GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 38 - July 2017

In addition to your sports betting sites, you run a bingo vertical. What made you decide to add a bingo site to the mix? That is 100% baldidiot’s fault. He just kept banging on about how I should do bingo, so now I have a bingo site. To be fair, once you’ve set a bingo site up it doesn’t require as much attention. It sends a trickle of accounts and pays for itself. My only issue is I find bingo inanely boring – I struggle to keep focused reading even my own content. The site gets a few hundred visitors a month. It is starting to rank for some ge- neric terms, and I am planning on giving it a kick this summer. This is another area where baldidiot was im- mensely helpful. His experience of the indus- try helped me avoid the bad brands overall. Do you bet on sports yourself? Online or in betting shops? What teams do you support? Yes, mainly online, or at the track if I am going to the races. I love the races. I stopped betting in shops with the rise of the FOBTs; they have ruined betting shops for me. The whole atmosphere has changed now for the worse. I support my home city club, Liverpool FC. You can probably see frommy GPWA profile pic that I am a big red. I get to all of the south-east away games, along with the odd home game. How often do you get to see and interact with other people in the industry? Have you attended any conferences? LAC is fantastic, mainly because it is so big and fun, but also because it is on my doorstep. I see baldidiot a lot socially, and he’s in- troduced me to a lot of good people in the industry. What traits do you look for in an affili- ate manager? How about in an affiliate program? Leave me alone and let me get on with things. I am a man of my word. If I say I’ll do something, I will. I’m not some- one that moves brands around constantly playing them off each other, andAMs that e-mail you every five minutes asking for more traffic don’t sit well with me. The more you pester me, the less you get. With affiliate programs, I am looking to build long-term relationships. I won’t just promote a brand because they give me more revenue or cool freebies – I will only promote those operators who I believe have a good chance of surviving. I will also only promote those who are fair with affiliates and don’t retrospectively intro- duce quotas or change terms. What’s your preferred method of com- munication with affiliate managers? E-mail. Always keep everything in writing. What prompted you to join the GPWA? How has it helped you? Baldidiot told me about it. It has been a massive resource for me over the last two years and has helped me solve many problems. The feedback I got on my first sites was so useful and saved me months of faffing about. The GPWA is also a great way to put pres- sure on dishonest programs and practices. I have been able to resolve many com- plaints by raising issues on the forums. What do you like about the industry? It is judgement free – anyone can succeed if they believe they can. It’s almost like the old American Dream ideal. One thing I love about the industry is how friendly it is. At the end of the day most people are out for themselves and competi- tors of each other, yet there is no animosity or back-stabbing going on. If you could change one thing about the industry, what would it be and why? We must find a way as affiliates of standing together more often. Too many programs are moving the goalposts, introducing lev- ies, fees, quotas, closures, etc. It is eroding the industry and, overall, they are largely getting away with it. If we can find a better way to stand up to these programs, they will think twice before screwing us and our livelihoods. What do you think the industry will look like in five years? It will be many times bigger. Online gambling is only going to grow and grow, and I expect to see more operators, affiliates, websites and compe- GPWA Affiliate Interview Series Content needs to be rich and real; writing anything else will lead you to fail. Yes, you can throw up a thin site and smash it with links to get it to rank, but that isn’t going to give you long-term success. What makes your sites unique? How do you help them stand out from the competition? Honesty, simple and clear. Content needs to be rich and real – writing anything else will lead you to fail. Yes, you can throw up a thin site and smash it with links to get it to rank, but that isn’t going to give you long-term success. Diversification is also key. My sites do different things, target different terms and sources. A balanced portfolio is key to success, in my opinion. How do you decide what operators to promote? Largely because I had already used them as a customer, and so I already have a relationship with many brands that I work with. 52 w w w . g p w a t i m e s . o r g