GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 24 - April 2013

but we don’t work with most of those affili- ate programs. What we have found is that the sites that score well with TrustRank generally have good affiliate programs be- hind them. It’s not 100 percent accurate, but we have avoided many of the affiliate pro- grams that have gone rogue in the past and credit that to knowing whom to trust first. If you had to pick five keys to success as an affiliate, what would they be? 1. Start with a good idea. No one wants to see another cookie-cutter website offer- ing a random set of banners and links with no real information behind them (and neither does Google). 2. Do your research and participate in the industry as much as you can. You will learn valuable information including how to avoid making mistakes from others who have already done this. 3. Build a website that converts. If you aren’t providing information in a clear and con- cise manner, you will miss a lot of oppor- tunities with your website traffic. Track your traffic and test new things on your website. We did this and increased our conversion rate over 20 percent. 4. Invest most of your time into building traffic. Traffic is the lifeblood of an af- filiate website, so you should be building content, building links, building likes and building shares as much as possible once your website is up-and-running. 5. Don’t stop improving. This industry is constantly evolving and your website should evolve with it. What prompted you to join the GPWA? How has it helped you? For me, I didn’t know that much about the industry in the early days, so it was extremely beneficial to interact with other affiliate marketers to understand how this industry works. The forums on GPWA are an invaluable resource for helping you build your busi- ness, from the information that other af- filiates will share to the business relation- ships you can foster though the community. What do you like about the industry? I’m not much of a gambler myself, which prob- ably keeps me out of trouble from burning up the profits, but the industry itself is full of energy and constantly evolving. While it can be challenging, changes to the overall industry always provide new opportunities to build your affiliate business further. If you could change one thing about the industry, what would it be? The utter reli- ance on Google’s organic search results. It’s nice that social has become a big component of the Web, but organic search traffic still delivers the lion’s share of converting traffic to affiliate websites. With the changes that Google constantly makes to its algorithm, you are at their mercy when they decide they don’t like something you have been do- ing. Personally, I would rather just pay them for traffic; it would save tons of hours. What surprised you most about the in- dustry? The biggest surprise was actu- ally being paid every month by affiliate pro- grams. The whole affiliate scheme seemed too good to be true at first (lifetime revenue share), and with some lesser programs it has been too good to be true, but the bulk of programs have lived up to their end of the bargain. We even have programs that we haven’t delivered new players to in years still generating revenue. What do your family and friends think of your work as an affiliate? While I don’t go into a great amount of detail with family and friends, they are all in support of it, and several of themplay online themselves. This can be one of the more shady industries on the Web, but reasonable people don’t really see gambling as a big issue and my family and friends are no different. How long do you give yourself for an- swering e-mail?What e-mail tips can you offer? I try to answer e-mail immediately if possible. If I’m buried in a project, it can take a little time to get back to people, but I’ll respond to most e-mail right away. Once you get into this industry, you will be inun- dated with e-mail from people searching for link partners (yeah, they still exist), want- ing to buy or sell links, overzealous affiliate managers, random spammers, etc. It just goes with the territory. That type of e-mail finds its way to the trash pretty quickly. When interacting with other people over e-mail, always remember to stay pro- fessional and courteous. Everyone has their own style, but if you treat other people respectfully then you will get more accomplished in this industry. How do you manage your “to-do” lists? Do you use any special software to help you out? I have several checklists that I use. Some are written down on scratch paper, others in a text editor and others in my calendar on Thunderbird. Mostly, it’s important to write down all of the tasks that need to be completed with a small square next to each one so you can check them off as they are completed. The feeling of progress and checking off tasks is a great motivator for moving ahead to the next task and feeling like you are ac- complishing something. How much time does it take to keep your site updated? More time than I can devote, unfortunately, as most time goes toward marketing. I could probably spend 20 to 30 hours a week simply updating my website, but it’s hard to do that. PlayersJet is a bit unique in that way, though. You could easily set up a website that only needs to be updat- ed once a month or once a quarter to make sure that links aren’t dead and that informa- tion is current. What’s your favorite vacation spot? Anywhere warm in the winter is my favor- ite vacation spot. I live in a cold climate, so breaking up the winter is a must, and thankfully with this sort of business you can pretty much work from anywhere as long as there is an Internet connection. If you could have one “superpower,” what would it be? Time travel. How amaz- ing would it be to check out ancient civiliza- tions, find answers to where the pyramids came from and then see where civilization is going in the future? Plus it would be pretty nice to know what’s coming around the corner in business so you can prepare for it today. Of course if I could really time travel I would probably just pull a Biff Tan- nen from Back to the Future , and place bets on the outcome of sporting events and the stock market to make myself rich. That would give me more time for researching ancient history and exploring the future. What’s your all-time favorite movie? Growing up it was Star Wars . I had all of the action figures, vehicles and play sets, and the special effects at the time were sec- ond to none. Today I would say that Lord of the Rings is my favorite movie(s). The way Peter Jackson was able to bring the story to life was truly amazing, a great use of today’s special-effects technology applied to one of the best works of fiction ever written. If you could invite any five people, living or dead, to dinner, who would they be? Thomas Jefferson and John Adams to dis- cuss how their original vision for the U.S. Constitution applies to the issues of today. Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking to discuss life, the universe and everything, and to see if their great minds can come up with solutions to today’s scientific chal- lenges. Barack Obama, just to hang out and talk about whatever – how cool would it be to hang with the leader of the free world? 63 GPWA Affiliate Interview Series