GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 10 - Sept 2009

62 GPWA Times :: “Tellyour familyyou work in advertising” You’ve got an interesting group of sites, with sports betting being the predomi- nant offering on all of them. What mo- tivated you and your partner, Milan, to focus on sportsbooks? My partner, Mi- lan, always liked sports betting.He started at off-line bookmakers, but eventually switched toonlinebookmakers after doing some research. He visited some sites and also learnedaboutaffiliateprograms. What are your favorite sports teams? Milan’s favorite team is ACMilan – that’s where his nickname comes from. I’m not much into sports, so Idon’t havea favorite team. You operate principally in the Hungar- ian andRomanianmarkets.Anyplans to movemore aggressively into othermar- kets? We’replanningoncreatingaGerman version of our stats site and doing some- thingabout sportsbetting inGerman. What prompted you to join the online gambling industry? Milan and I used to live together during college. He came up with the idea of building aWeb site about online bookmakers in Hungarian. I was studyingcomputerscienceandknewacou- ple of things about buildingWeb sites and started working on it. That’s how we got into it and learnedabout gamblingaffiliate programs. We knew about affiliate stuff, butnever thought itwouldgenerateagood income. Obviously we were wrong. Before becominganaffiliateIwasatcollege. Inmy freetimeIworkedasa freelancerbuildinga coupleofWebsites. What prompted you to join the GPWA? How has your membership helped you? I didn’t know about the GPWA until this year.Wewere thinkingabout going toCAP Amsterdam this year but an affiliateman- ager invited us to CACAmsterdam, which was on a better date for us. We learned about theGPWAon theCACWeb site and registered. I started to read the forum and liked it. It wassomething thatwedidn’tknowexisted, a place where other affiliates like us were talkingabouta lotof interesting things,not to mention the presence of affiliate pro- gramson the forum.Thencame theprivate membershipapplication,theapproval,talks withothermembers,etc. Itcertainlyhelped infindingvaluable infoand in establishing bettercontactwithsomeprograms. How did you choose your GPWA screen name? This isanicknameIuseeverywhere. Istartedusing it in2002 if Iremembercor- rectly.IwasaLinuxfanbackthen(stillam), andused thisname insome IRCchannels. Do you like to gamble? If so, what are your favorite games at a live casino, and what are your favorites online? I like to playpoker once in awhile. I used tobet in the beginning but it wasn’t anything seri- ous. I’veneverplayed ina livecasinobutI’d like to try it sometime. You’ve been an affiliate since 2005. As you look back over the last four years, what’s theworst thingyou’vehad todeal with so far?What’s the best thing that’s happened? Theworst thingwas probably when ourmain site, sportfogadas.org, was excluded fromGoogle because it had hid- denkeywords in it (we’reprettysuresome- body sent a complaint toGoogle). It tooka month to get it back. I didn’t knowmuch aboutSEOback thenbut thispushedme to learninga lotabout it. The best thing happened this year when we attendedCACAmsterdam.We’d never been to a conference before so this was a new experience.Wemet a couple of other affiliates and affiliatemanagers and spent somepleasantdays inAmsterdam. What’syour favoritevacation spot?Why? I like hills and mountains and we have plenty here in Transylvania so this makes this placemy favorite vacation spot. I can always find something new here, some- thing toexplore. I also like to travel abroad andvisitnewplaces. What does your family think about your work as an affiliate? They have mixed opinions about it. My parents say it’s an uncertain income. Other family members don’t even understand what it is, so I tell them Iwork inadvertising. How longwas itbeforeyour sites started earning you money? We made some af- ter the firstmonth. It wasn’tmuch but we invested it in buying a domain and paid hosting for our site. In the secondmonth wemade a littlemore and tooka coupleof friends out for pizza to celebrate. As time passed,our incomestartedgrowing. You’re based in Transylvania, and vam- pires are incredibly cool right now. How are the undead of Transylvania dealing withallof thisnewfoundnotoriety,or ce- lebrity,dependingonone’spointofview? It’s good for tourists but natives don’t Imre Szücs | vmlinuz GPWA Affiliate Interview Series INTERVIEWWITH