Affiliate Interview Series - Robert – (szury)

[GPWA Dan]

Age: 23
Hometown: Zalau, Romania
City currently residing in: Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Favorite food: Pizza
One book everyone must read: Be Faithful Unto Death, by Móricz Zsigmond (Hungarian)
Sites: dizzypoker.com, freepokermoney.net

Your sites, DizzyPoker and Deposit Poker, are both built around online poker, but DizzyPoker also promotes bingo and casinos and has a forum. Which site requires more of your time? Which brings in more revenue – poker, casinos or bingo?

DizzyPoker is my main site. I have not worked on Deposit Poker for a long time as I have other, more important projects to work on. I had no success with bingo, casino brought a few depositors, but poker is my main source of income. By the way, I also have a rummy site. I’ve had decent success with that.

You’ve been a GPWA member for more than two years. How has the GPWA helped you over that time span?

I’ve done business with some of the members of the GPWA forum. GPWA also keeps me up to date with poker affiliate news.

How has being able to display the GPWA Approved Portal seal helped you?

The GPWA seal has a special importance to me. My visitors have more trust in my Web site when they see the GPWA seal. Thanks for existing!

You recently posted that your 2009 revenue was more than 50 percent higher than your 2008 revenue. What factors do you feel were responsible for the increase?

Yes, it was more than 50%. There was only one factor: I met the right person who gave me the right poker bonuses.

How did you pick your cool GPWA avatar?

It’s a kind of lonely warrior. It was a completely random pick.

Do you work full-time as a webmaster?

I am a student and in my “spare time” I work on my Web sites. You can call it full-time.

How much time does it take to keep your site updated? Do you use a content management system to manage your site? Which content management system do your prefer? And why?

I am using PHP-Fusion on one of my sites. I had actually wanted to use Joomla! first but had a free hosting account back then, so unfortunately I chose PHP-Fusion. If I could start again I would go for WordPress. Joomla! is also good but consumes a lot of resources. WP is a lot faster and easy to customize. I haven’t updated my site very often in the past. Only recently did I post a few articles, but I am planning to post many, many more this year.

English is your second language, but is also the language you use on both of your Web sites. How difficult is it for you to work in your second language and not your native tongue?

Hungarian is my native language, Romanian – the official language in my country – is my second language and I have studied English, German, Japanese and recently Spanish. So there are a lot of languages. I’ve been studying English for 14 years but my accent is not very good. I (hope I) have no problems when writing.

Do you have any plans to develop Hungarian-language sites?

No, I have no plans to develop Hungarian sites. I have a Romanian DizzyPoker site, though, and a German mini site. I will focus on my English site in the future.

What is the one thing you wish you had known before becoming an online gaming affiliate?

As said before, I shouldn’t have chosen PHP-Fusion as my CMS. WP or Joomla! would have been a better pick.

Time management is one of the biggest issues facing affiliates. What time management tips can you offer your fellow webmasters?

If you are busy with family and friends my best tip is to work late at night. Sometimes I work until 3AM, usually until 1-2AM. Strangely that is the best time for me to concentrate as nobody disturbs me. If you have a job, try outsourcing.

What do your friends and family think of your work as an affiliate?

My friends keep asking me why I haven’t gotten a real job by now to earn some serious money. I usually tell them that I am happy with my online business. My family is very happy about this business.

What advice can you offer people who are just starting up in the industry?

1. Play by the rules; otherwise you are going to fail.
2. Build a newsletter list. Just imagine what would happen if next week every poker room would open their doors to U.S. players and you had 5,000 subscribers.
3. Buy a paid host as soon as possible.
4. Connect with other affiliates and affiliate managers (this helped me grow my income by more than 50%).
5. Learn SEO.

If you had to pick five keys to success as an affiliate, what would they be, and why?

Be fair, concentrate on your main site, connect with other people, focus on efficiency, consider it a real business.

How long did it take before you started earning money?

Two weeks. I had a lot of time and I read a lot of articles. I knew what to do.

What’s your favorite vacation spot, and why?

Due to my young age I haven’t been to many places. I enjoyed Greece, though.

What’s your favorite movie?

“The Simpsons Movie.”

If you could have one “super power,” what would it be?

It would be the power to make everybody happy.

If you were able to sit down to dinner with any five people, living or dead, who would they be?

My cousin, and my grandparents.

What are three things that nobody knows about you?

1. I was interviewed by PokerStrategy for being their top affiliate two years ago.

2. I have never attended a poker conference

3. I have entered the subaffiliate business.

[hiddenchamp]

So this is why so many aff managers contacted me in the past 2 days
I am mainly interested in no deposit poker bonuses. If there is anybody offering such kind of bonus please contact me now.

Thanks for posting the interview on the forum. It was fun to answer the questions.