Mastering Content Creation: Insights from Jon Bruford

Show: Revenue Optimization with StatsDrone
Episode: Mastering Content Creation: Insights from Jon Bruford
Host: John Wright
Published: Fri, 05 Apr 2024 10:09:00 +0000
Duration: 49:44

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.

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[00:00:00] John Wright: And I'm like, we've got to stop doing that.

[00:00:02] John Wright: Why works? Yeah, but it's followed.

[00:00:06] John Wright: It's a short term plan.

[00:00:08] John Wright: If I get the editorial content, right. People will read the publication. If people read it, they'll talk about it. They talk about it. Our advertisers will be there.

[00:00:18] John Wright: We get the content, right? Everything else follows. And he was like, you know, it's a crazy plan.

[00:00:25] John Wright: Okay. We'll try it your way. I'm like, well, you know, literally got nothing to lose.

[00:00:31] John Wright: And, um, I only made a deal. So I said, if you hit your sales targets, here's how much I want to be paid.

[00:00:38] John Wright: Um, and I'm within six months. I was being paid that because it worked.

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

[00:00:56] John Wright: Welcome to the affiliate BI podcast. Today we're chatting with John Bruford, who is the God of content of the gaming boardroom, also publishing director of full wood media, and he's one half of the gambling files podcast featuring fintan costello who's got beautiful hair. John, welcome to the show. No, I don't think anybody understands what I did. So I'm good.

[00:01:19] John Wright: And if anybody asks and it feels bloody, I just tell them I'm a real estate, an agent or either of those usually kills any questions dead. Um, hopefully it does. Otherwise, if they start asking future questions and getting interested, then we've got another problem. Then you can use it as the main story.

[00:01:39] John Wright: Marley guilty. So let me think. Well, so my background is actually just publishing that's been publishing for.

[00:01:49] John Wright: The two years, I think 31 or 32 years since I was 18. I was going to say when you started when you were 10 or something.

[00:01:58] John Wright: Oh, I am. I'm 50 like this year, which is quite exciting. Wow. And yeah, I started out on games console magazines with some, the town that I'm from small town in Shropshire called Ludlow famously. And this is mentioned by guests on the podcast. Interestingly, Charles Cohen brought it up. Ludlow is famous for, or producing a couple of games magazines in the early to mid 1980s.

[00:02:26] John Wright: Sorry, my dog is quite noisy.

[00:02:29] John Wright: We love dogs. For the K spectrum and the Commodore six and four, these magazines were genuinely legendary.

[00:02:38] John Wright: There's blue packs on the walls where they were in all of this sort of stuff. And I was lucky enough to work for those guys a little bit later than that. It was actually in their next incarnation, which was called impact magazines. And yeah, that that's where I started out. And it was one of those jobs where I bump into people now and they also said the same thing, best job I ever had.

[00:02:58] John Wright: Yeah, that's pretty cool. I'm, I remember like Commodore 64 and Coleco and all those things. I grew up on all that.

[00:03:05] John Wright: I, it was a, it was an amazing time because somebody could quite literally program something in their bedroom that people all around the world could play.

[00:03:14] John Wright: Nobody had done that.

[00:03:16] John Wright: It was, I think the only thing you can equate it to maybe not. I always thought that when digital cameras became affordable and really popular, that you would see a new era in filmmaking and that just hasn't proved to be the case, although there has been some really interesting stuff done.

[00:03:32] John Wright: But with the means of distribution available to everybody now, I guess maybe we are seeing that in TikTok and YouTube. It's just shame nobody's doing anything slightly non-deform. But that's, I just got started in magazines there and I enjoyed it. And I found that it pushed me quite a bit and I stayed in magazines. And then when I was, let me think, God, this is going to sound really sketchy.

[00:03:57] John Wright: When I was about 28, I had a burnout. It was quite an interesting one. And then I left that job, took a month's darling leave. They actually fired because I thought I was going to beat them up. Which is pretty funny. I'm subbed to shit, but I was quite angry, but I wasn't going to hurt anybody.

[00:04:16] John Wright: Really bizarre. And then I took another job that was much harder. I said, but then I had another burnout. I was going to say like a harder job as you do. So you can do it all over again. That was just anything a DVD publication. And it was like 164 pages every four weeks.

[00:04:35] John Wright: Yeah, they've been cool said to me since I went in now, had some big ideas, going to make some big changes. And I did have some ideas and some plans, but I wasn't able to enter any of them.

[00:04:48] John Wright: In fact, the owner said, I think she's just firing everybody and start from scratch. And I said, I'd rather not do that. I'd rather see people that are here and not be wankers.

[00:04:58] John Wright: But yeah, as my deputy, as I said, one time you have all of the responsibility and none of the power.

[00:05:05] John Wright: Yeah, it's pretty fair. So that led to further burning, which it might just one long burnout. I don't know. Drinking heavily. I was mainlining espresso in the mornings. It wasn't great.

[00:05:19] John Wright: And at the end of that, I just, I quit and I didn't have anything to go to. And I was doing some temp work in her office. I was working in an air or in an airline. This is my ex-files moment. I was working in the refunds department of a non refundable airline.

[00:05:34] John Wright: This is true story.

[00:05:38] John Wright: And I got on gray there and I had a good laugh and all of that.

[00:05:42] John Wright: My favorite part of that little period is that I was biking to and from work every day, which is, it was only about, it's just under 10 miles each way.

[00:05:53] John Wright: But I was in Devon, that's a Southern County in the UK, which is incredibly hilly and it was absolutely brutal. And in order to keep my weight maintained, I had to drink more.

[00:06:04] John Wright: And I got when they were like, okay, you're doing great. We like stick around for a bit. You know, we need to sort your login out for all of the systems.

[00:06:14] John Wright: Which one is your login name? You're saying, you know, how about Danny?

[00:06:20] John Wright: Then you were like, say middle name or something. Yeah, it's just a cool name. Everybody knows Danny. Danny's a cool kid.

[00:06:27] John Wright: Danny's a guy that you go out and you get into scrapes with. Go Danny. You know, Danny's that guy. So there's a load of, probably a load of mistakes on their backend caused by Danny and no records of any of it.

[00:06:40] John Wright: Brilliant.

[00:06:42] John Wright: Anyway, and then I realized that I was quite unhappy in my life. And what I did was I sold everything I owned except for what I could fit into a backpack and I went and sofa for a couple of years, which is interesting. And I was doing some freelance stuff. I had my laptop with me.

[00:06:56] John Wright: And I'd have been probably 30, I think at this point. And yeah, I just, I went and stayed with friends and traveled around.

[00:07:06] John Wright: Can I teach you like that for a couple of years? You could say I was technically homeless and I was, I didn't have a hub.

[00:07:13] John Wright: Well, I wasn't on the streets either. And I was running out of options for freelance work. Cause I was doing really odd things. I was like compiling sticker collections and stuff like that, which is pretty interesting.

[00:07:27] John Wright: And I started a job online to edit the sports retail business to business managing, and I applied for that. And it turned out to be a recruitment agency and they got all excited.

[00:07:43] John Wright: Um, got me to my age. I was only 30. I had a lot of experience and, um, they got me into you and I went there to see them be all happened very quickly. I went there to see them in made stone. It was, uh, data team, no, no, no, no, no, no. I called that seemed business media.

[00:08:04] John Wright: Um, and they came back to me fairly promptly and said, when I'll given you the job, um, we're actually splitting it into three separate jobs.

[00:08:14] John Wright: So they're paying three times what they would have paid. But there's something else that we, we'd quite like to do something else that we think you'd be more suited to. And that was casino international magazine.

[00:08:24] John Wright: And my first introduction to the gambling industry was G2E in God, must've been.

[00:08:32] John Wright: 2004.

[00:08:34] John Wright: Wow.

[00:08:36] John Wright: No, 2005 or 2006. I don't know. G2E one year. And yeah, it was a hell of a hell of a way to learn anything. G2E is quite a big show.

[00:08:47] John Wright: I was quite lucky that people were willing to take the time and explain. There was a lady at IGT who spent over an hour with me just talking about how the thoughts I had worked. My first appointment was with Phil vessel at, uh, MEI.

[00:09:03] John Wright: And he explained all of the whole process of bill validators, how, why, how the process works, what they do in the casino.

[00:09:12] John Wright: I learned so much, total information overload.

[00:09:15] John Wright: And yeah, that was the start of it, but I enjoyed one moment. I'm just going to ask the dog to shut up. Dude, is there any chance you could shut the fuck up? He wants to be on the show too. Yeah, that was the start of the journey. And yeah, I enjoy the industry. I think one of my favorite thing about the gambling industry is that there are hardly any stupid people.

[00:09:34] John Wright: And I mean, there's some people who are willful idiots, but they're not actually stupid. Mostly it's, it's a lot of very smart people. And I love that big fan.

[00:09:44] John Wright: There's, I think I would agree. There's a lot of smart people, but this is maybe a conversation that I seem to have pretty frequently, especially trying to being on the tech side. Do you think that maybe because there's a lot of money in the industry itself that it makes for complacency?

[00:10:04] John Wright: I think there's a lot of complacency.

[00:10:07] John Wright: I was reading a story, might have been on Dustin Gauper's newsletter yesterday

[00:10:16] John Wright: about the potential hazards and cost of a migration if you did a tech migration for an established sports book in the US.

[00:10:25] John Wright: Um, and things like that, they are risky because the downtime is people going to their other account or just knocking up, sign up, whatever. And that's reality.

[00:10:37] John Wright: But then what that means is that we've got an awful lot of legacy systems all across the industry, land-based and online that are- it held together by Sellotape and a machine somewhere that's running like Windows 98. And that's bonkers. That's completely bonkers. If you were a startup now, there's so many good tech options available.

[00:10:57] John Wright: But it means that the older companies, the legacy companies are actually at a disadvantage unless they can make those migrations and lose those ancient legacy system. But I think one of the difficulties for the industry, this is the same for any industry, is when you're at the mercy of causally reports and shareholder dividends, you're only ever going to make short-term decisions and that's never good. It's not good for society and it's not good for business.

[00:11:34] John Wright: Now, it's an interesting point because it's, I've been able to ask some of the the top performing affiliates in the industry and I said, what makes you stand out from being in the top one, two, or three versus the top 25 when everyone's celebrating? Yeah. I'm number 24 on EGR. And they basically said, no one in the space really has a long-term strategy or vision. And it sounds like you're making an obvious statement, but I think there's so many ways of looking at a company and going, here's the proof and you can pretty much see it with everyone.

[00:12:07] John Wright: Yeah. Long-term vision requires a strength of character and a boldness. And if you don't have the support of your board, then you're fine.

[00:12:17] John Wright: Let's say it's something that we're seeing at the moment with activist investors and activist investor groups. And we're seeing it with, excuse me, I think it's Entein at the moment, the companies actually doing some really interesting things, but they're only interesting to me because I am not a stockholder and I type looking in from the outside because I'd be willing to bet their board meetings are very interesting and I've been very interesting for a while. I'm not sure that I'm, I like the idea of activist investors and activist investor groups because people should use their leverage to create meaningful change. It's a fundamental to living in dimmered practice societies.

[00:12:57] John Wright: But if your fundamentals are, I need to make more money this year, then

[00:13:06] John Wright: what are you actually bringing into the public?

[00:13:09] John Wright: Nothing good.

[00:13:11] John Wright: Maybe, maybe their acquisition, maybe their acquisition idea was flawed. I don't know. I didn't think STS was a bad buy, to be honest.

[00:13:19] John Wright: There's a point where you get businesses acquiring other businesses because they're like sharks and they got to have this constant forward motion. And the only way to approve their bottom lines is to acquire companies that are making more profits.

[00:13:34] John Wright: The dog is trying to crack it under my desk, which would be funny if he wasn't messing, dude, sorry. I don't know what it is. Maybe he does want to be on the pay tab. I think he does. And we're going to change this. So it's dogs and affiliate marketing. Yeah, I'm sorry.

[00:13:52] John Wright: Yeah. I'll call the cat down, get some balance. So what do you think about the idea? Like, okay, everyone's wearing this M&A frenzy. And I've heard a lot of stories of companies being acquired and they are not being used or leveraged the way they should be for growth, where sometimes these companies actually die and fade. Um, seems like maybe with STS, uh, I'm sure the founders there said, yeah, that was a great acquisition, but, uh, just looking at the space lab, what's your take on like, how should people be doing this the right way?

[00:14:24] John Wright: That thing about businesses being like sharks and cabbages constantly move forward since that, that invites acquisition for acquisition sake, because we've got to be doing something. Oh, no, we've got to call the report. Blah, blah, blah. Oh no, we've got their money. This is an, it's something that I've talked about this on the gambling past podcast, it's something that you saw quite a lot with block manufacturers, land, land-based physicals, block manufacturers, where they would acquire a business that ostensibly has lots of similarities and hate fucking word synergies.

[00:15:01] John Wright: And without going into any details of slot manufacturer bought a electronic table game company for the reasonable chunk of money at the time, like actually 3 million or something like that. And it didn't work.

[00:15:16] John Wright: Uh, but there are other instances of the exact same thing happening in other companies.

[00:15:21] John Wright: And they looked at, obviously there is a lot of speculation in this.

[00:15:27] John Wright: They seem to look at the products and see, Oh, that goes in a casino as well. Well, we should totally buy that because we could sell that too. But it's not that simple. The electronic table game isn't the same as a slot machine.

[00:15:38] John Wright: It doesn't have the same technical support requirements.

[00:15:42] John Wright: It doesn't have the same anything except for the final customer.

[00:15:47] John Wright: And are there synergies if you're trying to do fine art with a fucking paint roller, but no, there aren't. You're not going to save on your marketing because your marketing team doesn't know this product, essentially.

[00:16:01] John Wright: It's just, it's flawed. It all ends up. And it, uh, it is in similar brandy merger stroke acquisition. The one that I saw that made a lot of sense recently was IGT and every doing a deal that makes total sense.

[00:16:15] John Wright: They've now got a combined suite of products that I don't think anybody else gets anywhere, even close to. They probably thought about that also. And I have made this point. I believe on the gambling podcast, they now get every's Willie Nelson slot machine, which may be the greatest slot machine I've ever seen.

[00:16:34] John Wright: I'm not even a Willie Nelson fan, but I became one after I saw that slot. I don't know. It's the best slots I do. The gambling stream.

[00:16:42] John Wright: As a player, I don't know.

[00:16:45] John Wright: Sorry, do you remember rambling? No, it's good. It's this is what I actually like about your podcasts. And maybe at some point I'll ask a few questions on there because I just like how you and Fintan have this casual conversation where I've got my list of questions for you and we're going off on tangents and now I've got even more questions. So I'm going to actually jump right into that.

[00:17:07] John Wright: From your point of view, given your experience on the land-based side and being an editor and looking at things from a different lens, what do you think is stagnant about online gambling for slot game providers and operators? It just seems like there's no substantial innovation. It's almost like there's been so much business growth that everyone's maxed out. Like we're maxed out on the white labels. We're maxed out on the next same type of next game providers. It's almost like it's the same thing. They filled up all the space and now it's overflowing. What's your take on this?

[00:17:41] John Wright: I think fundamentally the problem for the eye gaming industry is that everybody's got exactly the same product.

[00:17:50] John Wright: People talk about player churn and all of that. That's, there's probably a degree of boredom in that.

[00:17:56] John Wright: I'm surprised there are more people doing more exclusive deals with studios, encouraging more innovation in game development. I'm surprised people aren't being more bold with their branding. There's, I think there's a lot of reasons why there is stagnation, but the, I believe the players see and feel the stagnation. Yeah. I think that they're looking at it and go, Oh, they've got exactly the same slots that are playing over there. And I look, they're exactly the same themes as I'm playing over there.

[00:18:27] John Wright: Yeah. The world is a really interesting place.

[00:18:30] John Wright: And there's a lot of really weird shit that goes on in the world. Finton and anti-coiv a, if I were, if I were operating a sports book, I'd be looking at that. I'd be going, do you know what? Nobody else is doing that.

[00:18:53] John Wright: I agree. Nobody else is doing the British cheese rolling championship.

[00:18:58] John Wright: It's a real thing. It's a real thing. I've seen it on video. It's madness. It's delicious. There are no favorites in a race like that. It's like picking the winner of the grand national. Do you know what I mean? It's like every horse has an equal chance of falling.

[00:19:13] John Wright: Um, so yeah, I think people need to be bolder with their branding because.

[00:19:20] John Wright: That's the only real differentiation between them all.

[00:19:24] John Wright: Yeah. And it's becoming, if anything, even more homogenous, even more predictable with draft. Because the big players like in North America, particularly the big players are creating such an incredibly high entry level and player acquisition.

[00:19:42] John Wright: That you're going to see less, less innovation.

[00:19:47] John Wright: So I think it's going to get more boring before it gets less.

[00:19:50] John Wright: That's probably true. I know Chris Grove, he, I'm not sure if it was this year or last year, but he's always trying to showcase what is the year ahead in, in iGaming and gambling itself. And I think he said there's going to be more interest in non-traditional iGaming or casino or sports books. So things like lottery, things like maybe even bingo poker and things that kind of fall outside of it. It's almost like what you were saying when it comes to like niche betting events. So what would you say? Obviously DraftKings, they did a lottery acquisition recently. I think it was.

[00:20:25] John Wright: Yeah, they did that. Okay. Wasn't it? Yeah.

[00:20:30] John Wright: Yeah. I think the thing that keep people interested, if you walk into a casino, into an actual bricks and mortar casino, you know what the games are going to be. Right.

[00:20:45] John Wright: Now, if you do that in the UK, there'll be more roulette wheels and hardly any or no craps, fair enough. When we don't really get two bucks about craps, it's complicated and we don't do complicated, but the innovations in the land based side are side bets. It's really cool side bets. It's rare for a new game to really pick up. It is really rare. I know a couple of guys who are part of the development of these games.

[00:21:14] John Wright: It's really difficult to do because the dealer is going to be able to explain it in one or two sentences. And they've got to be able to deal it effectively and quickly. And it's got to have a reasonable house edge. Will it be interesting to the player? These are very difficult things to balance. I've been trying to monetize the end game of the card game shithead. Are you aware of shithead? Yes.

[00:21:34] John Wright: I had to figure out a way to monetize the end of that and give a house edge. Once I do that, I'm fucking out of here. I'm retired because everybody knows shit.

[00:21:43] John Wright: Plus with a name like that markets itself. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. So, so that's, that's side bets. So I've worn a little bit of innovation. There's a real world manufacturer called Kami and they've done some lovely side bets stuff and Gannuxy game picked up on what they've been doing. So some of this stuff's being offered, I think online and land based in North America and in Europe and blood. And so that's really interesting because that side bet, because I could see in my ever exclusivity in its geographical area and that's a marketing

[00:22:19] John Wright: point, that's a reason for real ed players, black checkers or whoever to go to that casino by that thing that is unique there. I think I might return to the previous question, but I think that's actually that's these seemingly minor innovations are actually a big deal for players.

[00:22:44] John Wright: They're the reasons why a player goes to one table, not the other. And there are a lot of similarities between the way that people behave online and the way that people behave in real.

[00:22:54] John Wright: There's got to be a reason for me to go to that casino or sports foot to sign up for each other for my account with them, but it's got to be a really good reason to keep using them beyond, Oh, I just happened to have an account with them.

[00:23:09] John Wright: Cause that'll work five or six visits.

[00:23:12] John Wright: But after that you've got to have something that makes them go. I haven't seen that anywhere else.

[00:23:18] John Wright: So let's tie in innovation complacency, your experience in content and iGaming. What would you do if you had to start an affiliate site, given you probably have had a chance to look at the giant sites and the smaller niche sites, what would be your playbook for you specifically?

[00:23:38] John Wright: I think there's some really interesting affiliate content out there right now.

[00:23:43] John Wright: I think there is a temptation for such sites to use AI to generate a large amount of content very quickly.

[00:23:51] John Wright: I think that's a mistake. I think it's a huge mistake.

[00:23:55] John Wright: The problem with AI is that it's not too fucked about accuracy, but so there's, there are some affiliate sites that I look at quite frequently because they've got a different take on things.

[00:24:11] John Wright: Am I allowed to name? Yeah, absolutely. They'll be happy you did. I think I can't talk about how they are as an affiliate. Yeah. But in terms of getting my eyes on that, I probably visit casino or casino.org three or four times a week.

[00:24:28] John Wright: They're massive. It's not just that they're doing content, right? I'm pretty sure they're doing pretty well. I think good because actually their news reporting is good.

[00:24:39] John Wright: Their news reporting is, don't get me wrong, this is going to sound like I'm being really snobby or really critical. I'm not. They're not news reporters, but the stories they find are different.

[00:24:54] John Wright: And that's what I like.

[00:24:56] John Wright: They're not reporters. They're not journalists, but they're finding some really interesting shit. And if I would take that path, I would find the interesting shit. I would, they're actually breaking stories that the regular industry journalists aren't. I agree. And that's an attitude. I would say they're not reporters by any stretch of the imagination. They're not writing great news stories, but they have finding the kernels that make great news stories. If I were editing, I don't know, some kind of news port to the industry now.

[00:25:36] John Wright: First side open every morning is there's nothing saying to my team. Look at this story. Here's where it's a good story. Go fill it out and make it a real story. Kind of thing. I appreciate that. Sound like I'm dissing casino. Really not. No, it's really a compliment because I think when I'm talking to affiliates and they're getting a little weirded out with the SEO space going, do I even have a chance or what do they have? And a lot of people just think that the bigger the site, it's all link building. You've got like the best SEO team and it's, it's end game type of thinking. But when I interview SEOs, they all have the mindset that there's always a way.

[00:26:13] John Wright: And whenever I also interview people that have content marketing experience or any angle in content, they all share the same thing. So I'd appreciate that you had an instant opinion of why they're different. And I think just being able to articulate it can maybe open up the minds of other people going, okay, how do I, like my advice to them is you just can't be doing the same thing. It's got to be different and you've got to be able to look at it from like a product point of view.

[00:26:40] John Wright: Yeah. So when I started on casino international, it was, I can't really say why it was how it was because I probably get that one.

[00:26:50] John Wright: But it wasn't in a good state of health. And it was, they were talking about closing it. And they actually said to me, look, you're the last one with the dice. Wow.

[00:26:59] John Wright: And when I'd been working in consumer magazines previously, I was the person that would get the magazines that were failing and rescue them. And I'd been doing that for the best part of a decade.

[00:27:11] John Wright: And yeah, so I took the magazine and I simplified it. I looked at the competition and I realized I couldn't do what they were doing.

[00:27:21] John Wright: And I didn't want to compete directly with them. At the time, I think casino review was probably the outstanding magazine. G3 hadn't launched yet. And casino review had a very newspaper like format, shorter stories, largely coming from really good contacts, really nice writing. And so I looked at it and I thought, what can I do to compliment this?

[00:27:47] John Wright: I don't want to go toe to toe with them. I can't do that. I don't have the resources. The publisher doesn't have the resources.

[00:27:53] John Wright: How can I do something that makes, that makes my magazine, the magazine they read alongside this one.

[00:27:59] John Wright: And I went to longer form articles. I went for articles that might be three, four, 5,000 words. And we found a niche.

[00:28:09] John Wright: But my publisher was, he was still trying to sell things on the back of the book. You do an article and you join it by an ad. And I'm like, we've got to stop doing that.

[00:28:20] John Wright: Why? It works. Yeah, but it's followed.

[00:28:24] John Wright: It's a short term plan.

[00:28:26] John Wright: If I get the editorial content, right. People will read the publication. If people read it, they'll talk about it. They talk about it. Our advertisers will be there.

[00:28:36] John Wright: We get the content, right? Everything else follows.

[00:28:39] John Wright: And he was like, it's a crazy plan.

[00:28:42] John Wright: Okay. We'll try it your way. I'm like, literally got nothing to lose.

[00:28:47] John Wright: And I only made a deal. So I said, if you hit your sales targets, here's how much I want to be paid. And I'm within six months, I was being paid that because it worked. And I say, I saw a tweet by, I honestly don't try to introduce the evil dead movies into every conversation I have, but it was a tweet by Bruce Campbell and both evil deads, babe. And somebody had put a side by side film on Twitter.

[00:29:18] John Wright: And it, on the one side, it had the green screen that both grassed and on the other side, it had the green screen, but with all of the computer generated stuff added to it.

[00:29:29] John Wright: And Campbell retweeted it and he just put, wow, this is great. Now write a decent story because it doesn't matter what it looks like. It doesn't matter how shiny it is without the story is nothing.

[00:29:43] John Wright: And it's the same with content.

[00:29:45] John Wright: Story comes first. Quality comes first. Somebody else sure might come along and breath six months, 12 months, 18 months. They might get all the eyes on them, but it won't last because substance is still everything.

[00:30:00] John Wright: In my opinion.

[00:30:03] John Wright: I agree. I'm going to ask a question that's going to help one of my friends who's doing a slots portal and there's no shortage of them. What would you say to him to do something different, taking that same theme of going, I need to look at what's on the market, do something different. What would your take on a slots affiliate site fee?

[00:30:22] John Wright: Wow. Slots are not the tricky, the volley is insane. If you can find your niche, if you can find your little niche, then you can have a really decent business. You might not take the top slot ever, but you also might not ever be bothered by anybody ever.

[00:30:42] John Wright: If I were doing a slot portal, I would do everything I possibly can to find out about how slots are built.

[00:30:55] John Wright: I'd find out who's building them, what they're doing, how they're doing it. What's different about the mathematics.

[00:31:03] John Wright: So it's there. Whenever you talk to publishers, whenever you talk to, as in game publishers and on the land-based side, people always be, oh, players love our math models.

[00:31:14] John Wright: No, they don't. They don't have a fucking clue about your math models.

[00:31:20] John Wright: They're coming to the flashing lights. They're coming to the team. They're coming to the design of the cabinet. They're coming to the sounds. They're giving it a go. If it hits, they'll stay. If it doesn't hit, they might leave, but they're not sitting there and thinking about the mathematics. And not consciously, even slightly. It's registering subconsciously because that's the hit rate.

[00:31:44] John Wright: So I'd do something that goes into the technical side of it because some people want to know what's under the bonnet and it's not going to be everybody.

[00:31:56] John Wright: But actually this is the, also this is stuff I don't see anybody else doing.

[00:32:01] John Wright: Agreed. Would you, would you even say maybe that could even be a podcast?

[00:32:08] John Wright: It definitely could be. There's a huge amount of talent, creative talent in, that goes into game design. Now I remember visiting Zetra, one of the big Spanish slot manufacturers, and they've got what the word they use. They have several campuses in Barcelona and different creative spaces, but they've got their own sound studio. It's essentially, I can't remember what the word is here, maybe it's Foley, Foley artists, and it's a super professional setup. It's a profession.

[00:32:41] John Wright: And actually, I don't know about you. I find that shit fascinating.

[00:32:47] John Wright: I agree. I'm really interested in all of that shit. Why did you use that sound? Where did you get that sound from? How did you make it?

[00:32:56] John Wright: Is that, and that sort of stems from movies. I watched the movie. Do you know the movie I Am Legend?

[00:33:01] John Wright: No of it. Yeah. It's a fucking terrible film. It is absolute dog shit.

[00:33:08] John Wright: I watched that entire movie. Do you know why? I'm a huge fan of the book that is based on a huge fan. One of my all time favorites. Really beautiful book.

[00:33:20] John Wright: I knew the movie was going to be bad as soon as it had Will Smith in it. Not dissing Will Smith, but you can't do a movie like that as a star vehicle because the hero is doing such ugly things.

[00:33:31] John Wright: And then you change the hero's role and you change the whole dynamic of the movie. I knew it wasn't going to be a good movie, but I found out that with the sort of zombies, they had a screen that they did and Mike Patton from Faith No More

[00:33:48] John Wright: did the zombie screen.

[00:33:50] John Wright: I watched the whole fucking movie for that.

[00:33:55] John Wright: So that shit is interesting.

[00:33:58] John Wright: And now it's an interesting take. So like I said, it's, uh, I'm going to make sure that, uh, my friend had tuned into that answer. So last question now that you're an affiliate marketing expert, because you've had a chance to have me on your podcast and talk a little bit about affiliate marketing, what would you say is the future of affiliate marketing as it intersects with business intelligence?

[00:34:23] John Wright: Wow.

[00:34:26] John Wright: You could say the opposite of we're talking about how AI is like ruining content and I think everything you've answered today is no one has that long term vision and everyone's just thinking, they're forgetting about quality or original ideas. Authenticity. That's the first magazine I ever worked on. My editor was a guy named Chris Rice.

[00:34:48] John Wright: And there was an issue with, he was away using Vegas on dinner and I'd been left to make sure everything came together. Now I was 18 years old and I'd never done this before.

[00:35:03] John Wright: So great. Thanks for the confidence.

[00:35:06] John Wright: And I had a call from a guy at one of the game studios and they got this big license where it was a supercar license and it probably cost him a reasonable amount of money and the game was where they should have spent the money because it was shit.

[00:35:25] John Wright: And we were quite generous.

[00:35:28] John Wright: It got something like 82%, 83%.

[00:35:32] John Wright: But if it gets below 85, probably not going to buy it.

[00:35:37] John Wright: And this guy bowing me up and he's like, I had the game to you. What do you think of the game? Like it's all right, but what's good to get?

[00:35:45] John Wright: And I broke with protocol and I told him what score was going to be. And he lost his shit and he was threatened me with dropping their advertising and all of that. And I said, but you don't advertise.

[00:35:56] John Wright: No, we were going to. Yeah, there's your leverage.

[00:36:01] John Wright: Brilliant.

[00:36:02] John Wright: And anyway, I politely ended the conversation and that was that. And I said, look, I might've lost you some money. I'm really sorry.

[00:36:16] John Wright: What happened? I told him what happened.

[00:36:19] John Wright: And he looked at me and he said, you don't ever lie to the kids because if you lie to the kids, they'll know and they'll never come back.

[00:36:28] John Wright: True.

[00:36:30] John Wright: And he's right. And that goes for all things in life. And in work, I think times are really hard for us. It's right now. And you're hearing about operator sites, squeezing margins, which has shown people down and you seem to be hearing that more and more. I don't know.

[00:36:48] John Wright: I don't think the affiliate model is ending.

[00:36:53] John Wright: It's probably evolving into something else, but there's so much power in it with the operators because they've got the purse at the end of the day. What you might see, there's an awful lot of ways that these things can go. Margins getting squeezed further and further. You might see more operators buying affiliates, working affiliates, trying to do their own.

[00:37:23] John Wright: I'm not sure that it's worth that headache for them, but they're all doing it though. But it's, these things go in cycles and it's, it's really difficult when those margins get squeezed or when people, when people are counting their shit or whatever. It's difficult to hang in there.

[00:37:41] John Wright: And I genuinely, I do build affiliates at the moment. And I say that even though Fenton is was, was one. Yeah. The market was so tight that I had to sell and it was just unfortunate. He's obviously gutted as he sits in his Scrooge McDuck style swimming pool with gold coins for water.

[00:38:05] John Wright: I'm just going for a swim, sweetheart. Okay.

[00:38:09] John Wright: Plenty of sound.

[00:38:10] John Wright: I wouldn't want to be an affiliate now. I wouldn't want to be starting out as an affiliate now, but I do think you've got to find your niche and you've got to build relationships with operators.

[00:38:24] John Wright: One of the best, it's such a relationship driven industry that we're in.

[00:38:30] John Wright: But the big difference between the online side and the land-based side in those relationships is that the turnover of personnel is much, much higher on the eye getting side.

[00:38:42] John Wright: And so you don't necessarily have the opportunity for relationships to develop over three, four, five, six, seven years. It's quick change. It's who can I bring in to make my core to look really good and show that I'm valuable to the business so that I can get my next job in six months.

[00:39:02] John Wright: True. Short-term thinking.

[00:39:05] John Wright: But yeah, I wouldn't want to be an affiliate right now. Right. This exact second. Maybe not, but I think you'd make an easy prospect to either start one or invest in. I think you've got the right mindset for content and yeah, it's no one has that innovation, there's enough complacency and no one's got that long-term vision at all.

[00:39:29] John Wright: Now it's a shame because there's a lot of talent there.

[00:39:32] John Wright: There's a lot of talented people doing stuff. It's, I think in terms of if you're an operator right now, there are so many brilliant tool to work with to, to look after your players, to market to your players thing, thing is right. All right. Say you're using some sort of RG tool, right? So using a responsible gambling tool and you're identifying your problem players.

[00:39:59] John Wright: And then you've got to differentiate between the problem players and the high value players, but here's the thing. Here's the thing that I don't see or hear anybody doing.

[00:40:10] John Wright: The part of that research that tells you, these are my high value players. These are my VIP place. There's a small subset of those, which are potentially problem players where we're going to have to do some adventures or whatever day, just off the top of my head, that whole top end is by percent of your players, it's not an unrealistic percentage damage, you've got 95% of people on there that it would be perfectly safe to market to. And if you get that 95% to all bend just a little bit more, you're absolutely laughing, but we don't do that.

[00:40:48] John Wright: We go to the short term goal and the high spend players.

[00:40:52] John Wright: True. It's the entire industry summarized in a nutshell.

[00:40:57] John Wright: I'm working with an operator and this is one of the things I'm talking to them about.

[00:41:04] John Wright: I'm talking to you about looking at the model, why it works for the high value players. What would you need to do to it to make it work for the occasional lower value players, the people with a smaller budget?

[00:41:16] John Wright: Because if you get that 95% to all bend an extra $2 a month, you've earned a shitload of money, but with, with also with relatively zero risk, because the small percentage of high value players, not just for that operator, the high value players, all of the operators know they are because they've got a cancel order.

[00:41:42] John Wright: How do you encourage the other players to play just a little bit more? It's the difference between how Macau used to operate and how Macau is trying to operate now.

[00:41:51] John Wright: It's a mass market model.

[00:41:54] John Wright: Okay. So some people are only going to bet on a sports book on the day of the grand national once a year, they're going to put one battle actually, if you push Cheltenham to them in a similar way, you might get them put two bets on.

[00:42:10] John Wright: And Cheltenham is not just one race. So what if, to the point, it's like, how do we communicate that player that this is also a thing and they can watch it on TV and make it up? I don't know. I don't know, I don't know. I don't know the answer.

[00:42:25] John Wright: I just talk with.

[00:42:27] John Wright: But we like it. It's pretty insightful stuff. And I've always found value in talking to people that do content. Cause everyone thinks of content as being this tiny little box over here that has a lot of SEO value. But I think if you're not thinking about content in the right way, the SEO value is lost and when I chat with different people like Leche Lewis and Eli Schwartz, content marketing meets SEO, I think you've got the right attitude. So like I said, if you ever did an affiliate site, I'd bet on you. Thing is right. SEO is shifting sand.

[00:42:59] John Wright: Right. Always.

[00:43:00] John Wright: And that's one of the things that makes it so difficult.

[00:43:03] John Wright: Google only has to change one little thing and everything you've done for the previous two years might be not redundant, but third tier stuff.

[00:43:15] John Wright: But if you're making good content and somebody is going onto their social media in which they constantly talk to other players and they say, I read this article, it's pretty decent and they share your link.

[00:43:26] John Wright: That's the goal. That's the value because it's authentic.

[00:43:30] John Wright: And it's that cook compounded over time. Really?

[00:43:33] John Wright: Yeah. You, you know, you do that and you keep doing that and you become recognized as somebody that's worth listening to.

[00:43:39] John Wright: It is, it's, it's frustrating. The, the importance that SEO is given. I'm not saying SEO isn't important, but it is not the be all and end all.

[00:43:48] John Wright: And I think one of the, one of the shifts that we're seeing, and this is in land-based as well, and this is bizarre, but there are slot influences in land-based casinos.

[00:44:02] John Wright: And they go into a casino and they have an agreement. They're going to be able to sit there and film. And there's a chat that we had on the Gamelake Fast podcast, Mike Leptemberg, and I was fascinated to talk to him, not just because he is working as a slot influencer, but because actually the slots that he specializes in are only in one state in the U S is the narrowest at narrow field that he's chose, but I love that because for people that want to play slots in that state,

[00:44:36] John Wright: he's the go-to guy.

[00:44:39] John Wright: That's number one. He found his niche and he's just, yeah, he's nailing it. And there's the guy who's taught a section of the plants are in Las Vegas.

[00:44:51] John Wright: There's a section named after him, I think. And he, I think it's the same guy who's currently doing the anti-smoking thing. Brian Christopher. Yeah, I think so. And again, that's also pretty interesting. I'm sure he's, I can watch any of your stuff, but I'm sure he's interesting too.

[00:45:05] John Wright: But if you look at the way that some of the marketing spends are going,

[00:45:10] John Wright: they're seeing that slot influences are relevant. Very. They're important. And they're reaching a sector that's not that easy to find with your traditional advertising, traditional advertising is floundering on its ass and publications and all of them are relying on that traditional model.

[00:45:35] John Wright: So you've got to recognize that where people are finding their content is

[00:45:42] John Wright: different now.

[00:45:44] John Wright: It's evolved so much, so fast. There's still a place for print. Don't get me wrong, but it's part of a package and there's the slot manufacturers, LAMB based slot manufacturers have recognized that. And actually I think even though I've been very critical of them in the past, I think there's something that light and wonder are well on top of, I think aristocrat as well. It'd be difficult because the bigger company is, the slower it is.

[00:46:09] John Wright: Generally out of necessity, there are controls in place so that people can't do crazy bastard things like having individual thoughts, but it means that where there is room for innovation and interesting stuff, like always, it tends to be in the smaller companies that can be adaptable and can move and can change, geez, I really do go on a lot of tangents, don't I? Sorry.

[00:46:31] John Wright: That's all good. So John, thanks a lot for being on the show. I'm going to give you the chance to talk about Gambling Files podcast. We're going to put that in the show notes. So how can people get ahold of you if you want them to get ahold of you?

[00:46:44] John Wright: Yeah, that's the trick. I know Gambling Files podcast, which is the combined episodes at www.thegamblingfiles.com or also on Twitter, but I can't remember what the handle is probably Gambling Files. And you can buy myself a Finchen, both on LinkedIn and we both have fairly unusual names, so pretty easy to find. Although true story, there is one other dude in the world with my name, right? This is 100% true story.

[00:47:12] John Wright: I got an email a couple of weeks ago and it said, and it was to me and it had my name in it and my name is so unusual.

[00:47:22] John Wright: One of the person in the world.

[00:47:27] John Wright: And I saw, and it had my actual name in it spelled correctly. And I'm like, this is unusual.

[00:47:36] John Wright: And I checked out the company that had sent it and they see it. They look very legitimate.

[00:47:42] John Wright: And I thought I need to check this out because this looks like an actual order and if it is, they've done something really odd here because I'm pretty sure that's their address. Oh, what the hell?

[00:48:01] John Wright: So I phoned the business up and I'm like, is this, is this real? And like, yeah, it'd be with you in a few days.

[00:48:07] John Wright: Okay.

[00:48:10] John Wright: Can you tell me that the card ended in anything like that?

[00:48:14] John Wright: No, cause the way it was paid and he used PayPal or whatever. Okay. Fair enough.

[00:48:20] John Wright: If I'm going to phone them up and see what's what.

[00:48:24] John Wright: And I phoned up and a guy that answered the phone, I said, I've got a cool bit of a strange question for you. Did you order something from such and such? And he said, yeah, is this about the order? And I said, my name is Joel Bruff, but, and he was like, Oh, so is mine.

[00:48:43] John Wright: And what happened was it was the one other guy with my name in the world.

[00:48:48] John Wright: And he'd written his name the wrong way around when he filled in the email part of the order.

[00:48:56] John Wright: So his email is brief at John at my email is John Bruff at ads.

[00:49:03] John Wright: How on earth did you get that wrong?

[00:49:06] John Wright: Well, here's the other bizarre part. He's in the same County as me.

[00:49:12] John Wright: Very strange. I'm sure he's a fine man. Probably very handsome and very popular with the ladies, but it's pretty weird.

[00:49:19] John Wright: So yeah, you can find me, but if it, if he's not here, it's the other John.

[00:49:26] John Wright: 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.