The gist of the announcement is given below:

As of this date affiliates are not permitted to acquire any links for [Bingo Site] terms from third party sites for the purpose of deep linking to their own [Bingo Site] review and information pages. Any affiliate found to have broken this term from this day onward will have any affiliate commissions withheld. The brand owner has made this move in order to guarantee the quality of reader experience when a user searches for their branded terms in search engines.

As I understand it the sites in question aren’t happy about paying commission to affiliates who perhaps are paying for trademark name links in order to inflate their positions in SERPS. Bingo is a competitive area and ranking for a “brand name”, even in the top few places can be beneficial to an affiliate’s monthly earnings.

In some ways the decision is understandable but the brand doesn’t control Google or how the search results appear or the quality of reader experience. Any brand owner would love the right things in the right order on SERPS but sometimes it just doesn’t happen. Perhaps the solution is a better SEO strategy from the brand?

Or if an affiliate is acquiring backlinks through payment then Google should be the ones to deal with it (paid links). Perhaps the fact that some affiliate sites rank for “brand name” (and above it in the case of Tasty Bingo) means that the search engine is happy with the link building processes that have gone on or they feel the site is genuinely worthy of that spot?

This puts the merchant in a bit of a pickle.

Firstly how can they determine what Google ranks and where and really is it up to them to decide who goes where? And secondly how is the acquiring of third party links going to be monitored? Also does acquiring mean getting a free link because someone has read your comments and wants to genuinely link back to you?

Another issue is what if the affiliate says “no” to the terms and switches links to a competitor site in protest (i.e. they rank for Site A but tell their users to go to Site B)?. That possibly raises potential legal issues but the fact is that the affiliate will still be ranking in SERPS for the brand. If they kick off the affiliate will they have more problems to deal with? If they don’t take action are they paying out commission they don’t feel they should be to an affiliate who perhaps isn’t working with them in partnership or “adding value”?

The eventual result will be a bit of a shake up in the bingo affiliate arena.

One merchant unveiling the new terms seemed to me to be a “reaction”, but a second following 24 hours later suggests that this issue is going to transcend across more brands over the coming weeks and months.

I’d expect many operators to now extend their own SEO and link building work so as to outrank affiliates under brand terms and generics, something which many are already trying to do. This no doubt costs them money and perhaps that will mean commissions will be cut to accommodate? It could well be that some operators start to become a bit more selective about who they work with, especially when it comes to their own independent networks.

It’ll be interesting to see if these term changes have any impact on SERPS, affiliate/merchant relationships and which bingo operators affiliates work with over the coming months.

Personally I sympathise with the bingo brands, but don’t think the strategy employed is really going to change anything. Monitoring and proving if an affiliate has acquired links is going to be difficult. Even if you ask affiliates to stop doing something they will try and find ways around it. That said affiliates paying for links run the risk of eventually being caught out so perhaps natural equilibrium will eventually win through?

Don’t blame me if you don’t get much work done today!

Update : I’ve removed the viral game from the site because the music was getting annoying every time I visited the blog. For free content it’s pretty good, but Killerviral need to have a tag in so that the music can be switched off!

That, whilst a bit of a pain, is acceptable (well to a point) provided things get up and running when the new site is in place.

However, this is AM – and affiliates are an afterthought!

This weekend Sun Bingo players (and remember that these will include the ones affiliates have referred to the old site and were once earning revshare on) were emailed to “pre-register” to play at the new site in exchange for the chance to win prizes in a £100,000 giveaway.

So affiliates who have lost out on earnings for players to “Old” Sun Bingo will now potentially also lose on those players if they decide to pre-register on “New” Sun Bingo! You can also bet your bottom dollar that the affiliate program will not launch on day one (or indeed be available to send players for this pre-registration). Go on My Sun prove me wrong!

I’m pretty disappointed by this and would have hoped that somewhere in the marketing launch mix the affiliates would have had an opportunity to get promoting the new site as soon as possible! This allows us to update established content and pick up promotions after the program’s closure.

The bingo affiliate world is now a reflection of the weather here in Swansea – The Sun definitely isn’t shining!

The event attracts a bit of a everything – affiliates, super-affiliates, operators, software providers, marketing managers and even Vice Presidents.

So what was it like from an affiliate point of view?

In terms of networking/meetings I’ve got to say my time was well spent. The problem with a meeting featuring such a diverse mix of people within the same industry is keeping them all interested throughout the day – so arranging meetings beforehand was a good idea. However, in terms of talks and exhibition stuff there wasn’t too much excitement from an affiliate point of view.

The one highlight of the day should have been the “speed networking event”. This was an opportunity for all attendees to meet each other. Eight people start off on a table and then after 2 minutes, 4 move on to the next table and 4 stay put to chat to another 4 who have just arrived. This started well but rapidly fell apart with people moving clockwise and anti-clockwise and 2 minutes not being kept too. A massive opportunity lost!

The panel session for affiliates went ok in my opinion. Although a combined 45 minute session for affiliate managers and affiliates wasn’t really enough to do affiliate marketing justice. Again I felt this was another missed opportunity to educate and help operators (e.g. good examples of programs, who’s doing what, super affiliates vs affiliates, tenancy vs paid on performance, spyware in the bingo sector etc). Next year there should be an introductory talk – complete with slides – perhaps then followed by a panel discussion.

To go into a session about affiliate marketing almost “cold” didn’t really grab the audience or spark useful debate about the future of bingo and affiliate marketing.

The rest of the event was a mix of more talks, drinks, a dinner, awards and a night out. Most of which I spent in meetings (or recovering from meetings).

And that really summarises things quite nicely!

Yes Bullet Business is highly targeted, yes I had some useful meetings and yes it was good to be a panelist, but I’d have been quite gutted to have paid £695+VAT for this, especially when A4UExpo is a fraction of the cost for a much bigger event.

Next year I would like to see more affiliates and more time given to affiliate marketing – perhaps even a “meet the affiliates session” where those who want to can chat and say hello. That’s where the real value in attending these events lies!

Unless you happen to be Crown Bingo.

Now I’m not a fan of naming merchants, but in this case it’s time for an exception (blame my Hillaryedness).

Crown Bingo do the usual stuff, like everyone else in that Revshare is calculated from the Gaming Profit.

If you choose to be rewarded through Revenue Share commission type then you will receive a percentage of the monthly ‘Net Gaming Profit’ for each player you refer. Your percentage is displayed in the programme details section and the monthly ‘Net Gaming Profit’ is calculated as the net profit remaining less any bonus or promotional amounts, charge backs, processing fees, license fees, operation fees and jackpot contributions.

However, on their invoices Crown take off “costs” from the affiliate revshare portion.

We stopped promoting Crown in April as it didn’t really work for us, despite our best efforts and support from the affiliate manager. However we did send 9 new sign ups in the first few days of April and from that, and other limited player activity, we managed to incur £45 of “costs”!

So what are these “costs”?

Is it the free bingo? It shouldn’t be as that should be shared between merchant and affiliate before revshare!
Is it software costs? As above!
Is it bonuses and promotions? Well, as above as well!
Anything else cost wise? Guess what, yes as above!

In fact there should be no “costs” at all incurred solely by the affiliate!

So why the blog?

Well firstly I’m hoping it facilitates an explanation from Crown – it was April when i first asked about this!

Secondly hopefully other affiliates will now check their invoices, and not just with Crown, and see if they’re paying the same “costs” after revshare!

Crown clearly define their terms:

Revshare: a Commission payment contingent on a Visitor reaching Crown Bingo through a Valid Click, depositing and staking the specified amount and then calculated as a percentage of their gaming profit.

Gaming Profit: means the amount earned by Crown Bingo after all costs are removed. Including but not limited to; promotional adjustments, bank charges, software provider charges.

So, unless someone can tell me differently, based on the definitions above, I can see no rational explanation as to why an affiliate is having to pay “costs” from their revshare – because according to the definitions all costs should already have been removed!

It may well be that there’s a simple explanation to all this – and I welcome hearing it – but it would be nice to get a definitive answer!

However, the loss of chill factor is mainly attributed to a merchant trying to convince me to promote them because their conversion rate is around 73%!

Now let’s for a minute assume the merchant isn’t telling porkies, my personal feeling is that they are, what exactly does this 73% conversion actually mean?

It means nothing!

So why is this stat not making me jump on board the bandwagon of promotion for this bingo merchant?

1. Conversion could mean click to registration, but I don’t get paid for that… so it’s meaningless!
2. Conversion could mean registration to depositing players.. making the CR highly questionable!
3. It doesn’t tell us where conversions come from. E.g. Email, PPC, Cashback etc. or timescale!
4. It doesn’t tell us if those conversions generate commission!
5. It’s not my site!

And (5) is the key point here.

Just because Fred & Brenda’s Bingo Emporium is converting well for a particular merchant doesn’t automatically equate it will do well for another affiliate, and I really wish affiliate managers wouldn’t waste my time with pointless unqualified stats.

Fred & Brenda may only promote one merchant, they may have a bought in list of bingo players, they may be SEOed in a specific position and they may even be PPCing…. another affiliate may not be doing the same, and therefore their conversion is likely to be different.

Without qualification, statistics and conversion rates are just fancy numbers that mean nothing!

So What Do I Want To Know?

Firstly if I’ve been promoting you for sometime, I’ll have an idea of how well you convert for me. As mentioned in my previous blog there’s a pecking order, so all I want to know is… what you have available for me to consider promoting you more.

Perhaps a solus email creative did well, how about suggesting I use that?
Perhaps you’ve started a new competition or promotion, how about suggesting I write some content?
Perhaps you’ve figured out xml jackpot feeds, tell me about them?

In fact tell me anything useful so that I can promote you – the only figures I’m interested in are my conversion rates and the amount of ££’s that they generate.

“I have temporarily suspended your traffic on webgains as it seems that your players are not performing on my side…. I looked at your site and I have terrible coverage – if you prepared to give me better positions and drop the offer to 5 pounds free – we can look to get you going again”

Am I Missing Something Here?

Firstly I’m annoyed that my affiliate links have been suspended, without notice or prior discussion. That is not on! I’ve not broken any terms or conditions on the program and think the merchant is well out of order.

I’m sorry I can’t vet players before they leave the site but if they don’t convert, isn’t that an issue the merchant should initially be looking at closer to home? Is “the wrong type of traffic” just an excuse along the lines of “the wrong kind of leaves on the track”?

But hold on, if my traffic is not performing in a low position (and the merchant is there because they don’t perform), why would putting them up higher, with a less competitive offer to other sites make things suddenly better? Why wish to advertise?

Now, if commission structures need to be adjusted all you do is send a nice email to the affiliate and talk to them. You don’t suspend them from the program to attract their attention. Having dead links because you’ve switched them off at 4 in the morning isn’t going to help and the only attention your program gets is from the delete button.

An Update
Good news is that the situation is now being resolved, and amicability is being re-established. Blogging about these incidents is perhaps a knee jerk reaction, but if the process was done properly (i.e. merchant contacts affiliate and talks to them) none of this would be here. The fact is year after year merchants don’t do “the right thing” with regards their affiliate partners and that shouldn’t be the case – not in 2008. If blogging about things is one way to change things, then so be it.

See if you can spot the difference!

A rip off or a clever use of another affiliate’s work?

Do you think this kind of activity is acceptable?

If you were a merchant and I told you the affiliate who did this would you consider removing them from your program?

In hindsight we should have stuck to our guns and not wasted time on this program as quite simply it’d have been more profitable flogging a dead horse… and probably a lot more rewarding.

The fact is though we were seduced by claims that the program does work, that other affiliates are earning commissions, and that a site very similar to ourselves were doing very well via their own branded site. That was a mistake! An important lesson for affiliates is don’t listen to affiliate manager’s when they tell you what other affiliates are doing… other affiliates are not you and they’re not promoting from your site.

Just because something works in one place, doesn’t equate to it working in another.

We promote several bingo programs, some do really well, some do reasonably well, and only this one has not performed at all, even when given extra promotion. Our performance has been dismissed as being due to “freebie bingo players” – these will be the same ones that convert on other bingo sites – so that’s really not a good enough explanation.

Trying to work out why this one site doesn’t perform, whilst others do, is difficult to do. It could be player quality from us, the affiliate, but equally it could be the site’s ability to convert and retain players. It could also be the fact that a player registering on Skin 1, can also login and play at Skin 2 and Skin 3 – something which is a bit unusual in bingo terms.

However, such analysis is a waste of time – the site doesn’t convert for us, and it has to go!

So the lessons here for all affiliates, and yes even us old timers occasionally try and give things a go, is don’t waste time with poor programs. You know your site, you know what works and what doesn’t, and if a program is not even earning half a crown it’s not worth your time. Bingo!

And whilst it’s great that an affiliate manager will encourage you to “give things a go”, remember that’s what they’re paid to do! Listen to your gut instinct, check your own stats, and don’t waste time flogging dead horses!

Last years sell out summit saw over 180+ attendees from the Online Bingo space and Bullet Business, who put the event together, confidently expect that number to increase to 250+ this year with leading operators such as Mecca, 888, St. Minver, PartyBingo, ThinkBingo, FoxyBingo, Crown Bingo, SkyBingo and more already confirmed to speak – In fact 50 companies have already signed up (including me!).

This year’s blockbusting summit will focus on how operators and affiliates attract big spending online bingo players, secure customer loyalty and drive bingo brands into new profitable European markets.

For more information there’s a nice glossy online brochure to look through, explaining the sessions, talks and networking opportunities.