What a casino affiliate does
A casino affiliate sends players to online casinos and is paid commission on the ones who deposit. You bring the audience, through a website, a video channel, search ads or a community, and your tracking link tells the casino which players came from you. The casino runs the games, holds the licence and owns the player account.
Deals pay a flat fee per qualifying first deposit (CPA), a share of the net revenue your players generate for as long as they play (RevShare), or a smaller amount of both. Which suits you depends on how long your players stay, and CPA vs RevShare works that out.
Choose a market and a channel first
Two decisions shape everything else: where your audience is, and how you will reach it. Make them before choosing a casino, because they decide which casinos will take your traffic.
- The market. Online gambling is licensed country by country, and a market you can reach is not necessarily one you may promote in. Check our restricted territories and the coverage pages before you build for one.
- The channel. Every casino lists the channels it accepts, and running one that is not on the list can void commission you have already earned. Traffic sources covers what is usually accepted and what is usually not.
- What you are good at. If you write well and can wait, SEO builds an audience you own, slowly. If you buy media, you need a deal that pays soon enough to fund the next campaign. Search ads on a casino's own name have their own rules: brand bidding.
The legal basics
Gambling advertising is regulated, and as an affiliate you are advertising. The details are national, but the core is the same almost everywhere:
- Age. Never target anyone under 18, or under 21 where the local minimum is higher, and say so on your pages.
- Disclosure. Make it clear that you are paid when a reader signs up through your links.
- Responsible gambling. Carry responsible gambling messaging and point readers to help. Never present gambling as a way to make money or to solve financial problems.
- Accurate offers. Describe bonuses as they are, conditions included.
Our advertising guidelines are the binding rules for traffic you send through us, and our responsible gambling page sets out what we expect of every partner.
Join a network or go direct
You can apply to each casino's own programme, or join a network that holds deals with many casinos behind one account, one dashboard and one monthly payment. Starting out, a network usually suits better: balances from every casino count towards one payment, and you have a manager to ask. What is an iGaming affiliate network? covers the trade-offs.
How your players are tracked
You get your own tracking link for each casino. Opening it records the click under an ID, and when that person deposits the casino reports it back with the same ID, so the deposit is credited to you without any personal data about the player. Use the link exactly as given: a stripped parameter is the most common reason a deposit is never credited. How affiliate tracking works explains the chain.
How you get paid
Commission is paid monthly, in arrears, once each conversion has been checked against the casino's own records. At TopStep Partners that check is done by hand once the month closes, and the confirmed balance is paid in crypto early the following month. There is nothing to request.
A balance is paid once it reaches €100 or the per-currency equivalent and clears a volume floor: 10 first deposits in 30 days, or €500 of revenue share since your last payment. A balance that falls short rolls over to the next month rather than expiring, and on revenue share there is no negative carryover: a losing month is credited at zero. How casino affiliate payouts work has the detail.
A realistic first 90 days
| Period | What usually happens |
|---|---|
| Month 1 | Setting up your site or channel, the compliance basics, your first casinos and links. Clicks and a few registrations, little else. |
| Month 2 | The first deposits, from a handful of players. You start to see which casinos convert your audience and which do not. |
| Month 3 | The first verified commission, often still below the payout threshold and rolled over. Drop what does not convert and put more into what does. |
Search traffic is slower, often six months or more before rankings pay, and paid traffic is faster but costs money first. Plan on budget you can afford to spend, not on commission you have not been paid yet.
Your first steps, in order
- Pick one market and one channel you can sustain.
- Check that the market is permitted and the channel is accepted.
- Build the basics: your site or channel, an age notice, a disclosure and responsible gambling messaging.
- Apply to a network or a programme, and describe the traffic you run honestly.
- Agree a deal per casino in writing, including what makes a player qualify.
- Test every tracking link yourself before sending real traffic.
- Set your payout details, then send traffic and measure what converts.
Starting with TopStep Partners
Apply on the registration page. A person reads every application, and once you are approved your account manager agrees a deal with you per casino and gives you your tracking links. Our ceilings are up to €450 per first deposit on CPA and up to 50% on RevShare, both programme maximums rather than the rate everyone is offered.
Already an affiliate in another vertical? Casino affiliate marketing basics covers what changes when you move into casino.
