Affiliate Interview Series - Jason D.

**GPWA Daniel** · 16 June 2021, 9:38 am

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(This interview was originally published in the April 2021 edition of the GPWA Times Magazine)

Loquax launched in 1998 as a competition/sweepstakes/community site, and yet here you are more than 20 years later still making a living as an iGaming affiliate. Did you ever think when you started the site that it would turn into a life-long project?

It’s unreal that we’re still here 23 years later. I’ve looked back on old blogs we wrote when the site reached 10 and even then we thought our time was limited. The project initially started as a way to learn about websites and the internet, not to become something this long term. When it started to attract users, we thought it’d have a few years lifespan, but it’s kept ticking along. We’re just thankful that it’s worked out as it has and try to continue to enjoy the trials and tribulations this journey brings.

I think we’ve survived because we’ve kept ourselves grounded. When things started going well, we didn’t look to expand, bring in lots of people, open an office, etc. We were (and still are, to be fair) also incredibly frugal and have always refused to pay for anything that we didn’t think was good value. In some respects I think we know our limitations. As much as it’d be nice in theory to have developed Loquax Ltd more it then would have become something neither myself or business partner wanted. Once you stop enjoying what you’re doing then that’s a problem.

For something to last this long online, evolution is important and we’ve always looked to make improvements to our site and service. Back in the day that kind of evolution used to be quite drastic ?regular site redesigns, for example ?but these days it’s just fine tuning, tweaking and seeing if small changes can make big improvements, not just for the business, but our users too.

When we interviewed you for the GPWA Times Magazine back in 2014, you told us that your company was made up of four people. How many people do you employ today and how has that number fluctuated over the years?

We’re down to three now and we’ve never gone higher than four. It’s unlikely to ever go higher. Nothing is outsourced ?other than hosting ?the rest we manage ourselves. We used to outsource content, but it wasn’t quite what we wanted and when it started to end up being rewritten too many times we called time on that arrangement. Back in 2014, you could create content for bingo brands almost daily, but now player promotions are pretty limited so there’s less to write about ?and there’s time to do that in house. I love the fact we’re hands on and I guess maybe that could be another reason why we’re still here.

Earlier this year, you created a “Competitions Only?version of Loquax that allows visitors that aren’t interested in lottery, bingo or slots to avoid that kind of content. What made you decide to make this move and has it been well received?

We cover different ways of winning online from free prize draws to gambling. For the most part, we keep these things in their own distinct sections, but the lines between these subjects do sometimes blur. For example, a gambling brand may appear in the competitions listing because they had a relevant promotion (e.g. Twitter giveaway, free-to-enter prediction competition, fantasy football).

To make sure we’re compliant we have to make sure these are listed appropriately and if the promoter is a gambling company then it’s tagged accordingly. We already had an extensive opt-out system that our users could use to tailor their competition content and so this allows them to opt-out from seeing anything tagged as a gambling site.

That got us thinking, if those who opt-out have no interest in gambling sites then they won’t really want to see links to bingo/slots/lotto in our navigation. So we extended the opt-out to create a “Competitions Only?version. Any logged-in user who’s opted out can’t access gambling content or follow any of our links. It’s been well received and I think, or at least hope, it demonstrates we’re being responsible in our approach.

Tell us about your newsletter. How has this option of content marketing benefitted your business and what suggestions would you give to fellow affiliates if they were thinking of launching a newsletter?

Our newsletter is currently on hiatus at the moment and is a bit of a sore subject. It’s for our competition users and has been since compliance became a thing back in 2017. Many gambling operators don’t permit direct newsletter marketing and that’s fine, we don’t do it. Well, at least we thought what we were doing was fine.

Recently an AM refused us access to a program because they said that we do direct marketing (SMS/Email). We don’t do either! They then said because we send a newsletter to our competition users we “indirectly?may link a subscriber ?who is self-excluded ?via our newsletter to our site, who may then end up in a bingo/slots section, then see their advert and who may then go to their site. Really?

Apparently, we’re meant to scrub our list against GAMSTOP, but they have told us affiliates can’t do this. So we’ve contacted the UKGC for advice and to see if we’re acting in a compliant way. It seems absurd to me that we can’t have a newsletter for a section of our site about stuff that interests them and keep operators happy. But such is life as a U.K. affiliate these days. You spend a lot of time dealing with compliance and these kinds of frustrations in equal measures.

My advice to iGaming affiliates looking to start a newsletter is probably don’t until you’ve checked the terms of every brand you work with. We’ve only really used a newsletter to act as a reminder to folks to revisit our competitions community and keep them updated with what we’re doing. As a monetary tool it’s never been great, but it can be a good way to get people to re-engage with you.

Please tell us more about your PennyBingo and Spins.co.uk sites.

I’d love to say these two sites were doing great but they’re not. They’ve always been backburner projects and other than a few fleeting moments have struggled to get off the ground. Over the years, time has been allocated to work on them and something has happened which puts them back. I guess this is where having limited resources goes against us. Also, blood, sweat and tears have been invested in Loquax and we don’t have the same feeling towards the other sites.

With the uncertainty over the U.K. market, it’s also hard to get motivated in making any massive changes to either site, overhauling them or investing in them. Operators keep pulling programs, won’t let you on programs, changing commission levels, swapping links, etc. In the end it’s become easier to focus on the main Loquax brand and keep the other two bubbling away maybe for a rainy day.

Before compliance we had a couple of other sites, but it was easier to bin them rather than revamp them. Additionally, we had some white label sites and they’ve since been relinquished too. In truth, we probably should have spent more of our time building one brand and doing that well. However, it’s easier to have courage in your conviction when looking back.

What would be your advice to someone who told you that they wanted to try and break into the iGaming affiliate business?

Go for it, but try and be different from what already exists, which can be quite hard to do. Most sites, including ours, are basically welcome offers, reviews and then try and have content unique to get good positions in Google. I’d also suggest focusing on being honest with your visitors so that you build respect and reputation. Not every site review deserves five stars!

It’s also not going to be an easy ride. It has become a lot harder for a lot of affiliates due to compliance, social media restrictions, limits what you can/can’t do, but there’s still room for those who want to try whether they’re going solo or a bigger company. A good example is Wayne Howe (ex-Which Bingo) has just launched his first site (howaboutbingo.com) and it looks great. Yes, it has the usual reviews etc., but also a unique style which hopefully will pay off for him.

Your blog at Loquax is updated regularly. Is the motto “content is king?still true?

I’m not sure content is king for the user, it’s more for Google. People like snippets of information in 140 characters or less and that’s the world we live in now. Sound bites of information which hopefully interests someone enough to read more. Unfortunately, as a gambling affiliate, using social media is either not allowed or an egg-shell-walking process that’s often best avoided.

However, I do like writing and if nothing else creating the blog content keeps me interested and entertained. A lot of our blog content currently surrounds “win a house raffles/competitions.?People put their homes up for sale via a competition and people buy tickets to enter. It’s an interesting sub-category of our site and also one of the most popular. It’s helped get us noticed by the press, which gets us a link here and there, which I guess all helps in the grand scheme of things.

Tell us about the name Loquax.

We established the site in 1998 and back then it was on an ISP’s hosting (Demon Internet if anyone in the U.K. remembers them). We chose “Loquax?as it sounded distinctive and more importantly could be anything we wanted it to be. Originally, we started building a shopping site but that lasted about two hours when we realized how boring it was. Who knew that voucher codes would be a big part of affiliate marketing, eh?

As the original site grew we had to move to proper hosting. We had limited funds so we stuck with the same people we knew when we bought our first .co.uk address. I think it cost around ?00, which was a sizable chunk of our savings at the time. I don’t even know if a keyword domain like “competitions?or “bingo?was available back then. I didn’t know that they’d have been good acquisitions, so never looked.

In many respects it’s been a good asset for us. We added a duck character into the logo around 2010, I think, which knitted things together really well. However, thanks to the good old UKGC we had to drop it because an operator wouldn’t work with us as the duck in the logo was too “child appealing.?br />
Before starting an affiliate business you were a Geochemistry PhD. Is that something you always wanted to be? Did your experience in that field help you in run and successfully become an iGaming affiliate in any way?

I did enjoy chemistry at school and started working at SmithKline as a Lab Tech. I then left there to do a degree but really wanted to get into Environmental Science —especially nuclear related ?but there weren't many openings. I looked at doing an Environmental Science Masters, but at the interview read about a PhD that was available and talked my way into getting that offer instead. It wasn’t planned, but the opportunity arose and I took it.

Has it helped in any way? It’d be nice to say “yes,?but I’m not so sure. Actually, that’s not true. It did help because the first couple of years of Loquax were run on the side whilst I was working as a researcher. I guess if I’d been allowed to stay in a laboratory environment doing the experiments rather than put in front of a computer churning data others had created then more than likely Loquax wouldn’t exist. I suppose it has helped in terms of problem solving, research, reaching conclusions, etc.

Ultimately, doing the PhD also made me unemployable, which may explain why we’re still going as there’s no other option (Laughs). Doing a PhD was great, but finding a suitable job afterwards was impossible. I did stay on for a couple of years as a full-time researcher, but that experience also made me aware of how much I hated working for other people. When I eventually left, my then-boss also said I was unmanageable, so I’m probably in the right place!

What's your approach to SEO and drawing traffic to your sites?

We probably don’t spend enough time on SEO, but then we also don’t spend too much time worrying about SEO. For me that’s a healthy balance! First and foremost, we try and put together a site that is for the user and that works. We are mindful of SEO and do checks on various sites to make sure there are no glaring errors. After the site moved home last year we did find a large number of basic errors, broken links, poor redirects, etc. then we managed to break other things in the process.

But as a small team we don’t have the time/resources to focus on SEO, link building, PR, etc. So we just do what we like doing and, by some weirdness, it seems to work. I’ve spent a lot of time online, at times too many hours, and I’ve reached a point in life where it’s not the be all and end all to be working.

What have been some of the biggest changes to the industry since you started and how have you managed to adjust and survive?

When we started, Google didn’t exist, no one had an iPhone, social media was unheard of and no one was gambling online. So we’ve pretty much seen everything change. When affiliate marketing started to develop in the U.K. it was mainly bedroom affiliates creating websites. Now it’s companies and folks half my age!

I would say that compliance has obviously been the biggest change to the industry in recent times and I’m all for the aims it’s trying to achieve. It would have helped us all if the powers that be knew what they wanted from the start. It would help us even more now if operators all had the same approach. But we’ve adjusted, including changing our logo and making it easier for ourselves to update content so that it is uniform across the site.

Other changes have been the way operators conduct themselves. How many of us thought that operators would honor their agreements when we first signed on the rev-share dotted line? Sky closing their program to some affiliates left a huge hole financially for us as we’d been with them since Day 1 of their bingo program. We had experienced closures before, but nothing of that scale comparatively. However, we have always been financially savvy in terms of rainy day savings and trying to make sure we’re not totally dependent on one brand for income.

It’s not always easy, but my advice to affiliates is don’t become too close to just one program, or if you do, make sure you have reserves just in case. Always assume nothing is going to last forever and enjoy the experience as you go.

How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected you both personally and professionally?

Professionally, we’ve used it to make changes to Loquax, including changing our server hosts for the first time in 20 years. That was quite a long-winded process as we’d accumulated several years of old content, broken code, lost pages. As we all work from home anyway and our business is online we’ve been lucky in the respect that the pandemic hasn’t had too much impact.

Personally, I think I’m like everyone else and have good days and bad. I’m fortunate that I live by the sea and can get out for walks with the dogs, but it is strange to think I’ve not travelled anywhere further than 10 miles away in almost a year. I see people say it’s been a wasted year, which is sad. It’s been a different kind of year, but I’ve watched films, walked the dog, taken photos, exercised, chilled out, spent time with my partner etc. and none of that was a waste of time.

What do you like to do when you are not working?

Exercise is very important, which is something that in the last interview I’d never have contemplated telling you. Just before Christmas 2015, I had an emergency operation which ended up with me having part of the colon removed. The surgeon was 90% certain it was cancer, but fortunately on that occasion he was wrong. Looking back now, I was pretty ill for quite some time and I didn’t want to be that bad again. Or if I was, then I’d be in better shape. So I decided that it was a good time to start taking care of myself better.

My neighbor is a PT and I thought a few weeks training with her would be enough. As it happens I could barely do a push-up, couldn’t lift 1kg over my head and had no idea what burpees were. Five years later, I’m still training with her, doing Llanelli Beach Bootcamp twice a week and a sprints session. I never thought I’d enjoy it, I never understood why people did it, but I get it now. It’s all well and good making a decent living from this industry, but health and enjoying life with the people around you is a lot more important.

Apart from that, I do a bit of photography (see jasondale.co.uk). As part of my hospital bed epiphany I decided I was going to travel a bit more so I’ve done a few wildlife trips to Greece, Spain, South Africa and Alaska. Lockdown has screwed that up a bit, but hopefully I’ll be back on the road again in the near future. However, I do take photos of other things including LEGOs! And in case you’re thinking “why,?there’s a blog on the site that explains it. It’s not as insane as it sounds. Honest!

If you could invite any five people, living or dead, to dinner, who would they be?

As it’s been ages since anyone came for dinner thanks to the pandemic I’d be happy just with a few mates. It’d be nice just to sit around a table and chat. If it was famous people I’d go for Eddie Hall, Rik Mayall, Louis Theroux, David Goggins and Nigel Adkins. The latter is an ex-Southampton FC manager, but I love his approach to life. During his time at Saints, he’d go on about controlling the controllables, which made more sense coming from him then any self-help guide I’ve seen. Once you realize what you can and can’t control, things become much simpler.

Name three things that people reading this magazine don't know about you.

I’m now tee-total and also no longer drink tea or coffee. That followed the health scare above, so it’s partly forced, partly choice.
In 2009, Loquax sponsored The National Dodgeball Championship in the U.K. We only did this because of the movie. It cost next to nothing in financial terms and did next to nothing in media/PR terms, but it still makes me smile thinking about it.
I’ve spent the last 12 months learning Spanish using Duolingo. This is the best I’ve done trying to learn the language. It's just a shame I can’t travel to try it. Fortunately, my wife speaks fluent Spanish, just none of the stuff I’ve learnt.

**Cash Bonus** · 16 June 2021, 3:42 pm

Good interview with Jason. The other big changes to the industry that you didn't mention is their strangling regulations.

**Topboss** · 16 June 2021, 5:19 pm

Great interview Jason. Thanks for sharing. Many of your comments I could relate to myself, having also been in the industry for many years too!
Things certainly have changed!

**GPWA Maria** · 17 June 2021, 12:24 am

Hi Jason,

Thank you for sharing.

Great photos, specially the White Horse Portrait. When my son was little, we used to make short videos with his Legos, so I totally get your love for the Lego figures.

Keep safe!

**drifter8** · 17 June 2021, 12:30 am

Amazing inteview.

**Scorebetting** · 17 June 2021, 2:07 am

Really enjoyed reading this! Thank you for sharing.

**newcustomeroffer** · 17 June 2021, 5:14 am

Brilliant, I remember using the Loquax site to promote a free scratchcard competition that I was running for a fledgling car insurance comparison website in a previous corporate life, must have been early 2000s.

**Dsquared** · 17 June 2021, 7:40 am

Thanks for this interview.. was interesting to read about your own affiliate experiences over the years that you didn't mind sharing with us (especially when I've been aware of your brand for years) .. Cheers!

**Cleo P** · 17 June 2021, 9:17 am

Thank you for sharing!!

**gil.langelaan** · 18 June 2021, 8:54 am

Wow, very interesting interview!

Thanks a lot for sharing!

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