GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 38 - July 2017

peers had done. I amgenuinely not motivat- ed by solelymakingmoney or improvingmy own lot, and I certainly didn’t want tomake money for some corporate conglomerate. I have one other major love in life other than science, and that is sports, and betting on sports. Moaning away to baldidiot in the pub one evening about my career, I was shocked to find that he thought my skill set would be perfectly suited to running an iGaming affiliate business. I understand sports and gambling, I am not misled by false positives or negatives, and I am large- ly objective and rational in my assessment of data and trends. One thing led to another, and within the space of six months or so, baldidiot helped me set up a couple of websites as an iGam- ing affiliate. That was mid-2015, and since then I have never looked back. I am not going to pretend that running iGaming websites is as intellectually chal- lenging as being a scientist, but it is very rewarding in a different way to work for yourself. Being free of the shackles of other peoples’ expectations and defining your own destiny is hugely empowering in itself. Besides, I still teach part-time for a university, so I still do get the best of both worlds. I’ve tried to bring a lot of scientific method to running my websites. I am not distract- ed by flash-in-the-pan ideas, and I try to go for a mix of what is proven to work while experimenting with new techniques. I am, as you would expect, good at research, and I can usually tell the credibility of a source in a split second. Tell us about your sites. How long did it take for them to start making money? I launched my first site in July 2015 (On- lineBetting.org.uk ) as an in-depth guide site to betting online in the U.K. This site served two purposes. Firstly, it allowedme to use my experience of sports and book- makers to write unique comprehensive reviews, and secondly, it allowed me to learn more about the industry on the job. In parallel I set up an offers site, Latest- BettingOffers.co.uk – again U.K.-facing, as this is the market I understand the best. This is the yin to OnlineBetting’s yang and, as the name would suggest, focuses on betting promotions. Between these two sites, I have been able to extend my knowledge base while also targeting diverse traffic sources. I picked up my first FTD late in August 2015 and made £60 in the month. By the following August, I was doing over 100 accounts a month and single-figure thou- sands in revenue. I have continued to grow the business and never looked back since. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to baldidiot for helping me so much in those early days, and indeed for setting me up with those two great domain names to get me started. Which of your sites gets the most traf- fic? Which do you spend the most time on? OnlineBetting.org.uk , mainly because it has deep, rich content that allows me to rank for many terms. This is around a 1-million-word site (so far), and I would say this is where I have spent most of my time. Steadily I am increasing my portfolio, and now that those two initial sites are established I am spending more time on other projects. Are you a full-time or part-time affili- ate? I am a full-time affiliate, part-time university lecturer. Do you have employees, or do you run your sites by yourself? I run the sites myself, although lately I have started to use a few freelancers for content. Do you have plans for further sites? Yes, always – this is not an industry to sit still in, and even if it was I would get bored. I love experimenting, it was what I was born to do, and there is nothing more fun than developing an idea from scratch into a fully functional website. I am also trying to develop a range of nongambling sports websites. These take much longer to develop and need more traffic, but I think it makes sense to have a few irons in the fire – insur- ance in case iGaming affiliate marketing doesn’t last forever. Sports betting can be a tough sector, especially when players are doing well. What do you do to keep your finances stable? Right now, revenues can be fairly volatile while my account base grows. I am in this for the long term though, and all my deals are rev share to reflect that. I earn a little from teaching, and this has helped me balance my finances. I also spend less on commuting to work, which helps. Inherently this is an industry with low overheads, so it hasn’t taken me too long to make the business solvent. I was lucky to have Euro 2016 in my first full year, and this helped me stabilize early revenue. I am not, however, looking for- ward to summer 2017, when I expect my sports revenues to plummet. This is one reason why I have been actively develop- ing casino and bingo affiliate marketing to iron out the fluctuations in sports. AGE fact sheet Hometown Living in Favorite Food sites 33 Liverpool, England, U.K. London, England, U.K. Chili latestbettingoffers.co.uk onlinebetting.org.uk bettingwebsites.org.uk bingowebsites.org.uk freebetoffers.org.uk liverpoolforums.co.uk Must-Read Book A Brief History of Time , by Stephen Hawking w w w . g p w a t i m e s . o r g 51