Overview of English casual games affiliate programs
There are many players on the market of english affiliate programs: , , , (workink via ), (working via ), , you also can use itself. This list of partner programs has no ending – today only a lazy person doesn’t have his own partner program. However, don’t rush clicking all those links and signing up for those programs cause all of them refer to second-level or even third-level programs, and some of them are complete trash. Reasons for that can be different: gaming content is poor, usability is low (sometimes it seems that everything is designed in a special way to make the work of affiliates harder), the system of payments is moronic (up to 4 payments a year), or the program itself is designed for affiliates who have enormously huge traffic… From our own experience we can recommend only two affilliate programs in the sphere of casual games: (more info in BigFishGames’ partner affiliation program – overview) and (more info in Reflexive’s affiliate program overview). In this article we are going to talk about them.
First of all, we must say that both of these companies are present on the market of casual games, and as a result, they partly share the catalog of games. Other features are different and to make it easy to understand them, we have placed all the data in the following table.
|
Criterion (numbers as of 2009-09-28) |
||
| Amount of english PC games (in our base) | 1130 | 1230 |
| Amount of unique PC games | 528 – english
328 – french 463 – german 283 -spanish 123 – japaneese |
628 |
| Amount of Mac games (games for Mac are available only in English for now) | 195 | 288 |
| Amount of unique Mac games | 78 | 171 |
| Releases of new PC games | English – 1 each day
German – 1 each day French – 1 each day Spanih – 1 approximately in two days Japaneese – 1 approximatelly in 3 days |
1 English game per working day (you see, on weekend is relaxing) |
| Releases of new Mac games | 1 game approximately in 2-3 days | 1 dame approximately in 2 days |
| Affiliate sales tracking method | Cookie, which installs for 90 days after you entered any page of BigFishGames sites. However if a certain user have already visited BigFishGames’ site before, he has been given a life-time cookie – a small cheat of this partner program. | when you go to the site using a link that contains your affiliate ID, it is automatically added to all the URLs on the page, so this ID is saved while the user is surfing the site (unless the user deletes this ID manualy) When the user downloads the game via your link, affiliate ID is build-in to the distributive. |
| Percentage earned on selling the game | 25% | 40% |
| Game cost | $6.99 | $6.99 |
| Multi-level system | yes, from each partner you bring, you will get 25%, and if they’ll bring new partners you can build a very decent chain that will make your income. | no |
| One time payment or payments for the rest of your life | Each user you attract to the program is secured for yourself “forever” and you’ll get percentage from each his purchase. | one time payment goes to the partner whose ID is build-in to the distributive |
| Access to buyers’ e-mails | no | yes |
| Reports and statistics | Briefly speaking we can call it shitty. It is absolutely useless. You can only see how many users you have attracted and how much money you have earned (per day/month). Also you have to follow your statistics on two different sites (more info here – BigFishGames’ affiliation program – Beginning). Everything works awfuly, falls apart and doesn’t show. Even the emploees of BigFishGames can’t explain the purpuse of Bi-weekly Sales Reporting. | Almost everything you dreamed about – all information is available in real-time mode, also you can save the reports you need. |
| Tracking of sales | no | is very comfortable, you can create as many channels for different sites, sections of sites, or for various promtion events |
| Money withdrawal and commission | WireTransfer and ACH, free ($500 minimum) Check, Free ($20 minimum)
PayPal, free (PayPal takes it pecentage when you withdraw money) |
WireTransfer, costs $20
ACH, free Check, costs $5 PayPal, free (PayPal takes it pecentage when you withdraw money) |
| Periodicity of payments | once a month or even rarely (as you wish). Also you need to order a withdraw BEFORE the 15th day of the month. Sometimes they delay paymet for several days, but it’s not critical | once a month. Usualy you can withdraw in the beginning of the month, on the 1-3d day of the month |
| Hold on the payments | No holds, you get all the money you’ve earned by the time of withdraw | One month, i.e. in september you can withdraw your july’s revenue |
| Ways of receiving the content | here the programs are similar: you get banners, links for the games, frames, XMLs, engines for your own site. Ways of receiving the content are well organized in both programs. | |
| Branding of the content | not available | if you don’t have your own site you can send traffic to your branded reflexive page (headline). Also your pictures are build-in to the distributive of the games and when the game is launched, the user sees your splash-screen, and if he click the button other games, he’ll get to your site. This button is situated in the folder of the game. The page where they buy your games is also branded. |
| Various promos (like, all games for only $0.99) | Sometimes those events happen, but rarely you are informed about them | Those events take place often enough, and you are always informed about them |
| Adequacy of support | average, but closer to detestable. Here they answer, but usualy not to the point. Also they don’t fix bugs. | here support is detestable. They just ignore you. |
| Annoying features | -errors in statistics – sometimes the affiliate program malfunction, there were days without users and partner’s allocations -sometimes cookie wasn’t installing when we used some promotion materials -earlier there was a serious bug (or an attempt of cheating on the part of the program), after it was fixed the amount of new registrations raised in 4 times. -your account can be suddenly blocked, and you will spend months to unlock it |
not detected |
Turns out that there are two different casual game affiliate programs and both have their unique features. Obviously, you have to use them both if you want to achieve the best result in your affiliate sales!
So, what is left to di is to sign up for and programs, enter your affiliate IDs in Zamango contron panel, and start earning money.
