Diversifying your affiliate channels

In this newsletter I’m going to do a short takedown of what was discussed in the panel for Diversifying your affiliate traffic at the SBC Summit Malta. 

As someone that has done nearly 150 podcast recordings, I like to take notes when I’m interviewing people. 

This panel at SBC Summit Malta was no different other than I had an audience and 3 guests than the usual single person. 

As always, shoutout to StatsDrone and FTDx as newsletter supporters.

That said, my notes can be a little rough as not all the questions I originally wrote down were asked. 

Panelists:

• Moderator John Wright, CEO, StatsDrone

• Jarl Modén , CPO, Dilanti Media

• Richard Dennys , CEO, Game Lounge

• Mathew Symmonds, CEO, Web Analysis Solutions Limited

Below are point form notes I took of the panel and from what I remember so of course I’m paraphrasing here. 

One thing I personally get to do on the Affiliate BI podcast is ask a lot of tough questions on how affiliates can diversify their traffic while Google has become more disruptive. 

So let’s dive in. 

Gael Breton of Authority Hacker, just shared weeks ago that he attended the Google I/O conference saying “Search for traffic isn't COMPLETELY DEAD. BUT It's certainly going to be the shadow of what it once was. And it's likely your "SEO Skills" won't be what moves the needle anymore. So if you're still tinkering with title tags or outreaching for links, even doing "semantic SEO",  it's time to think of a pivot.” How do we react to this?

Jarl Modén: Every click is more important.

Richard Dennys: Partnerships can be a way to unlock revenue and traffic. 

I wrote rough notes so I think Richard brought this up as some of the panel became conversational in discussing various points. That said, I think I remember Richard mentioning an idea where affiliates could do collaborations with game providers and operators. This is something I see more of in other industries but maybe in iGaming, this is starting to change.  

Mathew Symmonds: Building products you are passionate about will essentially always be successful. 

Are affiliates not embracing audio and video content formats fast enough?

Richard Dennys: Game Lounge has embraced audio/video by building a podcast studio. 

Richard Dennys: User generated content is the content Google and everyone else is hungry for.

Many affiliates chase doubling their search traffic rather than trying to double their conversion rates. How important is Conversion Rate Optimization and is this the unfair advantage the larger affiliates have?

Mathew Symmonds: They are retargeting their visitors of their websites. 

Just a thought on what Mathew wrote, it is very rare for an affiliate to do this and I know when it happens because I’ve seen some sites re-appear as ads on various platforms so this retargeting is definitely a real thing. 

Jarl Modén: They study their own user behaviour as much as possible and recommends people use tools to learn about their users. This includes session recordings. 

Richard Dennys: At Game Lounge, they have a user research team to dive deeper into their audience.

My SEO mentors often talk about how the audience as a concept is overlooked by many affiliates. What does building an audience look like for you?

From this question, the panelists mentioned how search is changing and the ways of grabbing an audience’s attention is not what it used to be and is now more important. The old affiliate model didn’t really collect first party data but now we are seeing more apps and streamers shine. 

I can tell you that Mathew had written extensive notes for this panel which would be a great article on it’s own. Before the panel, he told me that there are significant differences in how people use ChatGPT on mobile versus desktop. 

Speaking of SEO mentors, James Dooley and Karl Hudson held an SEO workshop which would have been great to inject some of their workshop here but hopefully you didn’t miss out. 

I spend more than enough time on LinkedIn to study the hires and layoffs at affiliate companies. Outside of SEO, what types of people are you looking to add to your team and do you expect AI to make all of us do more with less people?

I asked this question a slightly different way on stage where I paraphrased that I see more emphasis on product people. 

Richard Dennys: More brains, less hands. Essentially getting more done with less. They’ve just hired a new Head of AI and their Netherlands site is run by a financial journalist.

I think Jarl mentioned that everyone on their team is doing AI and that is just how it should be anyways. 

People come to these panels with amazing guests for predictions and trends, what are they from you? Also what should affiliates be doing more of in their business?

Richard Dennys: Capture more data especially player engagement data.

My comment was that affiliate managers have some insights as to what trends are happening and Richard made a comment that the industry could do more to share data as an industry. 

A question I had asked: do you think AI will help to create more products in chatbots, data sets and the like?

Richard Dennys: try all channels, you need to test and see what works. 

I believe Mathew had more insights on this as his sites are very product focused. I think everyone agreed there was a big opportunity for new affiliates to build something new. 

Question: how do smaller affiliates grow when they have tough competition in bigger affiliate companies with more resources at their disposal?

Jarl Modén: Dominate 1 topic and focus. 

I’ve left a comment where some of the biggest affiliates have told me that most in the industry don’t have a long-term vision. Jarl’s comments here are spot on in that regard. 

Mathew Symmonds:  Languages beyond English represent a big opportunity for growth. 

I just want to thank the gentlemen for participating, SBC for putting this together especially with Wendy Debattista and Natalie Lees working magic in the background. Also a pleasure to have chatted after with Rohini Sardana.