By Joe Saumarez Smith from Crown Bingo.
The affiliate market for online bingo is still relatively small. A few major sites have developed which dominate the market – Phil Fraser’s Which Bingo, Scott Logan’s Bingo Port and Raj Ramanandi’s Bingo Base are the obvious ones – but it is surprising how uncrowded the market place is.
I had been thinking this for a while but my attention was really focussed at CAP London. While there were hundreds of casino and poker affiliates, the bingo community could fit into a small room.
Some of the reason for this is obvious. With poker in particular there is a lot to be said about the game. Anyone with a Word Press blog can churn out 20 articles a day about how to play Jack-10 suited under the gun in a 1-2 no limit game with a short stack. With bingo it’s hard to have an in depth strategy section, unless you’re selling your clients some sort of magic bingo system which relies on astrology and the National Lottery results to make selections (good idea, that!).
But I think the other reason is that bingo is still perceived as a low earning niche for affiliates. You can put the work in but will you get paid?
My answer is that yes, you will get paid. It probably won’t be as much as for poker…
… where the lifetime value of an average player is substantially higher than for a bingo player (or at least it was when I last looked; perhaps now poker is losing its trendiness this will lead to a lower lifetime value). But it is probably just about on a par with a casino player. It will take longer for you to collect your cash as bingo players take a while to lose their cash – the average player sticks around for seven months or so rather than the week or two that a casino might retain an average player. But the lifetime value of players in bingo is good with sites like Crown Bingo keeping values at above £350 per customer, thanks to strong retention and reactivation activity.
As someone in the bingo space, my main concern is that the new affiliates entering the bingo space often do so with such low quality content. With the honourable exception of a few new sites like Free Bingo Hunter and Bingo News (which I have an investment in), both of which have clearly spent a good deal of money on their development and editorial promotion, too many new affiliates seem to be simply slapping up a few pages and using black hat SEO techniques to get good natural search rankings.
There is also a great deal of theft of content. As someone who spends a great deal of money generating fresh content I become increasingly frustrated by the number of sites who simply rip off my team’s work. If you look on some of the online freelancer sites you can see projects coming up offering work where writers are paid $2.50 per 500 words to ‘rework’ someone else’s original content.
I realise these techniques work. Google does not have the time to manually check every website to see if the content is genuine and their reporting process is worse than useless in terms of getting errant sites to correct their ways.
Perhaps the only way to make this work is for online bingo operators to police their affiliates and gently persuade them to see the errors of their way. Affiliates have been persuaded not to bid on certain keywords thanks to the changes of terms and conditions in most operator’s contracts and it would be good to see the same sort of terms about editorial integrity in those contracts.
I am not holding my breath on this one. But as more affiliates enter the bingo space, it would be good to see operators individually thinking a bit more about what they find acceptable business practice from their partners and what is not.
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{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
I suppose it all depends on what you call quality content. A couple of the sites listed above feature content that’s both inaccurate, reworked and frankly uninspiring. The problem with most in the affiliate space is that most of them don’t actually play bingo or even care for the game. If they did the content would be a lot more passionate, researched and worthy of reading. Unfortunately, the same is true of many of the operators out there.
There is also an element of pot and kettle in this post. I can think of a couple of instances where sites related to the post’s author have been guilty of exactly what this post complains about. More often than not it’s not just the affiliates that need policing, it’s the operators who make it easy for the affiliate and engage in the same activities that are being complained about here.
I read with interest Joe’s take on the bingo affiliate market and noted his reference to the “honourable exceptions” to his sweeping statement about new affiliates entering the market using black hat SEO techniques to get natural Google rankings and his reference to the theft of content.
As a content writer, affiliate and bingo player I found the statements to be a little general for my liking and whilst I myself have suffered the theft of content aren’t all bingo affiliates on the whole writing about the same promotions, the same news and the same online bingo sites?
In my role as a content writer for some great sites in the bingo space I pride myself on sourcing my own content and this is done in numerous ways dependant on the site that I am supplying content for. When covering ballsupbingo.co.uk the main stay of the blog content is keeping our readers up to date with the latest bingo promotions available from the sites we list. To provide unique content this means visiting the sites listed in our reviews section and checking for the latest news or promotions on a daily basis. Are we then not in essence committing content theft from the site in question even if we do re-word the content to make it unique?
Some content is written from personal experiences as both a player and a bingo chat host whilst other articles I post may simply be my opinion but the main stay is a round up or re-wording of a given bingo sites promotions and features which, as I have said previously, could be construed as content theft as well?
Why do people blog about bingo? On the whole it is for marketing purposes and a colleague recently raised a valid point during a conversation – more and more online bingo sites are providing material on their pages for “bloggers” to cover ensuring that their sites are written about more than a site that only updates a promotion once a month.
When covering onlinebingo.net as a content writer my role and scope changes slightly in that the purpose of this blog is not so much affiliation but general bingo news so my sources for content widen to the likes of Google News and other sources. Again, are we not simply re-wording what has already been written by another author somewhere or other?
I also own two bingo resource sites Bingo Spy and Ukash Bingo, both fairly new sites to the market and neither using “black hat SEO techniques” . Myself and the other writers for the sites pride themselves on providing news of the latest bingo promotions and news for the bingo sites that we are promoting. There is no underhand techniques used, just a passion for the online bingo game and I for one was quite offended to read the sweeping generalisation that Joe made in his recent article! I may not have spent huge amounts of money in promoting my bingo resource sites but I can guarantee that what I haven’t spent in money has been surpassed in blood, sweat, tears and hours sat at my PC!
I am a fairly new freelance copywriter and I feel that Joe’s argument just does not hold water. No matter what the industry when a story breaks someone picks it up and runs with it and others will cover it after the event. Did only one person cover the death of Diana, only one reporter cover Obama’s Presidential win – get real, if its in the public domain people will write about it, no one has the right to say ‘its my news you can’t touch it’
Sorry Joe, I’m afraid I am leaning towards agreeing with the comments of your article rather than the article itself.
The beauty of my current position, as with yours Joe, is that I’m involved with both the operator and affiliate sides of the industry. I see myself working hard to generate unique affiliate content, unique operator content and trying to police both sides of the fence at the same time.
This story seems to go off on a tangent at the beginning but pulls back to its title towards the end. To pick up on Joe’s first point regarding the market space, I would respectfully disagree. We have over 2,000 unique affiliates across our company with a healthy percentage earning respectable commissions. I would take a stab in the dark and say there are 200 UK bingo sites (only a handful of which make ‘reasonable’ money) and so that equates to 10 affiliates per brand. I have absolutely no idea what the proportion is for another industry but if I was to take car insurance for example, the market seems to be more of an oligopoly than the various gaming sectors.
A quick point, I think OnlineBingo.co.uk should be mentioned in your first paragraph
Onto the issue of content – a frustrating debate but nevertheless an important one to partake in. Poker is a game of skill and will always have more avenues for content writing. Bingo is a game of luck and as such there is a finite amount of content. There really is only one way to purchase your tickets yet there is an infinite way to play Jack-10 suited under the gun. I can only think of ridiculous skill vs. luck examples – but I’m confident anyone could write more about playing football than about flipping a coin.
Similar to you Joe, I spend a lot of money on unique content but unfortunately it is absolutely impossible to police the internet, let alone the niche segment of bingo blogs. It is simply one of those things – why do we get frustrated when there is absolutely nothing we can do? Deena, I completely agree with you and Google does place some extra emphasis on ‘first to act/cover’ articles. It is inevitable that stories will be copied and Google recognises this fact by penalising a direct copy – it is not feasible for a search engine to give a human touch to each article. Unlike a scientific breakthrough, stories in online gaming are rarely going to be revelations that change the way the masses think and therefore it is logical that the pool of content will be expanded with similar, but not the same, stories.
…. further, when Mr Smith is singing the praises of Bingo News and the lengths they go to in obtaining quality news, he might like to know that rather than generating ‘fresh content’, at the moment they are currently running a news story about a bingo winner that is now one year old!
Being a veteran of the online bingo affiliate space I think 2009 is going to be a very interesting year to see how the space will pan out and settle (if these things ever settle). There are many affiliates now in the search engines providing bingo content, of good and bad quality, but there are only a handful of decent operators to promote, and only a handful of keyword terms and brand names to fight over. Therefore, I think bingo is destined to have only a handful of large affiliates. Ben mentions 2000 affiliates, I am guessing a huge % of those are not full time bingo affiliates.
Obviously we have established that it’s getting a lot tougher as an affiliate, but it’s to be expected just as in any market that is maturing. Quality content is tough to continually produce and if we have just one writer doing this, it gets very boring after a while. That said, I think all affiliates will agree that over 50% of the reason that we do all of this content is with search engines in mind. I have found it’s sometimes easy to slip into the mindset that only Google is reading our content – of course we hope this isn’t the case.
As Raj said, as affiliates that work on CPA or percentage, it’s getting very hard to find quality operators that know what they are doing and can convert our traffic long term. It varies wildly to the point that, all else being equal, at one operator we make £10 per player and at another well over £100.
This all points to a lot of consolodation in the market at an operator level – probably not as soon as everyone expects (not so much in 2009), but by 2011 things will look quite different.
Are you saying Scott that if one writer provides all the content the content becomes boring or that the writer gets bored?
Doesnt it depend entirely on the type of content you want and the way you run your site? Take three portals on the market, compare them, and whilst they are all vieing for the same traffic they all have different ways of attracting it.
Each portal, whilst promoting multiple brands, convert traffic in different ways.
I really dont see the point for a new affiliate starting a brand new site needing to worry to much about good quality content, who will read it anyway? As Scott says, even sites with some traffic, we wonder if the content is getting read by real people, but we carry on producing it mainly just for Mr Google.
I have many bingo blogs that I started off with very cheap outsorced content, its all just re-written garbage, but no one is reading it anyway so why pay decent money for quality articles when I can hire a bunch of content writers from Guru.com for pennys and as long as its unique and passes copyscape I am happy with it.
You mention the sites Free Bingo Hunter and Bingo News, I agree the content is ok, but are they actually getting any real traffic? Until a site actually starts ranking and picking up some traffic you are just writing for Google so anything will do with a few keywords in it.
I think you are pretty new to the content game and probably have encountered some people re-writing your stuff (from you invested sites), this happens in all industrys and you wont stop it.
…….. some of us have professional pride. I believe wholeheartedly that good content will be read and people will keep coming back if they read interesting and stimulating articles. If someone keeps coming back to a portal and reads articles then they will click through to the online bingo sites that they are interested in. How do I know this? I am not only a writer but I am a reader of content too. I do on a regular basis Google or Yahoo, and if I see complete nonsense or someone who doesn’t write with integrity or with a good command of the English language I will move on. I have purchased goods myself on the back of reviews or articles found on an internet search, and in fact I am about to purchase a new video camera after reading an interesting article that I found via a search engine.
Turning out drivel turns off readers, they don’t come back. Why bother providing material for readers if you don’t believe that people will read it. You might as well save your money and your time and not bother having a site at all.
One of the things that I respect about Balls Up Bingo is the integrity and the skill of the writers, they love bingo and it comes across in their articles – I don’t write for them if you believe this comment to be biaised (unlike Joe!).
@Denna Chance – I too have purchased items based on the back of reviews, but it’s often not the reviews on the bingo sites that people are working on. Its the endless news articles, which I doubt many bingo players actually read.
I think unluckyforsome touches on a good point.
Being relatively new to the affiliate scene, its incredible the amount of work that is involved (if you are not outsourcing), but also the amount of articles that are generated for the purposes of google and organic search results. But do people read these articles? Should we not just be concentrating on a few good articles with the main keywords we’re all striving to rank top of google for, insuring that whatever minimal content we do have is up to date and relevant (unlike sites where the content and sign up offers are out of date).
Or even better, write for the users first not for the search engine, but who does’t think about the search engine when writing, how often to put your key words in etc. Is there a point in a passionate article written for the user if the user cant find it?
As a games developer for gambling sites for over four years now (not web page development, but games), including development of bingo games, I’ve increasingly become more interested in the affiliate arena and general web development which is why I’ve ventured over to the affiliate side.
While I admit that I’m new to affiliate sites, I’m not new to bingo, and one of my motivations was how little imagination some sites have. Out of date content, bad design, and general re-use of other content.
Unfortunately I’m not a content writer, and this is something I’m aiming to improve until we can either outsource it (which by the sounds of it inst expensive at all). But there is a side to me that wants to continue writing the articles, purely because I’m proud of the site I’ve developed, and also because I’ve a certain level of passion about what I do.
My main issue is one of two things
1)Being a creative developer and having worked with one of the market leading bingo providers I’d like to think I know a crap bingo site when I see one
2) Admittedly I’m now an affiliate to make money, but I have a hard time promoting the poor operators and writing favourably for those whose sites I just don’t get excited about. Does anyone else have this issue?
While there may be less to write about than poker, I think concentrating on the bingo community aspect side of things rather than content no one reads could be the way forward if you want loyal users
There is this newsagent who has a big pile of newspapers, 1000′s of them. All the new newspapers he receives goes on the bottom of the pile. If you keep sending him newspapers they gradually get higher and then people might actually start to find them.
My logic is until people start to find and read your newspaper, only then should you hire your “Denna Chance” so people will come back and buy your newspaper regularly.
While your newspaper is buried underneath 1000′s of other papers, its not worth spending the big money or wasting your own time on quality news articles.
…. Hey UnLuckyForSome, don’t put him off coming to me if he wants some copywriting done I am always here!
Clearly SEO is important too, but I still think interesting copy will get people coming back, after all isn’t this article proof of that!
David, whilst I whole heartedly agree that it is difficult to be positive about some of the poorer quality online bingo sites available today is marketing not about making the best of a bad job. Concentrate on what is good about a site rather than what is bad
Content for BallsUpBingo has never been outsourced and one of the things that is time consuming is making sure the content is up to date and accurate. Many bingo portals dont even check their reviews regularly. A recent update to software for example may not be picked up and therefore leave outdated screen shots on many such portals.
Any writer worth their weight will actually research their content rather than just rehash any writers content which seems to be what happens when outsourcing
Interesting debate.
Personally I think it’s wrong pointing any fingers at another site and saying “they’re doing this wrong” unless you’re 100% perfect… which means I can now rip into all of you (i’m kidding – honest).
I take issue with the “honourable exceptions” as well… if we’re going to ask bingo ops to “sort out” naughty people for copying then having been copied verbatim by *cough* and *ahem* billy big bingo sites in the past it’d have been interesting to see what they’d have done in those circumstances (or even now… answer is nowt!).
Anyway… water under the bridge now.
Imo a lot of affiliates try bingo, on the surface it’s a doddle of a sector. You buy [name]bingo.co.uk slap up some links, tell people it’s free and job done. It’s only when you start to look at adding content, developing unique features and working with operators that you realise it’s not that easy.
The key though is why do we all build bingo sites? Is it because we want a community on our servers chatting about bingo and commenting on our blog and news content? Or is it because we want them to actually go and spend money and earn us commissions?
Most affiliates will say the latter, sensible ones will say yes to the latter, but have one eye on building a brand and community as well. Offering users a good experience is also subjective.. I’d like to think we do – but I’m sure if you read the stuff I write (we have one writer btw) it’s perhaps not inspiring to you… but then I’ve read some of the examples given above and I’m not inspired – it doesn’t make you wrong or right though.
Conclusion… Jason waffles a lot… no seriously, concentrate on what you’re doing, if you’re right then the users will love it and things will build. Google may also love it and that will help. Spend your time worrying about “others” and it’s time wasted imo (although it’s well worth keeping an eye on copying – but it can be dealt with).
If we all approached bingo in the same way then it would be very boring indeed.
Jason
Well I am delighted to have provoked so much debate. There I was thinking I was knocking out 800 words that only Simon Collins and Ben Starr would read. How foolish of me.
I am certainly not advocating that only one site/person should be allowed to cover a story. The nature of news is that there will be multiple people covering it and everyone will see it from a slightly different angle. I know there will also be some ripping off of content – I used to work for national newspapers for five years and on the night shift we would sit there waiting for all the rival titles (with the exception of The Star, The Sport and The Express, none of which ever had any story worth following) so we could ‘follow up’ any scoops they might have. However that follow up did at least involve calling the parties involved, a total rewrite of the story and some genuine journalism.
My comments were instead aimed at the sites that employ lowly paid cut and pasters who take my content, change three words in 800 and then post it as their ‘original’ content. That irritates me because 1) it’s theft and 2) (more importantly) it screws with my SEO as I then get penalised for duplicate content.
Often these sites have a ‘preferred’ operator they work with, usually because they are on a great revenue or CPA deal. A complaint to the operator about this stolen content in my experience elicits a “not my problem” response rather than a “we’ll ask them to stop response”. Personally I’d like to see that change but not all operators think like that.
I’ll try to be less contentious next time :0
PS In terms of this specific comment:
…. further, when Mr Smith is singing the praises of Bingo News and the lengths they go to in obtaining quality news, he might like to know that rather than generating ‘fresh content’, at the moment they are currently running a news story about a bingo winner that is now one year old!
Bingo News rotates all their stories (more than 1,600 and rising) on a rotation on one spot on the home page. Apart from that position, all the content on the home page should be no more than 72 hours old and is usually newer than that.
We’ve always worked on the basis that producing copy which is more interesting for users than for google is probably the right thing to do. But of course we also don’t believe that there are lots of users desperate to read our every word or indeed that the strategies we choose are absolutley right. Rather, for us it is more about the longer term credibility of our business and that fact that we just want to produce copy that is readable (something we don’t always manage to do). I don’t fall out with any of the other approaches it’s a matter of choice for each business to make.
However, I guess the wider issue here that joe touches on is the approach that some affiliates take. Indicative of this is that some UK bingo affiliates continue to break the law by promoting bingo sites operating outside the UK white list.
It hasn’t happened yet but given that we are at the lower end of the industry vertical, so to speak, I think it’s probably only a matter of time before one of us gets a doing from the enforcement authorities. I think we’re probably much easier pickings than the operators who have much bigger resources to defend themselves. We carry as much responsbility as the operators to maintain the repute of online bingo. But none of us are perfect!
simon
“some UK bingo affiliates continue to break the law by promoting bingo sites operating outside the UK white list”
Just out of interest on this point then – is there a list of bingo sites that we should be wary of?
The bulk (Virtue Fusion, Globalcom, St Minver) I’m presuming safe?
Jason
Jason, there’s an older list of white listed bingo sites here: http://playingbingo.co.uk/bingo-articles-and-interviews/articles/04-advertising-ban-white-list.shtml
Haven’t checked it for a while though – probably some updates need doing but it’ll give you a pointer to what sites to avoid. Most of the big UK sites that weren’t white listed have made the leap to white listed regions, so now there’s very few who aren’t save to to promote.
Thanks for that Dio – nice one
)
white listing
http://www.culture.gov.uk/what_we_do/gambling_and_racing/3310.aspx
ADVERTISING OF FOREIGN GAMBLING
The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport has now confirmed that Antigua and Barbuda will be added to the list of places allowed to advertise remote gambling in the UK as if it were an EEA state. This decision follows a reconsideration of Antigua’s application following further representations made to the Secretary of State. A full assessment of their application was made to ensure it met the criteria set out in the Government’s ‘Whitelisting’ document.
Regulations have been laid in Parliament and will come into effect in 21 days time on 20 November 2008. After this date, gambling operators licensed in Antigua will be able to advertise their remote gambling services in the United Kingdom.
The States of Alderney and the Isle of Man and Tasmania are the only two other jurisdictions to have previously been added to the list of places permitted to advertise.
The effect of these decisions is that only gambling operators licensed in EEA countries (including Gibraltar), Alderney, Isle of Man, Tasmania or Antigua and Barbuda can lawfully advertise gambling in the UK.
I don’t think I’ve seen a bingo site that runs from Tasmania or the Isle of Man yet.