GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 45 - October 2019

This month we speak to two affiliates from a small but growing part of the industry: specialists who work within a larger affiliate company. Mykola, from Ukraine, focuses on the Irish and African markets within the HEX Casino network, and Alex works for Highlight Media's CasinoGuide brand from his office in sunny Malta. While they both seem to have wandered into iGaming on the back of related work in other industries, they've since become experts in what they do. Here, they give their thoughts on their jobs, the industry and what they'd do if they never had to work again. GPWA AFFILIATE INTERVIEW SERIES This Ukrainian affiliate African markets in the Irish and has found his niche — Mykola Tsiotov - gil.langelaan When did you first get into the iGam- ing industry? Why did you decide to enter this industry? I’ve been working as an SEO specialist in different companies since 2011. In 2017, when I was looking for a new job, Roman Doroshenko (who has been interviewed by GPWA Times Magazine as well) suggested I apply at a gambling company, since there were more opportunities to grow in iGaming. His advice started it all, and I first got into a betting project and changed it to a casino project later. How did your experience as a digital marketer help you as an iGaming affiliate? I’ve been into digital marketing for a long time. This gave me the tools necessary to lead affiliate projects in iGa- ming. The best experience for me was the possibility to see myself and others fail and learn from it. You have sites targeting Ireland and several African markets. What are some of the challenges of each of these markets? What are some differences between Irish and dif- ferent African players? The main difference is the number of players and player value. In Africa, there are a lot of bettors, and they bet significantly lower than the Irish do. The Irish bet more than Africans, but there are fewer bettors. What makes the sites you work with stand out from the competition? The entire HEX Casino network is focused on providing users with useful and relevant information — researching and resolving new player issues. We also have a special approach to each of the regions — players from the U.K. and Japan are very different, and so is the type of information they want to find. We are constantly working on the user experience of our sites—we want everything to be intuitive and simple for the user. How do you decide what casinos to promote? The first thing we look at is the reputation of the casino. No one wants to send the user to rigged casinos. We also look at how the casino behaves toward users and affiliates. We promote casinos for players depending on where the user is from, by developer, or if there’s a specific game they are looking for. Intro image by rawf8/Shutterstock G P W A t i m e s . o r g 46