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Well that’s not a ‘type of affiliate’.. what you’re describing is some guy signing up so that he can profit off of his own wagers, or get a rebate on bets at sportsbooks, etc.
Require at least one new sign up per month until you have 10 or something sounds fair to me
. Or a minimum of 5 before you’re even active.. or something similar auta work Sure, that would discourage such an affiliate.
Just how many people do this though?
I would never promote a program with a quota, what happens if I fall out of google, or get sick or something? Then they quit paying what I worked for and am owed? Not gonna happen, this business is risky enough without a clause that can send me to the poor house should I have some issues that keep me from delivering more and more. I want to get paid for what I deliver, period.
And of course, the retroactive issue stands. Breach of contract is just not acceptable to anyone, including the legal system.
Yes, affiliate programs may need to cut costs – but that does not give them any right to renege.
:hattip: True dat!!! Times are tough but that don’t mean it is okay break contracts with your partners. I will never agree to any sort of min player rule ever! To me that is just being a bully and blackmail.
Dominique;206520 wrote:Do you want that player? Is he making you money? If a second one comes along, do you want him too or don’t you?If you want him, pay for him as agreed. What entitles you to have him for free when you aquired him under a contract that says you have to pay for him?
If you can’t live with that, then make sure you don’t close anymore contracts that oblige you to pay for what you get in future. But that affiliate delivered under contract, and if you don’t hold up your contracts, your word is worthless and you have zero credibility in future.
You miss the point.
Not to go too far off topic, but it’s not a real affiliate. Players playing under their own aff tags is absolutely not in anyone’s interest. Not yours, and not mine.
I’m not pointing fingers at anyone here, but let’s be under no illusion that there aren’t people out there trying to screw (or let’s rather say “take advantage of”) aff programs.
Should I take it because they found a way to do it “legally”?
Can I put in a term to allow locking these accounts? I can, but it might cause a bigger stir than I would like.
Can I take advantage of the term to lock genuine affiliate accounts? Yes.
Would I? No, because it’s downright unscrupulous, and if I took my job and my (or the brand that I represent) “place” in this industry seriously, I wouldn’t even contemplate it.
Once again, it all comes down to choosing the right partners. I think Gooner has said it a couple of times, but I don’t think people take this advice as seriously as it deserves.
I notice a distinct “us versus them” mentality in the affiliate space, and if that’s they way you feel about your partners, you’re probably working with the wrong ones. Any manager worth their salt knows that you work WITH your affiliates, not against them.
Oh, BTW the above was off-topic (general observation), and not quite related to this specific instance. In no way do I condone applying terms retro-actively.
Don’t you have a clause that states that affiliates cannot play under their own account? That’s fairly standard and not at all objectionable. It clearly makes sense.
Occasionally an affiliate will test tracking – usually a friend will do it but sometimes they do it themselves. But that tends to involve one minimum deposit, is no further trouble to the program and is usually ignored. Beyond that playing under your own account is a no no and should be in the T&Cs.
We have had programs in the past openly advertising that they welcome affs playing under their own accounts – undoubtedly because many affs are players themselves and will play their earnings back. But this is not at all common.
Re. opposing camps: I am about as easy to work with as they come, any program I work with will attest to that. I see it as a simple thing: “If you make a profit, I make a profit. Let’s do it!”
That said, I have staff and I need to watch the bottom line just as much as you do. I don’t do this as a hobby, but as a full fledged business with a ton of expenses, just like you.
So once every so many years I experience a trend in the industry that is harmful to affiliates, even illegal. And I get on a soap box. We are an unregulated industry for the most part, and no one will look out for us if we don’t do it ourselves.
And if you think about it, these issues usually hurt the entire industry, not just affiliates.
Quotas will dry up the influx of new affiliates, because they are least able to meet quotas. It took me almost a year to make any money worth mentioning. With a quota, I would not have been able to build the business and would not be here today.
What a quota does for a program, is take a small number of productive affiliates with high value player bases by the balls and force them to continue to send more of the same or forgo monies earned. Those who cannot afford to forgo monies earned to avoid living in an environment of constant extortion, will be forced to limit exposure to the programs with the quota in order to assure they have future earnings.
New programs will not have access to these established affiliates. They will be picking up the new affiliates who cannot meet quotas yet.
The entire industry growth will be crippled. Think about it!
@CK – Schalk 206553 wrote:
You miss the point.
Not to go too far off topic, but it’s not a real affiliate. Players playing under their own aff tags is absolutely not in anyone’s interest. Not yours, and not mine.
I’m not pointing fingers at anyone here, but let’s be under no illusion that there aren’t people out there trying to screw (or let’s rather say “take advantage of”) aff programs. [/quote]
This is something you should be entitled to deal with – but not in such a manner that it creates a generic rule that may be unfairly used for other purposes.If they are the only player in the aff account, you should be able to match up those details.
However, as affiliates we also like to test to make sure that tracking is working properly – and don’t always want to get someone to sign up under us just so we can check.
The solution to this: if you don’t want them to benefit from their own account, say so in the T&Cs – then simply remove any earnings from that player before payment. But don’t remove the player from the system because then the affiliate has no way to check if things are working properly or not.
Quote:Can I take advantage of the term to lock genuine affiliate accounts? Yes.Would I? No, because it’s downright unscrupulous, and if I took my job and my (or the brand that I represent) “place” in this industry seriously, I wouldn’t even contemplate it.
That’s not really the point. Affs have been screwed by many different programs for many different reasons because of dubious or unclear terms and conditions. They have a right to insist upon clarity in terms and conditions without any sort of possibility of being screwed by something “at the casino’s sole discretion”.
Quote:Once again, it all comes down to choosing the right partners. I think Gooner has said it a couple of times, but I don’t think people take this advice as seriously as it deserves.With all due respect – some of us know that Canbet is solid and reputable – but I dare say that many affiliates haven’t a clue about Canbet, don’t know that it’s operated by an Australian-licensed bookmaker, etc. You should not depend on what might seem obvious to you without considering what might not be obvious to the majority.
Quote:I notice a distinct “us versus them” mentality in the affiliate space, and if that’s they way you feel about your partners, you’re probably working with the wrong ones. Any manager worth their salt knows that you work WITH your affiliates, not against them.Agreed. But see above.
Players playing under their own affiliate account I don’t think is a big deal. If it violates your terms and conditions then simply tell that person what they are doing is not allowed. I have had some players player under their own affiliate account and for small players it’s not worth my time to do anything about. I only really get involved when the player is a bonus hunter and is maximizing their value OUT of the casino, that is when I step in and do something about it but usually making the player not bonus eligible.
On another note I have seen many examples of affiliate / player and fraud teams where it is clear what those players are doing. I won’t spell out the details because I really don’t want to see anybody trying this but here is the example. Affiliate signsup and creates a **** website to technically show they are an affiliate. They refer only 1 player that happens to be a depositing player, usually from the same country and sometimes the same town. That player plays a break even game and either wins big or loses big in a month. You repeat this process over a year and you have decent profits.
What I mentioned above was very difficult to catch if you don’t have an eye for these things. I can now catch it very easily but I know these same players/affiliates will never have problems at some of the other places they are abusing.
That being said if this is the behaviour you want to prevent I think a simple T&C to prevent this would be to say that using the affiliate program as a means for rakeback for a player is not permitted. Affiliates are not allowed to refer themselves as a player. Maybe something else that says any affiliate suspected of colluding with a player for the purpose of profiting from the casino may have their accounts locked.
thisisvegas;206684 wrote:Affiliate signsup and creates a **** website to technically show they are an affiliate. They refer only 1 player that happens to be a depositing player, usually from the same country and sometimes the same town. That player plays a break even game and either wins big or loses big in a month. You repeat this process over a year and you have decent profits.This is what I’m talking about. And if you have about 20 of these from one small country, let’s say Bulgaria, and their betting both sides of certain events etc. it all becomes a bit su****ious.
Well, of course you have to deal with this stuff. Bad affiliates spoil it for the rest of us and I’ll be first in line to want to see them removed.
But, you can’t deal with it by imposing a retroactive blanket quota.
Once such a thing is in T&Cs, it stays. You may not always be there, your successor may have other ideas about how to implement it.
So we just can’t go along with such a clause.
Try to find a better way to cover this in your T&Cs and blow them out of the water, I say!
ok, I think Schalk is on to something here.
Can we collectively as a group come up with a term and condition that would discourage true affiliate fraud and affiliate/player collusion to profit as a tandem. The term should identify these types of players and affiliates but not have anything to do with the real affiliates that were dealing with. If this is the real issue in question then I see no reason why a legitimate term can be created to solve the problem.
I don’t exactly want to spell out the behaviour in question on a forum as someone else could take it and repeat causing even more problems. I would guess that a term that states that affiliates cannot refer themselves as players. The more important term would be to discourage player and affiliate collusion.
It gets a bit tricky with the collusion, since you can’t forbid player/affiliate contact – message board owners talk to their players all the time, I am always there to listen to player complaints etc. So that looks a bit tricky. But we should certainly try.
This is a volume based business. It takes an influx of new depositors to keep the business going. Trust me, programs that incorporate quotas are guaranteeing that they will not get any more new players through affiliates. Sure they’ll keep existing players, but eventually they’ll dry up.
ok, true that you can’t just use a blind collusion term because that would cancel out all forums and many affiliates that provide service to their players. This is very tough to write a term for this type of activity when it is hard to describe and without just writing a blanket term that has the potential to be enforced on the wrong affiliates.
@CK – Schalk 206741 wrote:
This is what I’m talking about. And if you have about 20 of these from one small country, let’s say Bulgaria, and their betting both sides of certain events etc. it all becomes a bit su****ious.
I agree that this is a problem.
This is basically a sportsbetting problem – it isn’t an issue with casino or poker. So the first thing I would do is make sure that this term does not apply to casino or poker affiliates. That will immediately put any issues to rest for a majority of your affiliates.
Once you’re left with only sportsbetting – you then need to create a way to identify offsetting bets – something your fraud department should be picking up. Your standard terms and conditions will contain some sort of term related to fraud – and if your fraud team can pick it up and prove it – then you’re sorted.
