As I gambling affiliate I’m aware I have a great job! There is simply nothing better than waking up in the morning, checking my stats, and finding that I’ve made hundreds of pounds whilst I slept. I’m also aware that I’m working in a very competitive niche. If I just relied on generating traffic from Google, then I’m at risk from other gambling affiliates who could attack my rankings, plus of course I could be hit my either an algorithm change or even some kind of Google penalty.
The online world changes at a vast rate. Just think about all the changes we have seen during the last five years. As an affiliate promoting mainly UK sites I can no longer target players from America. Social media sites are now established online and have even drained a portion of search queries away from search engines. Video online is now established with dozens of video sites such as Youtube and Vimeo available to all. Just a few years ago most of my traffic would come from search engines plus sites for which I had purchased advertisements. Now my traffic comes from search engines, videos, Twitter, Facebook, Podcasts plus many other sources.
It’s easy as an affiliate to take the safe approach. Find a method that works, with a site design that converts and stick with it. This is a big mistake! I have noticed that gambling affiliates, perhaps unlike affiliates in other niches, tend to stick with methods that have a proven history of success. Of course I understand this safe approach but in reality they are missing out on other forms of traffic. Take a look at a few dozen general gambling affiliate sites and you will notice how just a few have integrated videos, Twitter or even Facebook. To be honest, if Google make drastic changes to their algorithm, which we all know relies far too heavily on back links and anchor text, many gambling affiliates would be well and truly stuffed!
Don’t be afraid of trying to develop different methods to generate traffic. Simply take the time to understand how your potential signup use the internet. I will tell you that they do visit Youtube, they do have Facebook and Twitter accounts and for sure they don’t rely upon Google as much as they use to.
We all know Google is a great source for generating traffic. Many affiliates don’t even give Bing a second thought even though Bing is stronger than ever before, now that it is sharing search results with Yahoo. The smart gambling affiliates are those who have made the effort to generate traffic from other sources. Have you?
