There will always be a lot of discussion by affiliates about the percentage of traffic that they convert. I have found real money player conversions (from your site to real money players) has a lot to do with keywords. There are definitely other site factors including calls to action, programs you are promoting, banners used…etc. But in the end, I think if you have the best keywords (online poker, online casino) you will convert more traffic than the most optimized free casino/poker site.
I think most people realize that “free” is a really low converting keyword but there is a lot of traffic for it. So how bad can it really be?
I created a site to target a “free” (casino/poker) site and here are the stats so far:
Clicks: 719
Unique Downloads: 35
Sign-ups: 30
New Depositors: 0
Yep, no conversions…This doesn’t mean that later down the road there won’t be any real money conversions as this is a small sample size of time and players. Though, I can definitely say that “free” keywords aren’t a get rich quick type of keyword. Also, the program that I was sending the traffic through has done really well in the past with converting players so I don’t think it’s the program…Although, I may try sending the traffic to another program to see if I will get better results.
My numbers for a free gambling keyword:
clicks: 321
downloads: 12
signups: 23
new depositors:2
seem to be about in line with yours