GAMING AFFILIATE PROGRAMS
Video game world is attractive to affiliates in many different ways. First of all, major developers and video companies around the word make it their goal to provide the best products possible to keep gamers happy. Also, the companies creating hardware (game consoles) have pretty much the same mission. The current stage of development of the market makes it clear that video games are here to stay, and even though most games are not evergreen, the market as a whole is.
Joining an evergreen market is something affiliates really like to do. Or at least should be trying to do. Evergreen markets won’t disappear one day all of a sudden, and make a whole bunch of people go broke overnight.
However, even though the market is here to stay, individual games are not, so every affiliate needs to be careful when deciding what they promote. Some sub-niches have the potential to evolve into something new and keep up with the trends, but some will quickly die out with no possibility of being replaced with a similar sub-niche.
Thankfully, the video game world can be tackled from many different angles. If you’re an affiliate, and you want to join the game (so to speak) there are three main paths you can take.
1. Game Providers
The most obvious approach, and the most evergreen at the same time, is to promote all kinds of video game stores and providers. While providers themselves can disappear even overnight it’s easy to switch to another one and keep your affiliate business profitable.
GameFly is one of the most popular video game rental houses and stores. The idea is simple. Users can pick their desired games and have them delivered to their doorstep. The service is subscription based, and this is where the affiliate program comes into play. Every affiliate has the possibility to earn from $15 to $25 for each person who signs up for a free trial.
Every affiliate knows that free trial offers have a lot better conversion rates than all kinds of traditional sale offers. At this moment GameFly offers more than 8,000 games so every gamer is sure to find something interesting there, which makes the program even easier to promote.
This might be the perfect offer for you if you run some kind of comparison site, video game reviews site, video game news site, video game forum, and other video game related projects.
For high level affiliates – if you manage to deliver 500+ subscriptions in a month – there’s an individual program with even higher commissions.
Hoyle is a different kind of game store. It offers downloadable games for playing board games, card games, casino games, slots, and other similar products. Even though you won’t find Battlefield 3 among their offerings their games are still very popular and therefore might be good to promote to your gaming audience.
The basic commissions are at 15% per sale, and you can get paid every 30 days if you reach a certain threshold. The program itself is based at Commission Junction, so you need to sign up to the network itself before you can start promoting Hoyle.
As a member of their affiliate program you’ll also get access to the online reporting and monitoring platform. Various performance reports are sure to improve your results over time.
The name similarity to PayPal is not accidental here. GamePal is a site that provides services for buying and selling of MMORPG’s virtual currency, accounts, items, and power leveling.
MMORPG (which stands for Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) is a very lively niche inside the video game market these days. Not to mention the vast popularity of those kinds of games, they also (usually) feature things like virtual currency, which can be earned and then exchanged between players.
GamePal offers an in-house affiliate program. You can join it by signing up for a GamePal account and then going to the affiliate control panel. The rules are clear – you get 25% of each sale that happens after your referral.
2. Strategy Guides
Game strategy guides are a major niche in the video game world. Every popular game has a learning curve, and some people don’t like to figure things out on their own … that’s when they start looking for different guides and walkthroughs.
Not surprisingly, the most popular guides on the market are ones for different MMO games.
Zygor is the provider of the best World of Warcraft guides on the market. What makes their guides so great is the fact that they are not delivered as PDF files or any kind of similar content. Zygor’s guides are built in. This means that they can be accessed directly inside the game itself. It makes them much more interactive and easy to use. Zygor’s program is one of the most popular ones on Clickbank, and we can clearly see why.
Some information about the program itself: 50% commissions (around $16.64 per sale), gravity at 89, access to affiliate tools and promotional materials.
Star Wars the Old Republic is a new player to the MMO world, but it’s gaining serious popularity as of late. The program presented here is one of the most popular SWTOR guides. Even though it has a more traditional form than Zygor’s, it still presents a great gravity score of over 110.
The commissions are at 75%, which translates to around $21.30 per sale. As an affiliate you’ll get access to a free affiliate report, pre-written articles, PPC keywords and ads, graphics, reviews, and even forum signatures. As you can see, the affiliate package is really impressive.
Starcraft has been one of the most popular games of all times, and ever since Starcraft 2 has been launched the craze just keeps getting bigger and bigger. What’s interesting about this particular guide is that it hasn’t been created by yet another vendor who never actually played Starcraft. Shokz is one of the best players in North America, so his guides are always up to date and reflect the actual realities of the game.
The program is Clickbank based. You can get 57% of every sale, which transfers to around $17. After joining the program you get access to a set of banner ads, videos, and PPC keywords. Shokz promises that the affiliate package will soon be expanded to provide more tools and resources.
3. Hardware and Its Problems
This final kind of affiliate programs focuses on the hardware itself – game consoles. Even though machines like Playstation 3 or Xbox 360 are pretty reliable, and most problems can be handled by warranty, there are still moments when gamers need to find another way to have their consoles fixed.
There can be multiple reasons for this. For example, the repair might turn out to be too expensive, or the gamer might modify the machine on their own, so now there’s not much that warranty service wants to do about it (which is more often the case).
Thankfully, such gamers can get a range of repair and maintenance guides to get their consoles working again at a fraction of the price professional service would cost.
The most popular consoles of today are Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, and the most popular repair guides for them are: PS3LightsFix (PS3) and James Dean 3 Red Light Fix (Xbox). Both guides are essentially very similar from a customer’s perspective.
When it comes to the affiliate side they are not that different either. Both programs offer 75% commissions, and both provide really extensive affiliate packages. When promoting them, you can use a range of videos, banners, keywords, landing pages, articles, forum signatures, and more.
This concludes the list of valuable video game affiliate programs. Don’t forget to comment if you know of some other programs that would look good on this list.
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