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Did anyone else receive the e-mail about the new commission structure? From now commission will be considered on a group wide basis, not a single-casino basis.
eg:
Casino :: NGR :: Old Earnings :: New Earnings
7Sultans :: $10,000 :: $2,500 :: $2,500
iPlatinum Play :: $ 8,000 :: $2,000 :: $2,000
Royal Vegas :: -$2,000 :: 0 :: ($500)
Total Result :: $16,000 :: $4,500 (28.125%) :: $4,000 (25%)Why oh why do programs continue to make changes to agreements when they see how many upset webmasters there are? We have seen the reaction to the MM misunderstanding. Also with Referback. FA doesn’t care or doesn’t realise? :shooter:
Vegas Partner Lounge also from 1st June.
Obviously not good news to us affiliates but I’m waiting to hear if it affects old players sent under the original affiliate agreement. Discussed this with Spear and, like him, would expect this to take effect with new players only. F.A are a professional outfit and i can’t see they’d upset too many affiliates by lumping the odl with the new.
That said i switched to CPA on F.A recently for a trial run and as i integrate all my F.A. data from Casinofeed (no surprise there then!), i’ll be hanging on to them.
Cheers
Simmo!
Got the email also. In connecting the dots with this email and the previous late payment issue disussed here, my take is that FA is hurting from the last month or so and this is a measure being taken to stop their bleeding. Not defending or condemning the action they are taking, though it certainly isn’t in the best interest of affiliates.
Can someone let us know if this includes the poker as well. I won’t possibly be able to put the time and energy into promoting the poker rooms, which are always plus and can’t go negative, if one casino winner ruins the month for us.
Just got an email from Brad and the poker is not related to the casinos. Thanks Brad, that’s great news for us.
Hi All
Thanks for the responses to our announcement.
We appreciate all of the positive reinforcement and commitment to our partnership moving forward.
We also appreciate hearing your concerns, as this is ultimately a business partnership.So, in terms of the concerns raised in this forum:
Why oh why do programs continue to make changes to agreements when they see how many upset webmasters there are?
Fortune Affiliates is making this change because we have to not because we want to. We would love to offer Affiliates even more than we have previously but that would not be viable. The reality is that for quite sometime now Fortune Affiliates has been operating in very bad economic territory. We realized that this was due to our formula not reflecting rising costs in the industry and our expenses. So we are changing the formula to try and create a sustainable economic model (which is in Affiliates’ best interests).
would expect this to take effect with new players only
Since this is a change out of necessity we need to look at the economic realities of each scenario. It would be great to apply this only to new players moving forward but that would not address the bulk of the profitability issues we are having. Since most earnings are paid on existing players this is where the change needs to occur. A change to new players only would just not be enough to make this a sustainable business.
my take is that FA is hurting from the last month or so and this is a measure being taken to stop their bleeding.
We are hurting at Fortune Affiliates but unfortunately it is not only from last month. This has been hurting us for many months already and is not dependant on client performance but rather a formula that leaves us with almost nothing at the end. If this was a 1 month case we would not have changed the formula yet, but the reality is we changed the formula to create a sustainable business.
Can someone let us know if this includes the poker as well.
Just to reiterate on Poker; Poker will not be affected by the change in formula. Casino clients are first added then zeroed (in the case of negatives) before being added to Poker, so what you earn on Poker is what you get.
The overriding point in this post and our communication is that we simply do not have a choice. We looked at a variety of scenarios and this is the fairest we found. Anything short of this change and Fortune Affiliates will not be sustainable. This is obviously worst case for all of us. The change represents us trying to sustain our company and bring the revenue sharing more in line with a partnership.
This way we get to carry on and are committed to putting money we make back into the program and its tools to help Affiliates more than ever. We appreciate the understanding and commitment and look forward to a mutually profitable future!
Look forward to loads of great promos and huge happenings coming soon. Keep an eye open for announcement of some massive marketing opportunities!
Hello Marc,
This is very understandable. We all have to make business decisions that may not always be appreciated by others.
I am going to concentrate on that topic here and leave the “old players” issue to whoever would like to pick that up. Not because it’s not the important legal issue here, but because I think others are better equipped to address it.
We all are under some pressure due to the lack of good PPC advertising. The way we do business has changed, and many of us are busy catching up.
I have received a lot of private mail concerning this from people who do not like to post publicly, or who do not want their opinions known by programs because they fear repercussions.
We have discussed the changes to our revenue this change in your T&Cs will cause. It is really a fairly simple equation.
Excepting poker, Fortune has 12 casinos to promote I believe, and Vegas Partner has seven. ( you must excuse if I lump them together but to us they have become effectively the same thing now.) That means 19 of the properties we promote now are subject to wiping out one month’s pay because they have one winner (or two since there are two programs involved).
If I promote 30 casinos, and one month each Fortune and Vegas Partner have one winner, that wipes out all but 11 of my 30 casinos. My income is now a third.
Given that we have no insurance, no retirement, absolutely no safety net, and many of us are supporting families, you will understand that this is not a viable situation.
This forces us to embrace the only possible solution. We can continue to do business with FL and VP – as long as we limit the impact winners can have on us. That means reducing the number of FL and VP properties we push to 1 of each, ideally. This will take some of us some time, especially the ones who earn a good percentage of their income from FL and VA. There this will be a gradual process, switching out casinos.
Unfortunately you as well as we have to keep our eyes on the bottom line. I wish there was a kinder way to do this for both of us.
If you are in a dangerous financial territory as you stated, I would be interested in where else you cut expenses before you were forced to punish the affiliates who helped you get where you currently are. Or did you just say screw the affiliates because there is nothing they can do about it. Of course the company line will be something like this is personal business information which we can’t share with the public.
By the way, were you in the rumored “screw the affiliates” meeting in Amsterdam?
Very well stated Dominique and essentially it all boils down to just that, but I am still confused to the fact that if this is a economical decision then why piss off your main economic backbone…the affiliates.
If everyone slowly starts weeding out the FA and VL casinos then wouldn’t it seem that in about 4-5 months from now they will only be worse off then before and much smaller groups and casinos would only of grown and become more busier then before?
Hi Marc!
Quote:Since this is a change out of necessity we need to look at the economic realities of each scenario. It would be great to apply this only to new players moving forward but that would not address the bulk of the profitability issues we are having. Since most earnings are paid on existing players this is where the change needs to occur. A change to new players only would just not be enough to make this a sustainable business.Not acceptable. This implies that you should be allowed a free hand to screw affiliates any time you like. (scuse the rough language, but I find it easier to express myself in very straightforward language).
By the same token, you can now tell players you are paying them only half their winnings because you are hurting financially, and that you cannot grandfather them to the old model because it simply doesn’t address the problem.
If you make a promise, you keep it. If you agree a contract, you are expected to honor it. You did not ask our permissions to modify the contract in order to help your bottom line – you simply did it.
Basically, it amounts to this:
You must reactivate the old system until such time as you can find a way to separate the stats. Failure to do so will constitute breach of contract and leaves the way open for further action to be taken. But even if no action is taken, most affiliates are going to vote with their feet and your income will be dramatically lowered as your exposure shrinks.
You are potentially risking the licenses and seals of a number of organizations which accredit Fortune Lounge – I would highly recommend you reconsider this very quickly.
Quote:That means reducing the number of FL and VP properties we push to 1 of each, ideally.Just in case anyone didn’t notice, this is exactly what they want you to do – then they can cross-promote themselves without giving you credit…
I don’t believe in half-hearted votes – you either punch the ballot, or you don’t – don’t leave any hanging chads!
And did anyone address the retro aspects of this change? I didn’t see it addressed by FA or in this thread but it was posted by someone (Simmo?) in another thread that these changes would be retroactively applied. I would like verification of this.
Sue
They confirmed it is retroactive – that’s what the quote I posted is about.
Spearmaster,
I think I misunderstood the application of retro. In this case, retro would mean existing vs new?Sue
oooops, sorry about the misspelled nick
Exactly. The change affects ALL income earned, regardless of when players signed up.
