Referback Poker Programs Consolidate
July 24, 2005
Posted by admin in : General , add a comment
Referback recently announced the consolidation of Riverbelle and Gaming Club Poker. Last week I also received the following note:
“We’d like to bring to your attention that an alternative home page has been designed in the place of the Lucky Nugget Poker Room website.
Belle Rock Gaming will be re-directing all Lucky Nugget Poker Room traffic through to our flagship, premier poker room, The Gaming Club Online Poker Room.
All current Lucky Nugget Poker Room players will be able to continue their game play. If players click onto either text links or banners, they will be directed through to our new home page. This page will then prompt players to click through to The Gaming Club Online Poker Room.
Why?
Belle Rock Gaming is consolidating all its poker brands into one strong, phenomenal brand. One brand means more control, better customer service and improved player retention. They’ll ensure that all players are carefully looked after, leading to increased play and extended player lifetimes.
The good news!
This change will not effect your Referback commission in any way and all systems are in place to track players through to The Gaming Club Online Poker Room home page.
Having one major poker brand to focus your retention efforts on gives you better control over your players, their lifetime of play and ultimately, your commission. This is also great news for players, as they will undoubtedly find the bigger online poker environment more attractive.
What to do?
It is advisable to replace all Lucky Nugget Poker Room creative and text with The Gaming Club Online Poker Room creative. If you have any queries or concerns please contact your Referback Relationship Manager for any further information.”
I think this is likely a good move – this will make the Gaming Club Poker Room a much bigger, busier and hence more appealing place to play.
Affiliates – be careful!
July 10, 2005
Posted by admin in : General , 1 comment so far
Lately we have had several programs change their Terms and Conditions retroactively – always with the intent of cutting affiliate pay.
The ways our pay is being cut:
Bundling:
A program has several independent casinos. Heretoforth, they have considered each casino a seperate unit, so if you had a negative balance at a couple, it would not affect the positive balance you have on others. Bundling throws all these casinos in one pot – one negative can wipe out all your income.
Punishing failure to send new players:
This can take different shapes. The somewhat milder one is to reduce your comission if you fail to bring in a certain number of players in a certain time period. The severe one is to stop paying you for any comissions owed until you start bringing in new players. You never recover the lost comission either.
These two conditions are very, very bad because in today’s climate you are more likely than not going to lose search engine positions sooner or later for some period of time due to some unscrupulous casinos supporting affiliates who spam the search engines by various methods. If you are a full time affiliate, combined with the above terms this can put you in the unemployment line.
Now, it is up to you to read the terms and conditions of any program you sign up with carefully, no matter how convoluted the presentation. And there are a number of programs that have the above very hurtful conditions clearly spelled out.
But what if you read everything carefully and signed up knowing that you picked the right places?
Well, of late that doesn’t help you one bit. Casinos have started breaching contract with affiliates. They change the terms whenever they please – retroactively.
The programs currently in breach are: Vegas Partners, Fortune Affiliates, Partnerlogic and Wager Junction.
