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found this item related to gift cards on gambling911

The latest craze in the online gambling affiliate sector has been the promotion of so-called "gift cards" or virtual Visas. That craze may be short lived as some of these gift card providers have been notifying affiliates that they will not permit their product to be advertised on internet gambling-related websites.

For affiliates, this serves as yet another blow in an industry that for the past six months has grown increasingly unstable.

Many online gambling sites that once offered lucrative affiliate programs to US-based portal sites have since left the market. Only a handful of the "good" affiliate programs still exist.

For some affiliates it's been nothing but an uphill battle getting paid.

"My affiliate revenue has been cut by 75%," says one website owner. "It has been a trying time I think for most people".

"Gift card companies are catching on and they want nothing to do with online gambling"
We know of at least two online gambling affiliates who recently suffered nervous breakdowns.

"You have to realize, some of these people went from making a cool six figure salary in only a month's time to earning practically nothing at all."

Gift cards offered an exciting venture for online poker and casino affiliates since the cards enjoyed a rather high acceptance rate at some internet gambling websites and were relatively easy to obtain. Not to mention they were in high demand.

Joe Williams, a gambler from South Florida observed "Ever since NETeller pulled out of the US market, I've noticed that our local Walgreens cannot even keep these gift cards on their shelves."

Whether there is a correlation between these shortages and a high demand to bet at online poker sites is not known, but gift cards certainly offered suffering affiliates a means to recoup some losses during the first quarter of this year.

"Gift card companies are catching on and they want nothing to do with online gambling," barked Gambling911.com's own Marketing guru, Payton O'Brien.

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Christopher Costigan, Gambling911.com

Originally published April 6, 2007 11:07 am ET