Culling Active Bingo Affiliates Is Just Lazy
Published On 16th May 2022
Bingo portals such as this site exist because of financial relationships between themselves and operators. These mostly involve affiliate marketing whereby the portal earns referrals for sending depositing players to the operator. It's an interesting relationship because the power is in the hands of the operator, especially within the gambling sector. Over the years contracts have been discarded like confetti, commissions cut, quotas imposed and revenues lost through various dubious methods such as tracking platform changes or software changes. As an affiliate your only real weapon of choice is to not work with these brands or at least maybe limit their exposure to players.
Culling Bingo Affiliates
As affiliates can switch off operators it seems valid that operators can switch off affiliates. And that is what has happened to us recently when a brand which has featured on Loquax for 10 to 15 years decided that we weren't pulling our weight when it came down to pulling in the players. The actual wording was "we have not seen enough performance coming from your account". We'll come to that in a moment. Now culling inactive or poor converting affiliates from affiliate programs isn't new. It's usually done under the pretence of it takes up too much time and resources. In gambling's case there is the element of monitoring compliance - the act of making sure the information we're posting is legally correct and not going to lead to the operator getting a kicking from UKGC. Now I'm not sure how operators keep an eye on compliance but I'd have thought that by now (4/5 years since it became a thing) that there's some degree of automation involved. However with compliance there's usually human involvement along the lines of "can you update this content" and "thanks for getting that done quickly" whenever we've been pulled up on issues.
Focused & Streamlined
And in the case of the operator in question they've opted to remove us so they can "continue to meet regulatory obligations in a focused and streamlined way". Except we would argue that we're not taking up much resources so as to stretch the checking of their regulatory obligations. And let's face it, we didn't exactly take up much resources when it came down to the affiliate partnership obligations. Looking back over the past 12 months we don't seem to have had any bingo news or updates from the operator. No affiliate manager from that company has ever asked why there seems to be not enough performance or what could be done to change it. We did get sporting update emails on a regular basis but if your niche is bingo then that's not much help. It's also not much help when the affiliate program becomes so draconian you're limited on what you can say/review about the brand. And let's face it if said brand - and in fact this applies to many - puts bingo on the back burner when it comes to promotions and marketing it's not going to be easy to create interest.
But Other Bingo Portals Convert!
If you look at bingo portals then you'll probably find one or two that dominate Google whilst a handful advertise using PPC. If you're long established, owned by a large multi-million pound company and have multiple awards then you're going to be fine. Smaller sites like ourselves battle against this in a ever-increasingly difficult market. There are multiple rules about using social media, Facebook dislike bingo portals setting up pages, newsletters are banned etc. so that makes life harder. Furthermore we moved bingo from Loquax to Loquax Bingo and whilst that's been sensible from a regulatory basis it's not been plain sailing. On top of that we have to consider covid and cost of living crisis. In short had the operator in question bothered to talk to us and hear our concerns then maybe they'd be some understanding within the business relationship. Unfortunately when it comes to affiliates that kind of thing has long gone in this sector. Additionally the operator in question enforced their own rules on content. Affiliates could only use their content thereby creating duplicate content issues with respect to Google and making it literally impossible to promote them in any way that was different - but within compliance terms - than other sites. In other words only affiliates that are best positioned in search would benefit. Other content affiliates would have zero chance for improving performance. In essence we've done our job within the constraints - now we're told that it's not good enough.
Losing Review Sites Is Bad For Players
Over the years many smaller review sites have dropped by the wayside and if other brands decide that they too wish to be focused and streamlined with affiliates then that puts a countdown on our own existence. Over time what will happen is that bingo review sites will be dominated by the big guys and this is bad for players. Money always sloshes it's way to the top and a big site is never going to call out a bad site if they're being paid to put it in their "site of the month" position. Take one particular portal for example who have two Jumpman brands in their "Editor's Choice" list for May. Why are they there? Kerching! At least the user ratings are a better reflection on quality. We've always said what we think rather than be swayed by money and sadly that may well cost us in the near future. It's also notable that very few bingo sites now report any bingo news. Perhaps that is actually a good indicator of the current situation. In online bingo's heyday multiple sites were putting out multiple articles daily. Now you're lucky to see anything.
Industry Indicators
Bingo doesn't seem to be in a good place at the moment. There are few (if any) new brands, numerous sites doing very little, Dragonfish to Broadway Gaming waiting to happen, and limited player promotions. It's all very flat. Operators know that they make more money from slots so it's no surprise to see that they tend to focus on that aspect of play. If there's a black cloud over those who run online bingo then that has to spread to those who write about it. Yet we're supposed to conjure up players and interest them with an "exciting offer" when bingo rooms are empty, prizes are poor, promotions are non-existent or not great, games are average etc. All within the confines of - at times - draconian rules from the operators themselves (do this or you don't get paid), a difficult market and tough financial times. Of course we may be totally wrong and the reasons are actually we're an aging affiliate brand that's ran it's course. That is actually totally feasible and we're happy to accept that. But even so we're long enough in the tooth to know that culling active/willing affiliates is a really stupid idea. It's lazy (even more so when nothing has been done prior to culling), it only benefits the bigger affiliates and closes the door to an industry which should be encouraging of it's participants. Unfortunately gone are the days of helpful and proactive affiliate managers who with a quick email once a month could help boost performance.
What Could Have Been Done Better?
Whilst this post will not change the outcome with the operator that cannot be named, it is important to offer up some suggestions. Had there been a conversation six months ago about performance and we'd not implemented any ideas then perhaps that might have made things easier to swallow. So things could have been made better by the operator had they spoke to us, asked us about how things are, changes we've made, reasons for performance etc. In short use some of those time and resources we're actually taking up. It'd be nice if there was some degree of flexibility too. Not every affiliate is the same (how often does this need repeating). Some are big and some are small. Some are going to pull in 100s of players others quite a lot less. Provided they're compliant then they should all be valid. Assess how much time you actually use with an affiliate before culling. Are they really using up all your resources? Are they compliant? Are they responsive to compliance changes? Have you taken time to suggest changes, perhaps encourage different approaches etc? Oh and don't trot out BS excuses or slate our performance unless your own has been 100% over the time period. We'd rather end an affiliate partnership under a cloud of "we all tried our best" as opposed to "focused and streamlined" which is just buzz word speak for "we couldn't be bothered to do our job".
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