Hey Tero, how’s it going?
Hi Ari, all good here. How is it in Scotland?
Quite rainy. Um, yeah, we’ve hit September and the three good days of summer that we had are over.
Yeah.
So, back to normality. But, um, yeah, thanks so much for actually coming on the show and, uh, sharing all your
expertise with affiliates.

How long has it been actually? You’ve been involved for quite a long time.

Quite quite a long time. It’s uh, I think that the affiliation uh, started that I get really into it was around 2010.
Mhm.
And uh yeah, we were doing the affiliate uh marketing uh in the Nordic markets and uh it has changed a little bit since then.
Yeah. Yeah, actually that’s quite interesting.

 

What do you think cuz obviously that’s quite a long time you’ve been involved in the field. So what’s the main thing do you think that’s actually changed?

the uh like getting paid faster is
now the key point. So long-term relationships uh are losing its meaning.
Uh there are still the old school affiliates uh that uh they only
work with certain brands. uh they work with certain people and that’s it.
They don’t take any new ones in uh but those ones are very dying breed. The new ones it’s uh and also when you get into the
corporate level uh like this one uh completely goes away. Um so like because
when we started the revenue share was the main focus and revenue share, it still should be
the main focus. um because of uh the value that you can bring to the both side of the aisle to the brand and
uh also earn for yourself like it’s uh if you are an affiliate and you really
are um proud of your traffic like why do you need the CPA payment
there in a way if your uh player value is so high but I do understand that it’s just in these days.
Um, you want to get the CPA payments uh in on a monthly basis so you can cover the running costs.
Yeah. Yeah. I remember actually cuz I started out as an affiliate in 2010,
2011 I think. And um I used to do like a few different deals. I had CPAs, I had
rev share, I had maybe a tenancy where, you know, an operator would pay a fee to be
on the website plus a rev share. Um, but I did that for about a year and at the end of the day, I agree with you, like the
rev share was the best deal cuz from the CPA deals that I have, I’d probably lose out on like a whale coming in and depositing loads of money and I’d get
like, you know, $200 for that, whereas I could have got thousands. Um, so I ended up switching to rev share.
Um, but what I remember when it came to the deals that I was doing, I did want to work with like casinos and
operators like long-term, but at the same time, I was maybe advertising to a pool of people that already had accounts with
the big players. So I always had to like introduce all the new casinos coming in to actually get, you know, more revenue coming in and like a higher conversion.
Um, so it was complicated. But now we’re obviously an SEO agency, but we do um
work a wee bit with affiliates primarily just like checking if they’ve got the right traffic. So we can advise clients if they can actually go for the right
deal. We don’t do that a lot, you know, but it’s um almost like an add-on. Um but it seems there so many new brands
coming in and some of them just like last for maybe like a few months and then just they’re just out the door.
Yes, it is like that. So if we take the um uh one of the most active
market uh out there and obviously it’s Finland, my home country now it’s going to be uh slowing down because of
the licensing is coming there. But uh the last uh 2 years it is like crazy amount of um like the brands
that are being um built to the market are coming from the big operators. So rather than them doing um more retention
and stuff like that, it’s just like let’s get a new brand out there in every 6 weeks, every 8 weeks.
The brand is the same completely the same functionality is the same. the color and the name is different. Yeah.
And it’s actually it is very funny. Uh because this one goes to the player psychology that our good friend Mark would love to talk like ours.
Uh but what we have seen is that um well this one also is good for the big operators because they have a backup
plan but when they get their new brand out and they put it on the top positions in the major major affiliate
sites because their previous brand was doing so good numbers there but the new brand
doesn’t do at all. Mhm. it’s like what changed? It’s only the name and the colors.
Yeah.
Everything else is identical. And it’s like uh you never can know for sure how the brand will
react into those um traffic from the keywords. But then these big operators, they have the easy chance because they
can just pull their old brand back to the top position which they have paid and keep that one there and uh get the traffic in.
Yeah. So I suppose if you do have several backup plans then that’s actually a good option too cuz you can
launch you know three to six brands and half of them might not work. um you only need maybe a couple to actually do well and that’s your money maker essentially.
Um so diversifying obviously is what we’ve seen quite a lot. Um back to
obviously affiliates.

 

Do you think you’re seeing a smaller number of big affiliates in the space right now? Are the small players slowly dying?

It is based on the geos based on the
markets because I know uh like some really good players in Finnish market
uh that are coming up and really making a splash there. Um but it’s uh like in many markets uh these
big big players are buying the smaller ones when they start seeing that there is actually uh something that um like
value and everything they just keep on buying them. Mhm. And uh trying to take the control.
Um, but it’s also like um uh you probably know more on this one because
uh like

If you go and you buy an SEO affiliate and you take over their work and everything, are you going to be succeeding that one?

Because uh everything that was built was built by those guys and ladies
based on their like way of doing it. Now you coming with your big team and you taking over those sites like are
you going to continue what they were building or you going to continue how you’ve been building all the time and that might actually goes down on that website.
Yeah, it’s quite risky. You need to double check everything.
um you need like a list of things they need to actually go through to make sure that what you’re buying cuz obviously you’re going to be paying a multiple of
their profit. Um I’d imagine it works out like buying any business it’d be like a you know four or 5x of your
annual revenue. Um, but the thing is you’ve got updates that happen every few months that wipe out an affiliate. It’s
like the last update, you know, caused a lot of trouble when it comes to now update now running.
There was one recently. Yeah, there was one recently. Um, they seem to happen a lot all the time.
Just now? No, no, not right now. Not that I know of.
Um, well, I got the info yesterday that there might be um that there was some volatility uh and there might be a Google update.
What you’re probably seeing is we’ve noticed a lot of volatility on in our trackers uh in our tracking tools, but we don’t
think that that’s actually related to an update. There’s one that rolled out recently. Um but that I’m hoping that
will correct itself in the next few days.
Um, but yeah, it’s, you know, going back to actually buying an affiliate, there’s a lot of checks that you need to do. Obviously, you’ve got your technical
side, your content, your links. You need to look into the history of that, the history of those relationships.
Um, and obviously, you need a good trajectory to see where the website is actually going. Uh, and what you need to
be doing to safeguard that as a base um, and continue to actually build that. So, yeah, it is quite risky. And I remember
back in the day, I think it was maybe 10 years ago, there was a big company um buying up all the kind of like smaller
players and bigger players, spending millions.
And you know, if you look at half those websites now or more, they’re, you know, completely dead in the water that don’t
really generate any revenue. Um, and I think a few of them, a few of those websites that we checked, I think it was
even maybe 6 months after the deal, even those websites were actually completely down. So, so yeah, you need to be careful when it comes to that. It’s uh it can be quite quite risky for sure.

 

But can it happen that uh because of uh the people that have built it?

Yeah. no longer there that the knowledge that they just had the knowledge for those sites and like how they were building it.
Yeah, I mean a lot of them are built on the same platforms. Um if it’s something that’s actually custom then you know you
need a proper handover in place to make sure you know what you’re doing going forward. Um but most of the things
can be you can double check everything and make sure that you’ve got information on everything. And now obviously with you know AI coming into
the space too um it’s probably easier to maybe get documentation on that it’s probably easier to actually put that deal together and sell your website.
Yeah. So, I mean, one of the things that I was thinking about, cuz obviously I started
out as an affiliate and now we run an agency, but we’re thinking of maybe launching and maybe a couple of affiliates, but we’re trying to pinpoint
the right market, maybe the right product. We don’t want to go into something that’s super competitive, um, something that’s actually going to cost
a lot to actually get in because we want to test the water initially. So I was just wondering from your point of view,

 

Is it still realistic for an affiliate startup to actually do quite well in this space? And what channels do you think you would go after initially to get some revenue in?

there is uh like a lot of uh in the SEO
world uh you can create websites uh on certain markets
uh just because of uh if it’s a very small team that you have because you
don’t need to go after the main keywords but if you go after the um uh some of the not that used keywords that the
competition might be a little bit more easier uh um to create websites uh based on those keywords
uh because of um take markets like uh I’m not 100% sure is this still completely true.
Mhm.
But uh if you take the like the Baltic markets uh the black market in there uh is five six times more valuable than the licensed market.
Wow. Uh so because of uh I think it’s uh when I used to work with the Estonian
license and a brand there like when you are self-excluding yourself it’s 999 years. So you are
completely out from ever playing any um casino games in licensed operators in that market. So
obviously where are you going to go after that one? uh you’re going to go to the black market where you can still play. Uh so there is a
big amount of uh traffic in these markets but long time ago I was talking with gambling.com uh just briefly because
they were interested on different uh smaller markets but even they was like
maybe it’s too small markets for us because the bigger ones are looking at the big markets and the numbers
that are coming there but it’s suddenly um the ROI in percentage is so much higher in these smaller markets
because you’re not spending that much money there. You’re not uh like you don’t need too much things going on
there. So there is a big possibility for like newcomers, new affiliates in these smaller niche markets.
Yeah, every uh Eastern European market is picking up quite nicely now. Mhm. that’s interesting. Yeah. Yeah.
If you are uh creating something uh some activity maybe in Albania. Yeah.
Like are you going to be able to make money uh out of that one? like how much money you need to make.
If you can create couple of websites that are generating um 5 to 10k uh a month in revenue and it’s just you
there living like it already is enough 100%. it’s about your
positioning, isn’t it? Finding the right market, the right product. Um I think that’s what it’s all about and we see that a lot with operators and
bigger affiliates that we work with. for certain keywords in certain markets. So expensive even on the organic side, you know,
the cost of the content links, then you have your protection, you know, you’ve got your DMCA takedowns, you’ve got
your, you know, brand hijack. It’s just, it gets a bit crazy. But for smaller markets, we’re able to go in and rank for like really quality keywords, high
volume like online casino, sports betting, you know, the top tier and do really well and you don’t really have
those problems and it’s for a tenth of the cost to actually do that. So, so yeah, I agree with you. Positioning is key to actually make some money in this game.
It is. And um well one of the good part nowadays is that uh also the operators are um like they
are looking at the new markets because of uh when the new brands are coming in they always look the same old countries uh Germany Canada like whatever it might be but there
is now a lot more of the brands are looking at these uh not the new ones there is only few new ones that I’ve um
come across that are actually looking into those very small markets without the local license.
Yeah. But uh the bigger players um uh they are also like uh actively um
asking around uh like hey what do you think about Hungarian market Bulgarian market like how you see there
and um it’s uh so the affiliates would have a good choice of really good brands
that has a good reputation because you want to have you want to promote brands that um are going to pay you on
time. We’ll give you all that you need from there. And um yeah, it’s like you need those ones. You
don’t want some new ones coming there and uh they cannot handle it and uh you’re not going to get even paid.
Yeah. Yeah.

 

Out of interest, obviously in your line of work, what channel do you think is the most popular at the moment? Is it PPC? Is it SEO? Is it a mix of both? Is it streamers?

SEO is still the main source.
Obviously there is a lot of uh happening in the social channels nowadays. Yeah.
Because of uh everything is uh but it’s more becoming as a media buying
not entirely with the affiliation that much. There is still a lot happening in the affiliation with those uh social channels and everything but it’s also a lot of uh media buying is there uh PPC is very volatile and
it’s expensive so expensive uh all around that uh you don’t even
want to go to the PPC route until you have really good brand that converts. Um I always uh when the brands are
asking me like uh what kind of traffic uh we should go after it’s never going to be PPC from the
start. You need to have your conversions. You need to have everything in line because going with the PPC
it’s um a lot of the time the major ones are also asking you to prepay them. Mhm. um obviously the prepayment to really
really good PPC affiliates is a no-brainer because they will push the brand until that certain mark has been
uh done. But it’s like uh not many can put €15,000 on a
one source in one go um and that might be their uh fixed fee budget for the month.
That’s what I was thinking about, mate, cuz like we come across obviously um affiliates and look at the pricing too.
Um again, not like as part of our job, but like obviously we’re in the industry, so we know how much they’re actually charging and especially the PPC
ones. Some of the pricing is astronomical, you know, to get you listed and get your FTDs. And obviously the cost to
actually do PPC is really expensive in this niche, as we know.
Um, so they charge accordingly and I do get that. But yeah, it’s difficult for a, as you said, for a brand to come
in and spend big bucks on something that might not materialize.
Yeah, it is like middle East is over €1,000 uh CPA and 50% rev share. Um, how do you even make money on that?
That’s by the time you actually deduct all the costs. Yeah, it’s crazy.
You just need couple of big big players there.
Yeah, but you are um like it is no more um reasonable. Um Germany,
it’s 800 to 900 pure CPA plus but 20% uh guarantee on click to uh deposit.
Okay. every five click there needs to be a FTD.
So if you do like €800 uh per FTD
uh and your conversion is 10 clicks to one FTD, you’re paying 1,600 already.
Yeah.
So, it’s just like the um these ones are becoming um
like ridiculous. Uh and people still want to get there, but they don’t have the truly the
understanding of uh where they’re getting into. Mhm.

 

So, do you think a lot of operators at the moment, even new ones at launch, do you think they’re losing quite a lot of money when it comes to like um affiliates or they’re just chasing that fast FTD?

Because at the moment uh we are like helping out a couple of uh really new brands to get into the
affiliate uh line. And my thought process is always that we want to get you live in so many different
affiliates but we try to get you live in lower positions not going after high positions. There is no point to start
like scaling uh hugely on the first one or two months like get you everywhere
utilize different uh traffic sources and then start to see where the brand is like I mentioned earlier when one
affiliate site the brand is identical except the name and the coloring but it doesn’t work.
So it’s like when you are seeing these big SEO sites or whatever PPC it is social site like you cannot know if
your brand actually makes anything there.
So it’s like but yeah but they are like we can get this much FTDs uh
from them like no you don’t like it there is no magic here. it’s like
your brand either converts or it doesn’t convert. Yeah.
Uh I’ve seen uh like in Finnish market I’ve seen really really crazy uh
good conversions and then I’ve seen really really bad conversions
and uh it’s um yeah you cannot just go and start
buying the positions and start um uh trying to buy the traffic. Mhm.
it’s um well there are a few affiliates um like our good good friend
um uh Phixio that uh if you get in there like you know that uh they will like
they will do the things in a way that make sure that you when you agree to certain FTD amount you’re going to get that one.
Okay.
And I’ve seen the good value there in all around but they just they don’t work with new brands anymore.
Okay. Okay. Yeah. Obviously they’re Yeah. Um I used to do that as an affiliate too actually. But in some
cases I would find it would be harder just because you don’t really know how a brand is going to convert.
Um so that’s why I moved to long-term. I moved to rev share. And then you could test brands. You could do your own thing and you find which brands actually work
for you and everybody wins at the end of the day, both the operator and the affiliate.
Exactly. Exactly. And uh in markets uh like Finland, there are the
big operators that are running the show. Uh so for a standalone new brand to go into the
Finnish market it is uh a bit tricky because um you might be overpaying and uh not seeing any value there.
Um but yeah, it’s uh and it’s also very very easy for these uh smaller affiliates to work with um
let’s say five big operators because now you have 25 brands that you can promote and you can move them around
in your listings and everything and you get paid from five different sources only. You only need to talk to five different people.
So it just takes away uh a lot of the extra work and extra headache and uh all these things. So
it’s easier to manage as well.
Yeah. Yeah.

 

What’s the deal with the Finnish market at the moment? Um we worked for that market maybe two, three years ago and did quite well. Um, however, the client that we had to exit the market just because of the laws and regulations, it was a bit all over the place. Um, what’s going on at the moment?

Well, at the moment, um, Finland is getting the licensing next year. So now it’s funny because I’m hearing um a lot of these um uh they’re doing uh a lot of talks and uh podcast and everything about the Finnish market and how it going to look.
We still don’t know how it’s going to look.
So what I now understand from the market is that there is about 60 operators now applying for the license.
uh most of them were thinking that the whole market is valued about 2 billion but in reality it’s about 800 million
because the lottery and the slot machines and these ones will not be in part of that one. Okay.
So now people are also like rethinking like why do we like is there
then going to be something for us? Uh so so that for me I cannot understand that there is so many operators going and
applying for that license and actually doing something there. Yeah.
So what will happen there? I don’t really know. And so far the affiliation
uh this one is now been it hasn’t fully put it on the I don’t think that it’s completely made it to the uh to the actual law that you cannot be affiliate in Finland. You
cannot have comparison sites. You cannot do this and that. So you cannot be affiliate there. Right.
Okay. ever like as in like do you need to be Finnish or I don’t like no no it’s like all these uh Finnish SEO sites that uh are there now it’s like they are saying that uh we don’t accept the affiliates there.
Okay. But then it becomes to the point that um let’s say gambling.com in Finland
they would no longer be part of um well gambling.com is not the best example but
gambling.com they own Nettikasinot.com which went down in total but if it was still
operating and uh like pulling uh good numbers they would just make a company. Maybe it needs to be in
Finland. Maybe they can just open it up in Estonia, move the ownership to that company and call it as a media outlet, media company.
And then there wouldn’t be any tracking links. There wouldn’t be any indication of being affiliate. It’s just
the media buying. So now all the brands they just go there and uh they pick the spot that they want their brand to be presented.
Interesting.

 

And how does that work in terms of actually tracking?

is it because obviously you can obviously track certain things but
you don’t need like so the brand will uh I think they can uh do some kind of tracking or whatever it is
but it’s more into the way that uh like these SEO sites that have been doing really good numbers like
if you don’t see it from Ahrefs that they are going down they’re still going bring you those numbers that
before the licensing game. So now in good hearts you can go and purchase the positions because the historical data
was always uh similar there. So right I think I get what you mean. So you would do like almost like a tenancy
you would pay them you’d agree a fee and you pay X amount a month based on the historical performance.
Yes. And also that how the um how the data is being shown now like are
they um getting more and more clicks or are they going a little bit down and based on that one uh you can like top position is uh 50,000.
Yeah. Uh that’s it.
Okay. I think I should enter that market and build a website because it’s I’m looking forward to other things to do.
Um

 

Are you seeing more and more affiliates and like media websites enter that market now just because of the licensing coming into play?

So there are a little bit SEO sites being built there
and um but these ones are coming from the major uh major companies uh that have all been in that market and the
media companies these ones are already the Finnish media companies uh the newspapers and everything that it’s in Finland already.
Yeah. So they are then uh like selling in all of their websites because uh when the licensing comes into
place uh they can um they can sell positions on their sites. So like building now aside there and like you
need to get so much traffic out of that one to um Yeah. Um and I think it can be quite
difficult for maybe smaller players coming in to try and sort of like replicate that because what we are
seeing across the board and some of them do it in a kind of like slightly dodgy way like very black-hat way. Um,
but the thing to do is like you can go and buy maybe an existing website that has a lot of authority that might
not even be related to gambling and casinos, but then you can actually repurpose that website because it has a
lot of authority, a lot of links pointing to it and like a history, you can actually repurpose that, change the content, change the strategy, link
build, do all the technical side and rank quite well. and like a bit like parasite SEO, but
essentially you’re repurposing like an old domain um that has existing link equity and you’re bringing that back to
life and you can make a lot of money through that. And we’ve seen the bigger companies actually go out and acquire those websites or domains for a high
price point. But even if you’re paying like, you know, 40, 50 grand for the domain, you know, it has so much power that, you know, for you to actually
replicate that with a new website, you need really deep pockets and probably three times the amount of money. Um, so
it’s a good way to go about it, but equally maybe a little bit harder for like smaller players coming in trying to replicate that.
Oh, of course and um like UK is a good example on the parasite SEO sites that been popping up now. it’s actually like they might get the site up and running for one or two days maybe maximum one or
two weeks um with the proper keywords and everything. But these ones are coming from really big players.
Yeah. like they are not uh like newcomers uh to the uh to that kind of a uh way of uh doing business. Uh so
yeah they can easily take the hits if it doesn’t uh doesn’t work out because they have already another one coming live.
Yeah. And I always tell the brands that uh like when you work with these parasite SEO sites like you don’t look at the website like how much traffic there is in that website because it can show you
zero now and like you’re going to get listed there and it’s going to show zero in one week
time. I tell always the brands that uh when you get with these ones, you don’t ask them every day when is the traffic
coming. You will see it immediately because they jump heavily with the traffic
and then you don’t ask like uh can we get more and more of this one like it goes up it comes down but they have
another site already like that they are going to make it live and uh start the traffic again. So it’s
like for these I always tell that don’t look at the websites look at the company behind and
these few companies that are doing it in a right way like you just let them do and um you will see quite a lot of
traffic on these days that they are ranked uh on top positions in sports betting uh all these uh crazy keywords in UK market.
Yeah. No, I know. I hear you. It was crazy for the past few months, but um Google did actually do an update a few months ago that nuked quite a lot of
these websites. Um but they’re back. You still see in certain markets you actually hasn’t made any difference whatsoever. Um
they are smart people in those companies. They know how these can be uh like and they are testing.
They’re testing all the time. it’s like um yeah. Do you know what’s crazy though?
Um, I used to do that exact strategy in 2014, 2013, 2014. It used to
work quite well. Um, and then I can’t remember which update it was, but it completely wiped all those websites out.
It worked for maybe a couple of years, but now it’s back and it’s been back for like a few years. And you’d think that we’ve progressed so much when it comes
to technology in general and um AI and all the different things that Google’s actually doing the race that we’re
in at the moment. You think they’d be able to actually fix that from an algorithm point of view. Um but they
haven’t. And what we think is that they’re actually too distracted by other things. They’re too distracted by the
whole AI race, AI overviews versus ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, all the different players that they don’t really care
about that side of things. There’s always going to be people that are going to find loopholes.
It’s kind of what we do for a living anyway. Um, to find ways into like a market and yeah, I mean, if you can
actually do quite well from it and make money from it, then I don’t see why not.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And um yeah, you might be right that uh the more shift is towards the AI and all these ones, but the SEO is still uh well, when you’re looking at the Google front page nowadays, like
how many SEO sites you’re seeing there ranked on the first page? Like I think it’s like four, five.
It’s not many. It’s not. the rest of it is ads and uh Gemini is there taking over and uh like it’s a crazy
amount of ads. Yeah, I feel for um more for the informational side like for
example affiliates that relied on say for example blackjack strategies or you
know how to do this how to win at roulette or you know sort of like queries like that. Um
yeah they’re suffering. They have been suffering for quite a long time now.
Like we have examples of websites that are 80% down year on year in terms of actually clicks and it’s um basically AI
overview scraping the content answering the question citing the website but the website doesn’t really get any clicks
for it. So essentially users go online they get the answer that they want they don’t have to click on any website it’s
all there within AI overviews and that’s that and they don’t have to visit it. So obviously clicks are going to be down
for other more commercial intent queries. You don’t really see that at the moment. Um
but it does actually make me wonder where we’re actually heading. And I was wondering from your point of view,

 

Do you think ChatGPT or Gemini uh could effectively replace casino comparison sites in the future?

it’s a yes and no. Um obviously with the when you’re looking at the ChatGPT
um like how much information you can get from there but it’s like
you still need to choose the brand that you want to play and you still need to uh like it’s like the
AI will not help you on that part. Uh so like at this moment um
like the chat uh it’s interesting to see what it’s happening there and uh like how the
people are using the prompts uh like looking for the um uh the best places to play. Yeah.
And it is more and more clicks are happening there. Um but I don’t have any
idea how the ChatGPT is then picking up which is the best site
like where is that like where is it coming that uh if I
want to find the best SEO agency in UK and you come as a top position there. Yeah.

Where like is it coming from the reviews? Is it coming from like what’s the criteria that it’s coming?

Yeah. Okay. So, there’s a few things here. So, obviously you’ve got your website and that’s
obviously your central hub and ChatGPT and AI agents will actually go and search the internet for answers. So you
still need to have obviously uh relevant information on your website listed uh in a format that AI engines can actually
pick that up. Uh but there’s also quite a few other factors like for example what we’re doing at the moment um is
quite different to traditional link building and we’re going out and we’re buying mentions. Um, so essentially we
can actually go and buy a mention within an article that’s not linked. And as long as that’s relevant to the query
that you’re trying to the prompt that you’re actually trying to rank for, you could do quite well from that alone.
And even for um say less competitive prompts, it’s actually quite easy to manipulate just now. Um, okay.
I think that’s going to change obviously. um things are changing on a daily basis. Uh but we’re testing things
and yeah, traditional SEO is obviously key cuz that’s your baseline, right? So, you know, as you
said, like ChatGPT and all these other engines need to go out somewhere and get that information. Um and site websites.
Um, so that’s one part, but it’s not really enough at the moment to have just a website with the optimized
content and even a huge backlink profile. So even if you actually do quite well in Google, it doesn’t mean they’re going to be ranking across um
all these different AI engines. And that’s to do with Common Crawl. Um it’s to do with
mentions and it’s to do with validation from other sources. Um so for example when I was an affiliate I focused on
Google search and that was that. I only cared about rankings uh good content the conversion and obviously getting links
to actually get those positions and get those FTDs in. I think now you need to be thinking more like a media brand.
Um, so for example, if you want to be the best at something, yes, you could have that content on your website. Yes, you could be ranked in Google. Um, you
could have, you know, other relevant content that’s actually linked to that, but you need external resources to
actually validate that. So you need to be on socials, you need to be on review sites, you need to be on forums, you
need to be everywhere where a major media brand exists. You know, if you look at that footprint in that network,
that’s how you need to be thinking. And the more you do that, the more chances you’ll have to actually appear
um in AI engines and you know rank for all those prompts.
Yeah, this is uh nowadays like the Trustpilot is also like people are uh like just writing reviews there. Yeah.
And getting uh things ranking. No, it’s um because Yeah, for me it’s very interesting the ChatGPT because of uh like if you’re looking at the Canadian market uh like Casino.org has like the best online
casino uh keyword or best online casinos. Uh but when you add it into the prompt like it doesn’t bring
that one uh as a top choice like uh it’s um

 

So for smaller affiliates it is like how can they like go into that route?

Yeah. uh I don’t know fully like what is the amount of uh like searches in like ChatGPT if you add like the top 10 um iGaming prompts in UK like
how are they like are they getting like how many percentage they are growing each month
um Gemini is a completely different thing because uh it’s just like when you do any Google search, it’s just there.
Uh but does it count as a search in that moment or when you actually then open that one and you do another search? I don’t know.
I think the attribution is a bit all over the place at the moment too with these things. But um from what we can see and track, it’s actually growing.
It’s growing quite a lot.
But to be honest, at the end of the day, everybody’s talking about that, right? So it’s like the hottest new thing.
Nobody’s growing about the nobody’s really talking about the fact that Google grew massively year on year um just because it’s not the new flashy
thing you know everybody’s talking about ChatGPT Gemini Claude all these different engines but yeah the truth is it is
growing it is taking market share there is a race between them all and I think it’ll be quite interesting to see what
happens um I mean from our point of view doing SEO/GEO/AEO now is quite interesting
because you’ve gone from optimizing from one engine primarily to now optimizing
for multiple and tracking that and using different methods to manipulate things and try and show. But
again like and we use a lot of tracking tools. I think I did a post the other day on LinkedIn saying that you know please don’t message me if you’ve got
like another AI tool. like I’ve already have 27 of them that I’m trying. Um, but it’s so early and things
are changing so much that even the good ones that we have that we think track things accurately, you know, they’re not quite there yet.
And if you take one prompt and search in one device and then go to another device and to another PC even in the same
location, it’s going to give you slightly different answers or maybe completely different answers. Um, so you’re almost competing for a share of
that of that traffic, you know, a percentage that’s, you know, 25% of the times are going to be showing up for
that prompt within that location. I think that’s where it’s going and that’s something that’s quite difficult to track. Um, but there’s
obviously new emerging ways and technologies are actually coming out and tools that help us do that. But it’s for sure interesting times.
It is. And uh like obviously when you’re doing the prompts like you’re asking like the best online
casinos uh without license in Canada or something like that. that’s where uh like you want to find
another place like the new ones the just the new players uh they don’t
like I don’t think that they going to go completely there on ChatGPT or these ones they still going to be using the
Google and then what we have seen in the past quite a lot and this is like every major SEO website comparison website. Uh when you when your brand is listed there on the first 3
months, you’re going to get a lot more traffic than the actual numbers justify
because I’ve seen that there is a lot of like when person finds gambling.com one time and they find their casino there and they win some money.
the next time when they want to find another casino, they don’t like they go straight to uh gambling.com.
Yeah.
And they go that same page where they found that casino that they won $100.
Like they go there and they choose another one from that list. Mhm. so it’s like a lot of the times the players will not go and uh ask again uh like what’s the next uh good one. it’s like uh they already found the place where the good ones are being held and uh you just go there.
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. That’s that sort of makes sense. Um, in terms of like obviously like the affiliate
marketing in general.

 

Do you what’s your view on affiliates actually going after brand terms like as in um, you know, if I sign up with a new operator today as an SEO affiliate and I go after and try and rank for like their brand terms?

Well, these ones are good because uh we’ve been talking about uh quite quite a lot and uh it’s like every
time when I uh see the new brand, I always uh try to get them to talk with you about protecting yourself.
Yeah.
because of um the bigger the affiliate is the more like when they launched your brand
there as a review like it’s just going to hurt
a lot of uh your own traffic. Um it’s um and people don’t understand this one
because of uh like they just want to get listed on their uh top pages.
Yeah. Mhm. they don’t understand that there is actually review page of your brand that then you’re going to lose a little
bit of uh your organic traffic uh to that one. Yeah.
And then it’s like uh yeah for a new brands I always uh
say that they need to go and they need to check how they can uh protect their brand. Obviously, these new brands
that you can open in 24 hours, like you know how long they’re going to last, like they don’t care about this one. and also the markets where they going to go after like if you have a brand that goes after Turkish market or even French market let’s take France for example like it is like the after um year and a half
in that market the brand might be like uh top casino is the domain
top casino.com is the brand name and then after a year and a half. Uh it’s going to be top casino 247.
Yeah.
248 249 like so in those points um like
protecting your brand it’s not relevant anymore. and but major like we’ve been talking now the one
newcomer for the UK market like in that market because you need to protect your brand uh heavily uh before you’re
going to get affiliates to launch the brand on their sites because they have already.

 

What is the oldest uh SEO site in UK market nowadays like what’s the major major old school that it’s like if you’re going to list your brand there, you’re going to do some harm?

Uh, like the oldest site that actually comes to mind um online casinos.co.uk. Do you remember that one?
Yeah. Massive massive website. I don’t know.
It’s probably still going. Um but yeah, websites like that have like huge authority.
Yeah, I mean I used to do as an affiliate. There’s nothing actually wrong with it. You want to be listed on certain websites as an operator, but at the same time, you’re right.
Yeah, you need to be protecting your brands cuz at the moment, what we are seeing is obviously you’re going to be getting,
you know, major affiliates actually ranking for your brand terms and that’s fine if they’re ranking like third, fourth or whatever, getting like a share of those clicks. But you’re also getting
fake imitation websites that would set up with a similar brand name to yours and it’s like a random AI Claude-generated
website with spam backlinks ranking quite well and just when users click on
it just redirects the track it the traffic to like another random casino and there’s multiple of them.
Yeah, if you’re looking at the Swedish market has been quite active on those ones and um uh suddenly
the redirection is going to uh one particular company’s brands. Mhm. so it’s
uh um but yeah these ones um like they’ve been harming uh also in Finland market uh we see these ones uh coming up quite uh quite often
as well. Uh nothing you can do about those ones because of the companies that are doing it. Uh some of them only works
with one company and then like they get money out of that one and they don’t care if somebody
reaches out to them and like hey stop doing it. Uh yeah they’re b you don’t know where they’re based. You don’t know who’s actually operating that
website. Could be anyone, right? It could be anyone. uh when we do a little bit digging, we find who
they are and uh but still there is no way that uh you can tell them to stop this one.
It’s just part of the game in this iGaming industry.
it’s like we have the regulated market that the
rules are more strict like completely strict because the black market you can do whatever you want.
There is like uh that’s it. it’s like um nothing you can do in
these ones. You just need to um uh to react and uh try to get them uh down as fast as possible.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting. It’s a crazy world that we’re living in and uh the industry is like that. It’s
always been like that. Um there’s always like new things coming in, new loopholes, new ways to actually like get traffic and because there’s a lot of
money on the table um obviously going to be attracting the best talent um into this industry to actually go
after it. So um yeah there is and uh like in this
industry um like there is more scammers coming up and claiming to be
affiliates and having traffic and everything. It’s just like you never should be paying prepayments. Uh
that’s the one rule. But obviously when you have to pay, you need to validate the source so so
carefully. Um but yeah, there is just too many scammers nowadays coming up in this industry that it’s
giving a bad name. But then it’s not the affiliate giving the bad name, it’s also the brands are giving the bad name. So it’s uh like who are we to blame?
Yeah. Yeah.
interesting. Um, no, yeah, I completely agree with you, man. And, um, it was great to actually
get your insights on the affiliate world. Obviously, we talk a lot about it’s an iGaming SEO show, so it’s like
we talk a lot about SEO. Uh, but it’s good to look at other channels that are actually directly linked to the SEO
world. I’ve got like a few final questions and usually what we do with them it’s almost like a quick-fire thing.
So like I’ll ask you and you know you can give me like an answer. Um so the first one

 

Do you think there’s going to be fewer affiliates in 2027 2028 or more affiliates? What are you thinking?

more affiliates uh specific to countries global affiliates. No.
Okay. Like so more to the specific markets. Um example Finland.
Yeah.
So when the new rules are coming there, how it’s going to react streamers who whatever it might be.
Okay. Okay.

 

And if you could make um if you could see into the future, which acquisition channel do you think is going to be like the one to go for in the next two years?

It is the SEO. Um because it’s this is very hard since I
know some 19-year-old kids that are making millions per month in TikTok uh like advertisement and these ones. Yeah,
they don’t do the videos themselves, but they do the clipping and stuff like that.
So, it’s but the social traffic is uh
SEO is where the value is, where the player value is the highest. Yeah.
The social channels, TikToks and stuff like that, that’s the numbers game. That’s the uh that’s the mass market. um like where you are not
looking at the um uh the ROI in the same way and you don’t look at the player value is much lower but it’s like uh you get a 10,000 FTDs from one TikTok affiliate compared
to 100 FTDs uh from SEO affiliate but the actual deposit amounts can be the same.
Yeah, it’s crazy. It’s crazy. And obviously I’d imagine I mean I don’t know anything about TikTok affiliates but I’d imagine the ones that
actually achieve those numbers or a very very tiny percentage right.
Yeah they are quite tiny tiny amounts but it’s um and nobody wants to
share them. They’re very very like uh secret secret people.
Yeah. Uh but yeah, so but it’s the same thing about uh when you have a
crypto um uh brand uh affiliation will not bring you that much anymore. Like
bitcoin.com uh if you’re looking at those numbers uh on that website on the pages um there is not much of traffic uh coming.
uh and then other major crypto affiliates uh there is not much of traffic in those
websites or those pages. Yeah.
But for the like crypto.com the main page or bitcoin.com the main page obviously huge amount of traffic but
those gambling pages there is not much. So like they go into the
influencers, they go into these ones uh um they just start creating uh Instagram
accounts um with just their logo in there and uh utilizing other people’s content, do these clippings and
everything. So yeah. Yeah, that wasn’t a short answer. No, a good answer though because like you said SEO
which is good good for us obviously and good for but yeah I agree with you. I think um there’s obviously like all these different
channels that you could be diversified in but um I think search has just like grown massively with the introduction of
all these engines and it’s only going to like grow more. Um so yeah Tero, thanks so much for coming on man. It’s been great to have you.
Well, thank you for having me and yeah, it’s always good to talk with you and uh like it’s um we known each other for almost 10 years now.
Yeah, it’s always good like every time when I need something about SEO uh help or anything, I always come to you
first. So, it’s like it’s always good to talk with you.
Well, man, thanks again.

 

before we go, is there anything you want to promote on your end?

Oh, like there is because of uh what we are doing uh in the affie.ai obviously
um uh you had a little look on that part. Um
but the AI helpers are coming into the industry. So
what we are building with the AI on the affie.ai is that uh it’s just going to
give you the recommendations based on the data.
So whether it’s uh like potential fraud is uh detected. Uh we were also talking about that uh when there are jumps on
the SEO sites uh that you are listed uh that if it drops down or goes higher in certain times that we
would also have like that there is a Google update ongoing that might affect. Yeah.
So it’s giving the affiliate managers much more information in a much faster way. Uh so
when I’ve been talking with a lot of companies nowadays uh everybody is looking into the AI like uh that
they want to have that one in their company but it’s uh none of them really have it specifically for just for
the affiliate marketing part and it’s uh it will be a game changer.
It’s just uh like we are still getting it up and running like everything is well everything is up and running but uh to get the name out there much more.
Yeah, I think I had Elaine actually on talking about it too. It seemed quite quite an interesting concept. So it’s affie.ai.
Yes, affie.ai. Perfect.
Yeah, like I always say that it’s like the tool is pretty much like that
annoying kid in school that always wanted to raise their hand if they found some error somewhere
that it’s like hey that doesn’t make sense like there’s something happening here something’s off with that deal.
Yes. So, that’s kind of a way that uh I always uh laugh about it and um yeah, it helps out.
Awesome. Awesome. We’ll put that link in the description for anybody that wants to check that out. Great to catch up and um we’ll keep in touch anyway cuz like we’ve got like the chat going on.
But um I’ll see you at the next conference. Probably ICE.
Yeah, probably then in Barcelona. Uh, I think that one uh anyways is uh it might be the next one for me.
Same. Same. We’ll catch up for a few beers for sure. Of course. We need that one. Awesome, man. Thanks very much.
Thank you. Say hi to the team. Speak soon. Bye.