Affiliate Summit 2007 West, taking place January 21-23 at Bally's Las Vegas.

Michael Sanchez, CEO and Co-founder of ClubMom, will be the Keynote Speaker for Affiliate Summit 2007 West.

Mr. Sanchez will touch on how affiliate marketing has assisted ClubMom in member recruitment with their affiliate program, as well as generating revenue for ClubMom with their online shopping mall. He will also discuss how he took ClubMom from a startup to an established, successful business.

For more information, please see affiliatesummit.com

As with any business enterprise, preparation and knowledge are vital to your success. You can do everything right and enjoy a large quantity of targeted traffic hitting your web site every month, and your users are responding to the campaigns you are running from your site, but, if you cant rely on the affiliate programs you are running, all your hard work could net you zero returns.

Over the last 10 years, I have to say that I think I have seen everything from non existent sales conversions and programs that disappeared overnight and blatant scams, to massive pay checks from surprisingly successful programs. There is no sure fire way to spot the bad programs, but a little research and testing will go a long way to ensuring you don’t waste too much time and energy.

When you join an affiliate program, I strongly recommend that you send a quick email to the program manager to introduce yourself and your web site. Give a brief outline why have chosen to join and ask a few simple questions about how to get the most from your new partnership and how payments are processed.

This may seem a little strange, but trust me when I say that the response you get, will tell you a great deal about the company that you are dealing with. If you don’t get a reply, that’s a good indication that when you have an important question or require payment, you’ll probably get the same response. Get a courteous and professional response and you can safely assume that the program manager is accessible and will help you when and if you require help.

Before you take any campaign live on your web site or newsletter, test the programs tracking systems to make sure all displays and clicks are being recorded correctly. Some programs stats are displayed in real time, whilst others are probably updated in batch processes due to secure server and database connection issues.

Once you’re happy that everything is working as it should, take the campaign live and keep a keen eye on your stats, so you can quickly see if the program is converting for your site visitors and most importantly, making you money. If you’ve run a campaign and see that after a few hundred clicks that it’s not converting into earnings for you, then it’s a good idea to look into the results further and assess if it’s worth continuing.

Crunch time comes when its time to get paid. I’ve heard some horror stories over the years from other affiliate marketers, and I have to admit that I too, have been stung in the past. Experience provides you with valuable knowledge and thankfully most of the serious affiliate programs payout on time, every time.

In my experience, if you start earning good commission checks, your program manager will contact you to help you make more money. It’s worth taking the time to speak to them and although every affiliate program manager would love to literally take over your web site with their ads, they do know their business and can provide you with extremely useful information. In many cases, if you are doing well and providing valuable customers for their business, you can negotiate a slightly better commission deal that the standard one offered to all new affiliates.

With the new laws in the USA for internet gambling firmly in place, what does the future hold for the internet gambling industry, and more specifically the internet gambling affiliate industry?

In the early days of internet casino gambling back in 1997 there were very few internet casinos, and with the massive surge in people coming online to explore this new world, the thrill and excitement of being able to gamble from your home or work pc was something that most could not resist.

As affiliates, we discovered quickly that every player that you referred to an internet casino could be worth thousands of dollars, and if you referred the whale, your commission checks could grow to unbelievable proportions.

In 1999 if you searched at Yahoo.com for “internet casino”, there were 1400 casinos listed. The online gaming industry was growing fast. Affiliates had a full time job on their hands to choose which casinos were going to provide the best performance. Some casinos were offering huge commissions and others seemed to offer far less, but it took time to find reputable casino operators, test the conversions and then see if you got paid.

Many casino operators in those days, as testament to the fact that they are no longer in business today, did not run a professional casino operation. Both players and affiliates reported problems with payouts and commission checks, the software was often poor quality and support was a hotmail email account. Even though, still many players would happily let these casinos swipe their credit cards for 5 minutes of excitement and a chance of winning big.

Around mid 2000 the USA was a mature internet market. Predominantly the first countries to get online in the masses and with the Americans love of gambling, the USA was the main hunting grounds for casino affiliates and marketers. Combined with the saturation of internet casinos available, the industry slowed down and something had to give.

Many casino operators that were only in the business for the quick buck, soon faded away to their photography businesses or car dealerships, often leaving players and affiliates unpaid. In the early days, when these operators were collecting monthly pay checks in excess of $1,000,000, minus marketing expenses, life was good, but when the market shrank and the major brands started to get aggressive in their pursuit of market share, the same operators didn’t fancy the fight.

As with any industry, the internet gaming industry did some natural housekeeping and had a clearout, and we were left with significantly fewer casinos than before. As a knock on effect, many affiliates disappeared to try something new, fearing that the internet gambling age was now about to suffer meltdown.

Poker arrived towards the end of 2000, and many affiliates, used to earning large pay checks, baulked at the rewards the most Poker operators were offering. With a good casino, affiliates can earn anywhere up to $500 per depositing player, but Poker was paying around £150. As Poker’s popularity grew, many affiliates that were still working, found that conversions compared to casino player conversions were very good, and commission checks started to look quite healthy.

Poker operators started to float on the stock exchanges around the world and with the marketing budgets that afforded; Poker in every format was delivered into every home across America and Europe by TV channels, radio stations and magazines. This branding and exposure to the mainstream made our jobs as affiliates much easier and internet gambling looked to have secured its place in the entertainment business arena.

6th October 2006 arrived and the first murmurings of the bill to make internet gambling illegal in America began to filter through. Although various bills had been attempted over the years, it was widely expected that with the popularity of Poker and respectability of many major casino and poker operators now working in the industry, that the bill would not be passed and gambling affiliates could continue to share in the spoils of their labour.

A few days later and the industry took a big hit, with the news that the bill had been tagged on the back of an unrelated bill and rushed through at the last minute. Making it illegal for American banks to process payments for internet gamblers living in the USA, effectively shut the doors to the biggest marketplace in the world. We’ve all seen the fallout with share prices being slashed by up to 80% of their pre bill price, executives resigning to enable them to run to the next big thing, and jobs being lost across the entire industry.

Are we seeing round two of natural housekeeping? What should affiliates do? Surely with the American market gone, at least for now, can you still make good money referring players to the casinos?

If I had the answer to that, I think I’d be able to make a few bucks very quickly, but if we look at history as a guide a few things will happen for sure.

We will undoubtedly loose a few more casino and poker operators and along with that another round of affiliates who will focus their attention to other industries. Economic trends suggest that with fewer casinos and fewer affiliates fighting for the same customers, we should see the industry not suffer too much. Of course, for a USA based affiliate that only has US traffic visiting their web site, until the law changes, I’d strongly advise to not invest your life savings into marketing casino and poker sites from your web site.

If you have any non USA traffic, you’re going to do just fine. All the major casino and poker operators will wait until the dust has settled to see what the fallout is, to assess their position. In the not too distant future, I think they will embark on some major marketing campaigns to grow into the European markets. Still a relatively fresh market place, commission rates are slightly lower, but it does appear that most European countries are working towards regulated internet gambling, and if that happens I think we will see ourselves back to the gold rush days of the late 90’s.

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