SportsBettingProfessor.com Wins With Affiliate Marketing and Low-Ball Pricing

While there’s a clear niche for information on sports gambling, most PPC advertisers won’t open campaigns for them. Yet SportsBettingProfessor.com has been able to

While there’s a clear niche for information on sports gambling, most PPC advertisers won’t open campaigns for them. Yet SportsBettingProfessor.com has been able to thrive, mainly through the use of affiliate marketing and low-ball pricing. Co-owner Mike Zenga spoke to us about how he pays his affiliates, the results of his pricing tests, his use of welcome videos and overlays, and why being different was more successful than copying other sites.

Company Profile

Founded: 2009
No. of Publications: 4 (1 main site, 3 traffic-driving sites)
Employees: 2 in-house, 3 full-time contractors, at least 10 freelancers
Business Model: Mainly subscription
Paying Subscribers: 10,000
Location: Woburn, MA
Website: www.sportsbettingprofessor.com

Target Market

Zenga describes his target market at “pretty narrowily focused” to sports fans who like to bet on sports. The site attracts fans from over 70 countries, but focuses on American sports (the site has some British sports and Mixed Martial Arts, but the NFL, NBA, MLB and NCAA are the big draws). While the majority of users are men, Zenga states that his marketing and targeting is gender-neutral.

Content

SportsBettingProfessor.com has two types on content: PDFs that describe its betting algorithm to users, and weekly picks for professional games.

  1. PDF Reports: Platinum and Expert subscribers (see below for plans) will receive a PDF upon initial payment containing statistical research for the NFL, NBA, MLB or NCAA. The PDF has a summary of the previous season’s wins and losses for that sport, which teams the site suggested its users bet on for the previous year, and why.
  2. Weekly picks: Paying subscribers get picks via email on weekly/daily basis, depending on the sport (baseball, basketball, etc.).

Zenga says “The sports betting world is a little bit of a scam-y type of world. Handicappers will send picks on individual games and sell them at high prices, but give the first person Team A and second Team B and rotate all along.” SportsBettingProfessor.com aims to be more transparent and gives the same picks to all their subscibers.

Zenga hires statisticians that he finds through networking to develop the systems. He then has them conduct research and develop a system for betting. This is a labor-intensive process, and the statisticians come up with three of four “duds” for every one working algorithm they develop.

There is no video content despite the video intro used on the site’s homepage.

Revenues

SportsBettingProfessor.com makes almost 100% of its revenues from subscriptions, one of which is a lifetime plan. A negligible percentage of the site’s revenues come from affiliate fees and cross-sales/upsales.

The site has three types of subscription plans:

  1. Platinum: Four systems and a lifetime of picks for MLB, NBA, NFL and NCAA games. $197.
  2. Professor: All picks for current MLB, NBA, NFL, and NCAAA games delivered via email every day. 30-day trial for $5, then $47/month. There is no PDF.
  3. Expert: PDF for NFL, NBA and MLB algorithms for $197 with no weekly picks.

The Professor package is by far the most popular, then the Platinum package.

Zenga says that he created the Expert package as a marketing tactic he learned from Robert Cialdini, author of the book Influence, who advocates for having one option that doesn’t make sense.

Zenga tested a few pricing options for the Platinum package ($97, $247), but found that $197 made him the most money. He also says that their price is at the low-end of the marketing spectrum for sports betting, which has made him and his partner happy because it leads to less aggravation. He also attributes their low-ball pricing to their “ultra-low” refund rate of 5-6%.

Customers can buy one PDF and an ongoing set of picks for other sports, but not on a subscription basis. See cross-sales & upsales for more information.

Marketing Tactics

Google and other search engines do not allow PPC advertising for gambling information sites. Therefore, Zenga relies on affiliate marketing to drive most of his site’s traffic.

Affiliate Marketing
Zenga offers two commission structures to his 45 affiliates:

  • An initial payout and a 60% commission on a monthly basis for the lifetime of the account
  • A one-time only fee of $197 or $97.

Zenga does not forbid affiliates from bidding on any PPC words. However, some affiliates do employ questionable practices, such as reserving the URL SportsBettingProfessorScam.com and then using the site to tell people how SportsBettingProfessor.com is NOT a scam. While Zenga does not forbid this type of activity since it’s working, he’s not entirely comfortable with it.

Supporting Sites
SportsBettingProfessor.com also has sites specifically dedicated to driving site traffic, namely www.sportstradeonline.com, www.bettinglinemoves.com, www.sportsbetting-professor.com. The second site serves as blog that’s updated on a variable schedule.

Word-of-Mouth
Zenga says that the sites gets very good word-of-mouth on betting forums. Sometimes subscribers will post winning picks for games, which Zenga views as both a good and bad thing. But he has decided not to fight it since people typically post when they’re winning, and therefore the post is good advertising for the site.

Other advertising
The site does employ some SEO, but Zenga says search engine traffic has never led to good results for him.

Conversion Tactics

Zenga told us that 3% of total unique visitors who come to the site convert to a paid subscription.

He attributes his conversion rate to the addition of a homepage video, which brought an instant uptick in conversions. He also says the discounted offer for the Professor plan and a 60-day guarantee for the Platinum plan help.

He did try an exit overlay at one point, but he and his partner felt it was obnoxious, so they removed it. They didn’t see any decrease in conversions.

Zenga also offers a free “How to beat the bookie” pamphlet for skeptical consumers. He reaches out to prospects through his own site, by making the offer available in the header on all the site’s pages.

Retention Tactics

Most Professor plan subscribers will stick to three to four months before they discontinue or upgrade, mostly because it’s a bad deal to pay $47 a month when you can get a lifetime package at $197. Zenga says it’s about a 50/50 split between upgrading and discontinuing.

His most solid retention tactic has been choosing winning picks. If the algorithm is having a cold streak and producing losing bets, retention rates drop.

Cross-Sales and Upsales

Zenga is able to upsell 25-30% of Professor subscribers into the Platinum package. Since the average lifetime of the Professor packages is three to four months (with an initial first month of $5, and the subsequent months at $47/month), he can nearly double his account value with an upsell. A lifetime subscription plan for $197 is a great tactic in this instance, more so because he can also legitimately market them via email for life. And since a paying subscriber is more likely to buy from you than a new one, this is a great way to increase your bottom line. Also, given that his audience likes to gamble, upselling them into a lifetime package is a good way to avoid credit card churn.

He also upsells paying subscribers into one-time PDFs and continuous email picks for sports like NASCAR and Mixed Martial Arts (MMA). When he does so, he’ll roll out the offer in 3-day increments, he doesn’t segment his mailing list, but simply sends the offer to every one of the 20,000 people on his free email opt-in list. He usually gets 100-200 people to buy, but in order to speed up the cash flow, he’ll discount the price from $97 to $77 for a 72-hour deadline. This leads to 30-40 initial sales instead of a normal one or two on the first days of a new offer.

About Mike Zenga

Mike Zenga originally got into Internet marketing in order to learn how to market a site dedicated to home building. After success with that site, he teamed up with his friend Rich Allen and combined their love of sports with his Internet marketing skills to create SportsBettingProfessor.com.

His biggest surprise has been just how many people out there are like him and have the same interests. The site has enjoyed a warm welcome from other sports betting fans, and most have found the site through word-of-mouth.

His advice to other people in the paid content/Internet marketing business is to NOT copy what you think is the best site out there. “I’ve always had horrible luck when I’ve done that,” he says. It’s better to add your own personality and do something different.

Vendors & Technology

Hosting — HostGator
http://www.hostgator.com/

Affiliate Tracking & Payment Processing — Clickbank, with Visa, MC, Amex and Cirrus.
http://www.clickbank.com
*Zenga says he pays a high rate of 7.5% for processing fees, but doesn’t mind since he gets access to all of ClickBank’s followers. ClickBank also makes it easy for affiliates to sell his product.

Email Management — iContact
http://www.icontact.com/

Web Design/Development –Shawn Everet and other freelancers
http://shawneveret.com/

Video Editing — Ian Zagaglia out of southern Mass

Customer Service — 3 fulltime people on contract through an undisclosed third-party vendor.

Insider Analysis

We applaud Mike Zenga for finding effective ways to drive traffic to the site. SportsBettingProfessor.com has effective traffic-driving sites, and we like the lifetime subscription plan that extends the usual three to four month account lifetime indefinitely. We also love his cross-sale/upsale program into the lifetime subscription plan.

Zenga should definitely be employing more SEO tactics. He also mentioned exploring the option of Facebook ads in the future, which shows good instinct. But we suspect that given the site’s tremendous word-of-mouth, he may actually most benefit from a stronger social media presence. It’s unclear by visiting the site whether Rich Allen is a real person, and more friends and activity on Facebook would certainly help diminish that perception. The site would also benefit from a robust tell-a-friend campaign with current and new members.

SportsBettingProfessor.com may also want to test certain site features, like auto-playing the video but not the audio when landing on the site. Zenga should also cookie users so that when they return to the homepage from exploring other sections of the site, the video doesn’t start all over again.

Since the Expert package is a marketing tactic, people who choose it shouldn’t be automatically given Platinum benefits, but instead be offered the option to purchase an “add-on” to their plan that includes winning picks (perhaps titled “Expert+”). Zenga could also target more major marketing partnerships to drive traffic to the site.

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