GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 35 - June 2016

Money isn’t everything, says this Russian webmaster When did you launch Casinozru.com? When did it start producing revenue? The first version was launched in September 2009. After a couple of years, the invest- ment started to pay off. How did you get started in the iGam- ing industry? How did you progress to the point you are at now? I worked in IT equipment corporate sales until 2006. In that business, you communicate directly with customers and get immediate feed- back from them. They either work with you or they don’t. If they don’t, you try to analyze your mistakes, find the correct approach and work more. At that time, my brother was building sites for a client who sold paintings on the Western market. I was curious about how to sell on the Internet when there is no feedback except for the number of orders per month. Also, you don’t know where your customers come from and why they have chosen your store. So I started mak- ing online stores. I had a couple of friends who were selling sex toys, and I decided to help them. At the same time I was try- ing to master SEO and copy writing. I was only spending 2-3 hours a day building sites for fun, but I wanted it to be a full- time job. I had a lot of plans and ideas, but there was no time to implement them. A year later, when I began to earn the same amount on the Internet as in the of- fice, I quit my job. Then I made a site of 45 pages about gambling with a bunch of banners, and quickly promoted it in SERP by popular queries. It was easy to do, but there was very little traffic, so I decided to stop working on the site. A year later I saw the first payment, roughly $300 from Goldfishka. I real- ized by 2008 that I had to do something more substantial — high-quality and full of content. All your domains have some version of “Casinoz” in them. Why did you decide to use this term in all your URLs? Do you think it has helped with SEO? I can’t even recall this. It was probably inspired by Mafia stories. It was necessary to cre- ate a short name with the word “casino,” and all the interesting domain names had been already occupied. Casinoz is the brand right now! Most of your sites are Russian-language sites. Can you provide us with an insid- er’s view on the latest developments in Russia regarding online gambling law? What are players saying? Are you worried about the government crack- ing down on the industry? The English- language site (en.casinoz.me) has been available for over a year, and soon it will be translated into other languages. Tightening the screws in Russia is believed to be the correct thing to do, because our country has a certain standard of spiritual life. The West provides the standards of consumerism without restrictions — man is a wolf to another man. So restrictions are a good thing. I support gambling zones. They are growing now, and I hope that the tourists will play there, instead of citizens of the Russian Federation. As for domain filtering, it is not as strong as in China and is easy to get through. However, if the law concerning the ban of Tor and VPN is adopted, it will cause dif- ficulties. Domain filtering has a negative influence on our project, but this is nor- mal, logical and understandable. In general, Western intervention in the in- ternal politics of Russia through nonprofit organizations leads to the government having to learn from the United States how to defend its interests on the Internet. It is a very superficial opinion that there is no censorship in the West. It is present there! However, it operates beautifully so GPWA AFFILIATE INTERVIEW SERIES casinozru AGE 35 HOMETOWN The USSR LIVING IN Russia FAVORITE FOOD Uzbek plov and shish kebab, Indian cheese naan, chicken tikka masala and hingalsh (Chechen cake with pumpkin). MUST-READ BOOK The True Story of the Bilderberg Group by Daniel Estulin; Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins SITES casinozru.com casinoz.me casinoz.ru blogs.casinoz.me www.casinoz.su games.casinoz.me GPWA Affiliate Interview Series