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thanks Dom for correcting me.
and I agree with the Prof Eric; sounds like a good old case of …. the squeaky wheel got the grease.
Amazing how when you contact a program and tell them you’re taking down their links; that you suddenly start to see some action.
but what the hey? we’re all too dumb to figure out that there might be something funny going on.
:rolleyes:
Lets form a group.
Lets name this group ……..CAP. If CAP doesn’t want anything to do with this, we can call it something else – WEM (Webmasters for effective Marketing).
Lets put our heads together and make an impression on the casino groups.
1. We choose monthly one group which we will give the most exposure – all in the group will do this. Together we’ll send them so much new traffic their heads will spin.
2. We choose monthly who isn’t performing and lose them from all sites and ppc campaigns. Blackout.
Between the group of us – those that have the guts to participate and are willing to put in the effort to make changes on their sites, etc., we can make the impression we want to.
Pee-pee or get off the potty.
Fergie
I’ll be glade to help! It might show the casinos that we supply them with a lot of new blood. Maybe as a group we can carry some weight, but as individuals we don’t
Ok playing devils advocate let’s say you have a casino that earns you $8k a month, the rest of your programs average $1200 -$1500 and the group decides its time to pee pee on your $8k program. Do you pull it to ensure solidity with the group?
Lets say the majority of the group decides a program has screwy stats, but you have made good money with them for years, I will use Casino Rewards as an example, would you expect BB1 to drop them? If he didnt would he be considered a scab?
Its very easy to think about cooperative actions, but when it actually effects an INDIVIDUALs livelihood its not an easy question to answer.
No I don’t think if a casino is playing fair with you that you should drop them. But it is up to the individual if they think they are not getting a fair shake to go along with the program. How knows, the person that didn’t drop the casino may fine that his commissions go up also. I have found a program that I think is being fair with me. I have be getting 50% downloads on my hits and 10% of those have converted to new players. They had an interview on CNN and I have a video clip on my site if anyone is interested http://www.onlinebettingreview.com/Video.html . If you want to sign up as an affiliate under me I would love to have you. I have never missed a payday with the and have had no problems. Their affiliate support is very timely
There has to be some starting point. This has been talked to death already and no one has come to any sort of agreement or association that works for everyone.
My thinking is that we will continue to be shaved here and there, according to the whims of affiliate managers until we learn to band together.
Perhaps those of us who are already big and making tens of thousands each year have no need for such an association.
I feel that if a large enough group of us little guys did get together and chose who to promote as a larger block, we would have the kind of pull in this industry that will make screwing us something a casino would think twice about.
In order to start up such an association, everyone involved would have to make some sacrifice, I am sure. But it’s better to sacrifice now for more future gain, than to go on meekly as we are.
The starting point would simply be for the group to elect unanimously which casino group will receive the most exposure from each member. That doesn’t mean “pee-peeing” on anyone.
However, it would mean that, should significate evidence point to cheating on the part of any casino group, the whole group would first enter into diplomatic correspondence with them, and blacklist them as a last resort.
Nothing is perfect, but there is a better way to do things than as powerless individuals.
Originally posted by Fergie
Lets form a group.Lets name this group ……..CAP. If CAP doesn’t want anything to do with this, we can call it something else – WEM (Webmasters for effective Marketing).
Lets put our heads together and make an impression on the casino groups.
1. We choose monthly one group which we will give the most exposure – all in the group will do this. Together we’ll send them so much new traffic their heads will spin.
2. We choose monthly who isn’t performing and lose them from all sites and ppc campaigns. Blackout.
Between the group of us – those that have the guts to participate and are willing to put in the effort to make changes on their sites, etc., we can make the impression we want to.
Pee-pee or get off the potty.
I think this is a great idea for what its worth. While i note the Prof’s concerns, this idea and those concerns can be balanced to ensure that the “group” effectively becomes more powerful than the individual i believe. It needn’t be a case of taking radical action if a program doesn’t perform as expected – that can be left to the individual to decide – but the feedback and PR alone within this forum from such a campaign would be enough for individuals to make a decision and programs to realise the effect.
Count me in if it happens.
Simmo!
perhaps every month we can all vote on 1-3
programs that we should voluntairily NOT send ANY traffic to …
this way you change opt in or out and be aware of those
most others consider to be poor performers as of late so you
can adjust your placements if you so desire to tweak out
your maximum gain.
:rolleyes:
Fergie I have a proposition for you. I toyed with the idea of an association about a year and a half ago. Then after thinking thru all the potential pitfalls and calculating how much time and effort it would require to do properly I put it on a back burner for someday in the future. Well, maybe YOU are that future. You have the desire, and I believe you have the drive necessary to make an association work.
If you want to develop this concept I will provide you use of the domain and basic site I had set up. It’s here:
http://www.casinowebmasterassociation.com
You can operate it and develop plans on how the association should pursue growth in our industry. My only requirements are that it remain a non profit group that does not charge membership fees for casinos or affiliates and that it does not sell ad space or produce conferences.
Obviously I would not want to set up a direct competitor to CAP so as long as you pursue it as an association rather then a vertical portal you would have my support.
It will take a HELL of a lot of time and effort, but if you are willing to do it I think you could make this fly.
Hi everyone – After looking at the stats of our group, i’m happy to say that everything is pretty much stable. Off course some accounts have shown dropped in conversions but other have shown amaizing growth… again when i look at the global stats from our affiliate network, everything looks just fine.
I don’t think any casino (at least not us) would ask you to keep sending traffic if it’s not producing any revenues for you, but the analysis that you do on your stats, before making any statements should be really accurate. For instance if you have over 50% of your traffic that are returning visitors and not fresh traffic, it is quite normal that conversions of casinos that have been promoted heavily on your site would drop. Other factors like the type of promotiions that run back to back on your site i.e. maybe some promos are so different – get 500 free or get 30 free – conversions are affected…
our job is to turn your traffic into money. we have a common goal and make sure you understand that when it’s not working for you, it’s not working for us either.Best regards,
Laurent
This “association” is a fine idea, but I kind of have been there when I called a boycott on casinos using scum a year and a half ago or so.
Most people voted for it, most people gave verbal support, but only the ones who actually made little to no money with the affected programs actually boycotted.
There is no way to police this, the programs are surely not going to tell you, and people just will not take a voluntary cut in income.
I spun my wheels a lot to try to pull it off, and at least I did raise awareness of the problem. The sheer publicity of it helped to get some programs to stop, but most of the positive results came not from the boycott but from my contacting all new Gator advertisers personally and talking them into stopping.
Some programs stopped because they positioned themselves as the affiliate’s friend.
But boycotting did NOT work by and of itself. And I have learned that these type things never will. You neeed a different approach.
For instance if you have over 50% of your traffic that are returning visitors and not fresh traffic, it is quite normal that conversions of casinos that have been promoted heavily on your site would drop.
This is true for me, Laurent.
Over 50% of my visitors are repeat visitors I know of (using bookmarks). It is definitely a point to consider, and I do take it into account.
On the other hand, I have also a lot of visitors who love to play games online but have not yet been converted to casinos, so that flaws the matter again.
Then there is this to consider: Are conversions dropping, or are they just not accumulating, as in you cannot build a player base?
Some programs are great for building player bases, and some seem to lose all players after a month.
Then you have the “player for life” matter. Some casinos are extremely well branded and often get a lot of clicks and downloads, but few conversions. Why? Because the clickers have played there before sometime, maybe years ago. They belong to another aff.
This will work in your favor once you have been in the business for a while. This accounts for some of the programs holding on to the large affiliates for years and years. Programs who remove players after a certain period, like a year, of inactivity, are unable to hold on to the big affiliates. Why? No player base.
After all is said and done, you want to see a loyal player base at the casino. And that is up to the casino – the affiliate and the program have little to say about it.
I personally think that a lot of shaving takes place at the casino level, not the programs.
The only problem with the same traffic/decreased sales scenario is people ARE clicking thru to come to the casino.
They are expressing interest in that property.
If they were NOT responsive to seeing the same banners and offers at your sites they wouldnt click thru to the casino.
You would see a drop in VISITS to the casino.
This is NOT what people are reporting and not true in my case. I am sending visitors to the casino that are not converting to depositing players at the rate I would expect or have seen in the past.
If these visitors to MY portals werent interested in the casino or were burned out on the offers they would NOT click to go to the casinos in question.
dominique: i’m not sure where the scumware enters the conversion discussion, and i’d like to remind everyone on board that we never bought or allowed anyone to buy on our behalf an ‘scumware media’.
regarding your statement about a lot of shaving taking place: if this is what you think, then why are you still promoting online casinos?professor:
you have a good point here… why people click on the banners and don’t do what we expect them to do: make a purchase? when i buy thousands of clicks or millions of impressions that generate thousands of clicks hundreds of downloads and signups and only a fraction of those people actually making a purchase, i’m always suprised and ask myself ‘ what the hell do thoe people download a few megs worth of code if they’re not going to play?’
if we had the answer we’ll all be a lot richer…bottom line – we’re doing our best to convert your clicks into depositing players and sometime we’re more succesfull than other time.
After nearly 3 years of operations, i feel that we’ve provided consistent conversion, retention and that we’ve become a very respectable group in this industry. Without those elements, everyone will agree with me that we wouldn’t be where we are.Best,
Laurent
