Affiliate Disclosure
This page sets out plainly how Online Pokies earns money, what an affiliate link is, what it does and doesn't change about the way reviews are written, and what we promise — and don't promise — about the operators we cover. The wider picture sits on the About and Editorial Policy pages too; this disclosure is the short version of the commercial side.
What an affiliate link is
Most outbound links here that point at an operator carry a tracking tag, usually built into the URL itself. When a reader clicks one and lands on the operator's site, the operator records that the visit originated with us. If that reader then registers, completes identity verification and makes a real-money deposit, the operator pays a commission. That amount is either a one-off fee per qualifying registration or, more often, a share of the operator's net revenue from that player over a defined window. Either way the reader pays nothing extra: they see the same welcome bonus, the same wagering terms and the same cashier limits as anyone who reaches the operator by another route. The commission comes out of the operator's own marketing budget.
Not every outbound link is an affiliate link. Links to regulators (ACMA, Curaçao eGaming, UKGC), to support services (Gambling Help Online, BetStop), to independent player communities (AskGamblers, Casino Guru, Trustpilot) and to other reference material are plain hyperlinks with no tracking and no commercial tie. Links to game studios are likewise untracked. The rule of thumb is simple: if a link points at a casino operator with a clickable signup, assume it's affiliated. If it points anywhere else, assume it isn't.
What the partnership does not buy
A commercial relationship with an operator buys that operator no advantage in scoring on Online Pokies, and the absence of one drags nothing down either. The framework described in the Editorial Policy is applied identically to every brand that gets a full review. In practice we have rated partner operators at six and below, and rated operators with no commercial agreement at eight and above. Two reasons for that. The first is editorial and obvious: a review site that pads scores for paying brands lasts about as long as it takes readers to catch on, which isn't long. The second is commercial: a high score that doesn't match what readers find on the operator's site produces fast cancellations, support escalations and complaints — and those push chargeback rates up and lifetime values down, which is exactly the number the operator is paying us to move the right way. The long-term commercial logic and the editorial logic both run in the same direction.
What the partnership does buy
What an affiliate relationship does buy is access — occasionally — to specific data the operator doesn't publish on its marketing site. That might be raw withdrawal-time distributions, bonus participation rates, or KYC clearance times measured against a documented window. We use that data where it sharpens the review; we never use it to write claims that conflict with what we saw during ordinary player testing. Where the operator's internal numbers and our observations disagree, the observations win and the disagreement is flagged in the review itself.
How readers can verify this
If you want to test whether the editorial position above is real or just marketing, three pieces of evidence are public. First, the rating distribution itself: across every operator currently covered, partner brands and non-partner brands sit on the same curve. Second, the published lists of operators we won't recommend at any rating — most of those are partner operators we tested and dropped after support quality, cashier behaviour or licence standing slipped. Third, the change log on each review: every score adjustment carries a date and a one-line reason, and partner operators get no free pass on negative moves. If any of those three patterns stops holding up over time, the place to flag it is the Contact page.
What this disclosure does not cover
Three things sit outside this page's scope. First, this disclosure is not legal advice on whether you can lawfully use the operators we review from an Australian address — the About page describes the position under the Interactive Gambling Act 2001 (Cth) in more detail. Second, it is not a substitute for your own due diligence on the operator: every brand has its own terms, licence references and dispute procedures, and the job of reading them sits with the individual player. Third, it is not a guarantee of operator behaviour: we test rigorously and write honestly, but operator conditions move faster than any review schedule, so any figure you read on a review page should be re-checked on the operator's own cashier before it shapes a real-money decision.
Responsible gambling, restated
Online Pokies is funded by people clicking through and signing up at operators. That model creates an obvious incentive for any affiliate site to push registrations, and that incentive has to be weighed honestly against the harm gambling can cause. We don't recommend gambling as a way to make money. We don't push deposits in our copy. We write every review so it reads as a "do not register" recommendation as readily as a "register" one, and we keep a published list of brands we no longer cover. The Responsible Gambling page covers harm-minimisation tools and Australian support services in detail; please read it before depositing real money anywhere, with or without one of our reviews attached.
Information collected from readers who arrive through any of these links is described on the Privacy Policy page; the technical detail of analytics and tracking sits on the Cookie Policy page.
Questions about this disclosure
If anything on this page is unclear, the right place is the Contact page. We respond in writing, on the record, and keep the reply on file so the same question doesn't have to be asked twice.