From bonus hunter to StatsDrone: affiliate data and tracking, with CEO John Wright

John Wright has spent about 25 years in iGaming as a bonus hunter, affiliate, affiliate manager and operator, and now leads StatsDrone, which builds software for affiliates. In this Career Conversations episode from Gambling Industry Jobs he discusses his path, how affiliates lose money, and advice for affiliate managers.

In this episode

• Wright moved from the operator side to affiliate work in 2010, starting a B2B site reviewing affiliate programmes (5:02, 5:31).

• StatsDrone grew from what he saw on both sides: affiliates keep linking to closed brands or stale tracking links, so the app flags closed programmes (6:30, 7:30, 8:01).

• He explains that affiliates can encode a subscriber ID in tracking links to follow each player and re-target them, and says operators are winning traffic back from affiliates (22:00, 22:31, 23:31).

• Domain ratings are easy to fake, he says; he checks link velocity in Ahrefs, and warns that a $500 link on a fake DR70 site will not bring traffic (14:30, 15:00, 15:30).

• He thinks a ready-made network is overrated for affiliate manager hires, prefers hungry candidates, and says outreach needs SPF, DKIM and DMARC set up (34:00, 37:01, 37:30).

• He says last-click attribution could change, for example by splitting credit across clicks, and expects affiliate software to offer more built-in insights within two years (44:01, 44:30, 47:00).

Interview from Career Conversations by Gambling Industry Jobs, published on YouTube.