GPWA Times - Issue 21 - May 2012

What do you like about the industry? I like the variety, in- novation and fun offered by the casinos and game developers. I like the constant change, which keeps you on your toes, and the opportunity to meet and interact with people from all over the world. On a personal level I enjoy being able to work from home, see my kids and go out and do something in the middle of the day instead of being stuck in an office. What don’t you like about the industry? Loads. Where to start? The lack of regulation and protection for many players, especially in the USA; the belligerent attitude of governments in overreaching their jurisdictions and seizing domains, for ex- ample; the dodgy casinos that rip off players; the fact that most “lifetime” contracts with affiliate programs aren’t worth the pa- per they are written on; and the amount of spam that I receive as both a player and affiliate. Probably my biggest current dislike is the almost complete reli- ance on bonuses as a means of player acquisition. Most bonuses are now “fool’s gold” with ridiculous wagering requirements and T&Cs, and the casinos refuse to implement simple technologi- cal solutions to prevent players from violating those T&Cs. For example, every casino should be blocking disallowed games from being played after claiming a bonus. Sadly I can count the num- ber that do so on one hand. We recently had a player who won over $30,000 on a slots jackpot at his first online casino, but because he naively played a couple of hands of a disallowed game after winning the jackpot he got nothing (the casino is on our blacklist, mind you, so it’s not that surprising). Not only does it make my blood boil, but it turns new players off from playing online and reflects badly upon the whole industry. What surprised you most about the industry? The fact that all campaign tracking, data and revenue are totally dependent on your trust in the affiliate program to do the right thing. That is unheard of in other online industries that I have experienced. You posted in the forums last year that although you think bet365 has a great site, especially from the player’s point of view, you were dissatisfied with the wording of bet365’s neg- ative carryover policy. Have you since been able to “come to terms” with bet365 regarding this issue? No. I don’t have a problem with negative carryover per se. The problem arose be- cause their policy is to only wire commissions once they exceed a certain amount. We had a little under that amount and then had a winner one month, resulting in a negative for the month. So they subtracted the negative from our previous unpaid earn- ings. We did not think this was the right thing to do considering their policy was preventing us from withdrawing it earlier. They refused to change anything so we just had to suck it up and wait until we earned more to withdraw it. We think they are a great place for players and have no problem recommending them, but their affiliate managers didn’t exactly endear themselves to us after that episode. Sometimes that happens – i.e., you get a great casino with an ordinary affiliate program. In such cases we err on the side of the player. How long do you give yourself for answering e-mail? What e- mail tips can you offer? I am terrible at this and the only tip I can give is don’t be like me (currently 221 unread e-mails in my inbox ). How do you manage your “to-do” lists? Do you use any special software to help you out? I set reminders on my phone and use a program on the computer called Together. reinventedsoftware.com/together/ How much time does it take to keep your site updated? In man hours it is a full-time job for a couple of people but we spread that workload around among three or four people with only myself working on it full time. There are daily news articles to write, and if we are not performing new reviews or updating old ones, we are developing or adding new features, chatting with the members in the forums or doing various other administrative tasks. How much time do you devote to SEO and/or social network- ing in order to drive more traffic to your site? We have a dedi- cated social networking guy who updates Facebook and interacts with people there on a daily basis. I’m the first to admit that I’m a bit old school and don’t use social networks at all. I don’t have a personal Facebook, Twitter or G+ account and if I did I would probably spend all my time talking crap with people and getting nothing done. At the moment it’s not a big traffic driver; it’s more a value-add for our members and a way to interact with them on their terms, but we are slowly growing our social presence. We are at the stage where we don’t really devote much time at all to SEO. Our CMS handles the technical side of it in terms of on-site factors and we know that the way the site is structured follows best practice. The focus for us is more on creating an in- teresting and unique experience for our visitors that keeps them coming back for more. We’re really trying hard to build a long- lasting and self-sustaining community. I don’t want to be reliant on search engines (or social networks for that matter) for the ma- jority of our traffic because in the long term search algorithms in- evitably change, search engines merge and/or go out of business, evil competitors try to clone your site or destroy your rankings, Facebook could do a MySpace, etc. GPWA AFFILIATE INTERVIEW SERIES “I don’t think we need to get players excited about winning. Everyone is already excited when they win! It’s more about people sharing their wins and excitement with their friends. It’s great for players to see others winning, especially if it’s someone they have talked to on the forum who has hit a jackpot or something. From an affiliate perspective it can help show others that yes you can win at an online casino and you’ll be paid.” GPWA Affiliate Interview Series