What a difference a year makes

This time last year I was about to undertake one of the greatest challenge of my life.
Affiverse officially launched at the London Affiliate Conference in February 2018. I was acutely aware of the magnitude of what I was about to do and at the same time deeply terrified.
Twelve months on and I’m immensely proud of what we have accomplished.  
New year is a time to reflect and also to look ahead. I wanted to start January off by sharing a series of posts to share some of my experiences learned in 2018. I also want to give a personal glimpse into the journey to create a unique business that supports affiliate channel growth. If you keep reading each week, you’ll also get a peek of what you can expect from us in 2019. 
It all started with a little event called AffiliateFEST…
For years I’ve known there is a gap in the market to better support affiliates to grow their business. A gaping hole in skills development and coaching for affiliate managers who have to learn their trade on the job. A place where affiliates could easily learn about the latest digital trends and constant disruption taking place in our industry. There was no one business dedicated to helping affiliates (publishers and managers) grow theirs.
AffiliateFEST (is a digital marketing educational conference designed for iGaming affiliates)  launched in 2015 , it was the seed that started the entire concept of what we do now at Affiverse supporting knowledge share, tactical affiliate strategies and providing dedicated thought leadership and affiliate news to the iGaming Affiliate community.
Taking the blueprint from an idea to a viable business was a long journey.
This included researching the market, writing tens of thousands of words , planning,  countless hours connecting, networking and relationship building. I asked a lot of people a lot of questions in the search to truly understand where and how we could add value, make a difference and impact affiliate business growth.
Fate has a way of supporting you when you put a purpose to your passion, and that is exactly what happened here. A chance encounter with an old industry friend and entrepreneur Rasmus Sojmark led to the development of the joint venture with SBC which saw Affiverse borne.
From initial excitement, to “holy sh*t” this is really hard!
I’m not going to lie.
Building a business from scratch is hard.
Everything takes longer than you expected and sometimes things don’t go exactly as you’d planned. It takes time to find the right formats of delivery, to hire the right people and build systems and processes that allow you to scale. 
Affiverse has always been a labour of love for me. I call it my second child. The business is personal it’s born from my desire to help other succeed in the affiliate channel. Putting it all out there has left me feeling a bit vulnerable too. I had been used to working in big companies , my last position was with Paysafe (Neteller and Skrill and Income Access). I was used to building something small into something much bigger, and having appropriate resources and budgets to support that.
With Affiverse, we were building something from nothing but an idea and a desire to make a positive change.
This required a whole new set of skills.
As days turned into weeks and the weeks into months, we received incredible feedback and testimonials about what we are doing. Publishing bespoke content written specifically for the affiliate in mind, running educational bootcamps offering affiliates a chance to meet with experts get tactical training , running affiliate manager coaching academy – teaching the tools and tactics I’ve learned growing global affiliate programmes, and helping clients to build successful affiliate programs using strategies we’ve learned from two decades in the business.
All these things have contributed to our first year of success.
Now it’s time to look ahead…
The past year has been a steep learning curve, but one of the most important things I realised is that there is room to do so much more.  We’ve expanded, hiring new members to the team, people who are as passionate about supporting affiliate business growth, as I am.  For me, every day since our launch has been a defining moment in Affiverse’s journey and the learnings we’ve had have helped to plot the course we will take in the year ahead.
Our mission is simple. We’ll continue to add value in the affiliate channel – supporting business revenue growth.
I am hugely excited and motivated for the year ahead and invite you to join us for a year of growth hacking , entrepreneurial learning and growing affiliate businesses  – together.