Online Casino

[Anonymous]

si wrote:

I don’t really see why the software companies would care about rakeback – they will still get their % cut of the rake and/or fees whether the operator offered rakeback or not.

Not if there is no more profit margin for the individual rooms. What % of rake can you pay out and still be profitable?

si wrote:

If we all offer rakeback, it’ll be quite a scorched earth tactic – it kills off the advantage the rakeback affiliates have so we wouldn’t lose our future high rollers. But we’d be the worst hit by such a move as we have fewer high rollers.

Rake back affiliates actually often make less than we do. The overhead for the legitmate ones is way huge. I have a feeling the duration of this would be very short and rooms would stop accepting new rakeback affs very quickly. That would raise screams of blooddy murder, and the softwares would step in.

si wrote:

If you hate rakeback affiliates then start a loss leader rakeback site which offers the full 50% commission. I understand some poker rooms automatically refund the rakeback – so just feature those at first to keep admin down to a minimum. Once the site is established and you can guarantee x players per month charge the poker rooms a flat monthly fee to remain listed and rent space on your newsletters.

I don’t hate rakeback affliates. I actually found them smart and entrepreneurial and motivated and muy sympatico. I just think in the long run this is not a sustainable business model, and in the short run it hurts a lot of us, including the industry. I think the established rakeback folks are here to stay, they have what it takes to make it. They will just have to shift focus and go with the flow as we all need to do as things change.

I have great poker traffic and provide lots of useful content, but am not really monetizing the traffic. I see little point in it, as soon as I have created a major player due to the info/training you can get on my site, rakebackers snatch him. For now I am just enjoying the branding I am gaining, and not really feeding the industry. I am continuing to build the section, eventually I will do something with it.

I could optimize for rakeback and be very visible in a week. I have considered it. It’s likely the best way to run the thing into the ground. And yes, the programs that automate would be the choice here, rakeback is very labor intensive otherwise.

Just for myself though, at ths time I am content to build traffic, brand myself, and enter the industry properly when it’s cleaned up this mess.