Publication date: 22 Apr 2025
A new hero of our iGaming Heroes interview series at 3S.INFO is BigAff — a gambling affiliate and founder of the community “Affiliate Casino Blog.”
We talk about his first leads, trial-and-error SEO, wild promotion tactics, his love for fishing, and the one suggestion that helped shape an entire affiliate community. Let’s dive in!
– How did you get started? What was your first site that actually made money?
I started from scratch — no SEO knowledge, no web dev skills. It was 2014, I just had a basic understanding of how gambling works and a strong desire to make money. No budget either.
The first site that brought in money also launched in 2014. Toward the end of the year, it was getting up to 100 daily visits. It focused on no-deposit bonuses and was built on a basic hosting site builder (HTML). It was a complete SEO mess — but those first visits and real FTDs gave me the motivation to keep going and build something serious.
It was tough at first — no real knowledge base, no courses or communities, just forums.
I had to learn everything through my own mistakes and experiments. But I don’t regret a thing — that kind of experience is priceless.
– What’s the craziest promotion method that actually worked for you?
Ranking a site in the top 5 of search results — without any external SEO. Purely on internal optimization and content. It worked in Yandex back then, as long as the niche wasn’t too competitive. And it worked for real money keywords.
I haven’t worked with Yandex for over two years now, so no idea if that still flies. Probably behavioral signals (PF) matter even more than links these days.
– If you had to start doing SEO from scratch today, how would you approach it?
Honestly, everything changes so fast — it doesn’t really matter which specific trend you follow. The core idea stays the same:
Build sites, drive traffic, monetize.
If I were starting SEO for gambling today from zero,
I’d go for low-competition keywords in low-competition geos — and pair that with the right affiliate programs.
From experience, I already know who I’d work with… but I’ll keep that to myself.
– What’s the best professional advice you’ve ever received?
I can’t remember one specific piece of advice. What always motivated me was seeing other affiliates succeed — and watching what ranks in search.
Oh wait — there was one. After I created my blog, someone used the feedback form and wrote:
“You should start a Telegram chat for affiliates — way easier to share ideas and help each other.”
At the time, I didn’t even use Telegram. But I did it, added the link to the blog — and it slowly turned into a full-on community. A lot of affiliates (myself included) learned so much from that chat. Some still do.
These days, people share less because competition is brutal — but the most relevant and useful stuff still gets discussed.
If you’re the one who sent that message — thank you. That advice changed a lot. Not just for me.
– What does your perfect day off look like?
No problem answering that — my hobby is pretty much my lifestyle: fishing. Winter, summer — doesn’t matter. I can easily spend a day or a week offline, totally enjoying it.
I love getting out into nature with overnight stays, especially by a river. All the little things that come with that — I live for it.
– Your top advice for new webmasters who want to crush it in SEO?
I don’t see myself as a “top-tier” expert, but I’ll share what helped me:
1. Keep strict control over all the work you do. Be detail-oriented and creative at the same time.
2. Don’t stress over failed sites or dropped affiliate programs. Just keep moving. Even better — scale up in a way that makes those failures nothing more than calculated risks.
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