The Poker Affiliate Blog

England game is about to start. Got my strip today which I’m quite happy with, opted for the red one but, England should really be sponsored by Adidas or Nike. I know Umbro are an English company but they don’t make the strips like the big 2 imo.

I had a policy not to bet on this world cup and that went down the shitter on the 1st day. Was at a friends and had some commission left online. About £500 and I noticed France were 2.3 before the match to win. It seemed pretty good so it all went on and as we know Govou made a horrific miss and France can’t finish their dinner.

I’m not gna lie it felt bad. Real low.

Its not like I was going to feel on top the world after winning but, I feel like a real degenerate losing so much money especially in context.

Other news: iPoker software still hasn’t changed although things keep getting better for iPokerVIP.

I’m looking into affiliating in other industries and setting up a site like: comparethepizza.com and allowing customers to compare the best pizza deals at the big 3 (accross the UK) ; Pizza Hut, Dominos and Papa Johns.

That’;s something I’ll be looking into next week although I’ve got the affiliate agreement worked out with most of them – then its just the site and marketing.

Go On England !

Tags: affiliate, iPoker News, Playtech, poker, software, Update, World Cup

Sorry for a lack of post lateley. I’ve got my 1st exam on Friday but, haven’t been revising as much as I should have been – hopefully get cracking soon (using this post for procrastination).

The ads are up, along with the thread and its good to see things going fairly smoothly. I’m going to put Winner Poker & maybe a few other more competitive offers up tommorow and change the text on the home page a little (my bounce rate is alarmingly high) and hopefully that should kick things up a bit.

iPokerVIP was based on 2 premises;
1. Under the table deals are harder to come by – the market is moving.
2. iPokerVIP showcases the best legal deals.

I’d say I’ve got 2 bang on but, for all the time people have speant scrutinising my site 90% of the under the table affiliates could have been cleared out. Its pretty ridiculous and demonstrates that the iPoker network probably don’t care much for the rules themselves – just that people aren’t seen breaking them and the status quo remains intact, at least superficially.

The irony is that there are people in Birmingham who work for playtech whose job it is to catch these affiliates. If 90% of players can find these deals how can’t these spies who work on it everyday ?

I think the main problem is that iPoker doesn’t have a clear vision of what kind of network it wants to be. Its like one week they want uber-aggro deals so they can compete for Euro players on Stars and Tilt and the next week they’re banishing these deals wanting a fishy network and claiming that’s the way forward.

Tough spot. For a company worth over $1bn you’d think they might at least come close to getting it right.

Tags: affiliate, ecoop, ipoker deals, iPoker News, ipoker vip, iPokerVIP.net, online, poker, Rakeback, software

Noble poker recently announced that it was ceasing to give ‘loyalty’ payments. This just means rakeback. I’ve actually forgotton the reasons behind it but there were a few of them something like; Win/Loss ratio and the fact Noble is owned by Party and they felt Noble was actually kind of hurting Party. Anyway it obviously wasn’t +ev for them.

Although I can’t offer under the table deals publically its pretty incredible the amount of people that come to find me after this happens. I mean there are a not of new players looking around for deals and its amazing they manage to find new deals especially completley unadvertised ones such as mine.

It got me thinking that keeping stuff quite when it comes to under the table deals and hoping the skins I work with don’t cease them anytime soon is really the way forward. There is no real rush on that front, so long as I stay consistent the players will all eventually end up under me in someway or another.

On top of the new players a skin like Noble going down also presents a bigger opportunity. All their affiliates will be scrabbling about hoping this source of income doesn’t vanish into thin air. I can help them, set them up with a deal (possibly better than they had at Noble) within 24 hours, get a beautiful looking email out to all their players with the details and tracking link and help save their business. I’ve got 3 different Noble affiliates contact details who I will hopefully contact and propose this to. At the end of the day 1 of them is going to be an extra $1k a month minimum in my back burner so its really a worthwhile process.

What is more important than the cashflow is my power or assets and I really feel this is overlooked a lot. If I bring hundreds of players and several affiliates and am effectivley responsible for a good amount of MGR my posistion as an affiliate is so much stronger. I can negotiate better %s, move about and really have a lot of pulling power. For me its not all about the cashflow maybe one day I’ll want to sell the business. I don’t think I will becuase I’d be like a lost puppy but, who knows how I’ll feel in a year. I mean I’ve made a lot of friends through being an affiliate and obviously I want them to have the best – which I think is me :p and keep chatting to them so yeh maybe selling doesn’t look like an option yet.

Tags: affiliate, Cashback, iPoker News, Noble, Noble Poker, Online Poker, rake, Rakeback, RB, Skin

Around 2 weeks ago Full Tilt Poker decreased affiliate commission to 3% whereas before affiliates could enjoy up to 8% (I believe). This doesn’t effect me at all but, its definatley worth writing about so here goes…

I never really recruited players for FTP because even post 3% commission their effective commission was the worst out there along with pokerstars – if you were lucky enough to get revenue share.

What I mean by effective commission is that the FTP new player market was highly competitive and saturated with races, coaching and software being offerred left, right and centre – See the recent CardRunners promotion. After the player rakes their intitial $500 CardRunners will be lucky to have profited whatsoever.

However, ipoker and ongame are arguably as equally competitive with the difference being they’re networks. As far as I know there are no players who upon signing up to FTP are raking a decent amount – which pretty much means its an investment into the players raking a decent amount in the future. Whereas on iPoker or OnGame I know when someone says to me they rake $5k there is a fair chance they’ll rake something and if I establish a good relationship with them and things are good there’s no reason I can’t make a few K from them in a lifetime.

Its not only the investment in the player’s learning curve, future disposable income and everything else that gives them the ability to generate rake but, an investment in FTP still being around as a site and online poker as an industry. For a small unestablished affiliate running races and promotions resulting in a very fine edge combined with the delay in time before real returns are realised always made FTP an unappealing option for me.

I’ve read around that this drop to 3% was long overdue for affiliates and is going to be mirrored elsewhere. I completley disagree with this statement – as long as poker networks exist so will affilaites on decent commissions. The unarguably easiest way for skins to access fast, reliable rake is to steal players from fellow skins on the network. This cannot be done by anyone other than affiliates.

Moreover, FTP and Stars enjoy great brand recognition and affiliates definatley piggy backed off this. I guess the test would be to see how many of these players would be playing at FTP if they had the same deal without an affiliate. I’m guessing close to 100%. Whereas on iPoker or OnGame the players could be at one of 30 places.

I guess the problem for affiliates on stand alone sites is if a player wants to play that site its not becuase of the affiliate its becuase of the site. But, that’s why I’m thankful about not being involved in FTP. I can’t imagine being RakeTheRake and previously earning $80k a month of the $1million rake being generated by its players and having that docked to $30k. Its a lesson in how vulnerable affilaites can be and probably offsets the great short term earnings.

Anyway, I don’t see anything changing on the networks becuase the minute it does a ton of affiliates and consequently players will move and that will be that.

Tags: affiliate, commission, ftp, ipokerm full tilt, poker, poker affiliate