GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 26 - October 2013

What do your strategy sites do to dif- ferentiate themselves from other sites offering poker tips and strategies? Our strategy sites are woefully out of date, as we have spent fewer resources on them af- ter April 2011. When our strategy commu- nity was active, one of our biggest draws was the fact that we welcomed newbies who had “dumb” questions. Our articles and forums were geared toward players who knew absolutely nothing about the game, and we provided a safe place for them to learn and discuss. A lot of players and strategy site owners forget that there was a time when they didn’t know the difference between a flush and a straight draw. New customers are the lifeblood of any industry, and we pro- vided an open door for thousands of indi- viduals, fresh off watching Moneymaker take down Sammy, to walk through and start their own poker story. What traits do you look for in an affiliate manager? How about in an affiliate pro- gram? Affiliate Manager: Three things: 1. Responsive. If you can’t handle the e-mail volume, hire an assistant. 2. Open to pro- motion ideas, and not just endlessly push- ing promotions that I can assure them will NOT work in the no deposit bonus niche. 3. Willingness to stick with a no deposit campaign long term. These things tend to lose money up front, but over the long haul we see great results with programs that work hard to convert our traffic and pull multiple deposits from them. Affiliate Program: Flexibility. The pro- gram needs to allow their affiliate manag- ers to tweak campaigns and promotions to make the no deposit niche work for them. What advice can you offer people who are just starting up in the industry? Work hard. Don’t expect overnight success. Join affiliate communities like the GPWA and make connections. One of the best ways to connect is to offer a service like article writing. It helps earn some money that you can then invest in your own site and business. A good number of my poker contacts that I introduced to rakeback and strategy eventually moved on to do af- filiate work. Jonathan Wanchalk is a good example of someone who went from being a rakeback poker player to eventually see- ing great success as an affiliate in gaming and beyond. Wanchalk started out writing poker strategy articles, for example, and had an incredible drive to be successful. What prompted you to join the GPWA? How has it helped you? This is actually kind of humorous. We had someone bash- ing our site on GPWA because we encour- aged players to delete cookies before sign- ing up for one of our rakeback deals. They felt like we were “stealing” players. I came on to defend our business and explain that these were not “taken” players, but were players who had not yet decided which promotion they wanted. If they decided to take ours, we wanted to make dead sure that they tracked correctly, and not to an affiliate who happened to stuff a cookie into their browser three months ago. The GPWA has been incredibly beneficial in terms of holding the feet to the fire of pro- grams that have become unresponsive to e-mail when it comes to making payments that are owed. Besides that, the ideas and industry information gleaned by reading the discussion threads have been a big help. Many of your posts on the GPWA fo- rums have to do with problems receiv- ing payment from affiliate programs. How often do you run into problems when it comes to getting paid? What strategies seem to work best for you when you are trying to resolve prob- lems in this area? “Getting paid” could be a job unto itself. We are USA based, and even though we have a bank account outside the USA, it can still be a bear to collect all of the payments owed. It’s re- ally the nature of the no deposit niche, again. Smaller brands and new brands are more flexible and willing to run no deposit campaigns. Unfortunately, some of those brands have also been shoestring opera- tions that had a tough time paying their bills and affiliate payments. We have made some great contacts and friends in the gaming industry over the years, so our first step is to try to work through those channels to resolve payment issues. That usually gets the problems resolved. However, we have had to call some programs out publicly for lack of response and payments, and doing so on an affiliate board like the GPWA usually proves effective, because programs know that they will not at- tract the best affiliates if their reputa- tion is sullied. What do you like about the industry? Opportunity. Even though we are already a decade past the original “poker boom,” much of the world is still just waking up to online casino, poker, etc. There are ar- eas of the world that are just now devel- oping widespread broadband service, or smartphone usage, and as their econo- mies strengthen and their populations gain more disposable income, that can be a perfect recipe for success for gaming companies and affiliates. If you could change one thing about the industry, what would it be? The flow of payments for USA affiliates is just ridiculous. Our current setup is working, but we are still talking about at least three hoops to jump through before many of our affiliate earnings are in our business account, ready to be dispersed as payroll. We have been booted from two different banks be- cause of relationships with online gam- ing companies that did not even serve USA customers. GPWA AFFILIATE INTERVIEW SERIES Disney World! From left: Leslie, Hailey, Zach, Dylan, Keith. GPWA Affiliate Interview Series