Nowadays, scrolling the feed and watching short videos has become a daily routine: TicToc, Reels, VK Clips are popular not only with young people, but in general have a huge audience of all ages. In 2021, YouTube Shorts got their official release and began to rapidly gain popularity and millions of views, but mostly with an older audience. And where there are views, there is traffic.
In this article we will look at how to get traffic from YouTube Shorts to gambling offers.
YouTube stats
As we said earlier, Shorts format appeared on the platform 3 years ago. In 2023, short vertical videos began to gain millions of views in a matter of hours. The principle of work is familiar: Shorts are shown to users in the recommendations feed, regardless of subscription. Like other formats, they have comments, likes, a view counter, and a recommendation feed. That is, for people to see a video, you have to get to the top.
According to Statista data as of January 2024, YouTube’s audience is the second most popular social network in terms of monthly active users.
Also data on daily views of YouTube Shorts worldwide, as of October 2023.
YouTube drives traffic to any mainstream vertical. In gambling, especially for beginners in affiliate marketing, this source is suitable for three reasons:
- Large audience;
- Getting blocked for betting ads is rare, and blocking casino offers is easy to bypass;
- Traffic is almost free.
An important advantage of Shorts is that you can promote videos to different GEOs from one channel. The platform recognizes the language in the video and shows it to the appropriate audience. YouTube Shorts is especially popular in India.
For Google and YouTube, gambling is a gray vertical, so blatantly casino creatives won’t last long. Videos with only casino slots or wheel of fortune are often complained about, which causes the platform to cut back on coverage and can block a channel or account.
How to cast from Youtube Shorts
The source is simple, so even a beginner will do. You will be required to have time, accounts, proxies, and editors.
- Create or buy a YouTube channel
For more credibility of the platform, it is better to buy accounts that are registered with US and European IPs. Others are also suitable, but they will serve less.
- Find an offer to work
See the selections or ask the manager of your affiliate program.
- Prepare content for this offer (video sequence up to 60 seconds)
Look for content to work with this source. It can be videos of online casino winnings from streamers, clips of jackpot winning stories. In any case, select content based on the audience: gender, age, interests, motivators, and more.
- Publish content and add a link
Add popular hashtags. Keep in mind that as of August 31, 2023, YouTube Shorts banned active links in the description of videos and in the comments to them. Therefore, a promo code can be considered a suitable analog.
Working with such a source as Shorts, it is important to pour as many videos as possible in a day. The limit without the risk of blocking is about 15-20 videos. So webmaster increases the chance that 2-3 videos will fly into the recommendations and bring many thousands, and maybe millions of shows.
Creatives for YouTube Shorts
To avoid blocking and problems, you can take for creatives:
- Stream clips of online casino winnings;
- news clips with winnings;
- interesting moments from movies and TV series;
- short funny clips from TikTok, Reels, VKontakte.
You can use creative ideas for short videos on YouTube Shorts, taking inspiration from competitors’ content from other social networks. You can download videos without watermark, add effects through editors, mirror, insert captions and upload to your channel. You can also turn to spy services, where you can find ready-made ideas from other affiliates.
The choice of video categories for content creation in iGaming depends on everyone’s preferences. It is important to take into account the age, interests and geographical distribution of the target audience. Any creatives can be successfully adapted, the main thing is the quality of the attracted traffic.
Where to direct traffic from YouTube Shorts
From the videos themselves, you can direct traffic in three ways:
- Directly to the referral link of the casino: people go, register, make a deposit. YouTube bans direct links to gambling-offers, so it is better to take away in the form of a prelend, and then to the advertiser’s label.
- In the Telegram channel: add a link to it, write about bonuses, winning schemes and so on. Already in Telegram there is warming up and a direct link to the promoted offer.
- By promo code: add a sticker with the advertiser’s website and your promo code to viral videos. As stated earlier – this does not violate the new rules of the platform. Users remember the promo code, enter it when registering, and you get leads. Also, such videos are often shared, and the content gets more viral reach.
It is better to leave a link to a pad or TG-channel in a pinned comment or profile. And in the description simply write where the link is located and what the user will get if he/she clicks on it.
Rules of working with Shorts videos
To work, you need to know the main rules of affiliate marketing on this platform.Let’s consider 5 main mistakes, because of which you can get a ban instead of leads:
Content volumes
An ordinary youtube-blogger will not post 50 videos a day, so this behavior will definitely arouse suspicion. It is better to publish no more than 5-7 videos per day, with a break between them.
Knuckleheads
This refers to subscribers/views/comments. The channel will grow immediately after a sprucing up, after which the views will drop to zero abruptly. YouTube will see the bots and may send the channel to shadowban.
Non-unique content, reuploads
Algorithms have learned to recognize it, and even imposed filters will not help. Especially risky to post content that was downloaded from YouTube. Therefore, take original material from other resources, for example, Pinterest.
Forbidden hashtags, words
In hashtags, you can not specify words to which the algorithms react badly – for example, earnings. Keep in mind that the platform can read stop words even from videos.
Direct links under the video
We have already talked about this, the rules have changed and youtube can ban the channel, where there is a direct link to register in the casino, but will not pay attention to the promo code.
Conclusion
Youtube Shorts – for two years now remains a platform for getting quality gambling traffic with minimal investment on the part of the affiliate. Generating leads with Shorts is quite realistic if you study the platform and the specifics of working with it in advance. The main thing is to adapt the video to the chosen GEO, prepare creatives and know how to circumvent the rules to get the most targeted transitions. Don’t forget the pads – they will help reduce the risk of banning. If the video goes to the top and the channel gets banned, it will be unpleasant.
Don’t be afraid to experiment, test different approaches, upload different categories of videos and look for the most converting one. Do not hope that the first videos will immediately bring quality deps, time and patience, and of course, success!
