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I first connected to net back in 95′ on a 28.8 kbit/s modem (that was high tech back then).
Albeit times change and progress has improved connection speeds, prices have dropped and the internet now greatly influences the ways people go about their every day lives.Yet for all these improvements there is a cost. As an old timer I remember when:
- Hyphenating another affiliates domain would get you tarred a feathered.
- Removing designer links, copyrights or link trades would be frowned upon.
- Scrapping content or re-spun stolen content would get you ostracized.
When I commenced in this industry in 2000, affiliates helped each other, they had each others backs. If any program was shaving or stealing players etc etc, regardless if an affiliate currently promoted them or not, the majority would stand up against these wayward programs. Because if we didn’t, it gave a clear message to other affiliate programs they could scr#w each and every one of us over too.
Later when Cindy (SlyCin) founded the GPWA, we all had a community to call home. Private membership wasn’t dished out like a freebie give-away, it had to be earned.
Regular posting and participation in the community was one of the criteria to apply for Private Membership. That rule clearly ensured affiliates were serious and committed; not just another number to notch up on a membership wall!
It was a place where affiliates needs were always 1’st, and a camaraderie which was essentially, ‘One For All, All For One’.
Sure the ugly head of politics and factions with hidden agendas and their objectives to undermined the good within this community was present. But, when sh#t hit the fan, and affiliates income was being jeopardize as a result of a program being dishonest, the community stood united to protect its rightful claims to fair and honest treatment.
Fast track to today and it seems no one really gives a toss. That strong sense of community forged on the spirit of similarities shared by all gaming affiliates has all but disappeared.
Standing on the outside looking in, it seems we’ve allowed commercial entities to place their own money making greed ahead of our affiliate rights to a fair-go.
Not many weeks go by when another affiliate program is outed for shady and dishonest acts, stealing players, revenue and also our residual income too. But where is the support from these affiliate organizations who claim to have our best interests at heart?
Sadly it seems most of these organizations place the importance of making a dollar, 1’st.
Ironically without affiliate members these places would be ghost towns.
IMHO, if these organizations truly hold the best interests of gaming affiliates at heart then they need to not only start showing it but prove it too; talk the talk and walk the walk. Because without the actions, talk in cheap!
Sitting on the fence, turning a blind eye, actively trying to sweep (errr bury) threads about the wrong doings of such programs or using quasi logic semantics to vindicate their inability to address serious issues within the online gaming affiliate industry, is a farce.
Essentially, we’ve all allowed this status qou to continue for so long, it’s now affecting our livelihoods. Slice and dice it but theft is theft regardless of who is doing it.
I currently have a problem being investigated by my affiliate manager here with a respected program. She has also helped save me more than a few hours of work doing various things I have asked her for to do. In that respect it is working for me, but agian I am a dedicated affiliate even though I am new.
I have tried to be “friendly” with everyone I talk with here and having your backs is something I want to do. If something is wrong I will be the second to point it out, Dave is too fast. I wish that it was like the way your descried it back when I had a 9600 bps modem too.
Back then, a lot of people could care less about google and instead concentrated on PPC engines. And that was a quagmire of it’s own, you would have competitors clicking your listings until you ran out of money and had nothing to show for it. It was just as hard for newcomers then as it is now. Just with different types of issues.
On the positive side, there was a finite number of programs and a finite number of affiliates. The majority of people knew each other, if not in person, then through lots of exposure online.
Still, there were some very ugly fights being carried out on winneronline. Some of it was so silly that it was hilarious, some of it was outright character asassination.
Even though all this was going on, affiliates pulled together when there were issues with programs. CAP fixed countless issues with terms changes and such back in the day.
Since the affiliate programs were pretty much established and everyone promoted them, infractions by programs were very clear to see and usually everyone agreed.
Now we have tens of thousands of affiliates out there, and the programs and their rules change all the time. Many Brick and Mortar Casinos came online and brought a whole different outlook with them. One that is not usually favorable to affiliates. It’s hard to keep track of it all, and that’s why we have the affiiate guard dog constantly scanning terms and conditions.
No message board or individual has access to all the affiliates out there. Most never know that their colleagues are crying foul concerning a specific program, or a practice that is sneeking into the market and bad for affiliates.
Then, you have people with completely different experiences with the same programs. You have people with personal axes to grind, and people who completely depend on certain programs to put dinner on the table for their families. You have people who have had no issues, and people who cry foul regarding any specific program. The bag is very mixed.
Rogue programs can thrive for years in this climate, there are always affiliates who have never heard of their reputation and will happily promote them. Good programs can have their character assasinated by just one very vocal person with an axe to grind. It is difficult to make sense of it all anymore.
So it all boils down to avoiding emotional responses and looking only at cold, hard proof. Trust yourself and your own judgement. Enlist the help of other affs and message boards if you are sure you have been hurt and can prove it.
Sometimes you are up a creek with no paddle. Like Grand Prive settled with everyone who made a claim but me. Why? Because they owed me a large chunk of money. I wasn’t about to accept hundreds of dollars in place of tens of thousands and took offense at the offer. That immediately broke the trust and negotiations went nowhere.
Which brings us to a crucial point – trust. Can you trust all the programs to do right by you? No. Can you trust all affiliates to tell the truth? No.
So, the playing field has changed enormously. Just the vast numbers of programs and affiliates make any effective communication impossible. Any small groups of affiliates boycotting a program has very limited effect. The days when we could communally blacklist a program and outrank it on it’s own terms are gone. That was one way to get the message across to new affiliates, to have it displayed on google. But, with affiliates splintered every which way, and the majority never even visiting any affiliate board, this is impossible now.
Plus, most times people yell foul, there is no real proof. It’s up to us as business people to make informed decisions, believing or not believing something really shouldn’t figure into it, we need cold hard facts. And these are often hard to come by.
So we go by personal experience until and unless either party or better yet, both parties present us with concrete, provable facts.
So, keep track of things, take screenshots when something looks odd. And remember, everyone has “off months” when things are just not as profitable as in previous months, with any program.
Also, think about your target customers. Why is a certain program not performing for you? Is your site about free play and the bonuses are match bonuses? Not going to work as well as if you had freebie bonuses, that’s what your visitors are looking for. Is the promo targeting mostly women in their 40s who play slots, but you have small print and the colors don’t contrast clearly? Your customers can’t read it, eyes go bad around 40 but no one wants to wear glasses yet… Just two examples here, there are many, many reasons why a program may not perform well on your site, but do perfectly well on someone else’s site.
So, try to find possible other reasons for bad performance before you cry foul. Research the program, how many complaints are there from different people? If all the complaints come from one person, it may still be true, but maybe that person has an axe to grind.
Times are not the way they used to be, and they will never go back. The web is ever evolving, and we constantly have to look for new solutions to old problems.
PPC is pretty much gone and google rules. We don’t know each other well anymore. The people we do know are but a tiny fraction of all the affiliates and programs out there. With the huge growth in numbers, communication between affiliates has fallen by the wayside.
So we all need to grow up, we can’t function just on trust anymore, we need indisputable facts.
Programs need to prove themselves, affiliates need solid proof for allegations.What else would be useful is cooperation between the major message boards when there are issues affecting all affiliates. Maybe one day we will get there.
Anyway, I am rambling here. I could likely write a book about the gambling affiliate industry back in the the day and all the way up to now.
@Dominique 248765 wrote:
we need cold hard facts. And these are often hard to come by.
I don’t want to harp on about this or turn this into another CR/RA thread.
But…
There is more than enough proof to backup the claims that this affiliate program is stealing players and commissions. Yet, with all this proof no affiliate forum has yet to blacklist them. Instead, you have:
- AGD continues to give them a straight link banner on their RA forum.
- GPWA turns a blind eye, to the point of burying threads about the topic.
- APCW still accepts sponsorship and advertising cash from them.
That’s pretty much what I was getting at in the thread, but instead of spelling it out I chose to be subtle, hoping, people would read between the lines.
These three (3) entities above claim to hold the best interests of affiliates. But not one has stood up to RA/CR, instead their given carte blanche and high fives.
While not all affiliates will be members of industry forums, those that are, IMHO are being sold out and by these so called affiliate industry watchdogs.
Accountablity like integrity is thown about a lot. Both are MIA in our industry.
And then there are the claims posted recently by Lloyd over at the GPWA on the 14’th December 2012 regarding Brightshare. This forum has a thread about it, but still no response from BS – it’s as if everyone is hoping it will just go away.
It’s things like this that our so called affiliate associations should be standing up about and getting to the truth.
But nothing is done, and no one says boo!
Yet I’m sure with LAC approaching all these places are preparing to throw parties (p#ss ups) and walk around patting everyone on the back. Seriously, it’s pathetic!
There are just to many affiliates that look the other way and never visit the boards, for them it is a waste of time and better spent on SEO and getting more links.
They give a damn, they are only interested to make money as fast as possible.
If a program cheats on them big time they just replace it with another one or ask a fixed fee.
To change this industry it will take more than a few angry posts on the forums and some rogue pages online, it is simply to big and programs have become more powerful with the money stolen from us.
It needs to be regulated and taxed properly and some hefty fines if cheating the books and partners, otherwise it will not change – sorry for all those crusaders out there – but it is doomed to stay this way for a long time and CAP, GPWA, AGD can not do a damn thing about it.
Yep, I would like to see this thread deal with Grand Prive issues, but let’s stay on track and talk about cooperation among affiliates in general.
I think that is a very important topic, and a very complicated one.
We all know that we benefit from each others experiences, otherwise we would not be here.
But any type of union has fallen short simply because we don’t share the same experiences. While we all want to know what others have experienced, and this is very useful as one component of our decision making, no one wants to sacrifice their family’s dinner for cooperation with others.
So, what form can cooperation take without jeopardizing anyone’s livelihood?
@AussieDave 248766 wrote:
I don’t want to harp on about this or turn this into another CR/RA thread.
…
Accountability like integrity is thrown about a lot. Both are MIA in our industry.I think that last sentence really sums up the last 3-4 years in this industry very well! As you outlined in the OP 10-12 years ago we enjoyed a much closer community where affiliates were genuinely interested in helping and learning from one another vs. cutting each other’s throats – being forgetful and flat out telling lies that whether intentional or not DO hurt others directly!
Certainly back then there were some who preferred the latter; for example prophet who loaded dozens of cookies from his sites pages to steal others referrals, but the majority of the community stuck together to speak out against such injustices and the programs paid attention – enough to change the way they configured their cookies!
That environment was much more conducive to affiliate friendly programs vs. organization/association friendly programs which paid more attention to the operators of the sites where the affiliates gathered. Once those sites started placing more emphasis on making money for themselves vs. fostering communities for affiliates to gather, the entire gambling affiliate industry changed.
With the community based sites rushing to fill their pockets as full as possible, the programs quickly realized it was going to be much more difficult to compete with the 100 other programs for the exposure they once gained simply by offering a quality product/service to the individual members of the communities.
Grand Prive, Be Winners, Best Casino Partner, Wager Profits, Vegas Affiliates, Casino Coins, Casino Rewards, Brightshare, the list goes on and on – many thought at one time to be the best of the best, have now gone west – the wild west that is! They all are fully aware of the fact that there is very little any one affiliate can do to affect change so they strive forward beyond what once were commonly accepted boundaries of operation! Pushing the envelope of poor service, lying, cheating and stealing knowing that if and when need be, the community sites would have their backs in almost every instance and that the individual’s voice could and would be silenced.
At this point, sadly I agree with Inspiration and surrender nothing is going to change in those regards – as long as these sites place more emphasis on making money, we will never again have the legitimate community we once had; least not without total overhauls and clearly that is no longer in the best interest of the sites so it won’t happen!
Personally as I have stated elsewhere I am fed up as a person can get with regards to liars and cheaters and though I have always been outspoken against that crowd and at one time thought a unified front was the way to go and truly believed we would get there, the last 3-4 years have led me to the realization that things are simply not going to change! Seemingly haven been transitioned into the ‘new’ old west I can see only a few remaining options! Truly if that’s the unlevel playing field we are now forced to play on – I say arm yourself to the gill – it’s going to get a whole lot more bumpy before this wagon ride is over!
Well, we all remember things selectively – things were not quite as peaceful as we would like to remember.
But one thing we had was a norm we applied to aff programs. And if they deviated from that norm in a way that hurt us we gave them hell.
Now – we have no norms. Programs make whatever rules they like, and there are always going to be plenty of uninformed affiliates out there to promote them anyway.
Changing the rules was a lengthy process for programs, and the change had to meet affiliate approval or the program had to give a choice. No forced retro active changes. That went out the window pretty much.
Today – does anyone even know what type of cookies their programs use? We used to have input on that.
Quotas – they were unheard of. Now, many programs have it to where if something happens and you don’t deliver new players in a given time period, they simply take all the money coming in from your referred players. Think it can’t happen to you? Think again, people get sick, lose ranking in google, all kinds of circumstances can happen and make you lose what you may have left.
If we don’t have clear do’s and don’t’s for affiliate programs, there can never be cohesive action.
For the record, in case members here don’t know, I had my private membership at the GPWA striped and was subsequently banned back in 2011, because I wouldn’t keep quiet about all the dodgy goings on, conflicts of interest and finger in too many pies.
In the end it came to a Kangaroo court with Corfman being the jury, judge and executioner.
If I’m vocal about the GPWA it’s not because I’m bitter, it’s because I know they’re business mandate is not to protect the interest of affiliates, but to make money off their backs and sell them out for all the money they can get.
@Dominique 248773 wrote:
one thing we had was a norm we applied to aff programs. And if they deviated from that norm in a way that hurt us we gave them hell.
Now – we have no norms. Programs make whatever rules they like
And who do you think has allowed them to do that?
The gpwa.net was supposedly replaced with the .org (organization) because it claimed it represented the GPWA more appropriately. More BS. If a change was to be made it should have gone to a .com (commercial) TLD. Make no bones about it, that’s exactly what the GPWA is, a BIG business.
There was a group of us at the GPWA (Corfman ownership) who were very vocal about these type of issues and also about affiliate programs treating affiliates fairly. But obviously that didn’t sit well with the powers that be there. So slowly but surely, one by one, the voices were silenced.
Sponsor programs pony up with their bag of money, they don’t care who it is, as long as the cash is real. Hell, they even accepted a casino group/affiliate program that later I discovered likely held ties to the Russian Mafia.
http://www.gpwa.org/forum/questions-about-affiliate4you-org-raised-response-welcome-announcement-199012.htmlAnd where I kicking in asking questions about this dodgy affiliate/casino operation:
http://www.gpwa.org/forum/questions-about-affiliate4you-org-raised-response-welcome-announcement-199012.html#post653360AGD – An affiliate is over there now begging to be paid by a certified program. And it’s not the first time affiliates have struck payment issues with Ruby Royal. This person posted yesterday and like the other threads about not being paid, nothings is done.
Posted Yesterday
http://www.affiliateguarddog.com/forums/need-get-paid-t5832.htmlPosted 20-4-2012 (no response to that thread) $2,000 owed
http://www.affiliateguarddog.com/forums/need-get-paid-t5089.html20-7-2011 (last time anyone sighted a rep from Ruby Royal)
http://www.affiliateguarddog.com/forums/need-get-paid-ruby-royal-t4287.htmlAnd these type of issues are now the norm on places that claim to protect affiliates.
I guess since Andy (Guard Dog) has had to take a day job and his affiliate businesses are now part time, including AGD, things are not going to be run like they should be run. And again it’s affiliates who lose out.
I could go about all the organizations who claims to hold the interest of affiliates first, who clearly do not. However I think what I’ve said so far paints a good picture of the current status quo in our industry.
The gloves need to come off, so all affiliates can decide if who they support, are placing them 1’st!
Added: It’s even got to the point were most affiliates are too scared to speak up for fear of retribution. If not having the begebbers shaved out of their income by a program, fear they’ll be victimized and character assassinated by the Cartel who rules over the gaming affiliate industry, these days!
@Dominique 248770 wrote:
what form can cooperation take without jeopardizing anyone’s livelihood?
I think your asking the wrong question.
More and more programs are doing what they like, with little to no respect for previous agrements etc etc, continuing to hold a mindset of not standing up on the grounds it could (or might) jeopardize future income, is imo a moot point.
Our livelihoods are already under attack.
Do we die on our knees fighting for our rights of fair-go or just roll over. And, each month wave goodbye to more and more of our rightful income being stolen, till we have nothing?
Under the current circumstance, (imho) that’s a valid and suitable question.
I wish I had more to add. This has been a powerful read for a Saturday morning. I would choose fight, in fact I have some friends that are fighting the cartel in mexico and I am fighting a degenerative disease. Again, I am new but not going anywhere and this battle would be about my future too.
Guard dog just scans T&Cs contantly. That is it’s function. Andy has a full time job and a family and took the time to get a program going that will scan and he publishes results.
He doesn’t have time to mediate, a full time demanding job and a family is already consuming more than enough time. Mediation is not what AGD does. I am damn glad that someone put out the money and had a program written that scans T&C’s, it’s impossible to do for a person to go through all the programs all the time and compare T&Cs to the previous version.
The message boards are what they are – websites that try to pay people for working on them.
The only site that seems to be consistent in getting things resolved is Casinomeister for player issues.
And I have not been around for two years and am not aware of things that have happened since late 2009 when my husband got sick. So I have no idea who may have resolved what issues since then. I think CAP has a resolution service, but like I said, I wasn’t around to watch.
Complaining about others not doing something has never seemed very productive to me.
The thousands of affiliates allowed programs to make weird rules by promoting them anyway. As long as there is no way to reach them all, that is the way it’s going to be.
And now I am going to step away from the computer, it’s the weekend and I resolved not to work weekends anymore. Have a nice one!
@Dominique 248779 wrote:
Guard dog just scans T&Cs contantly. That is it’s function
ADG also gives accreditation to programs too or did you forget that!
And with regard to scanning T&C’s constantly, it was probably like that before you took your leave of absence. But these days, it’s certianly not. Albeit it seems some of the slack with regard to outdated, un-scanned T&C’s are slowly being caught up on.
However, like a car, if it’s only running on 3 cylinders, sometimes it quicker to take the bus
I posted it on the 5’th of July 2011 and ironically it’s about the same issues this threads about.
