Matthew Lovett, Managing Director of WOW TRK, joins the latest series of affiliate interviews on Affiliate Grand Slam.
Matthew Lovett speaks about the biggest part of WOW TRK’s culture which is innovating and looking to improve what they offer to their customers. WOW TRK provides an easy and intuitive way for publishers to find new affiliate offers that will suit their niches – follow his story below.
How did your affiliate business take off? And, is iGaming your only vertical?
I started my affiliate business way back in 2007, while I was still in school. The industry was still relatively young back then and things were changing quickly. In the first year, we set up five different sites and over the years we’ve added to it.
We now operate our own sites in five different countries but WOW TRK lists affiliate offers in just about every territory you could think of.
Tell us a bit more about your business model, concept, and culture.
As I said, when I founded the company, the affiliate industry was still finding its feet. At the time, the businesses that were most successful were the ones that could spot trends, find opportunities, and adapt to them quickly.
That’s remained a big part of our culture. We’re always innovating and looking to improve what we offer to our customers.
That’s how we created WOW TRK. We saw that it was becoming increasingly difficult for publishers to find the right advertisers for their websites, so we set about building a system that could simplify that.
How does your platform work?
WOW TRK provides an easy and intuitive way for publishers to find new affiliate offers that will suit their niches. We’ve integrated the offers lists of more than 30 different affiliate networks to help our users find the most suitable and most profitable offers to publish on their websites.
It’s completely free for affiliates to use, just head to our website and type in what you’re looking for.
What sets you apart? What makes you unique?
There are a couple of other companies offering something similar, but I truly believe we offer something that stands out. Having been in the industry for so long, we’ve come to understand what publishers need. That’s why we’ve built our system from the ground up, with a complete focus on a user experience that helps our users find the best offers and networks, and make more money from their affiliate marketing.
By design, our system is intuitive and easy to use, far more than anything else we’ve seen. We’ve also made a conscious effort to integrate the offers from “traditional” networks like Affiliate Future and Paid On Results. That means we have far more commission offers than anyone else in addition to a big catalogue of CPL and CPA offers.
In addition to our powerful search engine and comparison service, we offer tools and resources to help affiliates to get started, develop, and improve their business.
For example, in the coming weeks, we’re launching a free integration that will allow affiliates to check their commission by asking Siri on iOS devices.
What aspect of business development are you currently focused on?
For quite some time now we’ve been focused on building the best user experience we can. We’ve found that our users are happy to tell their friends and colleagues about us because of the value we offer them.
To us, there’s no better business development than a user base that raves about you.
What advantages do affiliates have when using your platform? What advantages do operators have?
Affiliates want to maximise their earnings from their websites, we give them the tools to do that.
WOW TRK lets them quickly compare the offers available from different networks and even find new networks and programs that they may not have heard about.
For operators we let them showcase their offers to a whole new set of affiliates. With all the resources and tools we offer, we have thousands of publishers using WOW TRK every day.
How do you manage relationships with multiple affiliates and operators?
While we have a team of people who manage key relationships, we believe the best way we can offer our service is to let affiliates and operators have everything they need to use WOW TRK without the need for our input.
Operators can log in to our platform and manage their program/network listing themselves, we also integrate with APIs to automatically keep offer information up to date from large networks.
Affiliates can just visit our site and start searching for the offers they want. It’s a very intuitive system so I guess the relationship is us offering a great service and taking on any suggestions they have.
Which niches work best for your affiliate marketing, and which are the most profitable? How did you find your most profitable niche?
iGaming is obviously a big niche, especially with the huge growth we’re seeing in the USA. We have hundreds of casino, bingo, sports betting, and poker offers for affiliates to check out. But we’re quite diversified so we also perform quite well in many other niches too.
Affiliate marketing is one of the most in-demand skills within the iGaming sector. Why in your view?
The iGaming sector is one of the most profitable and most competitive markets I’ve seen, so affiliate marketing is vital if a brand wants to get noticed.
How can affiliates be more unique in their approach?
As I said earlier, the affiliate industry is always changing. Nearly 15 years on from when I first started, it looks almost unrecognisable compared to back then. If affiliates want to succeed, they need to be unique, and the only way they can do that is to innovate and be ahead of the curve.
Try and spot where the industry is heading and pivot your business to go in the same direction.
What are your predictions for the future of the sector?
Regulation, competition, and technical innovation are the three areas that affect the sector. iGaming grows when the legal and technical conditions align, we’re seeing this in America right now and we’ll likely see it in other regions in the future.
Competition among iGaming brands means there will be a lot of opportunities for affiliates and I don’t see that going away any time soon.
As for the next big thing? It’s hard to say, I guess we just have to keep a lookout.Matt, Nicole, and Wesley from WOW TRK at SiGMA
Have you ever been to SiGMA? SiGMA Europe, Africa, Asia, or Americas – which of these four expo shows would you likely book on your diary for 2021, COVID-19 permitting?
Yes, I’ve been to SiGMA Europe a few times. I really enjoyed them all but I think the first year probably stood out to me most as I was so impressed with everything I saw and experienced. Everyone from the SiGMA team to the attendees were incredibly friendly, which made a big difference to the experience.
I enjoyed the affiliate poker tournament too. I love playing cards, though my ambition may exceed my abilities, so it’s great to mix poker and networking.
Tell us a bit about yourself – after all, business is done with people, not just companies! Your hobbies, favourite book, favourite quote, whether you are into Gaming yourself, etc.
I do have a penchant for gaming, and I enjoy having a bit of a flutter in the casino now and then. I enjoy binge-watching TV shows, so much, in fact, I actually started a website called UK Air Dates that helps British fans find out when their favourite shows are going to air at home. Aside from WOW TRK, it grew to one of our biggest sites before we sold it.
I’ve always admired Sir Richard Branson too, so it was one of my biggest honours to get to meet him a few years back. I’m also a bit of a finance nerd, so I’m always reading up on investing strategies and stuff like that.
