Josh Green from FruitySlots

How would you describe FruitySlots to someone who does not know what you are doing?

– We are first and foremost an online marketing business which concentrates predominantly on igaming and online casinos. Initially we would describe ourselves as traditional affiliates but our video content has enabled us to become more of a marketing business which can offer far more than normal casino affiliation. At our very roots, our core business is to deliver traffic ( website visitors ) to online casinos, with the aim of these customers signing up and joining new casinos. We are an online review, news and community site for online casinos with the goal of directing our users and visitors to different online casino sites.

How did you end up in the casino industry?

– Myself and my business partner Jamie have been in the industry for well over 10 years now. Jamie had started a job role in marketing for a company which had just launched a new Online Bingo and Casino site. I had a big passion for online poker at the time and when he found out they were looking to expand into poker and needed someone with a strong product knowledge he kindly put me forward for the role and it was my first job in gambling having previously been working for an investment bank in the City.

– Between the pair of us we have held various roles within igaming, across Sports betting, Bingo, Poker and online casino. We have both worked for operators in senior marketing positions and both previously ran our own affiliate businesses before launching Fruityslots.

What made you to start FruitySlots?

– After launching a new sports affiliate business over 5 years ago I wanted to diversify but I knew the online casino affiliate space was extremely competitive, tough to break and largely saturated.

– It was only by chance after watching online poker being streamed on twitch that I found online casino streamers playing slots on Twitch and Youtube. I instantly recognized this as a new opportunity which had a very low barrier for entry and strongly believed that myself and Jamie would excel in this space due to our love of gambling and personalities.

What personality traits make you a skilled founder? What have been your biggest challenges?

– The old age saying of working hard rings very true. I always felt that if i found something i really loved doing and was passionate about then i wouldn’t feel like i was ever working. This is largely true. I’m well organized and constantly scrutinizing and thinking about the business. What can we do better, where are our weaknesses and what direction we need to go in. You can’t rest on your laurels and you realize that running a business is never plain sailing. The second you start to take your finger off the pulse then you can easily fall behind. Staying motivated is half the battle but an eagerness to build an established brand and successful business is our main driver.

– The biggest challenges we have faced are probably regulatory changes towards online gaming, especially in the UK which have made marketing practices much more compliant, but also less lucrative. We have had revenue cut overnight by online casinos pulling out of the market and leaving us with a player pool that can’t generate us any revenue anymore from that particular casino affiliate. Being able to adapt quickly is very important and being a nimble company reality helps.

How have you changed as a person from running FruitySlots?

– I think I have matured as a person through experiences and age but not necessarily running a business. You certainly learn different things from setting up and building a company, being your own boss, which you don’t necessarily experience as an employee. More recently I have tried hard to balance work and life. During the current pandemic it’s important to put everything into perspective. Running your own business can be very consuming and affect your personality and relationships in a big way. I’m spending more time trying to balance the two and acknowledge how important mental health and happiness is over most things in life.

What are you most proud of?

– I think simply running a business that can continue to grow in today’s climate is an accomplishment in itself. We are lucky that online gaming has not been hit as hard as other industries have over the last year but at the same time it’s important to make sure you can give self credit. Given other people opportunities to work with us is a blessing. We are very lucky to have some excellent members of the team who really help push the business forward. I’m proud that we can employ staff who really love working for our company.

Where do you want to be in 5 years?

– At the moment we are mainly focused on our affiliate business and website fruityslots.com. We are keen to continue to grow our Youtube channel but would really like to start to expand our audience outside of the UK. We would love to have a more international audience and really plan on implementing some new marketing strategies to try and achieve this, Utilizing our experience playing online slots so frequently for the past 3 years we would like to use our experience and knowledge to move into a more product and tech side of the business in the future, possibly even creating our own online slot.

Personal and professional where can people find you online?

– Since our business is so visible online, I tend to keep my personal profiles as distant as possible and actually hardly use social media myself anymore as I’m on it enough for our brand as we cover Youtube, Twitch, Facebook, Instagram and twitter, all under the fruity Slots handle. I do have a personal linkedin profile which i use quite often and we have recently created a business page for fruityslots on LinkedIn.