changed. The excitement and the desire to make a profit continue to attract many players to bet on sports.

For ordinary people, Betting begins and ends with bets on sports events. Football matches, major battles, the results of the Olympics. In fact, the vertical of Betting is much broader: it includes esports and fantasy sports.

How to run esports in affiliate marketing

Esports is a competition between people or teams in popular video or computer games for significant wins.

One of the benefits of esports is that players can be anywhere. Viewers can also watch the game’s progress from anywhere in the world. It’s possible with the help of streams.

The number of esports fans is growing every year. In the United States, esports surpassed the super-popular NBA and NHL finals viewership.

The earnings of cyber sportsmen are approaching the fees of sports stars, while the overall revue of the industry grows.

Watch the webinar: Betting and Gambling discussion with 4 experts here here.

Best esports GEOs

Esports are most popular in developed countries: the USA, Canada, European countries. Very active fans live in China, Singapore, and South Korea. But it will be a little harder to work there due to the language barrier. Not everyone is subject to hieroglyphs.

Moreover, English-language advertising is inferior in performance to native languages. Take a closer look at the countries of the Middle East – there are also esports fans there.

What is RichAds?
🔝 High quality push and pop ads,
🔼 domain redirect and native traffic source,
🔝 buy push ads at $0.005 (CPC), pop ads at $0.5 (CPM),
⏫ domain ads costs start from $1.5 (CPM), native ads — from $0.001 (CPC),
⏫ ad network offers large volumes of traffic in more than 200 geos from Tier 3 to Tier 1.

Top esports games

There are hundreds of different games for esports, but the most popular are:

• League of legends;
• CS: GO;
• Dota 2;
• Fortnite;
• Starcraft.

Do not forget about sports simulators, for example, FIFA.

Step 1.
How to choose an offer and a GEO for Betting

The first thing to start with is choosing the right offer. You need to pay attention to the terms, payment model, and GEO.

According to the terms, everything is simple. You need to make sure that the offer accepts traffic from push notifications.

The most common Betting payment models:

CPA – pay for registration or deposit.
RevShare – pay lifetime commission from the betting shop income.
Hybrid – fix cost for new active player + lifetime commission from the betting shop profit.

There are also offers with CPL (payment for registration) and CPI (payment for installing the application). Nowadays, such offers are very rare, and it is quite difficult to get them for push traffic.

For beginners, we recommend choosing CPA offers. When you have experience and understanding of the vertical, you can switch to Hybrid or RevShare. The difficulty is that it will take some time to optimize such advertising campaigns.

According to RevShare, profits begin to flow after 3-6 months. This stretches the budget of any affiliate marketer. Only people with large budgets can allow such a waiting period. Moreover, they should be confident in their approaches and the quality of the leads.

Combination of popular sports and GEOs

There are 2 main options for Betting: run cheap Tier 3 GEO or choosing premium Tier 1.

Tier 1 (English-speaking GEOs, Scandinavian countries, Canada) generally always shows a higher conversion rate. But the traffic itself is much more expensive. Premium GEOs make campaigns riskier but also more profitable. Still, there is a more solvent audience there.

Tier 3-4 (India, African countries) are very good GEOs for newbies in Betting. The traffic here will be cheaper. Such countries allow you to fill your hand and not spend your budget in 1 day. The choice of an offer is crucial for them, and brand awareness plays a significant role here. Choose well-known bookmaker companies, a bad brand won’t convert.

After choosing an offer, be sure to go all the way for the user. Test if the steps the user should take are clear and be sure to check out the payment page.

In Tier 3-4 countries, it is important to pay attention to the available payment methods. In Tier 1 everybody pays by card. But in Tier 3-4 you need both local processors of plastic cards and local payment systems. It can provide up to 50% of transactions. If your brand/offer has all local payment options, then you are on the right track.

Step 2.
How to analyze the target audience of your Betting offer

Sports Betting is popular among prospered segments of society. Here is a typical portrait of a betting player. A middle-aged man from 25 to 45 with a stable average income.

Don’t forget about another branch of Betting – eSports. Young people from 20 and above are fond of it. Moreover, the upper threshold can be quite high: men over 40 can play and bet. Bettors are more loyal to a brand than gamblers, so it’s crucial to choose the right creatives for attracying players, then retain them with high-quality offers and bonuses.

One thing remains the same: there are not very many girls among betting fans. So, when planning your ad campaign, focus on middle-aged men.

The easiest way to analyze the target audience is to get a portrait of the depositor from the offer owner. It is the depositor, not the people who register. If you couldn’t get such information, you will have to turn to Google.

Alex Grus, former AdCombo expert

Imagine that you’ve already received the age and interests of the target audience. Then it’s very important to analyze the sports preferences of your GEO. For example, if it’s Europe, then football will come first. If you have India, it will be cricket, and baseball is popular in Japan. The Nordic countries are very fond of hockey. Consider all these facts when preparing creatives.

Step 3.
How to prepare Betting ad creatives

Nowadays, affiliate marketers prepare push ads for Betting according to several scenarios. We can divide them into events (tied to a large match) and general ones. They serve to generate new players for bookmakers outside of major events.

Examples of push-ads creatives for Betting

1. WOW-push

Such a push is designed to surprise the user, to awaken inner greed. Well suited for those to lure newbies and those who have little experience in Betting.

WOW-push can lead to the pre-landing page with a success story. We can also use pseudo-news about how someone won a large amount of money from this broker.

2. Event push 

These kinds of push notifications are created for certain events on the sports calendar.

The push will work well if you use familiar brand elements such as logos. Place team players or club emblems on the main push image. These are the most effective creatives. But even they will not work if your push base is very far from the rates. Check suitable Betting subscribers lists with your ad network manager.

An event push should lead to a specific match page on the broker’s side, without pre-landers.

3. General bonus push

The essence of this push is to promote a specific brand/operator with enticing creatives. The average player registered in more than 5 brands, as they are always looking for better terms/odds. It is this brand advertisement that attracts them.

The general bonus push should lead to a large beautiful landing page with bonuses. The next step is registration.

Pre-landing pages and landing pages with push should form one logical funnel. Moreover, the logic of the funnel should be clear.

Step 4.
How to analyze the results of the ad campaign

Having spent the first money, the most important thing is to evaluate the results. It is important to check 3 parameters: the ratio of impressions to clicks (CTR), the number of conversions (CR), and the profitability of the campaign (ROI). What can the numbers tell us?

Estimate CTR/BR

You can find out the CTR/BR in the traffic source data. RichAds has clear analytics and its built-in tracker, which pulls in fresh data.

CTR/BR shows how interesting and attractive your push is. If you have good impressions and clicks, then everything is in order with the push itself, and you can move on. If not, you need to change the appearance of the creative and continue testing.

Estimate CTR/BR

You can find out the CTR/BR in the traffic source data. RichAds has clear analytics and its built-in tracker, which pulls in fresh data.

CTR/BR shows how interesting and attractive your push is. If you have good impressions and clicks, then everything is in order with the push itself, and you can move on. If not, you need to change the appearance of the creative and continue testing.

Estimate CR

The next important point is CR or conversions. You can find them in the tracker or the stats of the CPA network. Usually, a sales funnel consists of two steps: registration and making a deposit.

A high registration rate and a low conversion of deposit mean that you attracted too poor audience or did not motivate traffic too much. We need to revise creatives towards more professional and experienced players.

If you have a high CTR but no signups, check the links. Perhaps the point is their proper operation.

A low registration rate also may tell that you are causing misleading. It’s worth checking your sales funnel and ensuring you get the message across to your users. If you promise a signup bonus on a push, there should be one. If this is a bonus for new players only, be sure to include it.

Estimate ROI

The last point is ROI. If you have gone through all the previous steps and fixed all the errors. At the same time, your campaign shows ROI from 0 to -20%, it is worth continuing the tests. Try other creatives or strategies for the same audience. You can pull these indicators out with new creatives and bundles.

You should change the offer or the audience if the ROI is worse.

Betting is one of the fastest-growing verticals in affiliate marketing. This is a good source of income with the right approach. People can give up the desire to lose weight. But they will never stop before the temptation to play and make money on it.

What is RichAds?
🔝 High quality push and pop ads,
🔼 domain redirect and native traffic source,
🔝 buy push ads at $0.005 (CPC), pop ads at $0.5 (CPM),
⏫ domain ads costs start from $1.5 (CPM), native ads — from $0.001 (CPC),
⏫ ad network offers large volumes of traffic in more than 200 geos from Tier 3 to Tier 1.