GPWA Times Magaine - Issue 23 - February 2013

consider starting again, and that is what I have done by launching my new website, Bonus-betting-offers.com. I am still quite new to the game to be commenting on howmyplayers have changed. What traits do you look for in an affiliate manager? How about in an affiliate program? The one trait that I value most is honesty. I like affiliate man- agers who are very quick to solve any problems that may arise and are very speedy at answering my e-mail. I like affiliate pro- grams that are updated daily. They all use similar automated software and claim to update their figures daily, but in my expe- rience the only affiliate program to update their figures on a daily basis each and every day is Sky Bet, which gives me confidence that everything is as it should be with them. All other affiliate programs should be looking to follow their example. Doubts creep into my mind when some affiliate programs are not up- dated for days or weeks. How do you choose which sites to work with and pro- mote? I like to promote the well-known brand names that have a good reputation. We understand that you’re not too keen on paying outside SEO companies to do the work for you. How much time do you devote to SEO? Yes, I like to do all my own SEO. The hard- est thing about SEO is understanding how search engines work. Once you know why search engines place one website above another website in their search results you will find that SEO is not that difficult to master. It is very time consuming collecting “natural” backlinks, as any webmaster will tell you, and I would much prefer to spend most of my time writing quality content for my websites. Which skills did you need as an affiliate that were the most difficult to acquire? Which skills did you already have when you entered the business? Well, coming from a welding back- ground and having no IT experience at all before I started, the most challenging thing for me was building my own website. I got stuck on very simple things, like creating a copyright symbol! If you had to pick five keys to success as an affiliate, what would they be? 1. Patience — It takes several months to achieve high rank- ings in the search results. If you are targeting highly com- petitive search terms like “Free bets” then you can expect to spend six to nine months in the Google “Sandbox” with a new website. There is a lot of debate about whether the Google Sandbox exists or not, and in my experience it does exist for highly competitive search terms like “Free bets,” but I have found it is possible to rank highly for less competi- tive search terms within weeks. If you are expecting to earn money instantly, then you are going to be very disappointed. Age: 48 Hometown: Bradford, West Yorkshire, England Living in: Bradford Favorite Food: Pizza Must Read Book: GPWA Times Magazine Sites: free-bets-uk.org bonus-betting-offers.com 39