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@Marcia 248948 wrote:
I would like to comment on the references here to BrightShare, one at a time:
It certainly would be unacceptable and unprofessional of me to discuss here the conditions under which Lloyd left BrightShare. Ditto for any legal dealings between BrightShare and anyone else.
Your connecting BrightShare with the FinSoft issue is beyone be me, so, I can’t comment on this one either….If you have a serious question about your earnings at BrightShare, or conversion at All Slots, then let’s look at it. In the spirit of mutual respect, write to me and let’s look at the facts. I have never turned an affiliate away who wanted me to investigate what is going on with his/her stats and/or traffic – and there are affiliates here who can attest to that.
The affiliate you are referring to where BrightShare paid him for past players, was a very particular case where a mistake had been made in setting up a new program for him – what to do, we are all human. If the affiliate had come to us immediately when he saw all his players disappear in one fell-swoop, the problem would have been corrected immediately. Because he didn’t, is why we did the accounting back to when the error was made. Not everything that happens is sinister.
I have been at BrightShare for nearly 8 (!) years and know it front, back and inside out. I can tell you with upmost certainty, we are straight as an arrow. I know this because once when I did need to change a player’s tag from one affiliate account to another (same affiliate) – I was put through the wringer to provide all the details and documentation to prove why I wanted this done. If I thought any less of BrightShare, believe me, I wouldn’t be here myself.
Thanks – Marcia
Marcia we all would like to believe your program is honest etc, but we also thought this of Rewards Affiliates and Renee being the case.
Lately RA have had ample money to buy casinos from groups that could not survive.
Most of this money however rightfully belonged to their affiliates (commissions stolen by not gving proper credit for inhouse cross promoting players).
Fact is Renee is still with RA and she is fully aware of this theft and has been defending them like a hawk ever since. I do not think she is fully aware of the fact that honest business(es) last the longest, what goes around comes around…eventually.
We depend on those player revenues, so I hope you are not offended but with all weird things happening lately we tend to not believe insiders, employees anymore.
We rather trust our own judgement and those that post relevant information about the given BS performance which lacks substantially btw.
@Dominique 248963 wrote:
So I don’t really see a “cartel”.
For someone who’s supposed to be clued up on the industry, that statement really surprises me. However I wont buy into this game, cause I see where it’s being steered.
Apperently there are list of all us affiliates being sold out there, if we buy one of these we could simply email every affiliate.
Just got an email asking for a casino to be added to my site, so I asked what my site is and they couldnt answer, only that they came across my email. As I already promoted the group its easy to see there are many email list for affiliates on the market.
@allfreechips 248969 wrote:
Apperently there are list of all us affiliates being sold out there, if we buy one of these we could simply email every affiliate.
Just got an email asking for a casino to be added to my site, so I asked what my site is and they couldnt answer, only that they came across my email. As I already promoted the group its easy to see there are many email list for affiliates on the market.
That’s true. There must be lists floating around out there or we wouldn’t get all this spam from new programs.
I bet they cost a pretty penny though.
@AussieDave 248968 wrote:
For someone who’s supposed to be clued up on the industry, that statement really surprises me. However I wont buy into this game, cause I see where it’s being steered.
Dave, I know you think there is some sort of conspiracy out there.
Well, if there is, I haven’t seen it.
I am more under the impression that it’s everyone for himself.
Which is far from ideal, but over the years I have come to realize that it’s just a reality in this business, whether I like it or not.
I have helped a lot of people over the years – most of them are gone now. People come and go. I’ll be happy to help in future too, if I can and when I can.
But as far as there being some sort of “cartel” – I don’t think so, unless it’s on the operator side and invisible.
Everyone is going to have their own list of ‘Bad Guys ‘ and ‘White Knights’ and that list is going to be different for most of us.Remember the two programs accusing each other of hacking their servers last year?During that drama it may have taken an hour at best for a manager on same software to send me email pointing to the thread and asking me to replace one of these programs with them.It didn’t happen but even programs are every man for themselves.
Last Thursday I met an affiliate locally for lunch and helped him for 4 hours on some SEO stuff on his website ,there was nothing in it for me but that is generally how we are with everyone.
I pulled up my earnings stats for January 2010 and here are the top programs : Pantasia on #2 ,Casino Coins ,400 Affiliates,Simonsays ($2504 that month!),Absolute Slots,g3 Partners ,gaming dollars,Canaffco ,Best Casino Partners ,Kharma Partners ,Regal Affiliates.Eleven program now worth ZERO , in fact Fortune Affiliates and Revenue Giants are only two on that list that still remain on my top performers after 3 years.
I do not plan on going anywhere in the business but I know every year there will be changes in the programs we work with and I have no shame in saying I lost huge revenue just in Rivals and Casino Coins going down and we picked up almost every RTG to Fill that Revenue Void because I was not going to tell my long time employees that they were out of a job .Judge me if you want to but I cannot cost somebody I care about to lose their homes ,that is what comes with the territory when you hire employees.
These days I have to judge the programs based on what they earn for us , if I am earning $1000 a month after 5+ years of pushing a program and the new kid on the block is earning me $3000 after six months then you have to believe something is off with the older programing.I no longer need to see proof to figure that out which is why we have dropped so many groups over last couple years and continue to do so.@allfreechips 248969 wrote:
Apperently there are list of all us affiliates being sold out there, if we buy one of these we could simply email every affiliate.
Just got an email asking for a casino to be added to my site, so I asked what my site is and they couldnt answer, only that they came across my email. As I already promoted the group its easy to see there are many email list for affiliates on the market.
Yep, there are just as many affiliate email databases out there as player db’s floating around for sale too. The online gaming industry certainly seems to be a magnet which habours and embraces dodgy bastards and crooks.
Shame is I don’t trust many Microgaming programs at all anymore! I don’t care about what Marcia is saying on how tough it is to untag players because the shareholders are not going to give a rats ass if a whale is taken away from me as long as they can continue to get fat off the earnings they stole from me.
I stay stole because there are many programs doing it plain and simple! I don’t need Lloyds words to be verified I just plain believe it and have thought it for yrs before he even came forward! I only have a few MG brands that I push even slightly heavy these days, I am moving on to other things such as Net Ent, Aristocrat etc until the day comes and some of them tumble from grace that is just the way of the land these days.
I can say if some stick together and pull brands that can be effective BUT I will not and never will think bad of my friends or competition for marketing brands I don’t agree with! I respect them and understand the choices they make.
If your gut tells you something is up with a program then your gut is most probably correct GO WITH IT!
@Inspiration 248965 wrote:
Marcia we all would like to believe your program is honest etc, but we also thought this of Rewards Affiliates and Renee being the case.
Lately RA have had ample money to buy casinos from groups that could not survive.
Most of this money however rightfully belonged to their affiliates (commissions stolen by not gving proper credit for inhouse cross promoting players).
Fact is Renee is still with RA and she is fully aware of this theft and has been defending them like a hawk ever since. I do not think she is fully aware of the fact that honest business(es) last the longest, what goes around comes around…eventually.
We depend on those player revenues, so I hope you are not offended but with all weird things happening lately we tend to not believe insiders, employees anymore.
We rather trust our own judgement and those that post relevant information about the given BS performance which lacks substantially btw.
Hey Inspiration and All…..
Thanks for your wanting to believe BS is honest – this is a great starting point.
RA’s story is RA’s story, not ours.If you want to investigate our casino’s performance I can relate to that. You see, there can be many reasons for “BS performance which lacks substantially” that have nothing to do with unethical practices by the casino or affiliate program.
All Slots’ retention of existing players is our strength – we have the best retention in MGS. Admittedly, conversion is something we need to improve. To this end, we recently put together a full-on conversion team complete with a team of phone salespeople whose job it is to turn your registered players into depositing players – yes, very exciting.
But sometimes……. upon investigation, we discover that low performance has nothing to do with the casino, but rather, the problem is even (gasp) the traffic the affiliate is bringing – like the affiliate I checked recently who’s traffic was 90% Malaysia and Indonesia (not good players)…..And some affiliates have 45% conversion with us – and there are no problems. But this is what makes this business exciting and never dull.
Again…. I invite any and all affiliates to write me to discuss these issues – and to work together to make improvements.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
Marcia@bonustreak 248988 wrote:
Shame is I don’t trust many Microgaming programs at all anymore! I don’t care about what Marcia is saying on how tough it is to untag players because the shareholders are not going to give a rats ass if a whale is taken away from me as long as they can continue to get fat off the earnings they stole from me.
I stay stole because there are many programs doing it plain and simple! I don’t need Lloyds words to be verified I just plain believe it and have thought it for yrs before he even came forward! I only have a few MG brands that I push even slightly heavy these days, I am moving on to other things such as Net Ent, Aristocrat etc until the day comes and some of them tumble from grace that is just the way of the land these days.
I can say if some stick together and pull brands that can be effective BUT I will not and never will think bad of my friends or competition for marketing brands I don’t agree with! I respect them and understand the choices they make.
If your gut tells you something is up with a program then your gut is most probably correct GO WITH IT!
Normally I don’t see eye to eye with you Bonusstreak but on this one, I most definitely do!!!
Removing myself from the equation for a moment. How is possible for USA affiliates to send literally 1000’s upon 1000’s of players year in year out for years on end, then end up with a big fat $0. The move to the MGS USA friendly casino died in the backside. Then, (if I have it correct) this USA traffic then being redirected to an RTG casino. Yet still USA affiliate were making next to nothing. How is this possible???
We’re not talking about newbie webmasters here, this issues affected well established sites, which their concept along with their traffic hasn’t change. Of course programs seem to pull every excuse out the book to why things have changed etc etc.
Again these stories probably wash with newbies but seasoned affiliates have been on top of both their site performance and expected ROI year in year out, you can’t use these excuse when a divergent set of statistics are thrown into the mix.
The only variable which can change, is the way a casino or its affiliate program chooses to treat existing tagged players, or new referred players.
What really gets up my nose, is BIG business, corporations who have literally millions upon millions and they are so damn greedy, they have no issue stealing from the little people.
While I’m not a USA affiliate, I’ve been around for over 12 years. My best earner month in month out, year in year out is Fortune Affiliates. Apart from a portfolio of smaller sites, I’ve got one major flagship site which has not faulted in delivering highly targeted, long tail search queries to this site over the years.
Australia is MGS’s biggest market right now and given I target both Aussies and Kiwi’s I should be rolling in dosh. Given I’m not, I like Bonusstreak have to look at what I see and figure out if this 2+2 = 4
Sadly in most cases it does even equal 2. So like Bonusstreak, I too have to go on my gut and my experience in this game to know that somewhere, someone is bending me over.
Personally I’m sick to the back teeth of being treated like a clueless newbie. Worse, being expect to swallow this utter load of hog-wash some programs dish out as excuses for traffic not converting or players, especially whales, closing accounts.
Marcia,
Hypothetically if any program is accused of cheating affiliates, they will always protest their innocence and take umbrage that someone has accused them of stealing players and commission.
Even with hard factual proof supplied, I’ve witness affiliate programs spew a mountain of Spin Dr excuses in an attempt to weasel out of the mess they’ve created.
NB – This isn’t the first time Jackpot Factory Group has been embroiled in dodgy waters. For the benefit of newbies, they got bust using some pretty unprofessional SEO tactics, like people in wheel-chairs, the disabled and such. Their eCOGRA Seal was stripped. The person responsible so it was claimed, some 3’rd party SEO webmaster if I remember correctly.
Story unfolds here at CasinoMeister:
http://www.casinomeister.com/forums/casino-complaints-non-bonus-issues/12659-jackpot-factorys-inspirational-stories.htmlIt was the catalyst of this total screw up, which led to Lloyd and his solid reputation, dragging this company from the mud and taking over management of the affiliate program.
If hard cold facts wont motivate some people to come clean, then IMHO any program who is cheating, sure as hell ain’t going to raise their hands and say, YEP We Cheated Affiliates. Hence your strong protests are falling in most part on deaf ears.I don’t know what to think anymore and I certainly don’t know who to trust either.
I don’t buy into the story, Lloyd did this to establish his new affiliates program.
Or any type of ill vendetta against BS sacking him either.I’ve known Lloyd for over 10 years, and the guy has always treated me well and never lied. Given my personal history I have with him and other affiliates have too, I can’t imagine he’d risk his reputation to come out and start lying now!
Edit: And whoever the head honcho over at BS is now, needs to learn some damn manners. Two emails sent directly to him for assistance and both ignored by him, no response. He forwarded to my AM.
If I wanted my AM to have them, I would have sent them to her. Seems from this treatment, and what Lloyd has says, backs up my impression this guy is a hired hatchet man. And alas, affiliates are just a number on his monitor.
Wow! I am not easily shocked but I have just been reading that old Casinomeister thread! Speechless!
@Marcia 248948 wrote:
If you have a serious question about your earnings at BrightShare, or conversion at All Slots, then let’s look at it. In the spirit of mutual respect, write to me and let’s look at the facts.
Thanks for the invitation, actually wrote you as soon as I seen this particular post back on the 9th… still have not gotten a response not even an acknowledgement that you had gotten my email…
so I reckon I will post a few questions here…Maybe you could help me, because I don’t understand how the Jackpot Factory Brightshare/ASUSA/Spiral Solution issues could have been considered transparent, honest, and how the entire saga was in any way representative of straight as an arrow.
Back when that epic started Brightshare attempted to insinuate that the two companies BS and ASUSA were totally independent of one another. Was that transparent and honest?
The ASUSA website was set up and tested at free-casino-software.com on a Spinspark operated server using Drupal with the admin section open to the public no less.
When they first started sending emails they used a Google account – course that wasn’t traceable. Then after a month or so Janet, the supposed manager of ASUSA was sending me emails which originated from a Brightshare IP.
Shelley, working with Brightshare posted using the AGD forum account of Janet and signed the post Shelley. Ooops , as soon as that was pointed out to her she went in and edited that signature out, but too slowly though because the post had already been quoted by someone else.
Then I had Brightshare payments showing up in QT tagged as being sent by ASUSA.
Clearly now I had more than enough to conclude that Brightshare and ASUSA were under the exact same Spiral Solutions umbrella yet BS continued to claim they were independent.
Then one day the ASUSA site was taken offline and all our stats were instantly gone with no way to access them.
After the site and stats were taken offline many were contacted via email to explain players were charging back and that no payments would be sent – surprise!
Then we learned that ASUSA was referring our players to Jackpot Capital an RTG casino and that no tags were being included in those adverts.
Then shortly after this Lloyd leaves the company – very odd timing!
Now fast forward a year and a half or so later and Lloyd shows up out of the woodwork claiming he had been fired after a discovery of btag information being altered. For me that really was just another the nail in the coffin, based on what I used to make with this program and how many players accounts I seen listed as locked, how many I seen vanish from ASUSA and how little I make today on average – I have zero doubt that I was in fact cheated!
To date there is virtually no way in the world for an affiliate to prove shaving! The programs have a dozen or more ready made excuses to explain away tracking issues and many have seen those over and over again throughout the years. I have always said the only way possible that shaving could be proved would be for an employee of an affiliate program to come out and talk about it!
Of course these employees most likely have long disclosure articles in their contracts that prevent them from speaking out so that too will likely never happen. Despite that, we now have an X affiliate manager of a program saying that btags were being altered – of course he says he has no proof as to whether or not it was accidental or intentional, but we do know he was fired and we know all the other info we have collected over the years – all these accumulative issues MUST be taken into consideration!
The way I see it, that sure is a whole lot of conflicting information more then enough to make an honest person question the integrity of those involved. What is sickening is that these affiliate oriented sites let issues like these slide because taking action would mean money out of their pockets! Sadly once they let one issues slide, then another, then another – they have zero reach!
By that time the programs have already taken note that they can do and say anything and all they have to do is cater to the cash cows and they will be free to push the limits one step further – until eventually they are closing up shop and taking all the money with them on the way out. What good has that cash cow done for the community that makes them what they are? NONE!
Make no doubt about it folks – GPWA/CAP/AGD – they care more about money coming into their pockets than they do you – and I honestly have no issue with that at all. What I have an issue with is these sites claiming that they have the affiliates best interest in mind or that they are looking out for affiliates, or that they represent affiliates etc etc – all those tag lines are complete and utter bull$hit!
IMO the affiliate industry started going to pot the day these sites started taking money in exchange for certifications that they had zero reach to mandate. The day the affiliate community started focusing more on money in the back door is the day affiliates best interest left out the front!
And now – where are we? Clearly we are in the let is slide mode once again! Nothing will be done and the issue will be swept under a rug / ignored long enough that its all but forgotten. Those who are not on a $hit list will make money and claim everything is great and on the other hand those of us who speak from the hip and are no doubt $hit listed for it will continue to be cheated.
Maybe you remember that 10-12 years ago the industry was once thought of as the wild west by USA legislatures and many of us affiliates laughed at them proclaiming they didn’t really know what they were talking about. Now today that is exactly what it has turned into and us affiliates, USA moreso have very little we can do to protect our interest and those that say they are here to do so just continue to “let it slide” … “let it slide” … “let it slide”.
As has been said way too frequently lately – “the only person you can trust is yourself”!
Hi Arkyt,
I did receive your email asking for a review of your stats.
Actually, I was the cc on that email, as you had addressed it directly to your Affiliate Manager.
I confirmed with him that he had received your email and asked him to contact you asap.
I’ve asked your AM again to contact you and am sure he will be doing this shortly.Sorry for the inconvenience – Marcia
@Marcia 249090 wrote:
I’ve asked your AM again to contact you and am sure he will be doing this shortly.
Got his email – thanks! He told me he was leaving Brightshare and that he would pass me off to another AM. LMAO! (sorry really hard not to laugh at all this – If I don’t I just might cry!)
