“CHARLES JAY LINE” CAN HELP INCREASE AFILLIATES TRAFFIC AND CONVERSIONS
June 8th, 2007
Charles Jay of Total Action Inc., a leading content provider for the sports and gaming industry and someone who has compiled novelty odds for various online sportsbooks, recently got together with interviewer Ben Rossman to talk about one of the new content offerings he’ll be making available to affiliates and other gaming websites - The Charles Jay Line - which in effect is a unique fantasy betting game that can be set up on any website.
WHAT IS “THE CHARLES JAY LINE” AND HOW CAN IT WORK TO BENEFIT WEBMASTERS?
“First of all, let me say that my company - Total Action - is in the content business. We’ve provided quality content for a lot of sites, both big and small, and cover all forms of casino gaming, plus the full spectrum of sports. But what we also do, which is different than most people, is content development. We use content to create or develop aspects of the client’s entire presence in order to give it a new dimension or enhance the experience. The Charles Jay Line is part of that.
What I discovered not long ago was that any site that could have, say, a vBulletin forum installed had the ability to install plug-ins that could do some very interesting things. One of those plug-ins is vBookie. Through this script I found I could literally run a fantasy betting apparatus, complete with prizes, interactivity and a number of other features, where people place bets just like they would in a cash sportsbook, but they play for points, with membership free to the participant.
So I’ve worked it now for quite a while, and in conjunction with my friends at a website called BoxingScene.com we’ve developed what is undoubtedly one of the busiest and certainly one of the most expansive vBookie presences on the internet. Subscriptions to the forum have gone way up in the last year, and the site has reaped the benefit of increased ad sales, affiliate revenue and click-throughs. There are 65,000 forum members who can be sent a private message on behalf of any sponsor we have.
And then it came to me. This could be a tremendous tool for any gaming-related site. It has so many components that make it ideal for affiliate sites, and works well for casino/poker operators, which hopefully we’ll get to later. But we have decided to engage in the business of implementing this content project on casino affiliate sites.”
EXACTLY WHAT BENEFITS CAN IT BRING TO AN AFFILIATE SITE?
“Look, every site would like to become more of an entertainment portal, and we can bring any site a lot closer to that. We build content by writing blurbs and stories around some of the wager offerings we make. We put links to news about those wagering events, as a way of pumping up the discussion. That way you’ve got user-generated content. We make it a place for giveaways, in a very organic way. We create movement on the site, and we make it more search-engine friendly as well. We can provide multi-media through podcasts. We can promote the fantasy wagering and the site through the use of news releases built around wager offerings. We can do article marketing to promote the client. We can bring a lot of components to the table.
This is not a cookie-cutter, or a branded version of the same site everyone else sees. We can do customization for our clients. We can give them unique content and a unique game, tailored to their customer. We can do pop culture or politics only if that’s what they want. We can do sports only, or one sport in particular. On the BoxingScene site, for instance, we obviously concentrate an awful lot on boxing. We can do a combination of everything. We keep it within the context of what they are doing on the website, so no one has to leave.
It can have the effect of increasing visitors, increasing stickiness, increasing customer satisfaction, acquiring contact and demographic info of visitors, developing players, using content in creating indexed pages for the search engines, and in general enhancing the entertainment experience of that comes to the website. It helps strengthen the relationship with the partner sites, because they can bring them closer to their potential customers. It’s a win-win all the way around.”
I KNOW THE KIND OF PROPOSITIONS YOU POST AREN’T THE NORMAL, EVERYDAY TYPE. DIDN’T YOU HAVE ODDS ON WHICH WAY BABE RUTH WAS GOING TO TURN IN HIS GRAVE?
“Yes. That was when Barry Bonds was passing him on the all-time home run list. We had odds on whether Babe Ruth was going to turn in his grave to the right or the left. We favored the left. You had to lay 6/5 with the left, while the right got even money. A guy wrote in. He said, ‘Hey, why aren’t they both even money?’ I told him he might want to get ‘the best of it’ and go with the right. Later, we flipped a coin. The left won.
We have a little leeway in terms of what we can do, and so you’ll see some things you might not put into a real money sportsbook. Since it’s about fun, it gives us a chance to get crazy. In the last Super Bowl, we have a prop which paid 69/1 if, instead of saying “I’m going to Disney World,” a winning player said “I’m going to the Moonlite Bunny Ranch.” We had an over/under on how many seconds would be left when the winning coach got the Gatorade shower. We always have some crazy props and parlays for the Oscars. We had odds on how many “F-words” were going to be used in almost every Sopranos episode. There’s a lot of political stuff. A guy named Andy Griffith was running for sheriff in Wisconsin, and we put a number on how many votes he would get. Hey - I ran for president on a third-party ticket in 2004, and I put an over/under on how many votes I would get. Sadly, it was the “under.” I’ve done weather props, auction props, State of the Union props in profusion. I’ve done more ‘gimmick’ props than anyone on earth. And the point is, I can supply that kind of thing for any site within the context of this interactive game.”
SO PEOPLE CAN WIN PRIZES PLAYING THIS?
“Yes they can. We will always work toward building a bank of prizes that we can parcel out to client sites. But we imagine the client will have some ideas about prizes of their own that they might coordinate with advertiser or affiliate partners with whom they have a relationship. We don’t interfere with that; we facilitate that.
Prizes can obviously be awarded in different ways; you can literally have a contest and reward the people who finish at or near the top. One of the things we’re working on, which should be great when it’s fully developed, is a kind of “store” where contestants can redeem points for prizes, regardless of where they finished. Sites can also give bonuses to players who have made the most posts or the most fantasy bets, not unlike the bonus programs that reward frequent play at online casinos. I’ll clue you in on something though; my experience has been that as far as the customers are concerned, the prizes are secondary. Many of them couldn’t care less. What’s most important is gathering the points and getting bragging rights. Believe me, a lot of people get their thrill just from the points alone.”
DO THE FANTASY PLAYERS BECOME REAL MONEY PLAYERS?
“Sometimes they are already one in the same. Otherwise, these participants are almost always prospects for something the affiliate has to offer. It just depends on the nature of the demographic. For example, the people who really enjoy the pop culture and gossip-related wagers are the people who might be more likely to convert to the casino than to the sportsbook. People who follow the sports propositions closely are often very convertible to a cash poker player. I think these people can convert very well over to casino and poker, not to mention skill games. And it goes without saying that they can become pretty good recreational sports bettors, if they aren’t already. This is an outlet for them to have a fun time, but we want to design it so that we help direct them to the partner’s website through the affiliate link or banner. One of the ways we look at this is as a development tool.”
CAN THIS WORK WELL WITH A CASINO?
“Yes, this can also work very well with a casino site that does not really wish to get into the sportsbook business. Customers who have an interest in sports can amuse themselves by winning bonuses, merchandise and/or other spiffs from the casino. It’s a great way to pump up play in the real money casino or poker room. It’s an amenity for the player. And all the casino who wants to provide it has to do is install the vBulletin forum and the right plug-ins. We take care of the content part of it, and if the client wants, we can take care of the technical end too. There is no need to integrate or swap databases. It’s simple to register and play. And the casino can do whatever it wants from there. It gives their recreational players some of that ’sportsbook feeling’ without ever having to leave their website.”
WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE TO SAY TO AFFILIATE MANAGERS?
“Really, affiliate managers should love us, and should turn us onto some of their affiliate sites who want to get more aggressive in promoting their offerings, because we can help there. We have creative concepts, we have content features for them, and whatever it is they’re selling, we can help them sell it better.
Real money sportsbooks should contact us too. One of the things we do is put together some ‘off-the-beaten-path’ odds propositions and create some publicity opportunities around them. We’ve done it for the Oscars, the Super Bowl, the NFL Draft, some other events. we will integrate it with what we do with ‘The Charles Jay Line’. We can put it up in a thread and have a link that says, ‘Play this prop at XYZ Sportsbook’ or ‘Bet football at XYZ Sportsbook’. It can work very well that way.”
WHAT OTHER FUTURE PLANS DO YOU HAVE FOR THIS?
“I’m going to be expanding this into a lot of areas, including politics in a bigger way, the stock market, more pop culture and news-related stuff. We’ll be making more and more special sports-related props as well - stuff you won’t find in the conventional sportsbook atmosphere. Hopefully one day soon we’ll be doing soap opera propositions. It’s all about servicing specific markets.
Also, we’ll be breaking out a stand-alone site, BetCharlesJay.com, which will be an expanded version of this game when it is fully operational, around the middle of July. It will also function as an affiliate site and the demo site for what it is we do. For now people can go to that site and it will hook them right into the demo we have at BoxingScene, if they want to check it out.
We invite people to contact us - we can work out a deal for getting this on their website!”
