The Poker Affiliate Blog

Saw a small article on pg6 of the financial times today about online poker and how NY State were going after Team FTP. Apart from all of them being in court a kinda funny image its a sign the future isn’t going to get any easier for ftp or stars.

Firstly, it stated the FBI had been collecting evidence about the company. Basically determining ownership. Secondly, the article claimed some investigatory body (I don’t think it was FBI though) established FTP was used to faciliatate money laundering.

It went on to point out NY state had successfully shutdown a payment processor, made another pay a fine and was looking to take a much harsher stance now evidence had been compiled.

So in a selfish sense as an affiliate who has nothing whatsoever to gain from FTP or Stars success I’m pretty happy.

Although the idea of FTP facing what will be (if implemented) strong reprecussions you should remind yourself the reason FTP and Stars have propspered for the last few years is because they decided to circumnavigate laws concerning payment processing and interpret the wire act and the UIGEA differentley to everyone else.

There are tons of Euro sites who decided not to operate in the USA and the reprecussions possibly faced by FTP and Stars are simply an eventually they certainly factored into their business plan.

That being said its going to be a while before anything happens. My guess is that more payment processors will be shut down and that will lead to a small dent in traffic in the short term.

Who knows

Tags: ftp, full tilt poker, Howard Lederer, legislation, online, poker, Pokerstars, UIGEA

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