Affiliate Interview Series - Ermin Rajic

[GPWA Daniel]

(This interview was originally published in the January 2025 issue of the GPWA Times Magazine.)

Could you share how you first became involved in the iGaming affiliate industry? What initially attracted you to this space?
Before I started with casino affiliation, I had already been an amateur affiliate who built about 50 sites in various niches, so the interest in affiliation started long before I even knew that casino was a possibility.

I was then advised by Erik Bergman, who at the time built up viral traffic sites and bingo sites and was about to move to Malta, that I should try marketing casinos. Sometime after this, I built my first casino site and then realized that it was a topic I really loved working with, while also realizing that it was such a big market that I might be able to make a living from in the future. Both of these things attracted me so much that it became something that I spent most of my time on every day.

How did you come to found Mediaclever Sverige AB, and what was your original vision for the company?
I started with casino affiliation as a hobby, really without having any idea that there was a lot of money to be made. So, once I managed to rank my first website, I realized that it was possible to make large sums of money.

Unlike other affiliate networks that I worked with before where you could get your commission paid legally as a private person, the casinos did not offer this possibility, so I started Mediaclever AB. The vision was to become one of Sweden's largest affiliates.

Each of your portal sites focuses on different markets, such as New Zealand, Canada, Sweden, and Ireland. Why did you choose these specific markets?
To be honest, one of the markets was my first project outside Sweden and I was curious to go outside Sweden's borders. The reason why I chose those specific markets is because they are markets where, just like in Sweden, it is less populated compared to other countries, but at the same time you have a large gambling culture in some form.

Ireland, for example, is a country where you know that people already play a lot of casino games. The same applies to Canada and Sweden.

How do you tailor your content for these diverse audiences? How do you manage content accuracy and consistency across different regions, considering the rapid changes in local regulations and market trends?
There's really no shortcut to this. It's about learning as much as possible about a country every time, from local words to rules and laws. This is also one of the reasons for my chosen markets. They are English-speaking countries so that I can easily keep up to date.

You've tested over 400 online casinos and written over 10,000 articles. Can you describe your process for reviewing the casinos that are featured on your sites? How do you ensure accuracy and transparency in your reviews and content?
To begin with, over the years I have gained a great understanding of what a good casino is, a bit like how a car dealer can see the value of a car just by looking at it. Those who work with me know that I always primarily review and publish a casino that I can personally vouch for. And those who do not work with me know that there was nothing they could offer me to list their casino if their casino was not good enough.

When I review a casino, I review it just like a player with experience from other casinos. I always go through everything the casino offers and then take up both what I think is good and what I think is less good about the casino. One last thing that I also do on the pages that I have reviews on is to delete any old reviews that we haven't had time to update regularly to ensure that the information you find with us is relevant to you as a reader and not 8 years old.

Please describe some of the challenges iGaming affiliates face today, especially with regard to regulatory changes.
The biggest challenge for affiliates today regarding regulatory changes is that you invest heavily in a country that then imposes a ban on online gambling online or has such a strict licensing system that only a few operators are legal.

Your company provides a free plugin that helps others create comparison sites. Please tell us more about this plugin. What inspired you to develop this, and how has it impacted your business?
The plugin was created with simplicity in mind so that anyone could create decent leaderboards on their website regardless of what they are marketing. We use the same plugin for some sites but with some updates, which means we avoid the cost of building a leaderboard every time we build a new website.

The fact that we also give it out completely free to everyone else is just something that feels completely right without it giving any profit in return. Sharing is caring as they say!

What are some of the most effective organic traffic generation strategies you've used for your sites?
The most effective organic traffic generation strategy was to build long-tail content clusters that gave the page an invisible added value because the "searcher" gets their answer, which strengthens the brand and which also created relevance and internal links for the rest of the website. But in my opinion, this is no longer a strategy that works in the same way as it did a few years ago.

What criteria do you use when selecting affiliate programs to partner with?
The very first thing I want to know before I work with a new program is who is behind the company, where is the company located, what license do they have, what does their casino look like, are there any negative affiliate reviews about them and how does their affiliate managers work with affiliates. If an operator sends managers who don't have a picture of themselves, can't introduce themselves or talk in a rude way, then I can't recommend the casino and tell my readers that the casino is good. So, the very first thing I look at is how serious the company is and how good their product is for the players.

Looking ahead, what role do you believe AI and automation will play in shaping the future of iGaming affiliate marketing?
AI already plays a big role, which we have seen both from Google being spammed by AI content and from websites getting fewer visits because AI provides the answer directly in the search engine.

I also believe AI will play an increasingly important role in the future where, like the internet, it matures and becomes so popular that new generations laugh at the way we used to search for information. Within iGaming, AI has also been introduced for support chat and analysis to better serve the player, so it is guaranteed to be something that will be used more and more by both casinos and affiliates who already use ChatGPT for ID, control check and simple tasks such as create a table

Do you enjoy online or land-based casino gaming yourself? If so, what are your favorite games? If not, what's your reasoning?
It's not my favorite hobby in my free time, unfortunately, because I work with it daily. Partly, I play when I want to test a new casino. I usually spend $10-$50. I also sometimes play for pretend money to test new games that have been released.

But, yes, it also happens that I do play casino games online in my free time. I don't really have an immediate favorite but love to jump around between the games. The last time I played, I played Treasures of Kilauea Mega Moolah, Double Joker Poker, Jacks or Better Double Up and roulette at Paf Casino. Games with doubling function appeal to me personally as this was something I grew up with where we had a Vegas slot machine available in every restaurant and pub.

How do you unwind and recharge outside of work? Any hobbies or interests you'd like to share?
I am a rather simple man who prefers home and family above all. So, most of my time is spent with my three children, their training and, of course, my better half (my wife). I used to practice boxing and it's a sport I still love to this day, but unfortunately our club has closed down so right now I only have a bag at home that I practice on sometimes.

Other than that, I'm either in the game room playing Apex with a glass of wine or I'm on an outing with the family. In November, for example, we were in Copenhagen for a couple of days with the children and rode carousels at Tivoli.

Imagine a fellow iGaming enthusiast is visiting your area for 24 hours. Where would you take them to experience the best of what your city has to offer?
Ha ha, I think many that have been here visiting me, will laugh just like me when they read this. I live in a very small village with about 8,000 inhabitants. The good thing here is the nature and that it is peaceful. There isn't much to do here to be completely honest apart from maybe eating a good pizza or fishing, if you like to fish.

List three things that people reading this magazine don't know about you.
1. Never been a materialist.
2. I have a brother who remained in Bosnia when the war broke out.
3. I love watching documentaries.

[NoDepositCasinos]

Great interview, as always. I would have liked him to mention a few dates to get a clearer picture of his timeline and understand more about the context he was dealing with at each stage, but that is just a personal preference. Thanks for sharing!

[erminrajic]

Hi, thanks for reading and commenting, i be happy to anser any specific question you might have=)

[invinciblepoker]

great interview. interesting that you recommend .ie, se and canada.
do you only work with regulated operators?

[NoDepositCasinos]

Hi Ermin, nice to meet you! Rather than one specific question, I’d love to learn more about your journey as an affiliate and the context you were dealing with. For example, do you remember what year you built your first affiliate site (the one that was not related to iGaming)? When did you create your first casino site, and how long it took to rank?

Additionally, just out of curiosity, how do you see the challenges facing iGaming affiliates today compared to when you started?

[erminrajic]

Hi, nice to meet you to! hahah omg well it so many years ago, but yes i do remember i actually build a how to make money blog as my first site where i tried to learn all diffrent ways of making money online and then sharing it in articles. My first casino site was created a few years after that, just becouse i got a tip to try it out and at that time i didnt know anything about casino online or affiliation i was kind of still struggeling to understand how to get trafic to the site, in a world where you had catalogs, linklists, toplist, personal bloggers etc. But long story short my first casino website at that time was kind of standing still for 3 months i just built it gave it some links and left it, and 3 months later it jumped up to pos 2 for its main keywords and this is when i realized how good this market can be=) So this site didnt take so long to rank but as you understand it was pure luck that got me there and unfortunatly the site went back down 3 days after that=( I was enough for me to understand it was something i wanna do again so here is where my journey begins =)

Well, today affiliates face challenges you didnt back in the days, for ex affiliates gets screwed by operators a lot more, and everything is measured like what page exactly and keyword does this player come from while back in the days if you had a free spins site you could still send players and make a good profit becouse all players where paid almost equaly. Other things is the techs stuff ofcourse, even if everything is actually easier to do today like using wordpress at the same time its harder becouse the market has grown up so much so you need more knowledge, faster site, better User expiriance, much better security and then when you have all this figured out you still have the challenges of Google that says one thing but in reallity it never works that way=(

Hope this gives you some answers you where looking for and thanks for taking the time to ask=)

[erminrajic]

Thank you! Well if there is a regulated market i rather choose that one before an unregulated yes, but as you know some markets are in a grey zone so i work on them untill they get regulated.

[Martin-nl2]

Things were simpler back then. But there was less competition then, too.

[NoDepositCasinos]

Hi, nice to meet you to! hahah omg well it so many years ago, but yes i do remember i actually build a how to make money blog as my first site where i tried to learn all diffrent ways of making money online and then sharing it in articles. My first casino site was created a few years after that, just becouse i got a tip to try it out and at that time i didnt know anything about casino online or affiliation i was kind of still struggeling to understand how to get trafic to the site, in a world where you had catalogs, linklists, toplist, personal bloggers etc. But long story short my first casino website at that time was kind of standing still for 3 months i just built it gave it some links and left it, and 3 months later it jumped up to pos 2 for its main keywords and this is when i realized how good this market can be=) So this site didnt take so long to rank but as you understand it was pure luck that got me there and unfortunatly the site went back down 3 days after that=( I was enough for me to understand it was something i wanna do again so here is where my journey begins =)

Well, today affiliates face challenges you didnt back in the days, for ex affiliates gets screwed by operators a lot more, and everything is measured like what page exactly and keyword does this player come from while back in the days if you had a free spins site you could still send players and make a good profit becouse all players where paid almost equaly. Other things is the techs stuff ofcourse, even if everything is actually easier to do today like using wordpress at the same time its harder becouse the market has grown up so much so you need more knowledge, faster site, better User expiriance, much better security and then when you have all this figured out you still have the challenges of Google that says one thing but in reallity it never works that way=(

Hope this gives you some answers you where looking for and thanks for taking the time to ask=)

Thanks for your responses and for being so open about sharing more of your affiliate journey. I hope you continue to have great success moving forward.