Chris Morton: Binary Options Allstar Discusses His Successful Transition

It’s not always easy to transition from one gaming niche to another, but Chris Morton has proved that it can be done seamlessly… and more important profitably. Morton started out in the poker industry, but was quick to identify a massive opportunity in the binary options industry in Australia. Using education and videos as his main USPs, Morton has been able to successfully ride the binary options boom… and continues to innovate along the way.
 
Raw Transcript:
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Warren: Hey, everyone. It’s Warren Jolly, with CasinoAffiliatePrograms.com, and I want to welcome you to today’s interview with Chris Morton. He’s been involved in the iGaming industry since 2002, starting out as a webmaster for OnlineGambling.com in Australia.
I’ve known Chris, probably since 2006. We met at one of our events, back in Miami, called CAP Spring Break, and we’ve stayed in touch ever since. Over the last decade, Chris has switched from working on the Affiliate Manager side, to the operational side of Poker.com, PokerNordica, PowerPoker, and Bookmaker.com.au, most recently. Now Chris is heavily involved in the binary options niche, as an Affiliate, and recently won an award for Best Binary Option Affiliate, in January in London, at the IGB Affiliate event.
Chris, it’s great to have you. It’s a really interesting transition you’ve made. I guess we just want to start out by understanding, first of all, how did you get involved in the gaming sector, back in the good ol’ days? And then, what made or lead the transition for you into binary space?
Chris:      Hello, Warren, firstly. Basically, I was working for an online media company, where we focused on basically developing a lot of websites. Actually, I was trying to do a search engine at the time.
Then basically one day, our owner said that he had bought a few gambling domains. He asked me to do a little sub-project that was working on OnlineGambling.com. He was basically starting a portal with lots of information. I had to do a lot of the research, myself.
My background, prior to that, was actually doing a lot of SEO work, back in the days of 2002, 2001, where it was a bit like the Wild Wild West, I guess, with Google. In terms of ranking websites, and understanding how to rank websites.
Then my job was basically to do that for OnlineGambling.com at the time. Within nine months, I think, I was able to get it to number one. From there, we actually saw a lot of revenue come in to the site.
I tried to fill out the site to be quite comprehensive. We also purchased a few more domains, as well, and tried to get them ranked, a few slot domains, casino domains.
Basically, that has been my background, about a decade ago. That’s where it all started.
Warren:     And recently, I think, you went from that space into the poker industry, I remember, for awhile. Then made this transition into binary. Tell us a little bit about why you went from casino, to then poker, to then binary?
Chris:      The transition to poker came about was the same boss I was working for at the time had done a deal where we were managing Poker.com. We actually made that into our own software, as well, and actually became another online poker room out there, competing a little with the guys like PokerStars, Full Tilt.
Part of that role in the early days, I had a bit of a dual role. I was still managing my Affiliate portals, OnlineGambling.com, but also being an Affiliate manager for Poker.com. I had done that for about the first year or so. Then I went over seas and actually lived in Malta for about four or five years, working for a smaller skin on the Poker.com network, which became Merge Gaming at the time. I did that for about four years, then from there, I came back home, and hooked up with my boss again. He was developing a whole bunch of horse-racing websites. Horse racing in Australia is quite huge and sort of an untapped market. That’s about two or three years ago.
He also then decided to get his own sports book going, which has now, I think, been acquired by Ladbrokes. So they’re now the Australian version of Ladbrokes, that same group.
In the midst of all this, I actually always had been doing my own little projects on the side. I have always been interested in SEO, and I always just like to see how to rank sites and make a bit of side income. This one particular one, I started getting interested in Forex. I saw it on a few sites. I think even on CAP, as well. So I was doing a bit of research about  Forex, and maybe getting a Forex site going.
Then I came across a binary options banner, which I believe I actually saw it first on CAP. It took my interest, so I researched a lot about that. The first thing I did was actually go do some domain research. I did a few who.is’s, and tried to see what domains were available.
As I’m based in Australia, it’s quite easy to register the dot-com that I need. I use Domains.net.au domains, so that was my first focus. I wasn’t able to get BinaryOptions.com.au, but I got .net.au, and a few other ones. Based on getting that, I just did a bit more research, then went out into the freelance world, and commissioned some guys to get some content for me, really basic content. This was about two years ago, and put up a site.
I was still sort of working at a full-time job at the time, but this was something I did at night. About three months later, some commissions started coming in, and I couldn’t figure out where these commissions were coming in from.
Basically, I traced it back to a binary option site. A few of the brokers I’d put up initially were  actually getting some rankings in Google, and actually converting to some real-money traders.
After a bit more research, I could see this had quite a bit of potential. At the time I was in a bit of transition period, with my full-time job, where I sort of wanted to go out on my own and basically become my own boss and have that sort of dream. So there was a period there where it was a bit of a risk. No money was coming in, but I had to really back
myself on all the skills and knowledge I’ve learned over the last decade basically making other guys rich, managing their domains. Then to give it a go myself.
Once I went full-time, I was able to put so much effort into the site, that the rankings just got stronger. I had a real golden period and some really hot conversions. I think I was probably one of the first to really get into the binary options affiliates and also pretty much capture the market for the Australian sector. Still to this day, I haven’t really come across a comprehensive competitor in my space in Australia.
Definitely worldwide, there are quite a lot of affiliates out there now. But definitely in Australia, which was my focus from day one, was to just be good at attracting traffic within Google.com.au. I didn’t want to focus on dot-com, or anything else. I thought that was always a bit hard to get a few easy wins.
Whereas if I just focus on Google.com.au, I’m probably going to be more successful and get more encouraged that way and build a business from there. So that’s where I’m at up to this point. Two to three years later, I’ve been able basically to have my own business. I’m very happy, actually. It’s going really well.
Warren:     Terrific. You are still primarily focused on the Australian market?
Chris:      Yes. What I found is that the site actually gets a lot of traffic from all over the world. Initially, it was probably a split of 80% Australian visitors to 20% rest-of-the-world. Whereas now, it’s like 60% Australian, probably 25% U.S., and then the rest of the percentage is the rest of the world.
About a year ago, I looked into YouTube as a way to produce video content. I really went at that pretty hard, and actually almost 30% of my traffic, right now, is coming from YouTube. I’ve been able to see, just looking through my analytics, and seeing the conversions that come from YouTube, it’s been really a good part of the business.
YouTube being the world’s second-biggest search engine, it’s definitely something that I’m glad I got into. That’s definitely helped the business, as well.
Warren:     These videos that you do on YouTube, are they basically educating folks on the best trades? Or just educating the market on how to trade binary options? Is that, in essence, what you’re doing on YouTube?
Chris:      Yeah. Well, I started doing the videos myself. What I did was just basic, generic, really newbie-type reviews of websites. Nothing too major, just saying, “Look, here is, say, back to binary. This is where you’ve got to click to actually trade. This is the trading platform.” Nothing really too out of the ordinary that you couldn’t find out yourself.
What I was finding is that I was getting a lot of use. One of my videos has over 100,000 views, itself, to this day. Where I saw a bit more research, there was some really technical stuff out there, and I’m not a trader, myself. I’ve looked into it and done a lot of research. I
understand online trading a lot more now. I knew I had to get some experts on board. Again, I went out into the freelance world and actually found some online traders, some Forex traders.
Didn’t know too much about binary options, so my goal with them was to use their knowledge in the Forex world and try to apply it to guys wanting to trade with a binary option. That’s actually been really good.
There are a few guys out there, that have been with me for over a year now, just basically as consultants. I pay them per video. So when they have time, they’ll put up maybe a daily-analysis video of a few Forex pairs out there. Like say, the US dollar versus the Australian dollar, and where they see good trades coming.
Then from that, the next step was, well actually I’ve done now a series of trading courses. There’s a beginner course that is a 12-part series on how to trade binary options. It goes from very basic things to like what charting programs should you use. What are technical indicators, technical analyses, fundamental analysis, how to trade news.
Then there is an intermediate course on top of that. where it gets a bit more complicated. And now, I’ve got an advanced course. There you’re more factual things where you’re educating people, so it can be a real, newbie-sort of guy, who will basically go to YouTube and type in “How to trade binary options”, or “How to use support and resistance in trading”.
What I’ve found is they are actually really good, factual videos, but what I’ve found is that my videos, where it’s from an actual, a fellow person, have been the most popular. In some of my videos I show my face and I speak, and from a layman’s point of view, I guess that maybe translates to the viewers out there.
My next goal is to try and really build my brand, even myself as a personality of my website, so people can really start interacting and I can start interacting with them.
I’ve done a lot more research on the benefits of YouTube. It’s actually a really exciting space you can get into, I think, and that, with running a website, I think it’s a really good medium to build a business.
Warren:     Have you now found that you’ve been able to replace your full-time income doing this business?
Chris:      I was able to, basically, within the first six months. I had a monthly period where it was higher than my full-time wage. From then, it’s never dropped below that. So within a very short space of time, I was able to easily replace what I was making in my full-time job, on a monthly basis.
Now, yes, I’ve been more than comfortable with the job, in terms of the revenues coming through. It’s been really encouraging, and you can’t be happier with the outcome. You have to stay on top of it. You have to work every day still, but I find that I actually enjoy what I do. I can’t wait to get up, check the stats on the website, think about the direction of
where I could take the website. How I can make it better. Every day of the week I can do something different.
One day, I might be checking whether the website is fast enough. Do I need to upgrade my hosting? Which I recently did the other day. I found out that my site was growing and starting to hit a few spots where too much traffic was coming in and the site was slowing down. So I recently had to upgrade that.
My background is SEO; I do a lot of the SEO myself, naturally. But also, I actually build the site myself, I still do the html. So that’s a huge overhead that I don’t have to outsource.
What I’ve found is that I outsource all of my stuff in terms of basically content, in terms of articles on the site. I get experts in their field to do that. A lot of those guys will just upload that for me. They upload the videos to YouTube, and I’m managing these contractors.
It is a full-time job. But if I do want to take off, if I’ve had enough and I’m sort of brain dead, it could be lunchtime. I’ll basically stop, drop tools, and go do something, some exercise, or catch up with someone. I love the freedom that this job gives me and I can do it from anywhere around the world, as well. So that’s great.
The whole constraints of being in an office 9:00 to 5:00, never ever really suited me. It really never suited my personality. So to finally get to where I am today, and be the master of my own destiny, has been a real confidence builder, and I have grown from that.
Warren:     Great. Just touching on SEO quickly, because obviously, that’s such a huge topic for guys, both in the binary and obviously the traditional gambling space. You’ve been in this space for a long time, Chris, and you’ve seen all the evolutions, as far as what’s happening in the SEO-side of things.
What advice can you give to fellow Affiliates watching this video, and other Internet marketers, as far as what they need to do now, as far as SEO goes? What the old mentality of SEO was? What matters today and what actually drives results? Can you give us some brief insight into that?
Chris:      Yes. It is quite challenging, the SEO. I don’t worry about what Google is doing so much. Don’t actually even check so much where I’m ranking any more. I just try and focus on making a quality website, in terms of an experience for the guys who come to my website.
Just try an imagine there was no Google, and actually just try and focus on having a good website. If you came to your site, does it make sense? Have you actually categorized all your different subsections of the site correctly?
When you start thinking like that, I think that’s where you can put your best foot forward. Once you start trying to think, “Oh how can I rank number one for a key term? What’s it going to take?” You get a bit side-tracked.
Whereas in the past, you could do, I guess, a lot of technical things, SEO-wise. Like with keywords, and keyword densities, and incoming links, having lots of incoming links can help you rank. Whereas these days, Google keeps saying to you just try and make your site good for the end user. So that’s what I focus on.
You still have to do a lot of basics. The best thing, basically, is to bring up Google’s guide. I do things like the title tag can’t be more than 60 characters. Just do lots of basic things like that, you should still do.
You still need some links from other people to your site, but you just have to think, “Why would someone want to link to you?” That means you’ve got to write a good article on one of your news posts, and that’s where some good links will come in.
It’s quite challenging. I don’t proclaim to be an expert in SEO. I just try and bring it back to common sense, and SEO is just one part of your business and your website. I don’t know if that has brought any real insight.
But I don’t have any major secrets to ranking. I’ve lost rankings
over the years. Even my site now doesn’t rely so much on my Google organic
search so much. My number one key term now is actually someone typing in my
domain name.
So my brand, my site has actually overtaken. For example, in Google.com.au, my number one, organic search term would say “binary options”, whereas now it’s BinaryOptions.net.au. So people have come to my site and have returned to my site.
I’ve actually focused on my site becoming a bit sticky, in terms of having my little members section, where guys can track their broker accounts via my link, to make sure I get them the best deals. Just doing little things like that. I actually don’t give out my videos free on my website. I ask them just to join, and when they join, they get the videos for free. Things like that have actually built up my membership. I have a newsletter that I regularly send out, daily, weekly, and monthly.
The newsletter traffic is actually really good traffic. It converts really well. If a new broker comes on board, or say there’s a new BinaryOptions signal service, I send out a newsletter. I can see the conversions that day come in to real-money customers.
So just trying to focus on that end-user experience with having your technical SEO in the background, making sure that the articles you put on your site are not just regurgitated. That they actually have some sort of point of difference, some sort of meaning behind them.
Whether it’s just your point of view on what’s happening in binary options, what’s your point of view on a website review, on a broker review. Your take on technical analysis in binary options. There are so many different things you can do.
The whole binary option signal side of things is quite massive itself. I’ve seen that grow in the last couple of years, that people want trade signals. So that is almost like a whole subsection in BinaryOptions and Forex, as well.
I guess that’s sort of it.
Warren:     So it sounds like you’re not out there acquiring links, doing things like that. You’re just letting it organically build, based on the credibility and branding of your site.
Now, outside of SEO, are you doing any paid media? Are you buying any traffic to the site?
Chris:      Yes, I started that, touched on it about six months ago. I do have a budget towards buying traffic, exclusively pretty much through AdWords and AdWords for YouTube.
I found that, with keyword advertising, it’s very, very expensive. For example, you could pay up to $30 or $40 for one keyword click on a binary options term, which is hugely expensive. And you’re going up against the actual advertisers with huge budgets.
What I’ve focused on was trying to come up with a YouTube strategy. That’s actually been really good. You can get a lot of really cheap clicks for as low as $0.05, $0.10, compared to say, the $30-click.
And YouTube has got a number of ways that you can actually get traffic to your website. You can get it through TrueView displays. If you go to YouTube and watch a video, you get a little pre-roll that comes in. That gives you a chance for you to advertise either your website or your product.
If someone click on that it will go to your website; that’s one way to get them in. YouTube is really powerful. AdWords is really powerful, basically with their tools, with what you want to target, the demographics you want to target. It is so powerful. Sometimes, it’s actually a bit overwhelming.
I started my AdWords education six months ago. My goal was that I knew I wasn’t going to know everything about AdWords in the first month. But I tell you what, I know a lot, still keeping with it six months later. I’ve learned so many things, little tricks over the last six months, that I’ve actually got my campaigns now down to what works, what doesn’t work.
I’m actually trying to get the funnel, actually see where if they clicked on this link in YouTube, on this website, it’s gone to my site. It’s bounced out to this advertiser, then back to Binary, and actually was a sale. I can now track most of that, and actually see which campaigns work, in terms of last click return on investment.
But one thing I’ve also learned is that it’s not always the last click return on investment that you need to focus on. Sometimes a guy might, say, find your site via YouTube search, say if he just comes across one of my YouTube videos.
The next time, he actually sees my site via a YouTube ad. Next time, he actually searches in Google and types in BinaryOptions.net.au. Maybe it’s on that third time he actually went to a broker and made a sale. So I can’t worry about so much that this particular campaign didn’t actually give me a return on investment, but it may have assisted in so many different other ways.
You’ve got to really look at your analytics once you start paying for media, and really trying to find what’s working and what’s not. That is a bit of a science in itself. I just said to myself, “I’m not going to be able to be an expert if I don’t give this a go.”
So I’ve set aside a small budget every month. I’m prepared that maybe I don’t make any money from this budget. But over time, I reckon I’ll get there, and it will help assist with the branding of my website. I think it’s really working. My YouTube site has got over 600 subscribers, right now. I hope to have by the end of the year maybe 3,000 subscribers, if not more. That could be a big part of the business, outside of people just going to my website.
I’m not relying just on organic search. I’m also, having a two- or three-pronged attack, and keeping a few balls in the air. I’ve also gone a bit into Bing, as well. I had a look at what they have to offer. What else?
Going back, in terms of SEO, I still do try and acquire links. But what I’ve done is try to acquire links in terms of branding from my website. So I might be doing something like, one example is SlideShare. They’re basically like a PowerPoint service.
I a lot of the videos that I’ve had go out to Australia, in terms of a course, they actually do it in a PowerPoint-type version. So I’ve written down those PowerPoints, and then put them on to SlideShare, put a bit of content up there. That could be another really good incoming link into my site, even if it’s a no-follow. It’s still a good link that other search engines might like. Or if Google changes the way they do their algorithm, whether that can be seen as a good link.
Another thing I’ve done is podcasts. A lot of my videos I put on to iTunes, as well, so that’s another good, incoming link. While it is a link, but actually trying to focus on that I’m actually providing iTunes with some content. So that’s got to be a good thing.
That’s the way I try and do the links, is that it’s providing content on some other website, over here. They just happen to give me a link back, and that’s great. Sure, I’ve done a little.
Instead of wasting my time going and writing emails to all of the webmasters out there who have binary options websites, saying, “Can I get a link on this page?” He’s like, “Yes, but you’re going to have to get a link on this page, over here.” Playing off, like, “My page rank is this. My page rank is that.”
I stopped doing that almost two years ago. I don’t think it’s worth it. So I’m trying to have a different strategy and trying to think how best to get links. As I mentioned in that example, it’s just trying to look at websites that provide or want content, and are happy to give you a link back.
Like if you create a Pinterest account, that gives you a link back, so make sure you build up that. MySpace, there are all sorts of thing you can-, upload content. So I’m just trying to basically build my site as a brand, trying to find different social networks where it allows you to give them content. It’s your content, and they’ll, obviously, give you a link back.
You can have a Twitter feed, as well. I’ve got a guy who manages my Twitter account, my business Twitter account. He tries to post meaningful things in binary options. Like saying that “The U.S. Unemployment Report is coming up, guys. It’s coming up at 3:00 p.m., be ready for it. I think it’s going to be an uptrend on gold” or something like that. Try to build a following like that.
I’ve actually started to see some conversions coming through, clicks still come to my site, then click off to a broker, from Twitter. That’s what I’ve been focusing on.
Warren:     Do you do any Twitter or Facebook paid advertising?
Chris:      Yes. I haven’t done Twitter, because I think most of it has been locked down to U.S. advertisers. They have released it to some Australian advertisers, but you need quite a substantial budget.
I put in a request for it, but I don’t think, even if they actually got back to me, I don’t think I’d be willing to spend what they want you to spend as a minimum, yet, for my business.
In terms of Facebook, yes, I’ve given Facebook a go. Facebook has a couple of different angles. You can do advertising into your page, so you get “likes”, or it can get bounced out straight to your website.
I’ve done campaigns where I’ve got guys to “like” my page and I’d give them a free trade signal. I’d give them a strategy to trading binary options. And I’ve gotten my Facebook page up to 10,000 “likes”. But I don’t know if guys are still really active on there.
I might have those 10,000 “likes”, but I don’t know if anyone’s really interested in me posting to Facebook. So I’ve sort of gone away from Facebook a bit, but I have given it a go.
I’ve decided, over this last quarter, that I’m going to put everything into YouTube, my YouTube Channel, and my paid advertising through YouTube. If I can spend more on there and I know it’s working for me now, then that’s where I’m going to put my budget.
It doesn’t mean it doesn’t work, but I just don’t have the time. I found I was spreading myself a bit too thin.
Warren:     Okay. One question about the commercials in the binary space. We get asked this question quite a bit. A couple of question, rather. What’s the difference between an “affiliate” and an “introducing broker”?
Chris:      With, I guess, an “introducing broker”, that’s more of a term that I had not heard of until about two years ago, when I started researching becoming a Forex affiliate.
An “introducing broker”, from what I understand, might be someone who is actually maybe a trader themselves, with a background or with a willingness to teach other people to become traders. What they can do is maybe they’ve set up an online website that’s a course on how to trade Forex.
They basically say, “I’ll become your personal mentor and I’ll be there for you.” They can actually say, “All right, now that I’m teaching you how to trade Forex, this is the broker of my choice.” He actually introduces these traders into the introducing broker.
So that could be someone who does real, live seminars. So they might travel around Australia, for example, from Brisbane to Sydney. They might say, “Look, if you want to learn to trade Forex, come to my session. It’s free.” It might be an audience of, say, 1,000 people.
He’s got business cards and might be selling a course. He might say, “You have to buy my course for $1,000, or whatever. I’ll teach you how to trade Forex. I’ll become your mentor for a year, and my broker of choice is XYZ.” From that, that introducing broker can make a lot of money from all of those referrals.
On the affiliate side of things, you’re just basically signing up to a program. You’re getting an affiliate link, and you’re putting it on your website. That’s just a bit of tracking code, which is what I’ve been familiar with from my Casino and Poker days, and now BinaryOption days.
It seems like binary options doesn’t really have an introducing broker program, just more, pretty much, affiliates. Probably what I’ve also seen in the binary options space is that it seems to be more guys who know how to run a website and be an SEO guru and then get into binary space.
Rather than say, there’s a guy out there who’s really, really knowledgeable on binary options, but doesn’t know how to run a website, but somehow gets a website going. Then he’s just putting really good content on the website. There are a few guys out there like that.
Whereas, maybe in Forex, I’m just guessing that it’s a bit more 50-50 that you’ve got some really good Forex gurus out there, and they have some really outstanding websites. They’ve just somehow outsourced all their technical needs.
On the other side, there are probably guys out there who just know that there’s some money to be made from referring Forex traders. They have actually gone out there and bought some domain names, got some content going, got the rankings, and are just seeing the customers come in.
Warren:     As far as the commercials go a lot of the brokers obviously are offering CPA. Are you familiar with revenue share becoming more important? I would expect that industry would evolve to that, but we haven’t seen a lot of it. What have you found, as far as the business model goes?
Chris:      I started out with a CPA with all my deals, which is quite good when you’re a new business, because you can get a higher amount of money coming through initially quite better. And you can get quite high CPAs, because the minimum deposit for most brokers are say, around about $200. So you can demand a CPA between $200 to $300, which is quite high, when you compare it maybe to poker, which has probably got a bit less over the
years.
But I have switched to a few deals where it is exclusively rev share. And I’m also doing some hybrid deals, where I get a CPA plus a rev share. I’ve found out that’s probably what I like the most. I’m covering my bases both ways.
On all my rev-share deals, I’ve never had a negative month. It’s always been a positive month, which has been good. But you’ll find they say the life-time revenues of a binary options trader might be around about $1,000.
So if you’re actually getting a $300 rev share, you’re not really cutting yourself out of too much commission. Because if you say you’re on, say, a 30% rev share commission, you’re getting the same amount, $300.
So a CPA rev share, I don’t think you can go wrong, which way you choose. But I think rev share is better when you really work with an advertiser over a long period.
I have seen deposits of over $50,000 come through some of my accounts, up to $100,000. If you have a bit of rev share on that, as opposed to say, a $200 CPA, you’re just cutting yourself out of a lot of revenue if you’re going for the CPA. Whereas, if you’re on the rev share, you’re sharing in a high profit for that particular month.
I would probably suggest to new guys, definitely start out on a CPA. Even to this day, if a new broker comes to me, I’ll start on a CPA. I don’t actually care how much they give me. I just want to see that they actually convert, that they’re doing their job well.
You get to learn which guys are good, in terms of their operations. Like, in binary options, the guys need to have a very good sales team. They need to be on the phone calling up their customers, getting them on the phone and talking to them. That really converts into leads and into deposits.
You can quickly learn which guys are better at that than not. I’m actually happy to take a smaller CPA, if I know it’s going to convert ten times better than a larger one.
You just really have to test guys out. I usually pretty much now have a concrete, top three brokers that I trust. And then maybe, position four and five, I’ll switch from month to month and see how they convert and maybe they push up a ladder.
Another thing in the industry is regulation, as well. There are regulated brokers and there are non-regulated brokers. There are regulated brokers in jurisdictions that I don’t know if it really means much to, basically, my Australian traders.
I guess, for example, if you have a CySEC regulation, which is the supreme one, which is supposed to be an EU one, as well, if that really even means much to someone in Australia, anyway.
Whereas, maybe an ASIC-regulated broker, which is an Australian license, actually can really mean something. So I try and push that. There are a few Australian brokers out there that I’m now working quite closely. I think my conversions are a bit better, because an Australian trader is obviously going to trust a local jurisdiction, compared to someone who’s maybe registered in Malta, or Cyprus, or some other offshore location.
But in saying that, it doesn’t detract from conversions. Still, some of my best converting brokers are ones that aren’t regulated at all, but they have a very good, sound system. They cross out their withdrawals. They come across to the traders quite well. So it’s not the be-all and end-all.
Warren:     So without hurting anyone’s feelings, can you give us maybe your top three or five? Who you think are the best brokers, in terms of guys who are really doing their job well, as far as converting and retaining traders?
Chris:      Yes, from my point of view, I’ve had a pretty good relationship with Back to Binary. They’ve been a bit up and down in the media, in terms of pulling out of the U.S., in terms of advertising, back in the very early days. Where it was probably a bit Wild Wild West, and binary options was moving way faster than any regulatory body anyway.
In terms of Australia, they now have a CySEC license, which is also, I think, a FSA license in the U.K., which sort of, Australian customers will quite trust.
But I convert very well Back to Binary. I know they are quite aggressive with their marketing and have a pretty well-oiled machine. So they’re going quite good. But if I talk to other affiliates, they don’t particularly think they convert well for them.
Some other brokers that have done well for me in the past, is the RushBucks program. They have brands, TradeRush, I think, Redwood, and another one. I did really well with them in the early days. I think I also had some very good rankings with them in the early days, as well.
Another one that I promote right now is called “WhichWay.com.” It is an Australian broker. They’re based in Sydney and they have the ASIC license. They also have a Forex platform. What I’ve found is a lot of the brokers in Australia that have binary option products, is that it’s on the back end of their Forex products, as well. They are doing quite good as well.
What other brokers out there? They are probably my top three at the moment. But there are quite a few that have done well. What I’m also finding is that I’m doing quite well with actually promoting signal services. A lot of those guys have affiliate programs, so you can actually promote different binary options signal services out there. Guys are really looking for that, so that’s another way to have another income stream into your website. It’s not just putting guys into brokers. You can actually put guys into other signal services. That’s proving really, really good as well.
One of the best ones I’ve had in the last month was promoting a binary option robot. Basically, he does all of your trading on your behalf in a binary options broker. And that’s actually been selling like hotcakes on my website. It’s just been unbelievable. Guys have been really interested in that. I’ve actually published quite a lot about it on YouTube videos. I did my first Google Hangout, using the Google Hangout service and talking about how to use the binary option robot.
A lot of guys want to see someone actually deposit into these things, that it actually works, before they are willing to do the step themselves.
So I just, “All right. I’m going to go through the whole process.” Bring up
the website, do the sign-up form, put in my credit card details. And
actually start using the product.
Once you start to do things like that, put it on YouTube, make an article on your website, guys are just going to read that. If someone has typed in “binary option robot”, they’re halfway there that they really want to know about it. If you can give them some bit of content, then that’s most likely going to help in a conversion.
I see, right now, there are lots and lots of opportunity to produce content, because the search need is out there. So if you’re definitely interested in getting into binary options, I think you can definitely have some success if you have the right strategy.
Warren:     What’s next for you, Chris? Are you thinking about mobile as a strategy? I know a lot of guys, I’ve seen brokers coming out with their own apps, and starting to push the distribution on that side. What’s the future for you and your business?
Chris:      Well, one of the biggest things I did was actually make sure my site was responsive, so I did a whole upgrade about three months ago. So my site is responsive. It’s actually just the same code, so it’s maintenance-wise, going forward as far as being brilliant. Because it’s the one set of code in it, and it fits to the format of a tablet, of an iPad, a mobile phone, and also a website. It’s the same code, so it’s not like it’s one bit of code for mobile, one bit of code for my website, or desktop. That was actually quite exciting, because the responsive frameworks out there, there’s some really good ones out there. I use Bootstrap, and it’s really easy to use, coding-wise. So that’s helped.
The jury is still out for me in terms of guys trading on their mobile. So there might still be a lot of traffic coming in, like mobile searches, but whether you can convert that to someone, then, who actually downloads, say, the Back to Binary mobile app, deposits, and starts trading. That probably hasn’t come about yet. I’m definitely getting mobile searches, but at the moment it’s a very small part of the business, but I’ve got my website ready, anyway. The website looks good in a mobile format, so I can at least tick that off.
But in terms of it converting, or actually buying some media campaigns just for mobile, I haven’t done anything like that. A lot of times I actually exclude mobile. So I make all of my campaigns on my media-blind desktop only, and totally ruled out mobile campaigns.
But I have to make sure my website looks good in mobile. So what was the question, again?
Warren:     What else is on your horizon? Is there anything else exciting in the future, as far as what you’re going to be doing in the space?
Chris:      I’m really just going to try to focus on my website and just consolidate it at the moment. I’m actually going through a process of doing an audit on my own website, and going through a lot of my articles and making sure they actually make sense.
A lot of stuff I had written a couple of years ago, when I didn’t know so much about binary options myself. So I’ve been going through and really making sure every page on my website has some meaning, and definitely making sure that the top landing pages on my website are converting as best they could.
That’s going to be my focus, at least in the next three months. Long-term, I’m basically starting up another website, called BinaryTradingFinance.com. That’s going to be my worldwide version of my .net.au site.
I am a bit restricted in terms of my website. We’re really only ranked in Google.com.au, so I would like to have another little project out there that’s actually getting searches in dot-com space. That is a side project that I’ve got, and I’ve actually already got it up and running, in terms of content. I’ve got a trader who’s actually done three series of binary options courses, from beginner to advanced. So all of the content is up there. I only released the site a couple of months ago, so it’s only getting a few organic searches, right now. But in one year from now, that site could be really good for me. So that really takes up a lot of my time, as it is.
Warren:     Great, all right. Well, Chris, thanks very much for your time today. I really appreciate your sharing your story, and obviously your background in both spaces.
If anyone is interested in contacting Chris, at the end of this interview, please send an email to [email protected]. We will be happy to put you in touch.
Thanks for watching, and stay tuned for future interviews with iGaming and binary option industry leaders. Take care.
Chris Morton is the owner of Binary Options Pty Ltd which runs a leading binary options trading website known as binaryoptions.net.au. Chris has spoken on a Forex & Binary panel at the 2013 Financial Partners Expo held in London. Binaryoptions.net.au was recently awarded the iGB Affiliate 2014 “Best Affiliate Online Trading.”
This video interview has been sponsored by the official affiliate network of CAP.