Hello, dear friends! This is GamblingPro. Today, we will share valuable information that can save you tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars, along with thousands of nerve cells.
We’ll split the article into two parts, so our dear readers can take useful action in part №1 for our entire community and speed up the release of part №2.
A little preface.
Among the global tasks of GamblingPro has always been the hunt for fresh blood: every morning instead of coffee, we brewed new brands in the admin panel, delighting the whole office with new releases for the needed geos and traffic sources. And even better – for specific partners, rolling them out as quickly as possible.
In the chase for dozens and hundreds of brands, observing the first awkward clicks in the statistics on fresh offers, we often faced cases of truly wild injustice. When the same offer, with identical pouring inputs, showed much worse results with a specific partner (while others successfully poured it with high indicators, making a profit).
Many of our product research began precisely from those times when we only started collecting our suitcase of expertise, to surely understand the nature of the product and its conversion from the first clicks.
And we sincerely strive every time to understand why a particular pour did not show results.
We will discuss the TOP reasons why an offer may not convert. Besides, I will share with you the guts that no one has yet illuminated. So sit back and get comfortable!
- TESTER BY NEED
In 2024, in affiliate networks, there are still those same principles of “sell for KPI”, where managers can offer you an offer that has not yet gained the necessary statistics and has not shown itself in traffic processing.
This is possible in two cases:
- In the case where the manager’s motivation is built on a % of the commission per offer. For example, if Offer №1 participates in the KPI of the manager, which has poor or no conversion but the commission from which is higher, compared to Offer №2, which does not participate in the KPI but has sufficient and competitive pouring statistics. Ultimately, the manager arms himself with Offer №1 and sells it to you at any cost. Due to potential profit and fervent pursuit of KPI. Globally, leaders can set it to mandatory execution (for example, due to the goal of fulfilling the plan for a specific offer/offers) and in this case, the manager, even with the brightest intentions, will arm himself with the goal of selling you what has not yet shown results.
How to protect yourself?
If you are presented with a new offer – request statistics, look at the figures and specific pouring results.
If the screenshots provided by the manager raise suspicions (or the manager himself raises suspicions, maybe he’s some kind of maniac) – request information on this offer from another affiliate network. Be more critical of what is presented to you.
- The second scenario applies to managers of affiliate networks when a new brand wants to ride the affiliate network like a Running Mare. Often the advertiser wants to get the first traffic from the affiliate network, trying to “sell you” the brand, without statistics and justifications of its potential result, offering phenomenal conditions for pouring traffic.
This is usually correlated with loud statements about effective work in the SEO source and topped with a baseline of 25 euros for the mobile application + Facebook source (the latter, of course, is trash in 99% of cases). For an experienced affiliate network manager, these things are understandable and discernible at the outset. But newcomers or new affiliate networks, due to inexperience and lack of knowledge, can actively connect dozens of offers with empty and unjustified conditions, subsequently offering these conditions to newly arrived webmasters.
Such an approach is typical for new brands and those that want to enter a new GEO at any cost, without having recommended themselves and not receiving the first expertise.
Let’s consider a small example:
Brand X presented India, conducted integration, and created an offer in the eponymous affiliate network №3. The manager picked up the installation and offered it to you. As a result, you got 0 results. In the case of us, with the Gambling.pro network, I will give a simple input: any offer in work with us is backed up by statistics from the admin panel. Or, in the absence thereof, the partner (webmaster) is announced at the start, that the specific offer and/or specific GEO of the offer still does not have sufficient pouring statistics.
From the last case in the network: feedback from a webmaster appeared in the chat, in which he complained about India, I quote with a screenshot:
Initially, what was important – which offer the webmaster pours. Writing directly, I found out both the affiliate network and the brand the webmaster poured on. By the way, the brand itself turned out to be known to me from my experience in the CIS and which in no way recommended itself in India, as 4RABET did, for example.
The decision to test new GEOs is good, you need to grow and develop, but questions arise:
Did the webmaster know that he was testing GEO?
If he didn’t know, why didn’t the manager warn him about it?
- COBBLER WITHOUT SHOES
In practice, many casino and betting brands strive to get players from a new GEO for themselves, while not being technically or from a user-flow standpoint prepared.
Why does this happen?
- A new brand is eager to enter the game as soon as possible to snatch a tasty piece of the pie.
This is the most common phenomenon with new products: when investors’ plans include getting the necessary volume of traffic and reaching profitability as quickly as possible. From experience, I can say that 90% of such brands quickly appear and quickly disappear. All because at the start they did not have a business model and did not understand the work with affiliate networks, instead, there were many questions about rates, bewilderment about CPA pricing, about building KPI, and so on. Often – complete incompetence. This point could be devoted to an entire manual, so let’s briefly about the most important.
How to protect yourself from an amateur advertiser?
This will be told to you by the representative himself. But if the brand presents itself as the nearest leader in the chosen GEO, use 2 effective methods to understand who is in front of you:
#1: ask targeted questions about conversion, about the device of the product, the internals of the brand. An amateur will give himself away)
#2: check which platform the brand is based on. If the platform is unknown – clarify with the representative, whether it is a self-written solution or a ready-made shell. 90% of new products use ready-made solutions and it is in this that there may be a lack of expertise in the product.
Certainly, the presence of a ready-made solution does not always mean that you are dealing with a raw product that will last 1-2 months and not strengthen in the CPA market. The online casino engine on which the Brand is based is the indicator that should raise additional questions for you, more thorough checking and analysis of the brand. And meticulous questions to the representative. And, ideally, a request for prepayment for security reasons, but this is usually more of a concern for affiliate networks.
Specifically, in our work, there were several indicative cases when the brand was not able to independently assess traffic and due to lack of expertise did not know how to conduct work and which metrics of its own product are important – these cases led to the fact that I banned integration with products on the 1xbet platform.
- The brand’s task is to cover GEO as quickly as possible, against the background of the hype wave and/or legalization of gambling in a specific GEO.
And in the pursuit of fulfilling and deadlines, the brand may overlook important parts of the product and not work them out: in localization, in adaptation of bonuses, in site optimization.
If you are a professional, you should feel the market dynamics. And, as a consequence, realize that if a brand that has been working for 5 years in the CIS and, against the backdrop of the hype in Brazil, decided to launch GEO in 3 days – there are quite logical questions to such a brand and it is necessary to check it for strength in the framework of a new GEO. Simply put, you have to re-check the product for inaccuracies. Here you could create an entire checklist for checking the offer for strength, but, perhaps, this is a topic for another article.
- The brand, having shown results in 1/2/3 geos, decides to reveal its potential in new countries.
This model is the most practical and workable, it is used by Mastodons. Nevertheless, always realize that if the brand converts in Brazil, launched Africa and did not bring you a result – does not mean that the brand is bad.
You should be warned that GEO is in the test and the indicators may be unsatisfactory. And any professional in the work should understand this, but there is still a practice when webmasters, knowing about such inputs when launching a new GEO of a particular brand – overlook it and subsequently form an extremely negative opinion about the product.
We exclude this by stating once again at the start about how the brand prepared for a specific geo and that statistics have not yet been formed.
I’ll share with you the latest case in work:
A new brand came to us, we had several calls, where we found out the needs, as well as the capabilities that the product management was willing to invest.
Colleagues actively requested our expertise and advice on work. In short: the brand was interested in European players and was eager to get traffic as quickly as possible.
And then one simple action slowed down the launch.
Going to the site, I found that in the registration form:
- the player’s currency is not determined by IP
- the country is not determined by IP
What does this threaten?
First: Users need to scroll through a list of dozens of countries and currencies to find their own. Second: I won’t launch traffic on such a brand.
These details reflect the product approach and market understanding. Essentially, when a brand enters a CPA network seeking traffic, they should clearly understand that 80% of incoming traffic is from Facebook.
The traffic comes from emotional creatives, and players may not anticipate that they’ll convert to a casino product tomorrow. This isn’t SEO/contextual traffic, where a player coming from a target site or query is more likely to take an extra step during registration due to their engagement.
But when we talk about Facebook – the product must be thoroughly prepared. Details like auto-selection of language and currency are essential, as they affect conversion to registration.
There are many such cases, it’s crucial always to be ahead and display professionalism in work, meticulously checking everything that affects the brand’s conversion. So, if new brand representatives are reading this – don’t rush to seek tons of traffic, gain the necessary expertise and understanding of the entire market. You can write to me in Telegram direct messages, I’ll help you do it more effectively and faster.
- YOUNG WARRIOR
I decided to name this section so because the word “youth” implies not yet fully established stability, and in “warrior,” I see high productivity and output.
This pertains to brands that are exploring territories in Asia, Latam, Africa. To date, few have established themselves in these geos with stable conversion and consistent results.
Taking India as an example, we observe the top 3 payment methods:
7/10 cases of missing conversion – failures of these payment methods.
This affects:
– The absence of conversion from reg2ftd
– The absence of repeated conversion to deposit
– Weak reg2ftd conversion
– Drop in reg2ftd
– Weak gaming activity
– Low LTV
Due to such cases, webmasters may encounter the following:
– The offer showed conversion in the first days of pouring, but in the following days, the conversion decreased by 20-50%
– During a week of pouring, the offer may show a drop in conversion several times
– Players showed weak gaming activity (naturally, when unstable payment methods and no option to make a deposit)
– Players “dropped out” facing difficulties
– The webmaster cannot lay down a predictable working model and calculate the expected result due to instability
What to do when working with unstable Tier-3 countries?
In all this instability lies cheap traffic, when you buy a depositor for $3-7 with a rate of $25-40. And yes, you might have instability in statistics and not always a predictable working model. My advice: don’t complain about this and work with what you have. Such is this market.
If you’re not ready to endure this and are tired – you can switch to stable Europe, with its player price and corresponding payouts. And its competition 🙂
I think that’s enough for now. I’ll give you time to digest all the above advice!
And meanwhile – subscribe to our blog to stay informed of all the news and not miss the release of the second part!