Allow me to chime in………
I have been moderatley promoting Paradise for a few months now and have not had any problems. In fact I am pretty pleased with my results and their affiliate department. Regarding the clicks versus downloads, I am not too concerned about this as it is has been explained to me by their affiliate department and it does make sense when you fully understand it.
I think the biggest affiliate need from Paradise is a cut and dry way to see Total Players versus Real Money Players. To my knowledge this about a month away. I agree that this is something Paradise has to implement to give us better understanding of our stats. Complain about clicks versus conversions, at least Paradise shares click data with us. Half the programs I promote don’t provide this data.
Not to be rude Tovey but I think it’s pretty low of you to issue a “Warning” about Paradise in not one but two different forums here based on the Sportingbet issue instead of based on your actual numbers, discrepancies, and problems that you have had with their affiliate department.
Aquisitions and mergers are inevitibly going to happen in the coming months and yes some programs are going to have to make adjustements……..that’s why we as affiliates shouldn’t have all our eggs in one basket. What happens to your players if Party buys Empire and integrates it into one room?
The T&C’s can say whatever they want but in a relatively new and changing industry there is no such thing as a “player for life”. None of these sites know where they will be in 20 years. They should rephrase it as “for the life of the player under the exsisiting program”
Now back to your warning, looking at the Paradise business model they are one of the larger players in the online poker market, keep in mind the parent company also owns Sportsbook.com. If anything I would look for Paradise and Sportsbook.com to leverage the exsisiting Paradise affiliate program to benefit eachother. Similar to how they now have Blackjack integrated into Paradise, my guess is at some point you will be able to visit the sportsbook with the same bankroll. They are already leveraging this relationship in advertising on their homepages and my guess is they will leverage it amongst affiliates.
What happened with Sportingbet sucks, but lets look at it this as business people. Sportingbet.com is becoming a portal/gateway to their European domains, maybe a bad business decision but nonetheless you can’t keep the exsisting affiliate program with this structure.
Do you really forsee one of the top poker rooms in the world (Paradise) that offers $1 million dollar freerolls becoming a portal any time soon? Do you think they would have invested in the new affiliate program and just launched a sub-affiliate program if this was in their plans? If you want to talk ethics in this industry, look around, you could be sending your “warnings” out every day.
Please don’t take this post the wrong way, but I feel putting out a warning in a community this size with the exposure CAP has should have a little more basis to it.
Jeremy