In most iGaming operations, an affiliate manager (often titled partner manager) runs outreach, and a growth lead signs off on terms and budget. Smaller teams combine both roles in one person. The five steps below take you from a written partner profile to a first partner who is tracked, compliant and reviewed after 30 days.
On this page
- Step 1: Define the Partner Profile and Commercial Terms
- Step 2: Build an iGaming Affiliate Outreach List and Qualify Each Lead
- Step 3: Write the First Outreach Message and Offer Terms
- Step 4: Onboard the Partner and Set Up Tracking
- Step 5: Review Compliance and Measure First-Month Partner Results
Step 1: Define the Partner Profile and Commercial Terms
Write the partner profile and commercial terms before you contact anyone. Outreach without them turns into improvised promises, and those are hard to walk back once a partner has built content around them.
Prerequisites are short. You need a live site or a dated launch plan, a clear offer, and a payout model you can fund. If the product is still being specced, the online casino and gambling software platform guide covers what has to exist before partners can send traffic to it.
Owner: The affiliate manager owns the list, the messages and the relationship. The growth lead approves the payout ranges, the markets and any exception to standard terms. Name both people in writing, because a partner who gets two different answers from two people will trust neither.
Partner types: Decide which of these you want first, and in what order.
- Review sites that rank operators and send high-intent traffic.
- Content publishers, such as sport, casino strategy or news sites with a gambling section.
- Tipster and community channels, including forums, social groups and messaging communities.
Each type behaves differently. Review sites tend to want better rates and exclusive offers. Community channels are quicker to start and harder to control on messaging. Pick one or two types for the first wave rather than all three.
Markets and jurisdictions: List the countries where you hold or plan to hold permission to operate, and the ones you will refuse traffic from. A partner whose audience sits mostly outside your licensed markets is a bad fit, however large the audience is.
Payout model: Choose one of three and write down the exact terms.
- Revenue share: The partner earns a percentage of net revenue from the players they refer, for as long as the agreement states.
- CPA: A fixed payment per qualified player, where you define what qualified means, for example a first deposit above a set amount.
- Hybrid: A smaller CPA plus a revenue share, which splits the risk between you and the partner.
Define negative carryover, deductions for bonuses and fees, and the payment schedule now. If you run tiered agents or sub-partners as well, the casino agent system guide explains how that structure differs from a standard affiliate program.
Compliance checks: Write the promotional rules the partner must follow. These cover age restrictions, required disclosure, responsible-gambling messaging, banned claims and bonus wording. Have your compliance contact read the document before it leaves the building.
Step 2: Build an iGaming Affiliate Outreach List and Qualify Each Lead
Build a prospect list from the partner profile, then qualify every lead against it before you send a message. A short, scored list beats a long scraped one, because each unqualified contact costs you time and some of your sender reputation.
Four sources do most of the work.
- Search results: Search the terms your players would use in your target markets and note who ranks. These sites already hold the traffic you want.
- Affiliate networks and directories: They show who is actively promoting operators and which verticals they cover.
- Industry forums and communities: Useful for tipsters and niche publishers, and for judging how a channel talks about operators.
- Referrals: Ask existing partners who they respect. Warm introductions convert better than cold emails, and you also learn who to avoid.
Score each lead on a simple sheet. Keep the scale small, 1 to 5 is enough, and write a one-line note for every score so a colleague can audit it later.
| Criterion | What to check | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Audience fit | Does the content and readership match your player profile and offer? | 1 to 5 |
| Traffic quality | Is the traffic organic and consistent, or thin, spiky and suspiciously uniform? | 1 to 5 |
| Market reach | Does the audience sit in the markets you are permitted to serve? | 1 to 5 |
| Brand risk | Are there misleading claims, underage appeal, or links to operators with a poor reputation? | 1 to 5, where 5 is low risk |
Set a cutoff before you start scoring, and treat a very low score on brand risk or market reach as a hard stop whatever the total says. A site with excellent traffic that markets to the wrong country is still a no.
Log every lead in a shared sheet or CRM with the same fields each time: name, URL, contact, partner type, scores, owner, status and date of last contact. Use a short set of statuses, such as Identified, Qualified, Contacted, In talks, Onboarding, Active and Declined. Record why a lead was declined. Six months on, that note saves you from re-qualifying the same site.
Step 3: Write the First Outreach Message and Offer Terms
The first message should state the offer, the payout model and the next step in a few lines. Partners receive many pitches from operators, and the ones they answer are short, specific and clearly aimed at them.
A workable structure has four parts.
- One sentence showing you looked at their site or channel, naming a real page or topic.
- The offer: your brand, the markets you cover and the payout model with its headline terms.
- One reason it suits their audience.
- A single next step, such as a short call or a reply to receive the full terms.
Keep it to a handful of lines. Leave out adjectives about how big or exciting your brand is, and say what the partner earns and when they are paid.
What to attach: Send the commercial terms as a short document, not a wall of text in the email body. Include a sample of your disclosure wording and your responsible-gambling language, so the partner sees from the first exchange that you expect compliant promotion. Partners who object to that wording are telling you something useful before any traffic flows.
Follow-up cadence: Plan the sequence in advance. A reasonable pattern is the first message, a short follow-up after several days that adds one new piece of information, and a final note a week or so later that closes the loop politely. Then stop. Log each touch in your sheet, and move a lead to Declined or a revisit date instead of chasing indefinitely. Vary the channel only if you have a real reason to, such as a contact form versus a listed email.
Handling a counter-offer: Expect partners to ask for a higher revenue share or CPA. Decide in advance what is negotiable. A good rule is to keep the core terms identical for everyone, meaning the payout model, the compliance rules and the definition of a qualified player. Allow movement only inside a pre-approved band, and only on evidence such as proven volume or exclusivity. The growth lead signs off on anything outside the band. If you give one partner a private deal that others find out about, you will be renegotiating with everyone.
When you decline a counter-offer, say what you can offer instead, such as a review of the rate after a set period of verified results.
Step 4: Onboard the Partner and Set Up Tracking
Onboarding is complete when the partner has working tracking links, a reporting login and a signed agreement. Until all three exist, no traffic should be sent and no promises about earnings should be made.
Agreement checklist: The signed agreement should cover at least these points.
- Parties, term and termination rights for both sides.
- Payout model, definitions of qualified players, and the payment schedule and method.
- Permitted and prohibited promotion methods, including restrictions on bonus claims and on targeting minors or excluded jurisdictions.
- Disclosure and responsible-gambling requirements.
- Approval process for creative material and the right to audit traffic.
- Clawback and dispute terms for fraudulent or invalid players.
- Data handling and confidentiality.
Have legal review the template once, then reuse it. Changes for individual partners should be tracked as addenda, not as new versions of the base contract.
Links and codes: Give each partner a unique tracking link, and a separate one for each placement or campaign if they want to compare results. Add a tracking code or sub-ID field so they can tag their own sources. Test every link yourself before sending it. Click it, register a test account in a permitted setting, deposit if your rules allow it, and confirm the conversion appears under the right partner.
Postback and conversion reporting: For partners who run their own tracking, set up postback so registrations and deposits are reported back to their system. Agree the events you will fire, such as registration, first deposit and qualified player, and what delay to expect. Mismatched event definitions are the most common source of payout disputes.
Partner dashboard: The login should show clicks, registrations, deposits, qualified players and earnings, filterable by date and by link. A partner who cannot see numbers will email you for them every week.
Platform support: Tracking and partner data usually sit across your platform, payments and CRM. The white label iGaming integration guide describes how those pieces are typically connected, and the gambling CRM buyer’s guide covers how partner source data feeds segmentation and retention. Check early that referral source is stored against each player record. Retrofitting it later is painful.
Step 5: Review Compliance and Measure First-Month Partner Results
Judge a new partner on first-month results against the profile you wrote in Step 1, and review compliance both before launch and after traffic starts. The first review tells you whether the partner is worth growing or should be paused.
Advertising and disclosure: Use recognized regulators as reference points for promotion standards. The UK Gambling Commission publishes rules and guidance on gambling advertising, and licensed operators there are expected to take responsibility for the marketing done on their behalf. In the United States, the US Federal Trade Commission sets expectations that material connections, such as a commission, are clearly disclosed to the audience. Check the current text for each market you serve, and take advice from your compliance lead or counsel, because rules differ by jurisdiction and change over time.
Before launch, review the partner’s pages or channels against your rules. After launch, check them again at intervals and whenever you change an offer. Look for missing disclosure, missing responsible-gambling messaging, bonus claims that differ from your terms, and content that could appeal to minors.
Age and jurisdiction checks: Confirm the partner does not target minors and does not send traffic from excluded countries. Compare the geography of registrations from their links with the markets in your agreement. A large share from an unpermitted territory is a reason to act at once.
The 30-day review: Sit down with the partner’s data at the end of the first month and look at two layers.
- Traffic quality: Click-to-registration rate, geography, device mix, patterns that suggest incentivized or automated traffic, and how closely the audience matches the profile.
- Player quality: Registration-to-deposit rate, share of qualified players, early retention, bonus-only behavior, chargebacks and verification failures.
Thirty days is a short window, so read the results as direction rather than proof. A small partner with strong player quality may deserve more support. A large partner with weak players may cost you more than it earns, particularly on CPA.
When to pause or end: Pause a partnership when you find a compliance breach that can be fixed, unexplained traffic patterns, or a sudden spike in invalid players. End it when breaches repeat, when the partner misrepresents your offer or targets restricted audiences, or when evidence of fraud is clear. Follow the termination and clawback terms in the signed agreement, and record the reason in your lead log.
Then feed what you learned back into the profile. Adjust the scoring sheet and the target partner types, and start the next wave of outreach with better criteria.
