The iGB Affiliate award votes have been counted and the organisers are happy to say that over 4,000 industry affiliates and executives made their choice. A fantastic response, ensuring a truly representative vote, the shortlist includes those who received the most or equal votes in any of the following categories: Best Affiliate (all verticals), Best Affiliate Program (all verticals), Best New Comer (Affiliate & Program), Best Affiliate manager (all verticals), Best iGaming Affiliate Network, The Louis Fabiano Award for the Best iGaming Community and Best Payment System for Affiliates.

“A well deserved congratulations to everyone in the shortlist” said Alex Pratt, Head of iGaming Business “To get to this stage is an amazing result and means you’ve had to beat most of your competitors to one of these top spots. Win or lose, each company on this list should be proud to have gotten to this stage. The final decision is now in the hands of our judges, so all that is left to say is good luck to our finalists.”

All the finalists will be examined by a judging panel who will evaluate each short listed nomination in order to select the final winner. The judging process is a rigorous and thorough procedure – each nomination will be considered upon their initial nomination entry (their answer to “Why You Should Win”) and evaluated against the judging criteria. Each judging panel will consist of independent experts to ensure that the integrity of the Awards is upheld, all entries get full consideration and that the right bingo winners are chosen. Specific experts have been invited according to the judging criteria of each Award to give their expert opinion on chosen areas, for example landing page professionals, SEO gurus, branding experts etc.

The iGB Affiliate Awards will be celebrated on the evening of the 26th of January, on the eve of the London Affiliate Conference. Over 50% of the seats have now been booked, so organisers expect a full house to come and celebrate these rising stars in the online gambling affiliate industry. With a three course meal, professional entertainment and a carnival theme, this will be a festive affair.

One of the many frustrations that bingo affiliates encounter when they try to make money online is the painfully slow rate at which money seems to dribble in. Checks may amount to only a few dollars in the beginning, if indeed a check actually shows up at all. Bingo that promise millions, send you checks worth only pennies. The problem often starts in that many programs are free to sign up. And there’s the problem. The free bingo offer that excited you so much is not too hard to market to others. It’s free and people like free.

Everyone loves free stuff and an offer of free membership in an bingo affiliate opportunity is a great way to encourage new prospects to have a look-see to judge the value of your business proposition for themselves. And if the bingo affiliates like what they see, they will more than likely consider a product purchase or upgrade.

Bingo affiliate programs are wonderful in that you usually start with ready-made materials. That means you don’t have to hire an expensive design team and technicians in the beginning. You don’t need to enlist talented artists to prepare website layout and design.

It’s finally warming up and spring is in the air at Joy of Bingo, where incidentally all the bingo excitement happens to be! As always, we’d like to share this with you! SO many upcoming occasions could only mean one thing – plenty of bingo promotions! We’ve got a huge range of these on all our sites in the next few weeks leading up to April Fool’s day, Mother’s Day, Easter and the Royal Wedding! The Joy Shop opens again in time for Mother’s day, and players can buy stuff with the points they collect, more details coming soon!

In other News, the next Joy Pot game will be a £50,000 ROLLOVER and will play on Friday 29th April @ 10pm at Wink. Players have until 23:59 on Sunday 24th April to earn free cards, register on Wink and change their email addresses to be the same across all sites. Cards cost £5; see details here. To create a big of hype and excitement around the Joy Pot game, Joy of Bingo is hosting a fun promo that allows players to win free cards into the Joy Pot. If players spot their face on the Royal family portrait photo, they win 1 free card into the game.

Show us an increase from the Net Revenue your players generated in February 2011 and get a bump on your usual commission percentage for the amount by which it increased! Getting to the next level on the Joy of Bingo structure is even more easier this month!! Remember you have SIX sites (and THREE extra days to help you get those figures off the scales and you can even have a go at reaching a mind boggling 55%!! There’s a WHOLE month for you to get there!

Star Partner’s Client (Vegas Partner Lounge (VPL)) is – a gaming group that has been around for over 8 years and hosts some of the most prestigious online casinos in the online environment. Other brands within the VPL Group include: Crazy Vegas Casino, Crazy Poker, Crazy Mobile, Golden Riviera Casino, Sun Vegas Casino, River Nile Casino, 777 Dragon Casino, Cinema Casino, Maple Casino, Aspinalls Casino, Aspinalls Poker, Casino UK, Casino Aus, Casino France-Net. Star Partner Affiliate Programme has just announced that it will be changing its current commission programme structure to extend over a 3 month period. How it will work is that instead of having a one month spike in commission, Affiliates can now enjoy three months of higher commissions.

In the past, commission automatically dropped to the normal commission amount by the second month. However, Affiliates can now experience 3 months of high commission, followed by normal commission structures for the lifetime of the player.

In the first month Affiliates will earn 60% of the player’s net losses, in the second month 50%, and in the third month, 40%.

Conrad Haack, the Affiliate Manager for Star Partner said, “This is definitely a tried and tested method that we know can bring great rewards to our Affiliates. Affiliates who signed up with us in August will keep enjoying the ultra-high first month’s commission, and this will only be in effect for new Affiliates who sign up with Star Partner from the first of September.”

We questioned Mr. Haack about extra fees that are generally posed on Affiliates. He stated, “Star Partner Affiliates earn pure commission. They do not pay royalties or processing fees like many other Affiliate Programmes deduct. Thus, our Affiliates get paid commission on higher amounts. This means that while we absorb the costs, the Affiliates can benefit from this provision. Essentially, this boils down to higher commissions for our Affiliates.”

“We believe that this new structure will attract new Affiliates to join our Online Casino Affiliate Programme,” continued Mr. Haack, “and they can earn better commissions in their first three months, so this will encourage them to advertise our sites and therefore increase their revenue and our traffic. All round, we believe that everyone will benefit from the new commission structure and we are very excited to be launching this for all Affiliates.”

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Online Games Club members pay $6.99 a month and get a Game Club Credit that they can redeem for any game.  As an affiliate Convert your users into Online Games Club Members and you’ll earn on each Game Club Credit they redeem!

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There are a lot of affiliate help and tools available including Online Games banner ads in all languages to help you drive referrals to Online Games and earn from all their sales!
  They have banners that you can link to the Online Games home page and banners that promote Online Games Club.