Affiliate Manager Insights with Sami Kurvinen

Show: Revenue Optimization with StatsDrone
Episode: Affiliate Manager Insights with Sami Kurvinen
Host: John Wright
Guest: Sami Kurvinen
Published: Thu, 23 Nov 2023 12:01:00 +0000
Duration: 26:02

Speaker labels are a two-speaker split from pauses (host vs guest). Timestamps are `[HH:MM:SS]` from the episode audio. Light ASR; names and brands may need a pass.

---

[00:00:00] John Wright: You can either go to work, do the basics, go on, or you can get more out of it by learning more about the company, the industry. If the company where you work doesn't provide you with this kind of knowledge, then you can look after it yourself. Make sure that you talk to different departments in your company, talk to the different employees and see, okay, you are working in payments and fraud. Okay.

[00:00:28] John Wright: What can I learn from that? You talk to the CRM team. What's new right now? What challenges do we have? What are we doing to be better than others?

[00:00:37] Sami Kurvinen: Basically get an overall knowledge of the whole product and that will make you a better affiliate manager.

[00:00:45] John Wright: I'm John Wright and you're listening to affiliate BI, the business intelligence and affiliate marketing podcast brought to you by Statstron.

[00:00:55] Sami Kurvinen: So welcome to the affiliate BI podcast. We're chatting with Sammy Crivenen. He's an expert affiliate marketer with a background in professional poker, leading to building and managing affiliate programs and is now building affiliate sites. Sammy, welcome to the show.

[00:01:11] John Wright: Thanks a lot, John. I'm happy to be here. I've been a fan of your podcast and listening to some of the previous episodes and some really good guests. So I'm honored to be here. Thank you. Well, I'm happy to have you on because I've been following your career for quite some time. And I still say this today when you did affiliate management, you're one of my favorite affiliate managers. You knew your stuff. You replied faster than anyone else. Uh, super professional.

[00:01:38] John Wright: Thanks a lot.

[00:01:40] Sami Kurvinen: Thanks. So let's start at the beginning by you choosing to play professional poker. And how did this happen? And I like to ask a different question. Like what was your reaction from your friends and family?

[00:01:52] John Wright: Yeah. Yeah. Now we're going a bit way back here. But, uh, it started with me working in the land-based casinos in Sweden.

[00:02:03] Sami Kurvinen: And, uh, there was a crazy poker hype going on there. Um, to give you an example in every year in Sweden, they announced a certain item to be the Christmas gift of the year. And in 2005, it was a poker set in the whole country. So it was quite a phenomenon. And, uh, naturally by, by working the casino, I got involved in poker and started playing, uh, on the side. And, uh, thanks to some, uh, skillful friends, uh, I got to learn the

[00:02:41] Sami Kurvinen: important parts of how to play successfully and eventually it took the two step to start playing full time.

[00:02:50] John Wright: And, uh, the reaction at the time, I mean, it was, um,

[00:02:57] John Wright: mostly positive, I would say.

[00:02:59] Sami Kurvinen: Uh, especially from the, the print, uh, of mine, because, uh, they were, most of them were also involved in poker and, and around 2005, six, seven, there was some more of home games going on. People were playing. So it was, I guess it was kind of a cool thing.

[00:03:19] John Wright: And, um, one good thing we did about, uh, the whole situation that we could play full time was that instead of sitting in Sweden, we all went together to live in Argentina and Buenos Aires and clay there, like a poker team online and we're in Australia. So it was a lot of fun that came out of it too. That is amazing. I remember I got the chance to travel in a similar way, but when I started 20 years ago, it was negative reaction. Um, family were super disappointed. I just graduated with a degree in engineering and they're like, how could you do this?

[00:03:56] John Wright: And even friends, they were like, this is stupid. And maybe it's all about timing because I think back then poker online poker was just starting to get off the ground. And like you said, it was cool. I started when people just thought like, this is the sketchiest thing ever.

[00:04:12] Sami Kurvinen: Yeah. You were, you were really early then. Yeah. Like, I think it was Chris Moneymaker that that helped to give that pool globally, or at least in US and Europe where people really started playing and looked at poker a different way. That was, it was more on TV with the world poker tour and all that. So, but yeah, I can, I can imagine if you were too early, then you had some funny looks at you. Yeah, I agree. I think Chris Moneymaker actually made online gambling normal. He basically set the stage and changed everything in my opinion.

[00:04:45] John Wright: Exactly. So I want to ask, what did you learn about the eye gaming industry from your poker days that made you want to consider career on the other side of the fence?

[00:04:55] Sami Kurvinen: Well, in, in my case, it happened quite naturally since working in a land based casino led me to play poker. And then by, you know, my coincidence, I ended up in Malta.

[00:05:13] Sami Kurvinen: A friend of mine from Sweden wanted to move here to start working in the industry and now we're in 2009 and poker was already done getting harder. And I did also realize that I need to do something else. I can't play poker online or forever. So it was a natural step for me to, to look into working in the online gambling industry, since there was a company's base to remove them, but it was very different back then, because even though I had the quite extensive background in

[00:05:51] Sami Kurvinen: gaming and quite a lot of knowledge, it wasn't easy to, to find a job back then. Even if you wanted to start from scratch, let's say from support departments. And it, you know, fast forward to 2023, you see these Facebook groups. For example, there's one called, uh, multi-smanscare, multi-suites. And someone posts there and says, hi, my son is thinking I'm moving to Malta and that wants to start working in gaming. Can anyone help him? And five minutes later, and there's like four replies from the recruiters.

[00:06:27] Sami Kurvinen: Things have definitely changed from when I first came here and started working.

[00:06:33] John Wright: I think it's a rare debt for someone like right now to have experience as a professional gambler, working the affiliate management on the opera side and running affiliate sites and just wanted to ask, uh, how would you say that's an advantage to what you do today?

[00:06:49] Sami Kurvinen: Yeah, I think all of that, um, combines to, to having an overall understanding on what, from being a player, you, you have a certain mindset, uh, even if, uh, poker is mainly skill based game. You still have, uh, situations where the, the gambla, the gambler inside of you take the decisions that maybe you shouldn't and, and, and so on. So, uh, you, you understand the mindset of, of real players.

[00:07:23] Sami Kurvinen: And after working for about 10 years in, in, as an operator, I know the ins and outs of, uh, how it is to run them. Uh, I guess online casino or sports book and, uh, all the different departments, what they do and the challenges basically that maybe other affiliates don't think or know about, uh, what kind of costs are involved and, and so, and then when building my own affiliate websites, um, I tried to package all that.

[00:08:03] Sami Kurvinen: Uh, and to create sites that, uh, factors in my basic.

[00:08:10] John Wright: Yeah, I agree. I mean, it's kind of like, uh, like a self, um, what's the word deprecating question for me or for you that reflects on me where I have the background of professional gambling operator experience, affiliate experience, and anyone that I've met that has all three of it. It's, uh, it's like a secret weapon. You can pretty much touch anything and your insights into the space are just, uh, really rich.

[00:08:36] Sami Kurvinen: Exactly.

[00:08:38] John Wright: So what are your thoughts on SEO, uh, for affiliate marketing and I gave me, do you think this is part of the business that's maybe saturated or you need too much money to, to have to compete?

[00:08:51] Sami Kurvinen: And it's definitely getting harder. Uh, if you compare now to the early days, if we go to say 2009, 10, 11, 12, uh, I think the guys that did affiliate websites back then had a much easier time, basically.

[00:09:12] Sami Kurvinen: And now you're competing with a big companies with massive budgets. Uh, and there's a lot of, uh, players that are affiliates that that's tried to get in our piece of the overall pie and, and, and, uh, I think.

[00:09:30] Sami Kurvinen: A big change is that, uh, trying to rank for the big keywords is, uh, if not impossible, a very difficult task. So nowadays you have to try to, to find the more niche ways, uh, to, to target players through, through SEO.

[00:09:52] John Wright: Um, I believe it's still possible, but, uh, it's, uh, you have to be really good and know what you're doing basically.

[00:10:01] Sami Kurvinen: I agree. I think it it's a mixture of having the knowledge to know what to do, to know what keywords to target. And my belief is that it just requires a lot more work. It wasn't as easy as it was 10 years ago. So I don't think it's impossible, but I think you actually just have to at least work harder and you got to work smart in the sense of you got, you got to know your stuff.

[00:10:23] Sami Kurvinen: Yeah, exactly.

[00:10:25] Sami Kurvinen: I mean, there's, uh, you, you, I believe that if you create content that players will enjoy, uh, it will eventually rank and good things might happen from that, but you also need to keep the factors in mind that Google looks at. So, um, you can't ignore one or the other. It needs to, you need to include both basically. So, uh, create good stuff that, uh, you know, real people want to read. If you're, if you're creating your own content and that look at, uh, what,

[00:11:01] Sami Kurvinen: uh, Google is asking for because they're quite open nowadays, if what's, what their ranking factors are. So, uh, work, work after that.

[00:11:11] John Wright: I think what you said is very on point that, you know, real people want to connect with real people. And I think what's being lost in the whole SEO space is that people keep forgetting that branding is an extension of sales and branding, I think is what's going to help people resonate with you. And I think, uh, this is what Google's basically trying to say over and over again is going, you have eat, you have topical authority, and I think these things are becoming more prominent.

[00:11:41] Sami Kurvinen: Exactly. No, for sure. So going to the operator side, I wanted to ask, um, what do you think operators need to do a better today to stay relevant? So it's not just that they look, want to get more affiliates promoting them, but so they can actually get more prominent exposure on parts of their sites or parts of the traffic that actually matter.

[00:12:02] John Wright: Well, if, if we look at the affiliate marketing, um, it's very much, much, uh, same oriented. So, uh, if you work with the, especially the, the biggest affiliates, they, they often tell you that, uh, these are the rates and, uh, you know, you want position one, this is what you have to pay and so on, but when it comes to medium, smaller sized affiliates, I think, uh, what is often lost is that you,

[00:12:32] Sami Kurvinen: let's say if you take it from an affiliates manager perspective, um, you to move away, I mean, it's from just the same pitch, uh, make sure that you have a proper understanding of the product that you are selling here and, uh, focus on the other selling point. Like, yeah, it's your company putting a lot of effort in, in conversion rates. Uh, then discuss that with the affiliate that, uh, maybe we're not going to pay you the loans, but if you look at our dates and you show the date to the, to the official talk you with, look at our coverage, conversion rates.

[00:13:10] Sami Kurvinen: Are you going to see that even if we pay less, you're going to still make more, or maybe the company that you are representing, um, as an amazing gamut education tool or, or a loyalty program.

[00:13:22] John Wright: Make sure you learn about the, what's your, what's, what are the, the strong points of the brand that you are working for and explain to the affiliate. And okay. Again, maybe we're not paying the most, but if you look at the overall lifetime value of the players, if you send those clicks to us, it's going to be higher because of this and that. So I think that, uh, those are the, the, the ways that sometimes is forgotten. That's, uh, it's too much focus on, on this, on the rates, the selling prices.

[00:13:58] Sami Kurvinen: Um, and, uh, they sometimes forget that there's other factors that can affect an affiliate with, with positions and brands they push.

[00:14:10] Sami Kurvinen: I agree. Uh, going full circle back to your experience as an affiliate manager and now being an affiliate where you get to work with affiliate managers, what do you think, uh, affiliate managers need to do today to not just be more relevant, but to do their job better?

[00:14:26] John Wright: Mm-hmm.

[00:14:27] John Wright: I think that's a bit connected to what we just discussed. Uh, it's, it's a bit about, um, what you want as an, as an employee, because, uh, you can either go to work, do the basics go on, or you can get more out of it by, by learning more about the company, the industry, if the company where you work doesn't provide you with this kind of knowledge, then you can look after it yourself, make sure that you talk to different departments

[00:15:01] John Wright: in your company, talk to, uh, but the different employees and see, okay, you are working in, in payments and fraud. Okay.

[00:15:12] John Wright: What, what can I learn from that? You talk to the CRM team. Uh, what's new right now? What challenges do we have? What are we doing to be better than that?

[00:15:21] Sami Kurvinen: And basically get an overall knowledge of, of the whole product. And, um, that will make you a better affiliate manager.

[00:15:31] Sami Kurvinen: And, uh, also, um, keep in mind that loyalty is important.

[00:15:38] John Wright: Uh, the last five, six years, or, or even more than that, uh, we have seen a lot of affiliate managers changing jobs very easily because, uh, there's been new brands popping up and maybe you get a bit more paid if you just jump over to the next company is still do the same job.

[00:15:59] Sami Kurvinen: But, uh, if you stay in, in one place a bit longer and, and, and develop and learn there, it's will benefit you in the longterm. Next time when you change the job, your, your new potential employers, we look at your CBM and say, okay, this guy doesn't jump around from one to another. Every company every year. This one actually stays longer and him.

[00:16:24] John Wright: What a good results and job he has now.

[00:16:27] John Wright: And, uh, in the end, that's when probably benefiting more.

[00:16:33] Sami Kurvinen: I think I agree. That sounds very insightful. And when you think about some of the affiliate managers that affiliates do like, um, I think the ones that we don't like in particular are ones that are changing jobs every six months. It's like, I can't keep track of what you're doing. You're constantly pitching a new brand, um, like every year or less. And, uh, I think it's kind of, um, yeah, I think that kind of rubs off in the wrong way, but I think going back to what you said about, uh, the skill sets, I actually believe a lot of affiliate managers today don't do what you said, which is to be curious to go, what do I not know? What can I learn? And I think a lot of them, maybe they just sit back and they're like,

[00:17:11] Sami Kurvinen: I expect my management to tell me what to do. So maybe you have good, uh, management that helps that, but I think affiliate managers need to take ownership and say, what can I do to be better? What can I learn what tools are out there and even networking with other affiliate managers?

[00:17:28] John Wright: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. There's, I don't think there's enough of those kind of events where people can meet up and discuss things.

[00:17:37] John Wright: And, uh, I think that the onboarding is sometimes, uh, not the best leader because, uh, for being such an important department of, uh, of a gambling company, it's somehow neglect, neglected a bit sometimes.

[00:17:54] John Wright: Uh, when you start out as an affiliate manager, you often learn the basics from your, uh, head of affiliates or, or your manager that's your reporting to. And if that person hasn't, uh, bought in the right starts from them, you might start working a bit in the, that disadvantage from right away.

[00:18:18] Sami Kurvinen: Um, I think there's been a few tries to, to set up, uh, programs where you teach a candidate managers about, uh, the, the do's and don'ts and how to become a good affiliate manager. But, uh, I think, I think there's more to do there.

[00:18:39] John Wright: I agree. Um, I took a couple of notes there because I've been thinking about this for, for years. Okay.

[00:18:46] Sami Kurvinen: So I think there's something there for sure.

[00:18:49] John Wright: Over last, over the last 20 years in iGaming, we've seen waves of affiliates. And I mean, this probably applies to all other industries where, uh, the dinosaurs ranked just by existing. And then there's ones that they're excelled at SEO in the last 10 years. Um, what do you think is going to be changing, uh, today that's going to be different?

[00:19:08] Sami Kurvinen: Mm-hmm.

[00:19:09] John Wright: Um, well, that, that's a bit, uh, what we discussed earlier too. I think, um, do you can't as a small or a new affiliate, you can't go after the big keywords and compete, uh, on the same way as the big ones too, you can basically copy paste what they're doing and think that you're going to have a success. You need to find some kind of niche where you provide the players with some kind of value that maybe doesn't exist yet.

[00:19:41] John Wright: Uh, I think that's where you have a chance to, to do good results. Uh, but copy past pasting existing things. Uh, I, I don't believe that's the, the recipe to succeed.

[00:19:54] John Wright: I agree. I think, um, when you mentioned value, I think value needs to extend beyond just content and content can still be video. And I do think, um, that's something a lot of affiliates aren't doing, but I think when you think about some of the new affiliates that are in the market today, some of them, they have apps. It's kind of like we built a utility for players and it ends up being their indirect way of affiliate marketing. So I think it's a, we're past the age of exchange of information. I think, uh, players and people today, we expect exchange of value to be there.

[00:20:28] John Wright: Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly. I think you players also evolved. So, um, instead of just looking for the best bonuses and always playing the same slots or the same games, uh, people want to know a bit more about things. And, uh, if, if they get that knowledge from someone who's an expert or an authority, that will make it even more interesting. Yeah. You can, you can change that from gambling to any other industry. And I think, uh, see the same things.

[00:21:01] John Wright: Uh, I'll take a note there because I know a couple of affiliates that I'm coaching and, uh, what you just said, there was a very spot on point that I think new affiliates starting out should pay attention to.

[00:21:14] Sami Kurvinen: So I want to ask, uh, within the next two years, uh, I think data science is going to play a key role in which affiliates will reach another level of revenue, would you agree with that opinion?

[00:21:26] John Wright: Yes. Um, and then we can see that already that these things have evolved from, from the early days when you check one affiliate program at the time and try to analyze data, now you have more sophisticated tools like, like, uh, stats drone, uh, where you get a clear overview of, uh, of all your links and all that data. And it even tells you if there's any patterns where that you should keep an eye on or, uh, which you may be not have should have spotted yourself.

[00:22:01] John Wright: So, so I think, uh, these things will just get more advanced with time.

[00:22:08] Sami Kurvinen: So the last question is, what do you see as the future of affiliate marketing as it intersects with business intelligence? Mm-hmm.

[00:22:15] Sami Kurvinen: Uh, when it's the same there from analyzing data yourself, uh, the tools gets more sophisticated, so you get more of, um, automatic help basically. So even if you are, let's say you're as an affiliate or very skillful in certain areas, but maybe you lack, uh, you know, skills in other things like basic

[00:22:44] John Wright: analyzing and have evaluating data and you have these new tools that do the work for you, uh, which is great. And, uh, I'm sure that, uh, especially the bigger companies already were quite advanced in that area. And you will see the rest of the industry.

[00:23:03] Sami Kurvinen: So what tools, given that you've got experience on the affiliate manager and the affiliate side, uh, what tools would you say the affiliate managers should be using and what tools do you think affiliates could be using as well?

[00:23:17] John Wright: Yes. Um, or for SEO, I, I, um, personally a fan of H reps.

[00:23:27] John Wright: That's the one that I've been focusing on.

[00:23:30] Sami Kurvinen: And, uh, just by learning the basic in a tool like that, as an affiliate manager, you can, uh, in, in a few seconds understand what kind of a finisher just talking with what, what are their traffic's what, what are they ranking on? What are the keywords, uh, is there focusing on being listed on the homepage? Maybe you should be focusing on completely different, uh, pages where this affiliate actually has a traffic.

[00:24:00] John Wright: Uh, and, uh, this is something that I think, uh, isn't too widely known or, or, uh, common knowledge, but, uh, it shouldn't be, and it will make,

[00:24:13] Sami Kurvinen: then it will lead to affiliate managers making better decisions and, uh, it will benefit the company that they work for basically.

[00:24:23] John Wright: And, uh, or affiliates that there's plenty of tools to, to look after. And the, the harsh from the, the SEO and tracking tools, there's also different heat maps that you can use to say, to analyze what can, what, what is the, how, how is the behavior of your traffic on the site? What kind of changes do I need to do? And, and, uh, I think, uh, you should not be afraid of using external help as well.

[00:24:54] Sami Kurvinen: They are companies that specialize in certain areas. Uh, and if you have the possibility to board or use them, you should sometimes reach out and see how they can help you.

[00:25:09] John Wright: You might get some new knowledge that you weren't aware of.

[00:25:13] Sami Kurvinen: Solid points on both sides of that question. Uh, Sammy, thank you so much for doing this. I want to pass it back to you to ask, how can people get a hold of you?

[00:25:22] John Wright: And I think they're the easiest ways basically to add me on LinkedIn and, uh, just send me a message there.

[00:25:30] Sami Kurvinen: I will, I will get back to you very fast and I'll make sure those are included in the show notes so you can find them there.

[00:25:37] John Wright: Perfect. Thanks a lot, Jim. Thank you. It was a pleasure. Yeah, this was fun. Thanks a lot.

[00:25:44] Sami Kurvinen: Thank you for tuning in to the affiliate BI podcast. I'd like to take this time to ask for small favor to leave a rating and review wherever you listen to your podcast. That helps us expand our reach to rank higher in podcast directories and reach more listeners.