GPWA Times Magaine - Issue 23 - February 2013

GPWA AFFILIATE INTERVIEW SERIES Both of your sites – WinDrawWin and PredictZ – offer free football tips, cov- er more than 100 worldwide soccer leagues, have tremendous followings on Facebook and Twitter – and both sites pull in some serious traffic. To what do you attribute their popularity, and how would you describe the differ- ences between the two sites? If I had to attribute just one thing to the success of both sites then it would be pure hard work. I only started delicating myself to the business full-time in October 2011. Prior to this I had a full time job and there- fore worked on the sites every spare hour I had during evenings and weekends. There are not many, if any shortcuts to success in the affiliate business anymore. With regards to the sites themselves, I set up WinDrawWin back in 2003 and its age and organic growth are something you cannot buy or produce overnight. Both sites’ popularity is due to solid organic growth and content that people want to come back and see each day, which have both in turn built a strong user base that trusts our brands and websites and more importantly finds them useful. Think of the sites you use yourself – how often do you visit a banner farm versus another site that has solid, useful and dynamic infor- mation you want to read? Our sites are popular because of their content – across both sites we displayed a page to a user 52 million times in 2012. The sites are meant to have distinct objec- tives and differences. On first impressions WinDrawWin and PredictZ look similar – they are not in reality. At an objective level PredictZ aims to provide more detailed analysis and statistics – you can view over 100 leagues and five seasons of history for every team in those leagues (and we will be adding a lot more soon). There is still a long way to go, too – we have loads of ideas and projects to expand this data. WinDrawWin is more about current data and was set up at the time to bring togeth- er current information about upcoming football games that would help punters in analyzing one team playing another. We try not to overcomplicate or over- engineer what we present to users, giving them quick and easy access to information that will help them in making their own decisions on what they will bet on in the next day or two. I remember doing the football pools when I was younger and trawling through the 60 or so fixtures on the coupon alongside the newspapers and league tables and trying to pick out poten- tial draws. Consolidating all the potential information behind these fixtures into something you can review in 10 minutes is what drove me to develop WinDrawWin into what it is today. Talk a little bit about using social me- dia to help your sites become a suc- cess. It’s something many webmasters struggle with, yet you’ve seemed to succeed. What do Facebook and Twit- ter bring you, both in terms of commu- nity and traffic? Which have you found more useful? Or are the two audiences different? The popularity of our sites and our loyal user population are a good fit with Facebook and Twitter. Conversely, if you have a website where only 20 per- cent of your users are return visitors then you may also find it difficult to get them to stick on Facebook and Twitter. To be honest I do not think we have scratched the surface on Facebook or Twitter. Our first post on Facebook was November 2010, so we have not been ac- tive for very long. Like many webmasters my view on it at the time was “Facebook is a waste of time,” “Facebook will not be around in two years” and “Why would I spend loads of time posting on a website outside of my own website?” However, my partner, Claire, who also works in the business, convinced me that it was some- thing we could not afford to ignore. Webmasters must recognize where and how Facebook and Twitter fit into their business – they are not one and the same thing. Twitter is much more instant and what you post appears in people’s Twitter feeds immediately. If your followers also follow a thousand other accounts then your tweet may only be seen for a few sec- onds, if at all. Facebook is more commu- nal in my experience. People can post on your page and you can get a discussion go- ing. However, both Facebook and Twitter provide an invaluable way of getting your website recommended to other people. Personal recommendations are invaluable in any business. I like to view social me- dia first as an outlet for my useful content, and the traffic growth and revenue will naturally come from that. You have to approach social media with caution, though – I think many websites use it primarily to push advertisements to their followers. Followers soon get bored with this and there is definitely a balance to be achieved between content and ad- vertisements. Again it comes down to that common rule when operating websites – think organically and sustainably. If you post too much content that people are not interested in you will soon get more unfol- lows than follows. What tips can you share from your so- cial media experiences that other af- filiates and webmasters will find help- ful? You just cannot afford NOT to have a social media presence these days, even if you think it will not make you any direct revenue at first. Customers will look for you on Facebook and Twitter, and if you do not have a presence and your brand becomes popular then you can bet that someone will register your name or try to impersonate you, like I found! Someone e- mailed me asking me whether a URL was my official Facebook page and it turned out to be a scammer taking payments for football predictions! Ban and report the spammers and scam- mers on your Facebook and Twitter ac- counts. Do not just let everyone and any- one follow you (I would probably have at least 10-20 percent more followers than I do today had I not banned and blocked unscrupulous followers). Initially you will get a whole host of scammers com- ing out of the woodwork, viewing you as a fresh new account that they can follow and ultimately scam your followers. If you follow this policy the scammers will soon learn that it is wasted effort trying to scam you. I see Twitter accounts with thousands of followers but when you look into them you find they are mostly people trying out scams, offering ways to get x thousand new Twitter followers, and fol- lowers who are obviously not interested Want to make it big? Good affiliate managers can help. MATHEW windrawwin GPWA Affiliate Interview Series