“Without the effort that my team and I have put in we’d be nowhere. This industry is full of comers and goers trying to make it and they usually give up after the first few months!”

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Starting at just 16 Michael Charalambous has been in the digital space for nearly 7 years and has seen tremendous success working for some of online marketing and SEOs’ industry leading agencies; where he managed creative and innovative digital marketing campaigns for blue chip clients.

Michael is an entrepreneur who co-owns Right Casino Media, a UK based company who manage a set of high-traffic high-profile gambling websites.

Right Casino Media is a team based in Essex, England. Their mission is to bring the common online gambler the right information about online gaming operators.

MO: How has your background and experience in SEO and digital marketing helped shape and focus the direction and vision of Right Casino Media?

Michael: Good question. Without my background in marketing I would not have even started this company. Right Casino Media can be traced back to when it was formed by a friend and I after we reconnected on Facebook – yep we have Facebook to thank. We ended up working at the same digital agency in London where our skills grew fast. As we began to realise the potential in the gaming market we started to plan out a business idea; of which we have stuck too.

Because we have a particular set of skills, we knew that we could break into the market. This ultimately has been the deciding factor in the success of the business. We specialise and focus on domain acquisition and SEO, whereas I knew from competitor analysis that many companies in the gaming market were years behind. So, leaving aside other marketing options and choosing our very small spend cleverly we were able to acquire a domain, build a great website, and have it ranking highly in Google very quickly. It took just one year for us to go from having just LiveRoulette.co.uk in our portfolio to over 140 domains and 30 operational sites. Without the online marketing knowledge – we wouldn’t have some of the most prestigious domain names in the industry and would have failed miserably in the search engine rankings.

MO: What influenced your decision to focus only on targeted traffic and what does that focus mean to your client base?

Michael: When you work for an SEO agency you become accustomed to making the most of a client’s budget and this often means cutting the fat and solely focusing all budget and efforts on the core search terms which will drive the most revenue; and often, what will drive that revenue in the shortest amount of time possible. Through years of this being drilled into your head it becomes second nature to not spend marketing budget unless there’s a guarantee that money is to be made.

Our client base if often amazed with our results as we are different to our competition. For example one of our major competitors might see 20,000 unique visits a month to their website however the traffic is coming from search engines, paid advertising, TV advertisements, and often the most traffic comes from display advertising. While all of these methods are excellent they will find they’re conversion rates incredibly low because a lot of the visitors coming to the site aren’t necessarily interested or that far down the buying cycle.

The difference with Right Casino Media is that we actively accept lower numbers to ensure that the only people that visit our sites are the ones that are truly interested, ready to engage, and most importantly ready to buy. This means that we can convert at 5%, 10% and even 26% (with our top client) – way over the industry average of around 3%.

MO: Can you talk about your strategy for expansion?

Michael: Naturally I can only give away so much – competitors are constantly watching our every move. However, our main strategy has been to re-invest, re-invest and re-invest some more. It’s barely been two full years and over that time we have spent a fair few pounds on new domains making sure we either buy out the competition or restrict them from entering our space.

As explained earlier we started with just LiveRoulette.co.uk. The strategy from the start was always to dominate the ‘live casino’ market and move on from there. We have launched several sites within this niche ensuring we rank for as many of the best terms possible. As these have become more and more stable we have used what spare funding we have available to explore other markets; even pushing out of iGaming and into the financial market; which is closely related. Some other sites in our portfolio include LiveCasino.co.uk (live gaming market), Roulette.co.uk (generic gaming market) and BinaryOptions.co.uk (financial trading market).

MO: You’re living the entrepreneurial dream. You’re gaining impressive traction and experiencing impressive growth with no investment, no start-up capital and are battling against companies with serious marketing budgets. What’s your secret to success? How do you plan to keep the momentum going?

Michael: Haha, the entrepreneurial dream – I’m certainly trying to. It’s not all glamour and money, its thirteen hour days and no sleep at times but I’m definitely working towards the dream. I think there are a few things to say here:

1. Hard work, will power and discipline. Without the effort that my team and I have put in we’d be nowhere. This industry is full of comers and goers trying to make it and they usually give up after the first few months when they realise that they won’t be millionaires in under a year and that it takes more than a few spam tactics and a poorly designed website to make money.

2. When I hear about momentum I think back to times when I’ve been feeling low or nervous that everything we do is going nowhere. It’s not easy; it’s really difficult to push through it. But providing you are constantly working towards short terms goals – momentum can easily build up speed when you reach goal after goal and often, if you’re like me, fail. When I fail it’s often just another reason to up the ante and pick up more speed.

3. Keeping the momentum of the company going is slightly easier than it is at a personal level – some may not agree, but that’s what I believe. Once the company was settled, stable and earning enough to keep itself running; it was and still is a case of being smart with the money we have. It’s so easy as the owner to go and buy a new watch, a holiday, a car, anything. Rather so we increase the marketing budget and size of expansion a little more with every small growth we see whilst ensuring we don’t exhaust all funds in case of emergency. In doing so we have created our own snowball and every month it gets slightly bigger.

MO: What are some of the major changes in online gaming that you’re excited about?

Michael: I think the number one is mobile. The world of mobile even outside of gaming is moving at an astonishing rate – constantly growing and changing the game. We’ve already moved on from having mobile websites as they are no longer necessary for the majority of the population because of smart phones. At Right Casino Media we have been seeing an ever increasing amount of our revenue coming from mobile – about 20% currently. I’m looking forward to watching this space and exploring more and more ways we can capitalise on it.

I doubt many others would call this an exciting change but I think the demise of the spam era is certainly something to be excited about. As the world becomes more and more aware of spam, how to use computers, what to click on and what not to click on – the amount of poorly constructed spam-ridden websites which used to dominate this industry is rapidly in decline. Now, only the truly great websites which actually offer value will succeed.

MO: If you could give our readers one tip about conversions what would it be?

Michael: Design! Design is the single most important part of converting your traffic to buying customers, no matter what the niche. I’d even put design ahead of traffic, there would be no point in us putting all our efforts into SEO and marketing if when users arrived on the site it’s not good enough. Design first, then traffic. And from there we track our progress and tweak where necessary.

Just to clarify, the written word is a joint first for conversions…but that’s a whole another story in itself!

MO: Right Casino Media has clearly done an extraordinary job breaking into the online gambling market. What’s next for you and the company?

Michael: Right Casino Media is still growing and is by no means even 10% of what it could be. We simply need to keep focused and keep doing what we’re doing while ensuring we stay ahead of the game by constantly innovating, expanding, improving and being as creative as possible with our marketing techniques.

As for me I have no plans to leave Right Casino Media so my future lies here for the next few years at least. Aside traveling, freeing up time and exploring the world – my end goal is to reach a point where I have my finger in several pies and have the ability to be somewhat of an investor, helping out guys like me who don’t necessarily have the capital to get started.

Starting at just 16 Michael has been in the digital space for nearly 7 years and has seen tremendous success working for some of online marketing and SEOs’ industry leading agencies; where he managed creative and innovative digital marketing campaigns for blue chip clients.

Michael is an entrepreneur who co-owns Right Casino Media, a UK based company who manage a set of high-traffic high-profile gambling websites.