Interview with Antti Alatalo, Co-Founder and Marketing Director of digital marketing company Cashcow

  • Antti, first of all, please tell our readers a bit about Cashcow.

Antti: Cashcow began a little over two years ago as a joint venture between myself and two business partners – Mika and Kirmo. We had all worked in different areas of iGaming previously so we decided to come together to create our own affiliate site, Casino-Professor.com.

Nowadays, we have 13 full-time employees plus many freelancers at Cashcow. They can choose to work either remotely or in our office in Malta. The success of Casino Professor has seen the site expand to cover many languages and regions, across several platforms. 

We’re very proud to have grown it from the ground-up.

  • What prior affiliate work experience do you have?

Antti: Myself, Mika, plus many others in our team have all worked directly in the iGaming affiliate vertical before Cashcow. Kirmo also has extensive experience in email affiliate marketing and has formed close connections with a variety of operators. In total, I would say that the company’s overall experience in affiliation surpasses 10 years.

However, some of our team have been employed at casinos and game developers too, so we’re lucky to have a well-rounded view of the entire industry.

  • How do you start working with a new client and what do you look out for?

Antti: We have a specific vetting process when choosing new casinos at Casino Professor. The main reason for conducting such checks is because we only want to work with legitimate and credible clients. However, we also want to offer genuine value and depth for our readers so each language has a slightly different checklist to cater for regional differences.

A good example would be a client needing to have local operating licences – such as in the UK or New Jersey. This is one of the reasons why you may see a casino listed on our German site but not English, for example.

  • A lot of iGaming companies are faced with media censorship during their promotions, how can they overcome it?

Antti: We believe it’s very important to diversify your product as much as possible. I mentioned earlier how Casino Professor has spread to multiple platforms, with our social media channels proving to be key in building brand awareness and engagement with different communities.

In our eyes, it’s better to take advantage of genuine, long-term opportunities rather than finding loopholes or quick fixes. The industry is becoming more regulated by the month so doing things properly now saves problems down the line.

  • Could you elaborate on your social media channels?

Antti: Casino Professor is mainly active on YouTube, Twitch, and Twitter, with a channel in Finnish, English and German for all of them. We’re especially excited about the future of our casino streams on YouTube. The site’s reach is like no other, and our Finnish channel has managed to attract a considerable number of views which has resulted in a strong following.

We’re looking to replicate this success in English and German too, as these profiles have only recently been launched. Here’s one of our first streams for Casino Professor EN (any feedback is very welcome!):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8jXDLTS-WM&t

 

  • What are the biggest challenges for casinos and affiliates, and which is easier to do?

Antti: I wouldn’t say one was easier than the other as they both require a lot of resources and have huge competition. Their goals and objectives sometimes match yet sometimes differ completely, so I feel they’re too far apart to properly compare in terms of difficulty.

However, they certainly share some common challenges. Both have to find the right balance between being compliant and having a competitive edge. Also, casinos and affiliates need to manage outside forces and the behavior of third parties. A good example of this is Google’s updates which frequently have an impact on success.

  • Do you believe that participating in all affiliate shows and exhibitions really makes a difference for promotion?

Antti: While we do attend a good number of conferences, we feel that you don’t need to go to every single event out there. For starters, you probably wouldn’t have enough time to work on your product if you did!

That said, affiliate conferences have proven vital in building relationships, learning more about the affiliate vertical, and spreading the word about Cashcow. We certainly recommend attending your fair share. 

  • What are Cashcow’s plans for the next couple of years?

Antti: We recently managed to secure a licence to operate in New Jersey, which is very exciting news for the company. We decided to launch a new site – USA Online Casino Finder – for this next step, and we’ve built it in a very specific way so that more regulated states can be added in future. This will obviously take up quite a bit of our focus over the next few years, we hope!

However, Casino Professor is still very much our flagship brand, so we’ll be concentrating on growing it into other viable markets while potentially expanding our social media presence as well.

We’ve also begun exploring other affiliation verticals alongside iGaming. This is in its infancy at the moment but is something we’ll certainly look towards in the near future.

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