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the27offsuit wrote:Anyones stats update for the 3rd ?
I looked early on Feb. 4, and I had a pretty severe drop off from Feb 1st and 2nd vs. Feb 3rd numbers when I compared hands played vs. rake generated. I pulled up a player’s stats who generates a few thousand per month and found some interesting data:
Jan 1-31 he generated roughly 23 cents per hand.
Feb 1 and 2 he generated roughly 23 cents per hand.
Feb 3rd he generated about 9 cents per hand.When I checked the AP stats today I notice that it looks like Feb 1 and 2 have been changed to reflect similar low earnings per hand.
Looks to me like Feb. 3rd was D-Day for the contributed rakeback implementation, and they went back and changed Feb 1 and 2 as well.
If this holds true, I expect to see our monthly MGR cut in half. Not really liking this change.
“When I checked the AP stats today I notice that it looks like Feb 1 and 2 have been changed to reflect similar low earnings per hand.
Exactly , what i meant to say , taking a 50% hit right now and i do not like it . They figure were pretty much screwed in the US right now with not to many good choices to promote so were getting screwed ,
another 50% reduction here 😡
Same here… almost a 50% hit so far over last month’s numbers…. very dissapointing. Looks like I need to find some place else for my US customers! ;-(
It’s a terrible thing what they did, whatever it is they did, i just know i got no coin where coin used to be, my stats are a bit higher than a 50% drop off so far this month, i was averaging more per day than i have in the first 9 days this month in total
I guess the signs were there with their constant screwy stat issues, i kinda sensed something bad was coming, but was really hoping it wasn’t
These companies seem to be following a similar pattern, they use you to attain their peak level, then once they’ve accomplished their goal they brush you off like some cheap ho
I think i have a resolution on how to stop these things from happening in the future, but it depends on Google/Yahoo abolishing all gambling websites from their search engines, aside from affiliate sites and other poker/gambling related sites
If you type in “where to play poker online” on page 1 of Google, 9 out of the first 10 results are online poker rooms, basically coming over the top of us, instead of optimizing their site for their own specifics, they’ve branched out with their keywords and phrases to eliminate the middle man, ie, us, and that’s not good
If you eliminate the actual businesses(which are illegal anyway) then surfers would be more dependant on the reviews of trusted poker portals
As it stands now, Google is the number one affiliate for these poker rooms, and they don’t really need anyone else, and they sure are acting like it
It’s unlikely this will change anytime soon, and if it did it would open a whole other door of legalities regarding promoting online gambling in any way, but it would be nice, as it stands now i feel as though my partners are actually more like my enemies than actual partners
Finding a decent program these days is like panning for gold.
I would like to replace Absolute, but with who, they are all garbage, Ultimate Bet, Party Poker, Poker Stars, Full Tilt, all crap, and those are the best of the best, show me one decent poker affiliate program out of those, none of the other poker rooms out there retain players at the level of those, so there is no point in getting 50% of nothing by promoting them.
AP always had told me they were contributed as well as the terms stating this. They also appeared to say bonuses would be deducted now. They changed their bonus structure to screw players pretty bad. These changes were retroactive too. This terrible bonus will cause fewer conversions and destroy retention.
Finding a decent program these days is like panning for gold.
You can say that again.
If G or Y showed they could knock out part of gambling search results the DOJ might say, why can’t they do all of them?
But you might get a similar effect if affiliates ever organized and threw all of their traffic behind one room. That probably isn’t very likely to happen either though. But, personally, it would be fun to watch affiliates A) find a room that everyone pretty much trusted,
grow it to be a huge room in the market, which would lead to C) even more income because everyone knows with huge amounts of poker players it just attracts more – lots of fishies.Still, even if it happened, you wouldn’t know if they would dump their affiliates in the end. Proably why a lot of people diversify so much in their marketing.
From day one, I always though it looked better to just promote one (possibly) two rooms on your sites. If someone asked for your recommendation for a car, would you list 10 of them? No, you would narrow it down to 1 or 2 that you really believed was/were the one(s). But this is the position they left a lot of us in, picking between what we truly thought was the best and weighing that against will they still be around in present form (aff. income wise) in 2-3 years. There are affiliates that have just about all of them listed on their sites – probably because they are trying to narrow their future risk if a few go belly up, decide to screw them, etc..
The handwriting was on the wall when a bunch of them started allowing rake back to be introduced.
Quote:The handwriting was on the wall when a bunch of them started allowing rake back to be introduced.Yes investing money in the players to insure the money gets raked over and over again is a terrible idea. Rakeback makes break even players able to come back over and over again so instead of making a few dollars once you make a continual stream of revenue and retain the player much longer. It also gives cash infusions to losing players and keeps high volume players happy. What a terrible idea……
Rakeback is probably the only thing keeping many US players alive now to generate revenue for everyone, including themselves. So instead of 30% of $0 affiliates make 5-10% of $xxx-$xxxx.
I know there are many on this board against rakeback. IMO it falls under penny wise, pound foolish. Like it or not it is here to stay.
It (rake back) is something I looked into quite a bit at the time it was happening and is why I came to the conclusion that it was a net loss in the long run. I found it almost worthless to the casual players – they were better off with the intermittent bonus. Your 10% hardcore players would benefit greatly from it though.
I viewed any program that changed & allowed affiliates to start offering this as changing their terms and conditions, because in essence that 30% was immediately no longer for anyone that felt they had to join in on the ploy to stay competitive. It’s that simple to me.
I am sure there will always be some people that think it is a good idea – people whose sites/marketing are completely themed towards rake back or the hardcore player/huge traffic forums – more power to them. So in that respect it will be always be around in some form. I also understand why some of the rooms wanted to try it, as poker has been a very competitive thing and they were trying to make inroads on the bigger rooms’ markets.
My bottom line shows that the rooms that ended up sticking with a no rake back policy showed a very consistent income & grew, depending on the quantity & quality of traffic that was sent. The others, that at times I sent huge traffic to, somehow ended up going backwards income wise. This is over a two year period so I think that is enough data to start drawing some conclusions.
I stopped promoting the rooms that offered this after I starting seeing the negative effect on my bottom line. I think UB still might get some miniscule traffic on an advertisement I can’t get the site operators to take down (yep really lol).
The only times I usually post in their threads now is when I am trying to extract money they still owe me on past players or when I see a thread like this, where yet again, they are finding new ways to cut your pay. It’s funny (or not if it’s you) how the same themes keep getting repeated – just in different form over time.
Also, UB/AP merging is almost hilarious in a way, in that you are combining the worst stats problem program and mixing it with the slowest payer. I wouldn’t touch that combo with a ten foot pole. But good luck to you if you choose to continue with them.
F&P, you make some great points in your open minded post. Most non rb affiliates often dont see the other side. I certainly agree that most casual players will not see any signifigant amount of rakeback and would be more turned on to special bonuses. Most casual players have no idea what rb is anyway and don’t know how they would benefit from it.
I can’t wait to see what disaster the UB/AP merger will bing the online poker world.
