GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 6 - September 2008

GPWA Affiliate Interview Series 63 | GPWA Times Some affiliates focus on build- ing one or two sites and mak- ing them as deep as possible. You’ve chosen a slightly dif- ferent strategy by building 60 sites. What’s the thought pro- cess behind this approach? On this point I have to lay the blame totally on Andy’s shoul- ders as he is a domainaholic and cannot resist register- ing domains. It’s a big joke in the office – because we keep threatening to block his ac- cess to all domain registra- tion tools!! But seriously, we haven’t regretted the decision to have so many portals. The problem of course is keeping them all up to date and add- ing new content, but somehow we manage to achieve this, and one of our strategies is by not adding daily and weekly promotions which need to be removed on time. The mini- mum term a promotion needs to run for us to add it is two months. A pet hatred is when the casinos change their bo- nuses too often – because this means a lot of work for us. I guess there are pros and cons to having numerous sites as opposed to one big site and many would disagree, but we prefer to have lots of rods in the fire in case some of our sites take a dive in the Google rankings. We also like to offer a broad range of sites – e.g., we have South African sites catering specifically to South African players, U.K. sites, poker sites, bingo sites, etc. We have tried to cover most of the areas but steer away from sports betting as we have no knowledge in that arena. You also have a fun Halloween theme to one of your sites. Why did you create that site? Are you pleased with the way it’s turned out? Is there any- thing you’d like to change about it? Here is another one of Andy’s doings. He loves designing logos, banners and playing around with anima- tion and he wanted to do something different from the normal type of casino portal – hence Topboss U.K. was born. One of the tips you’ve offered on theGPWA forums is towrite content for the people read- ing it, not for the search en- gines. Why is this important? I feel very strongly about this particular point. The way I see it is that it is all well and good being in the top positions on the search engines but once someone appears on your site, the content needs to be inter- esting enough to keep them there and make them want to return. If there is just a whole bunch of words designed for the search engines they aren’t going to stick around. The trick is to keep both the search engines and the readers hap- py. How is marketing to South Africans different from mar- keting to Europeans and Americans? It is quite difficult to market to South Africans as we are very limited in the amount of search engines, pay per click engines, etc., that are available and the major casinos in South Africa have already taken up the best ad- vertising spots on the bigger search engines. On the posi- tive side, we generally find that South African players are very loyal and are not bonus hunters and rarely do charge- backs, so once you get a new player they normally stick around. We still have some regular players that opened their accounts in 2001. There is also a lot less compe- tition in the market from an affiliate point of view, but this is changing daily as more and more South African affiliates are getting into the industry along with overseas affiliates promoting the rand versions of the various casinos. In an ideal world, how would you divide the efforts you put into your site? What percent- age would go to marketing, updating content, managing your books and other tasks (please list the tasks, include a % and an explanation)? In an ideal world 30% would go to marketing, 50%would go to updating content, 10% would be managing the books and 10% for other stuff – but un- fortunately in the real world it is not like that. I spend a lot of time removing casinos that have closed down, check- ing for broken links when ca- sinos have changed tracking links without notifying their affiliates, checking recipro- cal links, deleting spam, and answering emails. It doesn’t leave much time for updating content, which should be one of the most important aspects in my opinion. How long did it take for you to start earning money? Believe it or not, we didn’t make a cent for two years, which seems ex- treme, but bear in mind that in those days there were no forums like the GPWA where we could learn from other webmasters and we had no knowledge of computers let alone Web site design. We just plodded along and knew that eventually someone some- where would play. We got ex- cited every time we got a hit on our Web site, so you can imagine the feeling when we got an actual download! Our motivation came when we received our first check from BingoGala for the huge sum of $14.99. We never did cash it because the bank charges were more than the check it- self, but this is when we real- ized that we really could make money … the rest is history…. What do you wish you knew when you got started in the industry that you know now? Aside from wishing that we had registered the domain www.casino.com ? LOL. Web site design knowledge – or should I say the lack of it – has been our biggest stumbling block. We also regret starting off with FrontPage as we have recently moved over to Dreamweaver and can now see why everyone raves about it, but we have to learn a whole new software program all over again. If you had to pick 5 keys to success as an affiliate, what would they be and why? Ded- ication and hard work are the most important factors. Be dedicated and believe in yourself. Be honest and do things the right way. Don’t go in for any underhanded dealings, black hat techniques, etc. From the very beginning we made a de- cision to do everything above board in all aspects and we have never looked back. We even pay taxes and vat!!!! Learn from your mistakes. Have a positive outlook in life – it works wonders. What traits do you look for in an affiliate manager? How about in an affiliate program? The most important factor I look for in an affiliate man- ager is how quickly he or she responds to e-mails. With regards to the affiliate pro- gram, the most important things to me are how quickly do they pay, do they have a wide range of up to date mar- keting materials, and do they keep their Web site up to date. Those who used to promote Sureturn may recall how their front page in 2008 was still referring to new games that were launched in 2004! That’s a big put off to me. The next important factor is to keep affiliates informed by way of email or a newsletter if there is going to be main- tenance, changing of tracking links, etc. Heather Gartland | Continued from page 61 Continued on page 64