GPWA Times - Issue 21 - May 2012

Age 36 Hometown Sydney Living in Sydney Favorite Food Thai Must Read Book The Farseer Trilogy, by Robin Hobb Sites casinolistings.com Helping players by cutting out the first tier of sup- port and going straight to someone who can actually solve the problem is a key role that you can perform as an affiliate to help justify the value of your site. It is a great way to build a loyal following of players and also keeps you up to date with who is paying and who is delaying. What traits do you look for in an affiliate man- ager? How about in an affiliate program? We deal with hundreds of affiliate managers and I am sure that many of themwould attest that I don’t give them anywhere near the time of day that they are after. I value the managers who respond quickly to any re- quests or questions but otherwise leave you to your own devices. The same goes for affiliate programs, really – the best are the ones that pay automatical- ly each month without making us chase them, and keep their players happy and loyal. What advice would you offer someone just starting out in the industry? Be patient. This industry has low barriers to entry and as a result it is ultracompetitive and it is not the “easy” way to make money that it was in years gone by. On the other hand, the vast majority of affiliate sites exist merely to intercept and tag themselves on a visitor’s journey between a search engine and a casino, and offer nothing of real value. So there is a lot of opportunity for someone pre- pared to build something unique and useful for players. Pick something you love and start off in that niche, then go from there. It’s easy to spot the sites created by passionate people who love what they are doing and know what they are talking about. Those are the ones that will stand out and prosper in the long run. Learn about SEO but build your site for people, not search engines. What prompted you to join the GPWA? How has it helped you? The ability to talk to, listen to and learn from others in the industry with more experience was the main attraction of the GPWA. It has helped us avoid dodgy affiliate programs, learn countless things about how the industry operates, and enabled us to get in contact with otherwise unreachable affiliate managers. A few years back you made a nice gesture: you offered fellow GPWA webmasters a very well put-together casino tourna- ments listing script on an “almost-totally-free” basis. What prompted you to do this? It was actually a bit of an experiment for us. I had identified that casino tournaments were a virtually untouched niche at the time. So we thought that offering a tourna- ments listing would be a good way of developing the niche while at the same time hopefully positioning ourselves as an authority on casino tournaments. Webmasters are still using it and adding it to their sites to this day, so I think it has been a success. 51 GPWA Affiliate Interview Series