I totally agree too have been in the industry for ages and set up a bingo affliliate portal a couple of years ago. Only recently have we started ranking quite well for search terms. I have tried to contact all the operators and it seems like most of them just don;t care. Some of them don;t seem to be happy to negotiate deals or even be fussed if they get any of the traffic. Its incredible. I remember working for one of the big online gaming operators and our affilaites were the most important thing to the company.

Companies like Gala and Mecca would be seeing significant revenues come from the affiliate side, but access to content is almost non-existant. Gala prefers to hide behind Tradedoubler when issues arise.

Many US facing bingo affiliate programs do it much better with available content, affiliate promotions and timely payments (without having to invoice every month!!!)

As affiliates, we run legitimate businesses bending over backwards for these operators – working 16 hour days and on weekends. We take more risks and like to feel we will be paid what is promised on time. Sometimes it feels like we’re treated like second rate business people.

I am on the affiliate panel at the Bullet Business conference and will certainly be sticking up for all affiliates. I’d be happy to raise any concerns there for anyone that won’t be there. If you have an issue you’d like raised, please drop me an email – scott@bingoport.co.uk

Great post BTW. Totally agree.

So there is still a big affiliate scope there, but for sites like Sun Bingo and Gala if they want to keep there customers, even if they are massive brands they will have to look after us IMO.

These US sites do look after affiliates and offer MSN support direct with your affiliate manager in most cases, this is what I mean, if the UK sites dont start to interact more with us and the US sites offer us better deals/quicker payments who will we promote?

Quick payments and communication is all I want

I’m not so sure there will be a shake up if/when american run bingo companies come in. The second biggest bingo brand online is probably The Sun Bingo – and that’s because they have not only reach but a massive brand – it’s going to be very expensive for new entrants to come in and grab a slice of the already established brand bingo pie.

Jason

I agree with this fully. Would be nice to get this direct to us rather than waiting for newsletters that a customer gets and thats even if they get one.

There will be a shake up soon, a lot of american heavy weights will move into the UK bingo market and will look after the affiliates and customers to.

But, I wouldnt really say bingo is bumbling or whatever you call it, and its not booming either, its just getting tougher to compete with alot more affiliates jumping on the bandwagen.

Demographics don’t really worry me – just some basic information would suffice (latest winners, latest promotions, latest competitions, latest updates, updated creative) – not stuff that’s going to be a problem for anyone handing out.

Bingo Halls – my view on this is here The Smoking Ban vs Online Bingo. They will survive, and I think it’s Riva who have introduced an electronic game at their halls so that smokers can play outside the main hall?

William Hill Bingo though are using the ban as a way of getting people online (Ditch the Dabber campaign), but imo it’s not a well thought through campaign – simply because people go to bingo halls for socialness as well as bingo and I’m not 100% convinced people get the same level of social interaction online.

Hype – yes there’s plenty of that – I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been asked to promote “the number one bingo site” with “the best conversions” etc.

The problems re lack of commincation about demographics is that we dont really want our competitors getting hold of it. It’s scary how some bingo companies see bingo players and casino players as the same target audience, this is a good signal to us they dont know their customers yet.

We would love to send affiliates indepth stats, we have them and we can tell you things that really would help you, simple geo targeting, but… we cant do that.

We can give you basics and hints, I stand by what I have said on my blog re you have to have the bingo balls. Chris Wesson and I were speaking about this last night. Loads of hype being sent out by ops to get more players coming online.
I some times wonder if there are not more bingo ops then players :0)

Great post Jason