After checking my stats at some random affiliate site it occured to me just how little information there is.

The online gaming industry is obviously a huge market worth billions so why can’t some affiliate programs invest in some decent stat report systems. The biggest offender in my opinion are sites like Vegas Affiliates (although it’s a very good program) the stats are displayed day by day showing how much commission you have generated and how many clicks sent, this is all well and good but it doesn’t offer much insight in to the sort of traffic you are sending. Casino Rewards on the other hand show information about all the players including Age, Country, Games Played etc this is incredibly usefull info which allows you to further target your audience. I don’t think it’s to much to ask for an affiliate program to include the follow:
Day by day stats of traffic sent.
The refering URL of every sale so you know which of your pages actually work.
Data about your players such as the sort of game they are playing.
Custom campaigns, much like showing the refering URL it’s very useful to find out where your active customer come from.

Other things I believe a good affiliate program needs.
Specific Payment Dates - This is certainly more specific weithin the online gaming industry. Payment dates are all over the place especially for the previously mentioned Vegas Affiliates. Programs on the retail side of things often give specific dates that you can expect payments (i.e. affiliate winow)
Multiple Payment Methods - This isn’t to much of a concern as most programs now offer bank transfer. But sites simply offering a cheque option often leads to extra charges (thanks to hsbc) as well as a very long delay if the cheque is in $USD and I’m converting to £GBP
Fast support.  Anything over 24 hours to respond to an email is just to long. Also how hard is it to have telephone support??

What I’m drinking now - Pint of icey cold stella

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008 at 11:04 am and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.