GBC Time talked to the Favbet Affiliates team about the realities of affiliate work, what a “good affiliate” means to them, in what cases an affiliate program can refuse to cooperate with a webmaster, who is preferred – singles or teams – and other nuances in interaction with affiliate marketing.
Oleksandr Shukan – Affiliate team Lead at Favbet – has provided some valuable insights on the topic
Could you tell us how do you work with webmasters in your affiliate program?
The work of our affiliate program is built in a rather classic way. In order to start working you need to:
- Register here (affiliate.favbet.com);
- Write to us on Telegram – Favbet Affiliates;
- Briefly describe your experience of working with traffic and to what vertical exactly you want to drive it. The affiliate manager will offer available geos and conditions for such traffic, set KPIs, provide links, and, if necessary, will familiarize you with your personal account. That’s all – we can start working right away;
- Then the end of the reporting period – auditing and payment.
How do you help newcomers?
It all depends on the situation. Basically, we answer various questions and share information about what works best now. We also provide additional statistics and explanations for it. Actually, this is advisory assistance so that less experienced partners feel our support.
What offers do you provide new partners to start with?
We communicate with a partner before starting work, so that they first tell us what they can work with. We try to give exactly what a partner can do because we aim to get the best results. And, of course, the partner and we are satisfied with the cooperation.
What does “successful affiliate marketer” mean for you as a partner?
For us, a “successful affiliate marketer” is a person who buys traffic, for example, on Google. They drive and interact with it for a long time and sell us quality traffic on CPA. In this case, the webmaster receives much more than they spent, but it is enough for them. Also, to be a “successful webmaster” you need to maintain a friendly relationship with your affiliate manager, go out for coffee together, and share insights.
What are the characteristics of a good partner for you?
A good partner is a person or a team. This is our partner who treats mutual work as a business and constantly improves the quality of traffic and goes for coffee with the affiliate manager. We see this and provide the best conditions. We have a lot of good partners.
In your experience, what do webmasters complain about most often when working with an affiliate program? Why does this happen and how can a webmaster avoid such problems?
One of the classic problems is haste at the beginning of cooperation. Very often they (webmasters) do not pay attention to the terms and conditions or hesitate to ask something and start working right away. In this case, misunderstandings may arise.
It is very important to agree and write down all aspects that interest you:
- How many times the auditing takes place per month;
- How long it takes to check traffic;
- When the payment is made;
- What types of wallets do we make payments to;
- KPIs for traffic.
Be sure to clarify this information and only after that you can start working. This will give you a better understanding of cooperation.
In what cases can you refuse to cooperate with a webmaster?
There are not many such cases but still, such a situation may arise. If the partner deceives us to gain monetary benefits and we have indisputable evidence of this – fraud traffic, etc.
- We do not work with these types of traffic.
- Unprofessional communication (insults or threats, for example).
- If we are not ready to work with such quality of traffic.
Do you prefer to work with affiliate teams or single webmasters? Or is there no difference for you?
We work with different partners, whether they are lone webmasters or teams. The main thing is that the traffic is of high quality. There are fewer and fewer people who work without teams today because it is much more difficult for one person to do everything on their own.
Dmytro Kushchenko – Head of Acquisition at Favbet – has also shared his view on the topic
Recently, we have seen a case where if a client wins big or hits a jackpot, for example, the webmaster who referred that client can go into the red. How does it work? Does this happen often? Does it happen that the affiliate marketer disappears, and the minus remains on the casino? And for your part, do you zero out the negative balance if you have a good relationship with your partner?
Yes, perhaps, when we work with a partner on the Revenue Share system (that is when we pay a percentage of our profit). Accordingly, if a player brought by the partner hits the jackpot and it is bigger than the income of other players of the same partner, then the profit is negative and there is nothing to pay % from. Also, depending on our agreement with the partner, the negative balance can be carried over to the next month, or in the next month, a partner starts from scratch.
In general, we work with negative balance carryover. That is, players of this partner in the new month must cover the negative balance of the previous month and bring profit in the new month. Such situations arise very rarely, but of course, we can consider this moment and reset the balance.
What sources of affiliate traffic do you prefer?
We work with almost all traffic sources, but we always want more:
- SEO;
- PPC;
- ASO.
Here, it is important to understand that we are ready to pay dearly for quality traffic (almost of any kind).
How do you attract new webmasters to the program: what marketing approaches do you use, do you search at conferences and in chats? Or do they find you and you do not need to look for new partners?
All possible methods are used to attract new partners. Many partners communicate with each other. There is a certain percentage of new affiliates who come to us. We also visit specialized exhibitions, where we find new partners and invite them to work with us. We make promotions for existing and new partners. The main aim of it is to motivate affiliates to bring us as much traffic as possible, for which they receive a stipulated prize. We advertise such promotions in different publics and channels where partners communicate.
And how do you retain your partners? Do you hold any events for arbitrageurs, contests, drawings, or something else?
The most important thing to retain a partner is to make our product work well and have a good conversion into deposits. Thus, it is profitable for the affiliate to work with us and we get more new players. You can also always play with conditions for key partners, which is also important. And the main thing is to always be in touch with them (affiliates) and maintain a friendly relationship.
In your experience, do partners prefer the materials you offer (landing pages, creatives), or do they often make something of their own? Which approach is more successful?
Almost all our partners use their own creatives because they all have different sources and different approaches to attracting players. So they know better what creative to use. But we are always ready to offer our own options.
Hryhorii Shelest – Chief Marketing Officer at Favbet – also contributed to the conversation
What distinguishes your partner program from the others? What competitive advantages do you offer to make people choose you?
Frankly speaking, there are no fundamental differences between our affiliate program and others. Just like any other affiliate program does not have them. A partner program is just a tool, and functionality, but nothing more. It is a tracker for the product. It has no fundamental differences.
Webmasters choose us because we honestly tell how we evaluate traffic. Because despite any force majeure circumstances we always pay our affiliates. Because our managers really work 24/7. At night, when they see a message, they answer even with half-open eyes.
Often webmasters can be offended by something and quite loudly declare that the affiliate program is unscrupulous. How to maintain a good reputation for an affiliate program and deal with negative feedback?
Yes, they (webmasters) can be offended. But conflict is not always bad. On the one hand, conflict can highlight weaknesses in communication or in the partner program itself (on the technical side).
If we talk about our history, any webmaster can write to us that they do not agree with the results of an audit, which we conduct twice a month. But any audit contains information about each listed player (their activity, specifics, etc.) with specific figures. And we can always argue our traffic estimation based on the principles of UNIT economics – estimation of traffic payback on the stream.
