GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 19 - February 2012

As mobile gaming continues to in- crease in popularity, do you have any thoughts on the market or any actual plans to begin promoting a program or two? Yes, I have already obtained a couple of interesting domains, including www.mobile-casino.asia . Mobile gaming obviously needs to be done on the interna- tional level right now, because the Polish market is not mature enough to support projects aimed at a local mobile market. Mobile gaming is definitely a promising market and I am trying to get my head around that, sorting out how much of it is just hype and how much of it represents a real business opportunity. In promoting your sites, do you put more time into SEO or into enhancing your social-media presence? Which in your opinion produces the most con- versions? SEO is definitely my prior- ity. Social media presence and response might be fine for my ego, but businesswise I want to be where my potential play- ers are looking for help, and that is still search engines. If you ask me, I would skip that whole “social” thing and jump right onto mobile apps. For example, AppStore search optimization is the thing of the future – provided you have your own aff app already there. Also, most people think “social = Facebook + Twitter.” They forget how powerful YouTube is. Kids don’t read anymore, they watch videos – they search for clips, not articles. How long do you give yourself for re- sponding to e-mail? And what e-mail tips can you offer? If an e-mail makes sense, I respond within 48 hours max. My tip? Flag any e-mail you find interesting and review your flagged items every three days. Anyway, an IMPORTANT e-mail gets answered immediately. How do you manage your “to-do” lists? Do you use any special software to help you out? No, I use an old-school Moleskine notebook and a pencil to put down my ideas, action items, things to do, etc. I also run a general Excel spreadsheet to keep track of long-term projects regard- ing my main domains – something I re- view once a month, to be honest. Time management is one of the big- gest issues facing affiliates.What time- management tips can you offer your fellow webmasters? Focus on what you do in your “aff-time.” Get down to busi- ness. Create an account with Xmarks for your browser and switch to aff-only book- marks when you work on your sites. No Facebook, no YouTube, no Twitter. Just work-related links in the top bar. Once you start your daily session, jot down in your notebook REALISTIC goals to achieve today. Cross them out and don’t move forward if you’re not fully done with the previous one. In general – no magic formula here. Just hard work, that’s all. How much time does it take to keep your sites updated? No limits here. If I could commit all the time I had in the world, I would spend three to four hours a day. The rest would go to my little daughter, sports, reading and video games in the evening. How much time do you devote to so- cial networking in order to drive more traffic to your site? Honestly, almost nothing. I might be wrong, but I believe in “fresh blood” from Google, not the “friends” from Facebook. Plus, gamblers prefer to keep a low profile in Poland. The ban and legal situation don’t really go well with the whole “social” concept, if you know what I mean. . . . What prompted you to join the GPWA, and how has it helped you so far? It was a GPWA seal on one of the sites I pur- chased. I checked out what it meant, got into forums and lurked around. At first I saw it as being too U.S.-centric, but since Black Friday I’ve seen it switching more toward the European market and audi- ence. I got some helpful advice from the site as well as some business leads. Still, I think personally it is too fragmented as a discussion forum to keep track of what’s really going on. I would prefer way less subforums: I am a big fan of the evolu- tion theory – weak threads will drop down and interesting topics will stay on top, so there’s no reason to categorize everything. If you could have dinner with any five people, living or dead, who would they be, and why? David Simon, the creator of The Wire – I love the show. Ricky Gervais – this guy cracks me up. Donald Tusk, the current Polish Prime Minister – maybe I could explain why our gambling laws suck and how to make them better. Mike Patton from Faith No More – for the music. And Charles Bukowski – for the books. When you need to get as far away from work as possible, where do you go? I am an avid runner, so I just get up from my desk and run 10-15 km, to- tally relaxing and recharging. For a lon- ger break I go snowboarding or hit the Greek island of Ios. How do your family and friends feel about the way you make your living? My family supports me and my friends don’t know much about it. I tend not to bore them with my business life; we have better topics to discuss when we meet! If someone were visiting you, what’s the one place you’d definitely take them to see? The Warsaw Uprising Museum. It commemorates a tragic yet heroic moment of our history, which is hardly known to outsiders. What’s your all-time favorite movie? Swingers (1996). It reminds me of my good old student days, hanging out with my crew, still able to waste my time and have fun. And it has the cult scene in Vegas, where Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn pretend to be high rollers at the blackjack tables. Anyone from the indus- try should see this. It’s so money! If you won $20 million in the lottery, what would you do with the money? I would take my family and friends on a crazy trip to Vegas and double the winnings. . . . If you were a brick in a wall, which brick would you be? Probably the bottom one, hardest to remove. What are three things that nobody knows about you? 1. I sailed on a small boat all around Eu- rope when I was 18 with a captain and five other mates who, like me, had no clue about sailing. 2. I was one of the first downhill skate- boarders in Poland in the mid-80s. 3. I was playing online poker for micro- stakes once and got into an argument with another player via chat. The heat was on and we took it to a high-stakes, heads-up face-off where I lost my entire bankroll within five minutes. GPWA AFFILIATE INTERVIEW SERIES GPWA Affiliate Interview Series