Makin’ a buck in online gambling industry affiliate land used to be a piece of cake—in fact the whole cake—for those who got involved early enough and had a few SEO tricks up their sleeve.
Once the United States decided to crack down on the online gambling industry and Europe decided to go all fragmented on us, making a buck wasn’t so easy anymore and many affiliates were forced to start branching out… or they become bankrupt.
However, the urgency to branch out has not reached online gambling affiliates targeting the UK market nearly as much as it has crippled those targeting the US and European countries. For example, Matt Bayliss owns UK facing affiliate site Goodbonusguide.com and his business has minimally been impacted by regulatory changes.
“Because my primary target market is the UK I’ve seen little impact from the regulatory changes, except maybe for a slight increase in competition as other affiliates start targeting the UK”, Bayliss told CalvinAyre.com.
Even though Bayliss’s online gambling affiliate business has yet to feel the old regulatory pinch, he has gone ahead and diversified into other markets because its, well, just good business practice.
Bayliss said, “I think for any business to survive in the long term it has to diversify – this is especially true for affiliate marketers. My long term plan has always been to spread into mainstream niches – starting with small adsense and affiliate sites and then working my way up to large projects that need teams of journalists working on them full time”.
There are certainly both plusses and minuses to branching out beyond online gambling as an affiliate, the largest most obvious minus being that affiliates simply won’t make as much money for the same amount of traffic. At the same time, there is more traffic available in mainstream markets and the online population is much more willing to share this content and link to it.
When asked what other products he plans to promote besides online gambling Bayliss told CalvinAyre.com, “I’m going after two distinct types of site – those in the higher competition/revenue niches such as health and fitness, travel, web hosting, loans and electronics which are run in a similar way to my iGaming affiliate sites and informational sites such as ‘how to train a puppy’”. He continued, “Eventually I want to start an online magazine for London – similar to TimeOut or ViewLondon”.
While the future of the online gambling affiliate business around the world remains unclear, most affiliates knew what they were signing up for from the get-go. Bayliss appears to embrace this concept of uncertainty and is therefore taking all the precautionary steps to protect his business.
“I think there’s going to be an increase in red tape in the industry – especially with the regulatory attempts that are taking place in the US”, he says. “Regardless of what happens, those of us that promote online gambling products are always going experience a bumpier ride than our mainstream counterparts”.
