GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 9 - June 2009

46 “Takeabreak. Go for apint. Don’twork stupidhours.” As an affiliate, it looks like you focus on the sports bettingmarket.And your two sites take two distinct approaches to at- tracting players. Why did you add the second site? Footylatest.com came before the forum, which incidentally I have now closed down, I added the forum because I felt thatwithFootylatest.combeinganews site itwouldcreatea readymarket fora fo- rum inwhich to discuss the relevant news stories, and somy initial thinkingwas that theywouldbevery complementary toeach other. It justneverworkedout thatway. For affiliateswhoare consideringadding forums, what should they know about it before theymake that decision? It is veryhardworkand time-consuming,much more thanonerealizes. It isone thingwhen a forum iswell populated, and can takeon a life of its own, but for a new forum new topicshavetobeaddedconstantlytokeep it fresh, andyouare constantlyhaving toask people to respond. There’s nothing worse thanan inactive forum toputpeopleoff. What’s the most difficult thing about administering forums? Spam, without a doubt. It comes out of thewoodwork no matterwhat anti-spamproceduresyouput inplace, and this iswhen timebecomes an issue. You simplymust keep an eye on the forum 24hours a day. I can’t tell youhow many times I wake up in the morning to find a load of porn links or Viagra links or whatever theyarepeddling thesedays. Of course you can manually activate ac- counts to stop this to some degree, but whenpeople join theywant immediateac- cess and if they cannot have it it’s hard to expect them to contribute once you have activated them. And as stated above another difficult thing with forums is keeping them active with freshpostsandso forth. How long does it take for you to gather sportsnews for your siteeveryday? It is rarethatIpersonallygatherthe info.This is usually left down to the site’s contributors, butwhen I have done it, it can take hours. We try to post news that ismore Europe- an-based as opposed toU.K.-based, sowe look at sources in Spain, Italy, Germany, etc., and this brings its own time issues: translationsare required, newsneeds tobe verified, and even something as simple as verifying a player’s age consumes valuable time. Make one clear error andwe then receive numerouse-mails;putuponepieceofnews that is viewed as biased and the abusive e- mails follow. It is easy to rush stories, but I have found that this has anegative effect. Youneed to take time to get the news right or you end up wasting more time answering com- plaintsandevendoingretractions. Iwould say that toget up 10 stories inone day – stories of decent length that have been verified– can take a good four to six hours. Some can put up 10 stories in one hour,but thenyouwillfind that thesequick storiesarebasicallycopyandpaste jobsand wedon’tdo that. Do you bet on sports yourself? If so, what’s thebestwinyou’veeverhad? Ido bet. Mainly I trade onBetfair, but I’m not a big gambler. I don’t have the confidence to put large sums down. My best win? I think that would be on the spreads actu- ally a few years ago. I backed a footballer calledRioFerdinand toscoreagoalandhis minutesweresomething like4minutesand he scored in the90th so Ihad86 timesmy stake,which I believewas£30, so Iwon in excessof£3000. Forme that isa largewin as Iamnotabiggambleratall. How longwas itbeforeyour sites started earning youmoney? They still don’t, re- ally, to this day. If anything they cost me money, what with dedicated servers and DDOSprotection,payingwritersandsoon, butmy affiliate accounts are increasing by the day and I fully expect to turn a profit via the sitesquiteshortly.Mymainaffiliate earnings come fromme basically running competitionsandbuyingadspacemyself in which toplaceaffiliatebanners. Howdidyoufindyourway intotheonline gambling industry? I became a tipster. I wouldwrite tips forWeb sites and for one site in particular, asianhandicap.com, and simplyput Istartedspeakingwith theown- er at the end of eachmonthwhen it came to collectingaprizeand I justmadeanoff- hand comment tohim that if he gaveme a jobIwouldmovetoNorway,wherehissites werebased. He never gave me a job. What he did do was allow me to find advertisers for his Web sites in return for a commission and for some reason I managed to get a lot of advertisers from the word go. Sixmonths after I started I was living inNorway, and therest ishistory. Inaddition to runningyouraffiliate sites, you also operate a business called Bet- Partners. The slogan/motto for BetPart- ners is“bridging thegapbetweenbook- iesandWebsites.”Whatdoes thatmean? And what exactly does BetPartners do? Thesloganmeansexactlywhat itsays inthe sense that we bring sportsbooks andWeb sites together. The biggest issue I found when I startedBetPartnerswas that itwas sodifficult toget to the right person. Affili- atemanagers are not always the oneswho make the decisions; marketing managers are inplacewitha lotofsportsbooks,and in additiona lotof sportsbookshaveamyriad of global and country affiliate managers. Whatwehavedevelopedover the last three years is a comprehensive contact list and relationshipswith thepeoplewho count at most sportsbooks. If a Web site operator needs to sell ad space, typicallyall hecando ismasse-mail all affiliatemanagersorgo throughcontact forms on the sportsbooksWeb sites. I can inmostcases justpickupthetelephoneand makeadirectcall to thepersonwhocansay yesorno. Affiliate managers andmarketing manag- ers receiveproposals everyday. Theydon’t have the time or patience to go through them all, and so forWeb sites, while they may have an excellent product they may well find that thepitchingof theirproposal goes to thewrong person, or when it does reach the right person it is one of 50 that thesportsbookhasreceived thatday. INTERVIEWWITH Martin | BetPartners GPWA Times | GPWA Affiliate Interview Series