GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 29 - July 2014

Takeagood lookat threeexcellentbets BetVega, sweetbet anddapbet, tobeprecise! They come from three continents –Australia, Europe andNorthAmerica. Favorite foods include oysters, tomyum soup and sugar snappeas. Fantasydinner guests run thegamut from Jesus Christ (to saygrace) andPadrePio toEminem andElvisPresley.Onehas lived in ahaunted house.Anothermorphs into adancingmachine afterdowning ahalf-dozendrinks.Andour third intervieweewants to eradicate lingeringperceptions that our industry is seedy. All threeoperateaffiliate sites and all three enjoybothonline and land-basedgambling— everything from craps and roulette to in-playgolfbetting. Are they lovingwhat they’redoing?Youbet! *Due to space constraints, we couldnot print the interviews in their entirety. The complete text will be postedat gpwa. org. Searchengine traffic ismorevaluable thansocialmedia traffic, butfirst you’vegot tohavegoodcontent When did you launch your site? I launched Sweet Bet back in 2006, but it wasn’tmyfirst site. How did you become involved in the industry? I was initially involved in the dating affiliate business. I hadmany dat- ing affiliate sites, andwas also running a few personals sitesmyself. Then one day I was comparing my traffic, number of sites, working hours and income to that of a casino affiliate. The casino affiliate had far less traffic, worked shorter hours, had a coupleof sites andwas consistently generating a significantly larger income thanmyself. That’swhen I decided to exit the dating affiliate business and enter the gambling affiliatebusiness. How long did it take for you to start earning money? I earned my first com- mission payment back in January 2001, only a fewmonths after I built and start- ing promoting my first site in October 2000. Back then, everything was easier. There was less affiliate competition, it was easier to rank in the search engines and the casinos didn’t have as many countryor banking restrictions. Any plans to launch additional sites, or is sweetbet.com – a general gambling portal with sections that promote par- ticular niches – comprehensive enough to suit your personal time-commitment preferences for maintaining, updating andpromoting thesite? I have anumber of general gambling portals, and a num- ber of niche-specific sites. The sites range from 10+ pages to 15,000+ pages. I trynot toput allmyeggs inonebasket byhaving onemain site or by promoting one spon- sor ahead of everyone else on all of the sites. Each site is alsopromoted a little bit differently. Some sites have a strong so- cial media presence, some are promoted withpurchased ads and traffic, others are promoted via link building, etc. I believe that it’smore advantageous to spread ev- erythingout asmuch as possible, andnot rely on one or two similar sites that are promoted inmoreor less the sameway. Do you write all the sites reviews for Sweet Bet? How long does it take to re- viewanonlinecasino?Whatstepsdoyou follow inthereviewprocess?Andhowof- tendoyouupdateyourreviews? Iwrotea small number of the reviews, but the bulk werewritten by a freelancewriter I found through the GPWA. Writing reviews is very time consuming, so I prefer to give thework to someone elsewhile I focus on other aspects of the business. The reviews aregenerallyupdated every threemonths, unless there is something that requiresmy immediate attention such as a bonus offer changeor a linking code change. Back in March, you started promoting Bitcoincasinos.How’sthatbeenworking out for you so far? I started off promot- ing a number of Bitcoin casinos on one portal. After a fewmonths of promoting them, I found one sponsor had a number of signups and depositors, while the oth- ers didn’t have any signups. So I am cur- rently only promoting one sponsor, and am so far satisfied with its performance. ADEL sweetbet GPWA AFFILIATE INTERVIEW SERIES GPWA Affiliate Interview Series