CAP Community Member of the Month Spotlight: Michael.A

We are excited to spotlight CAP’s Community Member of the Month for December 2012… Congratulations Michael.A! Michaela26 been a member of the CAP Community since 2008, and he actively posts in the forums and provides great feedback to people in this threads. Overall, he’s been a great member for many years! Thanks for all that you do, Michael.A!
We caught up with him to learn more about his career in the business!
1. How did you get started as being an affiliate in iGaming?
My casino affiliate marketing ventures started in April 2007, after I registered my very first domain name, usaonlinecasinos.org. All of this came about as a direct result of my older brothers, who started in the iGaming industry well before I did, in 1999. After I saw how much money they were making, and with some encouragement from my mum, I finally decided to try out this industry, which seemed very strange and fictional to me at the time.
2. What are your top traffic drivers, and how did you learn them?
My top traffic driver is basically just Google. I’ve spent over $250,000 to acquire some of the best exact match domains in the industry, including casinoonline.org. Despite what most people say, exact match domains are still a major factor when it comes to top search engine rankings. It is certainly not a coincidence that onlinegambling.com is #1 for online gambling, and onlinecasino.net is #1 for online casino. I learned about this strategy from reading a lot of SEO books, as well as from my experiences of trial and error over a period of years as well.
3. What factors do you look at when deciding on an operator?
The first thing I do is ask my fellow affiliates and friends about an operator in question. I basically do as much research as possible to work out if an affiliate program is friendly, trustworthy, and reputable. I also check forums, such as CAP, to see if any information has been posted about this particular operator, as well as the opinions of the various members of that forum.
4. What are your thoughts on legal standing of the online gambling industry?
I believe the online gambling industry is only illegal because it is in direct competition with land-based casinos in America. As a result, America does not wish to compete and lose business to online casinos, so it has developed a set of laws to kill off their competition, using the “protection of our citizens” excuse to disguise their actual intent. Based on this belief that I hold, I don’t believe that online gambling will never be legal on a worldwide level, unless it can be taxed, so that it can be of benefit to the country or jurisdication in question.
5. What was the biggest lesson you learned in your years of being in this business?
My biggest lesson occurred after Poker’s Black Friday, when most of my top affiliate programs decided to shut down, including Casino Coins, and Best Casino Partner. After this tragic event, I learned the importance of saving all of my earnings, and never taking any money that I make for granted. There was a time when I used to make over $34,000 per month, and I didn’t think much of it. I almost expected to keep making this amount of money for the rest of my life, without any consideration for the future, or any possible catastrophes that might occur. As of today, I appreciate any money I make from the online gambling industry, and I enthusiastically invest all of my money into shares, and other investments, so that I can be assured of financial security for many years to come.