Growing a successful affiliate site takes a bit more talent and effort than slapping an ad at the top of a page. As David da Silva, CEO of EasyOdds, explained to CalvinAyre.com’s Becky Liggero, it’s about building a relationship with the customer and offering them value.
Affiliate operators who build something that will last, rather than go for the quick buck, will do much better in the industry. “At EasyOdds, we believe that these are our users, they’re our players, and that it’s our relationship with them over a number of years that gives us a reason to exist,” da Silva explained. “So we want to have relationships where we share revenue with operators, where we both win together rather than opportunistic, short term arrangements which some of the affiliates do. So, it’s really about offering them a long term proposition, that they can keep coming back to and they find is actually helping them in their enjoyment of sports betting.”
Offering the content that customers are looking for isn’t easy though. It takes a mountain of effort. “We do have a great core team, but it’s only a handful,” he said. “We’re like three or four people but we outsource a huge amount to some trusted content contributors that really understand how to write the type of content that we like to put in front of our users, that understand how to optimize that content for search, which is super important, and who really make life easier for us.”
If you’re looking to start your own affiliate operation, starting at that scale might be prohibitive, so focus on what you can do best. “It’s a very expensive business to get into, and the content obligations are huge,” he noted. “The best way to start really, for a new business, would be to pick a vertical. Pick a kind of tiny segment and do that really well, and grow from that to other segments and just keep adding propositions and adding the size of your user base.”
At the end of the day though, the best way to retain customers and grow the business long term is to continually focus on what you’re offering them, and not what revenues they’re bringing back to you. “From our point of view, if we’re offering those users, we’re going to track the users, we’re going to give them something valuable,” da Silva said. “If you can fixate on what that proposition is, users will come and they will engage, and then you will be able to monetize those users through affiliate relationships. If you think of them as your users, and about the value proposition first, and then secondly the monetization, then I think you’re into the right zone really.”
