Power affiliates 2011 - Casino

Ask Gamblers
Founder/Principal: Igor Salindrija
Domains: Askgamblers.com; SuperBetting.com
Igor Salindrija has been active in the affiliate sector since 2005 when he took over Superbetting.com. The site has undergone massive redevelopment, and expanded from a forum to a multi-service platform. Salindrija is trying to build the site to be as successful as Askgamblers.com, which is being franchised out to five new territories.

Casinomeister
Founder/Principal: Bryan Bailey
Domains: Casinomeister.com; Gonegambling.com
The casino watchdog and forum site established in 1998 by Bryan Bailey that has a conversion rate of around 80% and appears near the top of most casino operators’ lists. Its list of accredited casinos makes a valuable resource for both players and affiliates. Online Casino Reviewer owner Dave Sawyer acts as a moderator for the site’s forum. Secondary site Gonegambling.com is to be relaunched in mid- March 2011.

CasinoBonusGuy
Founder/Principal: Judy Matthews
Domains: Casinobonusguy. com; Casinoveritas.com; Pokerbonusguy.com; LuckyDabberBingo.com; NewCrapsPlayer.com
Affiliate based in Toronto operating a network of high-ranking sites, run by Judy Matthews. Matthews has sites covering product verticals in all major territories, including the US and Canada.

Casinoportalen
Founder/Principal: Søren Mirzai, Mikkel Pedersen
Domains: Casinoportalen.com/ se/pl/fr/es/dk/tr
Casinoportalen was founded in 2000, and operates in seven major European markets via localised domains. It is owned by SunCore Innovation, set up in 2001 by current MD Søren Mirzai and Jan Pedersen. The site focuses mainly on Northern and Central Europe.

Casinoverdiener
Founder/Principal: N/A
Domains: Casinoverdiener.com
Casinoverdiener drives predominantly German, Belgian and Austrian traffic for casino, poker, bingo and sports. The site set up an ‘Expert Panel’ feature in February 2011, allowing players to rate and review operators, creating an aggregate rating to rank the top site for each product vertical.

Games And Casino
Founder/Principal: N/A
Domains: Gamesandcasino.com
Detailed casino directory and strategy guide driving traffic across a number of territories, including the UK, Europe, America and China. The site also maintains a regularly updated ‘blacklist’ of casinos that have been the subject of players’ complaints.

Online Casino Suite
Founder/Principal: Ben Ogden
Domains: OnlineCasinoSuite.com; CasinoParty.co.uk; CasinoGamesHQ.com; GamblingPhD.com
Online Casino Suite is the main site in US affiliate Ben Ogden’s extensive portfolio, with six-figure numbers of monthly visitors. Ogden is seen as a major player in the affiliate market, operating a number of the top-tier sites for both US and European players.

Online Gambling Insider
Founder/Principal: Riaan D
Domains: Online-Gambling-Insider.com; Gamblingkingz.com
Online Gambling Insider is the flagship of the portals owned by South African affiliate Riaan, who has been working in the online gambling industry for nine years. The sites attract five figure clicks a month.

Casino.de
Founder/Principal: Jan Balslev
Domains: Online-casinos. com; Casino.de
Danish entrepreneur Jan Balslev draws significant traffic from Central Europe, and has invested heavily in the casino.de domain, buying it for €400,000 in 2008 ““ one of the largest .de domain sales ever. The domain draws the most traffic of Balslev’s sites.

Slots.org
Founder/Principal: Andreas Emmanuel
Domains: Slots.org; Internet-poker.co.uk
US-facing slots site operated by Andreas Emmanuel, who oversees the Internet-poker.co.uk portal. Slots.org lists US-friendly sites.

Reviewed Casinos.com
Founder/Principal: Kevin Lindsay Payne
Domains: Reviewed-Casinos.com
Founded by entrepreneur Kevin Lindsay Payne in 1998, it drives traffic for both US- and European-facing sites.

Online Casino City
Founder/Principal: N/A
Domains: Online.CasinoCity.com
Online Casino City is a Massachusetts-based portal ranking almost 3,000 sites, with a directory of products and software providers, as well as monthly usage figures. It keeps an eye on sites accepting and blocking US-based players.

Casino Choice
Founder/Principal: Richard Skelhorn
Domains: CasinoChoice.co.uk
Established in 2000, Richard Skelhorn’s Mandalay Media also turned operator after acquiring the CostaBingo domain in 2009. Recently it has been selling off its skill gaming domains, with Skelhorn looking to sell Tournament.com and Tournament.co.uk at the start of this year.

Online Casino King
Founder/Principal: N/A
Domains: OnlineCasinoKing.com
Online Casino King is based in Barcelona. The site mainly drives content for Microgaming, Playtech, Cryptologic and Chartwell casino sites.

Q&A affiliate focus
Edward Yu, founder, Lady Luck Media
CasinoMan
Monthly Income: US$15k on average
Monthly Traffic: Casinoman gets approx 48,000 visits, 37,000 unique visitors, 170,000 page views
Conversion: 14-75%
Domains: Casinoman.net, PokerFaces.net, 8online-slots.com
Casinoman is one of the largest casino information sites online with over 10,000 pages on web-based casinos. Founded by Edward Yu in 2001 as part of his portfolio of affiliate sites, Yu used slot videos as a SEO tool ““ a major innovation.

eGR: What issues have affected your business in the past year?

EY: Being predominantly US-facing, it has been regulation. Few will admit to having problems in America or the newly regulated European markets, so we could start working with an operator active in these regions, only to find they are having massive issues with payment processing. When operators are accepting players from grey or black markets, it is difficult to be fully transparent, but considering major affiliates are an important source of income, operators should really start treating us like business partners.

eGR: With companies using traditional affiliate marketing techniques such as SEO and PPC, do you feel that you are in direct competition with the operators you work with?

EY: Operators are very slow to adopt new technology for their affiliate programmes; we’ve been asking for RSS and XML feeds for our sites for years, and haven’t received anything useful. Therefore we’ve had to develop the technology ourselves, so ultimately we aren’t in competition with the operators, as we have developed better and more effective tools than they are currently using.

eGR: How do you see the affiliate market developing?

EY: I see the leading affiliates evolving into massive brands. People are going to realise that the only real collateral they have is their brand, as SEO is very much a short-term strategy. There’s still room for new entrants in the industry, as the market is always growing, and there are still so many untapped markets.

It is a question of finding a niche and exploiting it; if someone creates a generic slots site, they’ll need to invest heavily to see any sort of return, but if someone creates a Japanese-language slots site, they’ll have a lucrative source of income. With good branding, they can drive this product forward.