GPWA Times Magaine - Issue 23 - February 2013

in that Twitter account content and are just following everyone and anyone to try to boost their own profile. There is an art to getting the right number of followers compared to the number of people you follow yourself. As always, organic, real growth is key. It is crazy that people buy Twitter followers to try to boost their im- age and profile. It is a case of Ground- hog Day in my opinion – remember all the people who paid for backlinks two or three years ago, and they are now get- ting hammered by Google on ranking? I have heard stories of people now paying for poor backlinks to be removed because they are damaging a site’s SEO! Other advice I would give would be to weigh up how much effort you are going to put into social media. I have worked for companies that dedicated up to 10 full-time people to social media! That is a bit over the top in my opinion. It is difficult to build a viable business case for spending time on social media, but it is one of those in- tangible business benefits that you cannot easily measure through revenue. Having worked as a business analyst in the avia- tion industry for 12 years I know a lot about doing speculative projects that do not have much direct immediate revenue benefit! But sometimes you have to look beyond revenue and think about other benefits. You clearly spend a lot of time on con- tent. Some of your content takes the form of news. Some of it takes the form of predictions. How much time do you spend on updating content? Do you spend more time on the predictions or the news? Yes, our vast array of con- tent is something that makes us stand out ahead of the competition in my opinion. If you are just starting to put together a new affiliate website then it is so easy to throw up a load of banners and hope for the best, but if you want to grow a large and successful website you have to have unique and useful content. Our websites require full-time attention to publish and Age: 37 Hometown: Berkshire, U.K. Living in: Berkshire Favorite Food: I am not a big foodie, but I like to try anything new. Must Read Book: Any good autobiography always intrigues me. The Railway Man, by Eric Lomax, sticks in my mind. Sites: windrawwin.com predictz.com Mathew in White Sands, New Mexico. 45 GPWA Affiliate Interview Series