People love to play games, especially considering just how accessible and fun the mobile and casual game market has become in recent years. From the perspective of the publisher, this can also prove to be a very lucrative opportunity. If you’re ready to cash in on this market, then you’ll want to take a closer look at Shark Games. The international game affiliate network serves as the subject of today’s review. Let’s get started.
Circling Around for the Kill
I don’t need to tell you that the Internet is filled with numerous affiliate networks. The majority of these are rather general in their scope. Shark Games is different in that it focuses primarily on web and mobile games.
The goal here, as you can imagine, is to best monetize your mobile and web traffic. Because of the broad appeal of mobile and casual online games, these ads can be applicable and relevant to a rather broad range of audiences.
Shark Games offers its affiliates a number of benefits, including the opportunity to set up direct offers based on the specific requests of partners. The network provides “a multitude” of direct CPI (cost per installation) and CPA offers with competitive payouts. Other perks here include weekly payouts by PayPal, bank wire or WebMoney, as well as a responsive multi-lingual support team.
A Familiar Affiliate Experience
Those of you who have been around the world of affiliate marketing for some time will immediately feel quite comfortable with the interface with Shark Games. It’s powered by the same engine as many other networks.
Along the left side of the screen is where you’ll find your main navigation, including expanding menus to access offers, reports and tools. Below this is also the option for a support chat, as well as the detailed contact information for your account manager.
That last part is critically important, because Shark Games really is aiming to provide as individualized an affiliate experience as possible. If you ever have any questions or requests — like asking for higher payouts or seeking advice for how best to promote a particular offer — your affiliate manager is only a quick phone call or email away.
Aside from this, the initial dashboard displays your quick stats for the last seven days, recent notifications, a slider with featured offices and your performance data for the last seven days.
Put Your Game Face On
At the heart of any good affiliate network are the offers you’re going to promote, of course. With Shark Games, you can take a quick look at the top offers. These are split up into sections for incentivized and non-incentivized traffic, as well as for web-based games. They’re also split up based on platform: iOS or Android.
This page gives you a quick overview of the top offers in the Shark Games inventory at the moment, including at a glance data about conversion rates, EPC and the payout. Clicking on the Preview link directs you to the iTunes App Store or Google Play Store listing for the app or game being promoted.
The majority of the offers are going to be for mobile games, like March of Empires and Family Farm, though you’ll also find listings for utilities and other apps too, like Opera Browser and Badoo. Offers geotargeted for Russia appear to be quite common too.
Clicking on the name of any given offer opens up the more detailed page for that offer. It’s here that you’ll find your tracking link, including several options and the ability to customize your tracking link by adding sources, creatives and sub IDs.
Below that are details like the expiry date, valid countries, offer description and CPA. You’ll also get information about the allowed and prohibited media types. Some advertisers may not allow VPN proxy traffic, for example. If you don’t find the creative that you’d like, you can always ask your affiliate manager.
Browsing through the marketplace of offers, many of the payout levels seem to be on the more modest end of the scale. They typically require the installation of the promoted app or game. As of this writing, only three offers have a CPA of over a dollar.
A More Profitable Way to Play?
It’s undeniable that the market for mobile and casual web games is growing and will continue to grow for the foreseeable future, especially among emerging markets. Since conversions typically don’t cost the end user any money–many of the games are free to download–conversion rates should be higher than most.
The process to sign up as an affiliate only takes a couple of minutes, after which your application will be reviewed. You should hear back within a couple of days and then you can start making some money with your gaming-centric global traffic.
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