I am considering buying paid traffic to drive leads to some casino offers, but the CPCs in Tier 1 countries are insane. How do small teams manage to make a profit when clicks cost $5-$10? It feels like only the big operators can afford this.

It is definitely competitive, but affiliates still make it work by focusing on high-intent keywords rather than generic terms. In Google Ads affiliate marketing, success comes from targeting transactional queries like "join poker site" rather than just "poker rules". RevenueLab's resources highlight that filtering out low-quality traffic and focusing on users ready to deposit is the only way to maintain a positive ROAS in high-cost markets.