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well I think its somewhere inbetween both extremes brought to mention here; though in most cases I’d say its more towards the shave than the not:
let me explain. As one that taken steps to check sponsors for honesty; though not to the point I’d like of course, but enough that eventually one of two things will happen;
I’ll either catch them thru my testers;
or else they’ll prove to be so unprofitable with the players that they do get; if any; that the question of their honesty becomes a mute point; they are obviously incompetent at converting/retaining; so what’s the point of proving whether or not they’re honest?
this was always a point a friend in the biz always hounded; and I always was astounded at his adamant search for the truth. Who cares?!!! whether honest and incompetent; or dishonest; you’re bottom line is all you need to look at.
Now the real question then falls to those programs consistently on the bubble. I bet I could name a number of them that seasoned vets would all say the same thing; ya; they seem to be underperforming in comparison.
walks like a duck…..
those are the programs that I think we need to start shedding some light on. these places that seemingly consistently have for one excuse or another; whether it be winners; fraud; or whatever the reason; and I suggest to everyone to take into consideration the combination of the usual excuses also is very suspect; say a winner one month; fraud the next, next month you earned a little but had some more little winners ….
whatever, the end result is that over a period of say 6 months; you ended up having about two decent months; two with no income; and maybe two that saw minimum payouts; and you know you are doing much better with another program offering similar software casinos….
its time to question with serious interest.
I’ve given this scenario before; and challenge everyone again. if you’re not a gambler; then get a couple true players ; no matter what their stakes; and get them to be honest with you how much they play per week, and I think you will find it very interesting to hear that they play often. that your stats should change often, not every third or fourth day as some would have you beleive.
that almost nobody goes in and loses $50, $100; and then says “I’m done for the next three weeks, I’ll play a little at hte end of the month.”.
Gambling for most people is entertainment. not a means to make money. if it was to make money they’d go in and bet it all on a couple rolls with lady luck and walk out either with the money; or not. most people gamble as an escape so that’s why its so hard to beleive some of the stats I see that don’t change over literally days and days.
now the one exception to the above is the person that plays once and doesn’t like the place, therefore its understandable they’d leave and not come back. but seeing stats on returning players update so rarely is upsetting because it obviously leaves much room for corruption.
One last thought. I have busted many, many programs that didn’t report the player at all. that was back in the day when they didn’t respect us at all and blatantly screwed us. Now things are much more sophisticated. you can “have winners” which I personally think is the favorite weapon of the cheaters today; as well a number of other less obvious; or perhaps better stated; less easy to catch ways of screwing the affiliate. The selective shaving tactic is I think alive and well; as well as many other ways.
ways I have personally caught cheating/incompetent tracking
player sign up didn’t show
player deposit didn’t show
player’s deposit only showed 50% – this one i viewed as an obvious cheat; I deposited twice; why did one show the other not?though not from cheating, i know for personal fact that it IS possible and have seen it done: to track a player from someone’s account over to another; don’t bother asking me how you’ll just have to take my word for it. It was done to right a wrong, but I’m just saying its very possible to do.
and then on top of everything else is a huge problem in OG that I’m getting ready to address in full battle armour come the 2nd week of next month ; regardless of how this situation I’m currently involved with; comes out. at this point its just a matter of whether i decide to name the offending party, but rest assured it is an industry wide plague which is a freaking disgrace to the hard work we as affiliates go thru to accumulate real depositing players.
this story involves a loyal patron of over 5 years; 5 FREAKING YEARS! who the place in question has chosen to run off rather than use a little common sense and put forth an effort to overcome the deal-breaking obstacles they have created.
but loss of income due to shoddy CS is of course another story; but one that I feel also needs some further attention given by the powers that be. I’ve already got it written just waiting to see whether the place in question wants to take it to the point of my naming them.
While there is room between what Clause says and the reality, I’ve always insisted that there is fraud over there. Why? Because it’s in human nature.
Which company and which person would not be tempted to diminishes the figures in a backend where nothing is shown in real-time? Or to develop poor tracking to get 1 out of 3 sales tracked at all?
Through I’ve no *hard* evidence to prove anything apart screen captures, I’ve seen so many things with lots of affiliate programs that I take this now as a fact and work with the *fraud* as a parameter in my business. I’ve seen lots of things that would say that I got players playing while I was seeing noting in stats.
On example? I got some ‘proves’ with Casino Shield. I pushed a little this software, because I was finding this software interesting. One thing that is great in their stats is that you can see exactly which online casinos YOUR players are playing. All those that have downloaded the software via your site and use the software are showing up each time they play and which casino they play (with no personal information of course).
I pushed people to download CS in my mailing list, once people confirmed their subscription. So that’s quality players/traffic that were following us, because they got our newsletters.
Guess what? In the casinos list they played the most, the top 10 were casinos where I was making the less money. Contradictory… You can say that it’s because they already got the casinos installed before they use CS through us… But on over 1050 casino sessions, it leaves some doubts, when you are marketing those casinos heavily and even inside the software, and that you know, by monitoring your traffic and clicks, that there you *are* sending people going to those casinos.
While everything is not black, we are far from the 100% white as well.
Those are my 2 cents. I know a lot disagree with my opinion, but take it as this. It is my opinion based on my short experience.
I really would like to see affiliate programs voluntarily submitting to third party independent audits like the casinos do.
It would dispell a lot of these perceptions, at least for those who subject themselves to such audits.
I know I would promote them way above all others, knowing that I will be compensated exactly for my efforts.
Some basically honest programs recoil from this idea because the statistics software is just not reliable. None of it is 100% reliable I understand, and often it is quite shoddy.
Again, I have to point at microgaming – they should hang their head in shame for not providing an accurate, uniform tracking program. They are spending all this money on new games and all kinds of incentives – show me an audited program and it will be all the incentive I will ever need.
APCW and Todd have been conducting some tests, much of the same type as we all conduct periodically. They can, if you are not perchance catching the time a particular program tracked correctly, tell a lot. But it’s not like a real audit – if I make a test of one out of several thousand clicks, it’s not much of an audit, is it.
Again, I think there are good and honest programs out there, but as Maxfalcon says, it’s human nature to stray when there is no regulation at all.
And we have none.
I don’t agree that dishonesty/thievery is human nature because both are known to be morally wrong. I would agree however that for some it has become a natural progression, based on greed, convenience, and evolution of the machine.
I am not going to name any names, mostly because I didn’t have them on a voice recorder so its all hearsay, but I recently was sitting at a bar with no less than three affiliate managers from different programs who all talked openly about cheating & fraud!
The key to minimizing (not sure you can eliminate it 100%) the effect is to develop good relationships with your affiliate managers.
Has any casino or online gaming establishment ever actually had a legitimate audit where some suit comes in unannounced and starts going through books – I doubt it!
axl wrote:Has any casino or online gaming establishment ever actually had a legitimate audit where some suit comes in unannounced and starts going through books – I doubt it!Casinos – yes.
Affiliate programs – nope!
Dominique wrote:Casinos – yes.Oh really? How does that work exactly?
There are no real audits in this industry for casinos or affiliate programs. And I venture to say there probably never will be any real ones. Any “audits” refered to are invariably marketing papers.
To believe otherwise is Naive.
Guys its a relatively simple equation. Work with the partners who make you the most money for your exposure/traffic. If they make you money and arent ripping off your players stick with them. If they ARENT making you a good return change partners.
If a partner DOESNT make me money I change partners, period. I could care less if an “audit” says they arent stealing from me.
While entertaining, all these conspiracy theories amount to mental masturbation. There aint a damned way to prove any of them.
Professor wrote:There aint a damned way to prove any of them.Lol, yep, that’s it in a nutshell.
Professor wrote:There are no real audits in this industry for casinos or affiliate programs. And I venture to say there probably never will be any real ones. Any “audits” refered to are invariably marketing papers.
…
If a partner DOESNT make me money I change partners, period. I could care less if an “audit” says they arent stealing from me.While entertaining, all these conspiracy theories amount to mental masturbation. There aint a damned way to prove any of them.
This may be a somewhat fatalistic attitude
It may be a practical stance to take especially if you’re happily subsisting on the industry at the moment, but isn’t this really the elephant in the room?
If you’re currently getting everything you want from the gaming industry, I honestly think that’s a good thing, but for anyone who wants more from their invested time, anyone that wants to get paid every cent their hard work entitles them to, much more is needed from affiliate programs.
To begin with, how about real-time stats. Not once a day, not even once an hour. Every dollar that comes in to a gaming concern is tracked by the millisecond, delays should be no more than a few minutes for verified funds to show up on the affiliate platform. Once affiliates can see the real-time ebb and flow of the activity of their account and players they will have more information and be far more receptive to casino concerns and adjustments such as chargebacks and/or large player wins. If everything which is called a win or a chargeback by an affiliate program is such, let’s get the affiliates more involved with the process and life will be easier for everybody. The lack of transparency in affiliate programs clearly is responsible for brooking resentment among webmasters who feel they are in an information vacuum. From what I have seen of this site, CAP is great.. and it’s fantastic for the community and mods here to be able to resolve problems or concerns between webmasters and affiliate programs. But this should be the exception, not the rule. Somebody suggested you get to know your affiliate manager to prevent problems like getting cheated. Not the most appetizing situation to have to make friends with a business partner so you don’t get cheated ‘as much’!
So, real-time stats is a good start. Several people have mentioned that.
As I see it, there are two ways to address the problems that everyone knows are going on in the industry. First, on the corporate side; Full periodic audits of affiliate programs including a forensic software audit (cookie/player tracking) and affiliate payouts.
Secondly, on the affiliate side, doing client-side tests.. But it really should be distributed, especially to avoid problems suggested such as the affil program knowing when you have a friend deposit (close geographical proximity etc). If all this information was being collected and published in a central place, it would begin to put the casinos on notice that they are going to be much more carefully watched. I understand many people do this on their own with their programs and have assembled their own information.. some ppl might feel that is their proprietary info, but when it comes to evaluating the actual HONESTY of the partner you’re signing up to do business with I think it’s something that should be public for everyone to know. The certified partners on the board are a good start but let’s be honest, like the last two posts have said, there’s no way for an affiliate to objectively prove most programs are cheating.
But there are ways to get a real good idea.
Dom, you said something about some kind of an association that does some of this testing. I will have to go back and check it out.
Cheers
Quote:There are no real audits in this industry for casinosProf, are you saying that PWC audits are marketing papers? I always thought that they were reliable.
Quote:The key to minimizing (not sure you can eliminate it 100%) the effect is to develop good relationships with your affiliate managers.That is something good, having a good relationship, but some of use don’t have the time to create and maintain this kind of relationship. I prefer concentrate on expansion and creating new things than joking with my affiliate managers. :drunk2:
Quote:I don’t agree that dishonesty/thievery is human nature because both are known to be morally wrong.In highly competitive industries where lots of money is involved, yes, ‘dishonesty’ may become human nature. Very rare are the persons keeping 100% honesty. There are persons keeping 99%, others 50% and those that have no morals at all. But that’s my opionion.
Quote:Guys its a relatively simple equation. Work with the partners who make you the most money for your exposure/traffic.Yes, that is the only solution! :rasta:
Since this is a hot topic in the last few days especially regarding some Microgaming casino groups (so I know it’s not just me who is extremely interested in this topic), I thought I’d post some of the latest update to this report:
http://casinoaffiliatefrauds.com/
This is the domain name set up by the owner of the guy who runs http://www.gamblingmagazine.com specifically for the report. Part 2 (from November 3rd) is almost halfway down the page.
Some very interesting scenarios that have made me think.. I’ll post an excerpt here
The player deposits $100 and it’s 100% of the total available.From this 100% you need to deduct the following:
The licensee will pay an average of say 25% license fee to the game developer. The game developer has good systems in place to make sure the licensee can’t cheat them, so they will collect the 25% and you can be sure about this.
The licensee needs to pay an average of say 12% for high risk credit card processing, charge backs, anti fraud systems, processing and payment fees, bank charges, and other fees on the processing, and making payments and receiving them and collecting them, etc………
The licensee has operating expenses of say 28% for paying salaries, rent, gaming license, advertising, offshore servers and connections, IT and crooked programmers, traveling, insurance, leasing, bank charges and loans, legal expenses, customer support, telephone, depreciation, offshore companies, accounting, auditing for some, taxes, sales tax, etc……………
The marketing companies will offer affiliates an average of 25% to 50% and some much more. They also offer the affiliates to get up to $400 per player, plus all sorts of gimmicks, and other incentives to sign up, and then stick to their fraudulent programs. Let’s take 35% as the average they promise the affiliates.
25% license fee
12% payment processing
28% operating expenses
35% marketing company
100%The first problem is that in the above example, the licensee didn’t make any money, and the 100% are theoretically gone, there is nothing left for the operator.
The other problem is that we didn’t take into account the sign up bonuses, and other incentives given by all the operators to attract new players and also to get repeat business.
The above average percentages can vary by a few points, either way, depending on where these crooks operate, and how they are set up, but a few things are certain:
1) The game developer makes sure he gets paid his license 25% license fee.
2) It’s hard to get the 12% processing fees down, because of the high risks involved and the penalties that are common in the industry. If you feel that 12% is high for all these expenses, you are out of touch with the reality. The reality is that many of these very big operators are also laundering money, and they are offering to credit card processors 20% to 25% just to process the credit cards. Credit cards are only one component of our average 12% and for many operators it’s much higher.
3) The operating expenses of 28% can naturally vary, either way, depending on locations, volumes, efficiency, and other factors, but it’s hard to get them down because many are fixed and recurring expenses. Many licensees have considerably higher operating expenses, because the game developers steal their clients to direct them to their own sites, where they make a higher profit margin. This means that the licensee needs to spend much more to get some business through the door, so his operating expenses can easily go up.
4) You can be sure that the marketing companies will have a good system in place, so they will get paid by the licensees. This means that they will collect the average of 35% from the licensee.
Where did the money for the affiliates disappeared in all that because in the above examples the affiliates didn’t get paid? The marketing companies got paid, and everyone else, except the affiliates.
The answer is that the affiliate’s money didn’t disappear, it was programmed by the marketing companies and by the licensees that he wouldn’t get it in the first place, or will only get a tiny percentage of his real commissions.
There is 35% missing right there, and the crooked marketing companies get away with it by only paying a very small percentage of their own 35% to the affiliates.
A very high percentage of affiliates get cheated an average of 95% to 99% of their commissions. This means that instead of getting a commission of $100 they will be lucky if they get $5 and in most cases, lucky if they get $1 or $2.
More than you can ever possibly imagine get cheated 100% which means that if their net commission was $5,000 or $10,000 or $25,000 or $50,000 they get nothing, absolutely nothing, zero!
Some of these costs remain the same whether the player deposits 100, 1000 or 10,000. It is true that for example most programs don’t make money on a player that deposits $100 a month. However, they do keep this player happy and going because they know it keeps the affiliate happy.
This % calculation may apply – but to a $100 deposit only.
One thing we do know for sure – the programs need us and they do want us to be happy.
Only a few of my affiliates I totally 100% trust. I would love to see full disclosure. Some sort of independent auditor would be nice. Do I think some webmasters are getting less than what they should be? You betcha, I am 100% sure of this. greek39
Lou is right, do business with the people who make you the most money, it is that simple. The profit is there for all entities to make their share, and there are very honest affiliate programs out there.
Brian
very disappointing to read this
