GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 46 - February 2020

Do you gamble online? What about in brick-and-mortar casinos? Why or why not? I use to play poker a lot, both online and live. Not so much anymore as work and family life have taken priority. I do like to bet now and again but more on big football matches and big horse races when it takes my fancy. Now again, you will get a tip from somewhere that I will have a bet on too. Being an affiliate, I guess the level that I have gambled has decreased as I am focused on the other side of things being an affiliate. How often do you get to see and interact with other people in the in- dustry? One of the first bits of advice I got was to always build a face-to-face re- lationship with the brands you work with. When we were developing the app and after it launched we attended every iGB conference for three years. Those who have met Roberto would know he is a very like- able person so we have been lucky to have been invited to a few lunches and events during conferences and got to meet some good people and develop some good re- lationships. I would still consider us as a small affiliate compared to many others and have no idea if this has any impact, but when a lot of the U.K. brands were closing down affiliates we managed to keep all ours open and I always look back to that first bit of advice and wonder if it had any relevance to that. What traits do you look for in an affil- iate manager and affiliate program? As we where launching our app in the U.K. it was important that we focused on the major U.K. brands that people are aware of and see in their day-to-day lives. It wouldn’t look right, I don’t think, if you are telling people they can compare the best price and you don’t include bet365, for example. In terms of affiliate managers, they can be very hit and miss. There is always a lot of turnover, however, I would say we have had the same bet365 affiliate manager since we started and they are a level above the rest and the standard the others should be aiming for. Why did you join the GPWA? I am sure Michael Corfman has met a lot of people over the years and not sure if he will recall, but we were invited out to lunch by bet365 when the affiliate conference was held in Berlin and Michael, his wife and two employees were also in attendance. Michael had two employees with him who looked more like bodyguards. Despite his wife’s best efforts to take it easy it wasn’t long before ourselves and Michael’s two employees where drinking shots and were a bit worse for wear. And, of course, through discussion I heard about GPWA and joined not long after that conference. If you could change one thing about the industry, what would it be and why? I have no idea of how it would work or if it could work, but I would love to see better regulations on affiliate programs and operators. Every time you go to a confer- ence we see endless amount of new compa- We outsourced some SEO work last year and around the odds comparison terms we have gone frombeing non-existent in Google searches to being in the top 20 . The next focus is developing a strategy that gets us into the top 10 and then into the top 5 . 57 G P W A t i m e s . o r g Jamie G. | JamieG1981