Chodak Hunter is the owner of marketing recruitment agency Black Yak Digital. With a recruitment career spanning 18 years, Hunter’s expertise falls within the digital marketing sector – predominantly gaming and affiliates – and he started Black Yak in May of last year.
“With Black Yak I wanted to take recruitment back to basics and to the days where it was respected,” Hunter explains. “When it was an extension of someone’s business and where the recruiter fully understood the industry they were recruiting within, along with the dynamics of the company, sector and person centric approach.”
In the second part of his affiliate guide, Hunter identifies how affiliate marketing in the igaming and sports betting sector differs from that of other industries.
CH: The main difference with igaming industries is that the role is much more condensed, as the companies are much larger and have bigger teams in place. Therefore, an affiliate manager role within an igaming organisation will firstly pay a much higher salary compared to other industries.
Secondly, it will be more focused upon acquisition, maintaining affiliates and working towards those specific targets. In other industries affiliate managers tend to need a much wider breadth of skills and will be stretched far greater within their roles and technical abilities. The gaming industry can be quite a bubble for affiliate managers and is the main reason why so many choose to stay within the industry rather than diversifying into other verticals.
For example an affiliate manager within say the retail vertical will also be expected to take on roles such as SEO, PPC, website maintenance, design and often offline marketing tasks. Therefore, very few affiliate related jobs compare to online gaming and I’m not sure they ever will.
In the sports betting and igaming verticals you have a team of people doing each task and usually to a high ability, therefore, the programs appear to work much better. You have a team of designers to create banners, email creative and websites, SEO professionals, PPC experts and product designers etc. With other industry affiliate programs in most cases unless they are extremely large organisations all of these jobs would be done by a couple of people and therefore, the quality of affiliate programs in other sectors in the main tend to be of lower quality.
I believe this is the reason why more and more affiliates are flocking to try gambling affiliate programs. They have a dedicated affiliate manager who understands the program inside-out, dedicated networking events unlike any other sector within affiliate marketing, top Revenue Share and CPA commissions on offer, a multitude of creative to choose from and a whole lot more. This is very attractive to both affiliates and those wanting to get into the gaming industry.
Come back on Monday for the final instalment in the affiliate guide, where Hunter talks us through the state of the affiliate industry, and where he sees it going as we move into the new year.
