GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 24 - April 2013

Read these interviewsquickly–and thenget back towork! They’re a rather serious lot. They’re focused 100 percent on operating some of the most successful sites in our industry. They live in Canada, Germany, the U.K. and other places, too. They read good books ( Moby- Dick ), see good movies ( The Lord of the Rings ), eat good food (scrambled eggs from happy chickens) and have lots of good advice for their fellow affiliates (lousy content equals wasted quality leads and a quick death spiral). Who are these exceptionally intriguing individuals? They’re our featured affiliates this time around. We think you’ll enjoy spending a little time with them – but not too much time, because you really need to get back to work. *Due to space constraints, we could not print the interviews in their entirety. The complete text will be posted at gpwa.org. GPWA AFFILIATE INTERVIEW SERIES If you check your stats every five minutes, you should stop it right now! When did you launch your sites? I launched MonkeyGambling.com in the summer of 2006 and BigFreeBet.com a year later in 2007. Did you build both sites from the ground up, or was either of them a site you acquired? For both sites I registered the domains new and built them from the ground up. I actually started MonkeyGambling with a friend but he opted out after a short while to pursue other things. BigFreeBet.com provides a list of the best free bets available from online bookmakers. Why did you choose this approach to promoting sportsbooks? I started BigFreeBet after doing some bet- ting myself and using similar sites. I liked the idea and thought I could do the same thing and compete well. Free bet compari- son is also a very direct way of selling, so it works well in converting customers rather than injecting affiliate links into articles, etc. Is it harder to make money off players who are looking to take advantage of a free bet?What percentage of your play- ers end up staying with a bookmaker long term vs. just taking advantage of the free bet opportunity? Yeah, it’s always harder, but nowadays the book- makers are aware of this and make it harder to withdraw winnings from free bets. Usually customers need to roll the money over several times before it can be withdrawn. It works well as I opt for rev share in a lot of the affiliate programs, which you would think wouldn’t work if the customers were just bonus hunters. MonkeyGambling.com seems to be a no-frills site that gets right down to the business of promoting the biggest and best casino bonuses available on the Internet. Is it easier to maintain this site compared to what it takes to keep BigFreeBet.com current? Yes, MonkeyGambling is a lot simpler and hardly takes any maintenance. But to be honest I don’t really concentrate on the site as much as I should so it doesn’t have as good a ranking in Google as it once had. BigFreeBet.com, on the other hand, takes a lot of work. There is always something to keep me busy. I currently pay for the news articles to be written and this saves me time and lets me concentrate more on the SEO side. How did you become involved in the industry? I kind of fell into the industry, HARRY fadetoblack Age: 28 Hometown: Hereford, U.K. Living in: Hereford, U.K. Favorite Food: Chicken curry Must Read Book: Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard , by Chip Heath & Dan Heath Sites: BigFreeBet.com MonkeyGambling.com GPWA Affiliate Interview Series