The Poker Affiliate Blog

2+2 came out with a new affiliate policy this week – see here.

It basically states that non-advertising affiliates cannot PM members of the forum offerring their deals or services.

To People Who Aren’t Familiar With The 2+2 Setup

2+2 is the world’s largest poker forum with about 250k members. The next biggest is CardsChat with around 75k registered users. Although CardsChat is a little less than a 3rd of the size of 2+2, CardsChat is significantly less valuable. In general the players aren’t as savvy and the average player will rake around 10% as much as the average 2+2er. Obviously, 2+2 is a really valuable forum and from my point of view its not only an acquisition tool but,  a retention tool. Our current player base can be reassured by the fact we have a sponsored account and its a useful bargaining chip when negotiating with poker rooms.

Due to the fact the 2+2 users are generally mature and experienced poker players they’re not taken in by banner advertising, tv ads or any of this.  A professional poker player’s top priority is keeping their bankroll safe  – they want to sign up to reputable rooms, where they can be assured of quick withdrawls and minimum hassle.  Somewhere in the list of priorities, surrounded by software, liquidity and deposit methods is RB % of effective VIP %.

2+2ers looking for new deals will post in the rakeback request thread – which pretty much does what it says on the tin. Obviously, sponsored affiliates reply to the posts with as good a deal as possible but,  the problem comes when other forum members effectivley do the same thing for free. This has been happening for the last few years and its fair to say that ~50%+ of genuine posters go to a non-advertising affiliate.  Aside from the fact thatthis is a bit of a raw deal for advertisers paying a minimum of $2.5k a month it can be dangerous for the player.

1. Rogue Affiliate – The most sacry and obvious problem are rogue affiliates who are out there to make a quick buck. These guys will promise the world and very rarely deliver anything. Scooping the maximum commission, dissapearing into the sunset and coming back next month to do the same thing, on a new account all over again!
2. Ignorant Affiliate – While your low posting,  non-advertising affiliate might have your best interests at heart they often don’t understand what they’re offerring themselves. Under the table deals at Party Poker are quite common and I’ve personally seen several affiliates offer to pay players $3k if they rake $10k which is 30% gross RB. Despite how they dress it up on the PartyPartners site, the 30% they pay affiliates is subject to seral deductions and the player will only be dissapointed in this situation.
3. Small Room - A common trend amongst these affiliates is that they associate with small, unheard of rooms.  These guys tend to have quite a short term mindset and will do literally anything to sign a player up. If that means vouching for a room or cutting their margin down to 1% it doesn’t matter. They’re signup hungry – which is actually exactly how I used to be apart from the fact I always viewed this as a possible route out of education and didn’t vouch for any room I wasn’t comfortable with. I never got asked that much because we only deal with the biggest sites anyway.Anyway,  a lot of these small affiliates offered under the table deals on Potraiser whilst the bigger affiliates were investing into private races on 24hPoker and NOIQ. Inevitably Potraiser was kicked off Entraction and hundreds of thousands of players money was left in limbo for over a week as a consequence of non-advertising affiliates.  Although the players got their money back when Potraiser moved to Cake it was a reminder to players what could happen if they didn’t use their common sense.  iPokerVIP and myself as an individual have never dealt with questionable rooms and in the main I prefer to deal with sportsbooks.  EuroLinx was another room where players signing up through these kind of affiliates suffered. RakeTheRake did offer EuroLinx but, seemed to stop recruiting a while before the majority of these other affiliates.

I’m obviously really pleased that 2+2 have seen the light and decided to punish freeloaders and have actually taken iniative to ensure that advertiser’s get the maximim value. The non-advertisers are obviously fearful for their businesses which I really sympathise with.  However, many of them simply don’t contribute and their indignity really pisses me off.

You don’t contribute, don’t pay and are unaccountable. You guys have had a great run… now pls if you don’t want to pay like anyone else GTFO.  Worse than many of the very small guys are the likes of WebPokerSource and TetleyBoy, I think its ridiculous that they’re posting and complaining about not being able to advertise.  I’m certain that these guys are of comparable size to iPokerVIP. When I decided to pay $7.5k to 2+2 it was a big undertaking and pretty scary. There is no way that these guys don’t have the money to invest – they just seem to prefer to freeload.

I think the bottom line is: If these guys bring such value to 2+2 then why don’t they go elsewhere and take the traffic with them? Many of them can afford it and the ones who can’t are more likely to be illegetimate. Very few players seem bothered and 2+2 will make more money.

Simples…