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Interesting thread!
I am not sure that it relates to quotas all the way – Like Stupid said above. But still interesting.
Renee’s clause is something I have seen lots of places and don’t see as objectionable at all. I don’t see any fraud clauses as objectionable, as long as it it not a blanket clause that affects innocent affiliates. Like I said before, you (the current aff manager) may apply that clause only to fraud, but there may be a future change of management who thinks differently. With the blanket clause already built in, it’s an easy thing to enforce it when times are not so good.
So installing a blanket clause with the promise that it won’t be used except in specific cases is not acceptable. You just have to be more specific.
As partners, I don’t want you to get screwed, and you don’t want me to get screwed, we want each other to be healthy, wealthy and happy so we can perform at peak levels and generate good money for each other. That should always be kept in mind, no matter what issues we all run into. Without that principle we don’t have a healthy industry.
Now, about quotas again. So over the course of the years, I send you enough good, solid, long term players to generate a decent revenue for both of us. Now you install a quota.
This means you now have me by the balls. If I don’t send x players in x time I won’t be paid for services I already performed. Whether I can meet the quota or not doesn’t matter, I don’t like to be dictated who gets featured on my site at what time. It’s extortion, plain and simple, and whether I have the money to pay or not, I refuse to submit to extortion.The place with the quotas also hurts all the rest of the affiliate programs, now it doesn’t matter how well they perform, I have to give the space to the quota place or lose out. Years of my work are at stake.
Now, anyone can add whatever clauses they like at any time. Affiliates can decide if they like it or not, and choose to promote that program or not. But applying a clause retroactively is a no no. It’s breach of contract. There are basic laws about conducting business anywhere in the world, and contract law prohibits breach of contract anywhere.
People always think that because online gambling is a grey area in many jurisdictions, they are immune to law suits and can breach contract whenever they like. Not so. There are lots of jurisdictions where this can be pursued. If enough affiliates get screwed, we may have to set a precendent for the industry. If we don’t, next thing you see is everybody scrambling to install quotas to tie down their affiliates and keep them from promoting others. At that point I would feel like I am dealing with the Mafia instead of partners.
So this is a very serious issue. Vegas Affiliates is about to launch a quota. This is now the second Microgaming program to stab affiliates in the back.
It leaves me wondering who’s next and who, if anyone, I can trust with my players anymore. Maybe I should cease to be an affiliate and only offer flat fee ads through a bidding system.
Grand prive have got away with millions of dollars what happen to them? Few WebPages with this casino is blacklisted and they all ready had heaps lol. This should have been dealt with in court this would have put an end to casinos trying to pull this crap and change contracts and get out of paying affiliates. Casinos want to hop in bed with affiliates when their new we build them a name and a huge player database then 5 years down the track they want to kick us out of bed and keep all the money. You hop in bed with us you stay in bed with us or don’t open an affiliate program and try and get traffic and players for yourself from the start. I’m sick of putting in 18hr days on a computer fighting with Google to send you players only to be raped by you`s a few years later. Grand prive open this gate if it is not closed now you are going to see a lot more casinos going the same way
@mak445 206873 wrote:
Grand prive have got away with millions of dollars what happen to them? Few WebPages with this casino is blacklisted and they all ready had heaps lol. This should have been dealt with in court this would have put an end to casinos trying to pull this crap and change contracts and get out of paying affiliates. Casinos want to hop in bed with affiliates when their new we build them a name and a huge player database then 5 years down the track they want to kick us out of bed and keep all the money. You hop in bed with us you stay in bed with us or don’t open an affiliate program and try and get traffic and players for yourself from the start. I’m sick of putting in 18hr days on a computer fighting with Google to send you players only to be raped by you`s a few years later. Grand prive open this gate if it is not closed now you are going to see a lot more casinos going the same way
Time to look for PPC software…google ads or clickbank perhaps… As a person just starting in this industry, and impossible to get players immediately, if casinos do not want to pay commissions, they will end up without sales force and will have to go elsewhere as no one will deal with them and they will only have links on ROGUE lists. Suggest any casino putting these terms in their program, get charged for advertising on your site… two can play that game. They want you to sponsor them, but not pay? then how about them sponsoring you? and oh yea,, payment up front.
Anyone have a rate sheet for charging for advertising banners on home page, links, PPC based on traffic?
If casinos prefer to PPC on google outside USA, and once things turn around, perhaps Google is alot cheaper than paying commissions? anyone know if this is true? if so, time to tune up adsense and remove casino banners… lets see, google, clickbank…etc.Spearmaster;206848 wrote:I see it the other way – this person is a player, and this is player fraud. The fact that he registered as an aff just gives him something tantamount to rakeback – this person shouldn’t be considered an aff. If this person is blocked as a player, then this person as an aff obviously can’t beat the system – see the point? The root of the problem is with this person’s playing account – not his aff account.The player is not the affiliate. If you go back and read my example, I said the affiliate sends a player to do this in order to make commission from the play. The player and the affiliate are not the same person and the affiliate has done this on purpose to “scam” the affiliate program since there is no loss by the player here and the affiliate is making a commission from nothing. If the affiliate and the player did not know each other, I can see why it would be the player that should be shut down, but in the case that the affiliate sends the player to intentionally do this, this is affiliate fraud (in this case BOTH accounts get closed).
If that’s not fraud committed by the affiliate then I think someone should probably revoke my aff manager badge. I’m not suggesting that the player is doing nothing wrong, but in this case the affiliate also needs to be dealt with. I’m not sure how I can make this any clearer. Why would I want to work with an affiliate who is trying to scam us? Or KEEP working with them after they have done the above? Are you saying I should not close the affiliate account and let them keep doing this? I’m not seeing any other point to your arguments about why it’s the players fault here? I’m interpreting your posts as the player’s account should be closed but the affiliate’s account should be left open. Is that what you’re saying?Spearmaster wrote:Again – there is no difference between a player playing under his own aff account and a nobody which registered through his aff link – the net result is still the same for the casino. But as I said before, I don’t think anyone will argue with the term you implemented because it is perfectly reasonable.The difference is the ~35% commission. If the player does not sign up through their own aff tag, they are not getting the 35% commission back from us which then gets recirculated through as well as the continuing retention bonuses, making the commission amount actually much more than 35%, especially if he cashes out. So he makes the commission AND cashes out. Then if he is claiming loyalty points and bonuses, say 20-25% regular bonuses, and 10% loyalty points, that means we are paying 35% commission, 30-35% bonuses (making the amount the player is getting on their money actually up around 70%), ~25% royalties, plus any admin costs.
This one is hard to explain to someone who doesn’t see the numbers on our end, so you’ll just have to trust me here. Maybe one of the other aff managers can explain an example that is easy to understand.
I guess if you still can’t see my point here we may have to agree to disagree.. I was just trying to point out why I was disagreeing with your comment (from the operators point of view) that it was only a sportsbetting issue and could not affect casino and poker as you said in one of your posts. Rather than just saying I disagree, my posts were demonstrating WHY I was disagreeing and showing examples of why I was disagreeing.. I hope the message has gotten across about why it can be an issue for casino and poker and is not just a sportsbetting issue for players to be playing under their own accounts.
Dominique;206864 wrote:Interesting thread!I am not sure that it relates to quotas all the way – Like Stupid said above. But still interesting.
Renee’s clause is something I have seen lots of places and don’t see as objectionable at all. I don’t see any fraud clauses as objectionable, as long as it it not a blanket clause that affects innocent affiliates. Like I said before, you (the current aff manager) may apply that clause only to fraud, but there may be a future change of management who thinks differently. With the blanket clause already built in, it’s an easy thing to enforce it when times are not so good.
So installing a blanket clause with the promise that it won’t be used except in specific cases is not acceptable. You just have to be more specific.
As partners, I don’t want you to get screwed, and you don’t want me to get screwed, we want each other to be healthy, wealthy and happy so we can perform at peak levels and generate good money for each other. That should always be kept in mind, no matter what issues we all run into. Without that principle we don’t have a healthy industry.
Now, about quotas again. So over the course of the years, I send you enough good, solid, long term players to generate a decent revenue for both of us. Now you install a quota.
This means you now have me by the balls. If I don’t send x players in x time I won’t be paid for services I already performed. Whether I can meet the quota or not doesn’t matter, I don’t like to be dictated who gets featured on my site at what time. It’s extortion, plain and simple, and whether I have the money to pay or not, I refuse to submit to extortion.The place with the quotas also hurts all the rest of the affiliate programs, now it doesn’t matter how well they perform, I have to give the space to the quota place or lose out. Years of my work are at stake.
Now, anyone can add whatever clauses they like at any time. Affiliates can decide if they like it or not, and choose to promote that program or not. But applying a clause retroactively is a no no. It’s breach of contract. There are basic laws about conducting business anywhere in the world, and contract law prohibits breach of contract anywhere.
People always think that because online gambling is a grey area in many jurisdictions, they are immune to law suits and can breach contract whenever they like. Not so. There are lots of jurisdictions where this can be pursued. If enough affiliates get screwed, we may have to set a precendent for the industry. If we don’t, next thing you see is everybody scrambling to install quotas to tie down their affiliates and keep them from promoting others. At that point I would feel like I am dealing with the Mafia instead of partners.
So this is a very serious issue. Vegas Affiliates is about to launch a quota. This is now the second Microgaming program to stab affiliates in the back.
It leaves me wondering who’s next and who, if anyone, I can trust with my players anymore. Maybe I should cease to be an affiliate and only offer flat fee ads through a bidding system.
I am with you on the quota thing Dom, as long as there is no fraud.
The other point is, as I think you said earlier that you would just get one of your friends to sign up so you could meet the quota, I can’t imagine why that would be better for the affiliate program than to get genuine players.. (ie this is why I think quotas are a little crazy coz you will start to get players that are not “real” players just to meet the quota)
The other point is, as I think you said earlier that you would just get one of your friends to sign up so you could meet the quota, I can’t imagine why that would be better for the affiliate program than to get genuine players.. (ie this is why I think quotas are a little crazy coz you will start to get players that are not “real” players just to meet the quota)
how are they not real players? they deposit right?
slotplayer;206951 wrote:how are they not real players? they deposit right?What I mean by “real” is a player who has signed up because they genuinely want to play, not someone who has signed up because you’ve told them to so you can meet the quota..
My guess is that the someone you’ve told to sign up will probably not play again (unless they are a gambler and in which case, you probably would have sent them earlier I guess), whereas someone who has joined because they have visited your site and want to play will likely be more profitable to the group (since they will likely keep playing).
Thats the point I was trying to make. I can’t imagine how someone being sent to meet a quota would be more profitable than players being sent from a site who are looking to find somewhere to play. I’m on your side here :tongue:
@Renee 206952 wrote:
What I mean by “real” is a player who has signed up because they genuinely want to play, not someone who has signed up because you’ve told them to so you can meet the quota..
My guess is that the someone you’ve told to sign up will probably not play again (unless they are a gambler and in which case, you probably would have sent them earlier I guess), whereas someone who has joined because they have visited your site and want to play will likely be more profitable to the group (since they will likely keep playing).
Thats the point I was trying to make. I can’t imagine how someone being sent to meet a quota would be more profitable than players being sent from a site who are looking to find somewhere to play. I’m on your side here :tongue:
I know what you meant, I was giving you a little guff.
The good news is, as you can see in my sig, I started promoting your Zodiac ND offer.slotplayer;206953 wrote:I know what you meant, I was giving you a little guff.
The good news is, as you can see in my sig, I started promoting your Zodiac ND offer.Hahahahahah thanks — everyone needs a little guff every now and then
The bad news is that since we are not a listed program anymore, I can’t see your sig :tongue:
sorry wrong thread …for my post
@Renee 206952 wrote:
someone who has joined because they have visited your site and want to play will likely be more profitable to the group (since they will likely keep playing).
And that’s exactly the point, can I trust this group with my player base now?
@Renee 206949 wrote:
The player is not the affiliate. If you go back and read my example, I said the affiliate sends a player to do this in order to make commission from the play. The player and the affiliate are not the same person and the affiliate has done this on purpose to “scam” the affiliate program since there is no loss by the player here and the affiliate is making a commission from nothing. If the affiliate and the player did not know each other, I can see why it would be the player that should be shut down, but in the case that the affiliate sends the player to intentionally do this, this is affiliate fraud (in this case BOTH accounts get closed).[/quote]
If you shut the player account down – you solve the problem. If you shut the affiliate account down – you may unintentionally have caused damage to the affiliate who had nothing to do with the player.My point is not the “terminology” – my point is how this issue should be dealt with. You may not be able to prove 100% conclusively that the affiliate deliberately sent the player – but you will certainly be able to prove fraudulent play by the player.
Quote:If that’s not fraud committed by the affiliate then I think someone should probably revoke my aff manager badge. I’m not suggesting that the player is doing nothing wrong, but in this case the affiliate also needs to be dealt with. I’m not sure how I can make this any clearer.How do you know that the aff deliberately sent the player? And how much damage can an aff with no live players do to you?
You are going out of your way to take action where none is required, in the process potentially alienating a legitimate affiliate.
Quote:Why would I want to work with an affiliate who is trying to scam us? Or KEEP working with them after they have done the above? Are you saying I should not close the affiliate account and let them keep doing this? I’m not seeing any other point to your arguments about why it’s the players fault here? I’m interpreting your posts as the player’s account should be closed but the affiliate’s account should be left open. Is that what you’re saying?My point is that if the player account is closed, and the aff has no players left, you have no problem. If you instead close the affiliate’s account, and subsequently discover that the affiliate knew nothing of the player, what have you got to deal with then?
I understand where you’re coming from – but ultimately a scam without a participant is not much of a scam, is it?
Quote:The difference is the ~35% commission. If the player does not sign up through their own aff tag, they are not getting the 35% commission back from us which then gets recirculated through as well as the continuing retention bonuses, making the commission amount actually much more than 35%, especially if he cashes out. So he makes the commission AND cashes out. Then if he is claiming loyalty points and bonuses, say 20-25% regular bonuses, and 10% loyalty points, that means we are paying 35% commission, 30-35% bonuses (making the amount the player is getting on their money actually up around 70%), ~25% royalties, plus any admin costs.This one is hard to explain to someone who doesn’t see the numbers on our end, so you’ll just have to trust me here. Maybe one of the other aff managers can explain an example that is easy to understand.
Umm… you’re saying that the aff recirculates his aff earnings back into the system.
A player receiving cashback recirculates his cashback into the system. In this case, the “player” has cashback of ~35%, plus comps, bonuses, etc.
Or – a real player who is not the aff, loses whatever money, you pay the aff a commission of ~35%, which he then recirculates into the system. Plus comps, bonuses, etc.
As far as I know, the net result is the same. The point you are trying to make is that you don’t want to give ~35% cashback, but you are happy to pay out ~35% aff earnings. If the aff subsequently makes an equivalent deposit, you have exactly the same state – and in addition, you suffer additional processing charges, whereas an aff playing on his own account might actually request earnings to be placed into his player account.
Furthermore, if the player cannot sign up through his aff account, he might not play at your casino at all because:
a. He can’t track to make sure the system works properly
b. He can play elsewhere – thus you earn nothing from him as a player.
c. Because he isn’t playing at your casino, he might be less inclined to promote youI understand that this may not matter to all affiliates – but I do not promote nor recommend any casino I cannot test myself.
In my opinion, it actually costs you less in the long run. However, and I repeat again, I do not have any issue with a casino’s right to block play on one’s own aff account. I wouldn’t even care if you told me I couldn’t earn a percentage off my own player account, so long as I am able to play and test the tracking periodically. By saying one cannot sign up under one’s own aff account – you deny me the ability to do my own testing.
Quote:I guess if you still can’t see my point here we may have to agree to disagree.. I was just trying to point out why I was disagreeing with your comment (from the operators point of view) that it was only a sportsbetting issue and could not affect casino and poker as you said in one of your posts. Rather than just saying I disagree, my posts were demonstrating WHY I was disagreeing and showing examples of why I was disagreeing.. I hope the message has gotten across about why it can be an issue for casino and poker and is not just a sportsbetting issue for players to be playing under their own accounts.The reason I differentiated is because you cannot offset one player against another in a casino, whereas you can certainly make opposing bets using different accounts in a sportsbook. This is definitely a situation unique to sportsbetting. Your issue is actually different.
I understand that this may not matter to all affiliates – but I do not promote nor recommend any casino I cannot test myself.
In my opinion, it actually costs you less in the long run. However, and I repeat again, I do not have any issue with a casino’s right to block play on one’s own aff account. I wouldn’t even care if you told me I couldn’t earn a percentage off my own player account, so long as I am able to play and test the tracking periodically. By saying one cannot sign up under one’s own aff account – you deny me the ability to do my own testing.
Exactly! I like to try the slots that I am promoting to my forum members and in order for me to get a good feel for the slot I have to play it in real mode, to me free mode is just not the same. With that said I know several programs that have this rule but they do not enforce it so to the credit of the operators not all are sticklers to certain rules in the terms.
Often times the casino players end up being an brand new affiliates for the casinos they play in as well.
Spearmaster;207035 wrote:If you shut the player account down – you solve the problem. If you shut the affiliate account down – you may unintentionally have caused damage to the affiliate who had nothing to do with the player.My point is not the “terminology” – my point is how this issue should be dealt with. You may not be able to prove 100% conclusively that the affiliate deliberately sent the player – but you will certainly be able to prove fraudulent play by the player.
How do you know that the aff deliberately sent the player? And how much damage can an aff with no live players do to you?
You are going out of your way to take action where none is required, in the process potentially alienating a legitimate affiliate.
My point is that if the player account is closed, and the aff has no players left, you have no problem. If you instead close the affiliate’s account, and subsequently discover that the affiliate knew nothing of the player, what have you got to deal with then?
I understand where you’re coming from – but ultimately a scam without a participant is not much of a scam, is it?
Umm… you’re saying that the aff recirculates his aff earnings back into the system.
A player receiving cashback recirculates his cashback into the system. In this case, the “player” has cashback of ~35%, plus comps, bonuses, etc.
Or – a real player who is not the aff, loses whatever money, you pay the aff a commission of ~35%, which he then recirculates into the system. Plus comps, bonuses, etc.
As far as I know, the net result is the same. The point you are trying to make is that you don’t want to give ~35% cashback, but you are happy to pay out ~35% aff earnings. If the aff subsequently makes an equivalent deposit, you have exactly the same state – and in addition, you suffer additional processing charges, whereas an aff playing on his own account might actually request earnings to be placed into his player account.
Furthermore, if the player cannot sign up through his aff account, he might not play at your casino at all because:
a. He can’t track to make sure the system works properly
b. He can play elsewhere – thus you earn nothing from him as a player.
c. Because he isn’t playing at your casino, he might be less inclined to promote youI understand that this may not matter to all affiliates – but I do not promote nor recommend any casino I cannot test myself.
In my opinion, it actually costs you less in the long run. However, and I repeat again, I do not have any issue with a casino’s right to block play on one’s own aff account. I wouldn’t even care if you told me I couldn’t earn a percentage off my own player account, so long as I am able to play and test the tracking periodically. By saying one cannot sign up under one’s own aff account – you deny me the ability to do my own testing.
The reason I differentiated is because you cannot offset one player against another in a casino, whereas you can certainly make opposing bets using different accounts in a sportsbook. This is definitely a situation unique to sportsbetting. Your issue is actually different.
The only way the affiliate’s account would be closed for fraud would be if we could 100% prove it. So I think we are arguing about the same thing here :tongue:
There’s no way I would close an aff account unless I was 100% sure.As I said, i don’t think I can explain the circulating aff commission in the way to show what I mean. I am a natural blonde you know
We have no problem with an aff signing up under their own account to test the casinos. Once the commission reaches a certain amount though, the account is automatically demapped to prevent the rule in our T&Cs being broken. We allow up to a certain amount for testing, then cut it off.. So no problems there.. I’m not sure exactly how much it is, but I can find out if any are curious.
We also have no problem with the affiliate putting his commission into a player account whether the affiliate’s player account is tagged or not to another affiliate (we actually offer this as a payment method). Paying out the 35% commission is not the issue.. The issue is that it gets circulated so that the amount we are paying is actually much more than 35%, and the amount of bonuses given is actually much higher than the standard 25-35% (including loyalty points), which eventually over time makes them together not profitable for the casino…
I dont know how else to explain this so I’m giving up. If any of the other aff managers want to explain it, feel free.
@Renee 207095 wrote:
The only way the affiliate’s account would be closed for fraud would be if we could 100% prove it. So I think we are arguing about the same thing here :tongue:
There’s no way I would close an aff account unless I was 100% sure.[/quote]
Well exactly. But you can still prove that the player account was 100% fraud. So if player fraud does their job, you have nothing to worry about.There’s no point in worrying about something that ultimately should not affect you – I used to be like that and in the end discovered that there was no point in worrying so much that I couldn’t do anything else.
Quote:As I said, i don’t think I can explain the circulating aff commission in the way to show what I mean. I am a natural blonde you knowI’m pretty sure I know what you’re saying. I’m just too lazy to explain the process – but in the end I am also pretty sure that it will not hurt you.
Quote:We have no problem with an aff signing up under their own account to test the casinos. Once the commission reaches a certain amount though, the account is automatically demapped to prevent the rule in our T&Cs being broken. We allow up to a certain amount for testing, then cut it off.. So no problems there.. I’m not sure exactly how much it is, but I can find out if any are curious.Here’s the problem – you cannot demap an account. You might set it to 0% commission, that I wouldn’t argue with – but the instant you demap, we are in the same situation again. I don’t test a casino once and then never again. I might test it for every promo I run!
Quote:We also have no problem with the affiliate putting his commission into a player account whether the affiliate’s player account is tagged or not to another affiliate (we actually offer this as a payment method). Paying out the 35% commission is not the issue.. The issue is that it gets circulated so that the amount we are paying is actually much more than 35%, and the amount of bonuses given is actually much higher than the standard 25-35% (including loyalty points), which eventually over time makes them together not profitable for the casino…Here we go again… haha…
I understand exactly what you’re saying. But what is the difference between:
A. Aff earns $100 commission from himself, deposited direct into his player account
B. Aff earns $100 commission from others, deposited direct into his player accountThe result is *exactly* the same. But you’re saying that the aff could then lose the $100 and get more bonuses?
Once the $100 is in the player account, it is the same no matter what the source, whether it be commission, credit card, Neteller, wire, snail mail, etc…
Also, in theory, if the commissions end up in the player account, they don’t get further bonuses in the same manner as if they were making a deposit – because it hasn’t passed through the casino’s front door, so to speak.
You correctly state that funds get recycled – but what I am saying is that it should end up being *exactly* the same no matter where the commission came from. If it does NOT – you need to check the process to see what is wrong.
Quote:I dont know how else to explain this so I’m giving up. If any of the other aff managers want to explain it, feel free.
