CAP Community Member of the Month Spotlight: islandmaan

We are excited to spotlight CAP’s Community Member of the Month for August 2012… Congratulations islandmaan! islandmaan is a phenomenal CAP Community Member veteran… and has been active since May 2003 (whoa!). He always brings great insight to discussions and poses great questions to the forums.
We caught up with him to learn more about his years in the industry!
1.  How did you get started as being an affiliate in iGaming?
An Internet company I was working for wanted to branch out into online gaming back in 1997 and I headed up their online casino. This was one of the first online casinos at the time and we were using the Cryptologic software.
2.  What are your top traffic drivers, and how did you learn them?
In the beginning, we did a lot of keyword buys when that was allowed on Google and others.  Now we concentrate on SEO and keywords built around our domain names.  Fortunately, we have some very strong domains such as Casinogames.com, Livecasinos.com, Footballbets.com and Sportsinsider.com.  Using fresh content and concentrating on keywords we cross-promote these sites.  I also have a personal blog RocktheTurtle.com, who is my turtle.
3.  What factors do you look at when deciding on an operator?
I look for an operator who has affiliate managers who are proactive.  I like them to make suggestions as to what tools they have: be it banners, live odds, comparisons anything to make them and my sites stand out.  Fresh content is very important.  Accurate stats and timely payments are just the minimum standard.
4.  What are your thoughts on legal standing of the online gambling industry?
For the first few years, I thought that every new year something big was going to happen.  Now I think this is what it is and we need to make the best of it.  The world is a big place and there is a lot of gaming business out there. The US market would be nice to have back in full action but I don’t count on it.
5.  What was the biggest lesson you learned in your years of being in this business?
Test everything and don’t take things on their face value.  Everybody says they have new processing, and the best this and that. Well, the proof is in the pudding.  Put up good content, keep it fresh and evaluate how your affiliate programs perform.  Numbers do not lie.  If your site has good content, and you are driving good traffic then it should show as real sign ups and real revenues.  Do not sweat the winners and things like that, it will all level out.  I have learned that not all affiliate programs perform the same on my sites for whatever reason.  Put a program up, send a fair amount of traffic and if it works send them more traffic.  If it doesn’t then move on to another Aff program.  This is all business and we all want to make money together.