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Please bear with me thru this discussion, it’s kind of long. I realize that many are already doing some of the things like blacklistings referback, but I think we should look at this from purely a business standpoint. We have very little to no protection as affiliates from the actions of Referback or other sites. If we don’t fix things right now, we will all be destroyed eventually. In the business world in order to get things changed you must have leverage. The only way we can gain the necessary leverage to survive is to ahow a tremendous amount of power. For this reason, I feel that we as affiliates must do everything in our power to not only hurt Referback, but to destroy them. If we can make a collective effort to force them out of business within the next 6 months then we will have leverage against other programs. The only way to do this is to convince players to not play there, ever again. This is a very bold statement, and cannot be accomplished without cooperation and unity. I know that there are old rifts between CAP and GPWA and I’m not here to heal anything or as a peacekeeper, but the larger affiliates there are no happier than we are about this. Many of you still have contacts there, and some are members. IF, and this is a big IF, we can agree that Referback needs to be bankrupt soon and all work towards that goal, we can gain the necessary power to survive. Business is about money. Many of you know that I am still young in the affiliate business, but I’m not young in business. We must create leverage. As for the possible legal action mentioned, while this is fine, I don’t see it creating the necessary leverage even if it works.
Quote:As for the possible legal action mentioned, while this is fine, I don’t see it creating the necessary leverage even if it works.Coming from a long background in business, as well as this industry, I’m not going to outright disagree with you – I do believe leverage is necessary – but I also think you have no idea how difficult it will be to destroy Referback – though you can certainly hurt them, which should really be the intent.
As for the legal aspect – you can be certain that a legal judgement against them will have a lot more leverage than you think, for reasons which are not all that obvious.
So I agree with taking a stand, and I agree with creating leverage, but I think one needs to take an even more realistic view of the situation than you have proposed.
They are too big to destroy. But like any other bully we can bloody their nose and make this more fight then they ever wanted.
That sends a message to other bullies out there in the yard watching this that we will fight back aggressively and that it’s probably not something THEY want to face.
Regarding GPWA. Referback is NOT one of their partner programs so in essence Referback has said by action that they dont care what GPWA does.
That being said I KNOW that the affiliate webmasters at GPWA are NOT happy about these changes and are surely reacting just as strongly as we are. The problem is that THEIR discussions are all in private. Referback ISNT taking the heat there where people can see it. This is one of the ONLY reasons I havent thrown Referback out of here on their asses YET.
Very likely, when this is all over, and we are not benefiting from beating them up in public anymore, we will pull their certification.
It all comes down to timing guys, and we wont do that until we have exhausted our present strategy of berating them in their forum.
I agree with the Prof on this, they are to big for us to destroy them but they surely can destroy themselves. If everybody pulls their traffic from them it will definately bloody their nose as well as let the rest of the aff programs realize that we the affiliates can work together as a single entity, which I believe is what our real goal should be.
I think it is apparent that RB believes they have the ability and cash to manage their own traffic. unfortunately they also have a database of old and existing players generated by us.
What I anticipate and hope is that they fall flat on their faces and find out they did need us. If the shipping of the outrageously expensive magazine Cool Hand is what we can expect from their marketing team it is only a matter of time till the coffers run dry.
Keep pulling those banners down and show the rest of the programs that we the affs can pull together and show what a force we truely are.
Brian
Lou, I was in no way trying to say that you should decertify them or push you in that direction or tell you what to do in any way. My intension is not to tread on toes, unless they belong to referback.
I humbly disagree that the affiliate community can’t put a place like referback out of business. While I will agree that if only a small percentage of affiliates work together that nothing will be accomplished, if the affiliate community as a whole works towards a particular goal, just about anything can be done. The affiliate community includes some of the best marketers in the world as well as some of the smartest people alive. What I do question is if a large enough percentage can and will work together towards a common goal.
I am but one small inexperienced voice, and will of course consider everything that is presented, especially from you guys that have been in this industry.
The GPWA actually has a thread where disgruntled webmasters can post about the discontent they have with referback. This thread will be sent to referback, so there is action been taken from that group also.
As for destroying referback…. well their group cannot advertise anywhere, so they have to rely on affiliates. If all affiliates remove them they dont have much to go on.
antoine wrote:If all affiliates remove them they dont have much to go on.Yep, thats the way to go with all of these programs.
There are still many other places they can advertise – just not so easily in the US.
And, to be dead honest, they might not even be too worried about a reduction of exposure in the US market. I assure you, if they were worried about the US market, they definitely would not have dared to take this type of ridiculous action.
But we can definitely beat them up badly, no question of that.
As for legal action, it ain’t taking place in the US, that’s for sure. However, if it takes place in their operational jurisdictions, it can AND will have a very big impact on their ability to do business in the future.
Quote:hey might not even be too worried about a reduction of exposure in the US market.The North American Market is 80% of their revenue. Thats not to say they arent too stupid or arrogant to care, but without US players they would go under.
It’s not quite that high any more, Professor. It’s still the majority, don’t get me wrong. But, at least in Referback’s case, I think they feel they have enough strength outside the US to make this kind of move.
The timer’s on… LOL… make this week count people. I am of little use by myself…
I have been working all weekend on eliminating all the offending programs.
Still not done, that site of mine is getting positively huge.
When I am done they all will go poof and be gone from everywhere.
Hi,
actually I think that it depends on what you would define the term “destroy” as: I definitely think that the affiliate program could go away. And I definitely think the casinos could be if not forced completely out; they they would fall to the side of the road like many other casinos which were aggressively advertised as the cheats which they were.
However, its much harder in the case because RB casinos – to which I will refer to as RB for this post; will likely always pay their players. And if its true that the same people own RB as Microgaming, then you’ll never put them out.
Now I remind those that have heard this story before, and tell it for first to the newbies. There was a time when I was living on a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread for groceries for the week. I owed everybody, and aside from what little I made in the adult side (to which I am no longer involved and happily so) I had little in the way of hope for any kind of salvation any time soon. In fact I wasn’t sure what the hell I was gonna do.
I did have one page where I was sending gambling traffic thru paid ads. No luck however (this due to the scum I had listed but didn’t know any better …. cough:bossmedia, focal, (Dom I don’t want to hear it, its the freaking truth! , starluck and that worthless bunch… and a host of others long gone).
anyway, one of them was quicksilver casino. run by a snake calling himself Mike Dibley. he already owed me about 800 from an accumulated 2 months previous, and I had pulled all the links but you know how some always remain.
my luck I landed the whale of all whales. He dropped (my share) 14k in 2 weeks time and was going strong when dibley locked me out of the account.
I’m telling you it took all l had not to get on a plane and go kill the sob. All my problems solved and then get screwed out of it.
well I didn’t do that, but God help the bastard if I ever meet him in person. But what I DID do was learn the only SEO I’ve ever really seriously attempted. and I landed so that i had at one point, like 7 of the spots on the first page if you looked up quicksilver casino.
and every single one of the descriptions started off “Warning! cheating casino doesn’t pay its bills! Avoid at all costs”.
Now I don’t know how much I had to do with that demise; since he’d screwed everybody else as well. But I can say its no longer in business. And I think affs had a lot to do with his demise so quickly.
so I DO think its doable.
but to put the kind of serious pressure on RB that needs be done, everybody would have to run a list of the blacklisted casinos on their first pages. where everybody can’t help but see it.
then suddenly all the fancy mags in the world coming in the mail will not be enough to wilt that ever-growing seed of doubt that will have been planted and then reinforced in the public’s mind.
I tried telling all this to Wayne in a letter. What RB fails to realize is it doesn’t matter if they always pay the players and have a nifty magazine and cutting-edge loyalty program.
the simple truth of the matter is; is that if you tell a dog its a chicken enough times by enough people; it will eventually start clucking.
said enough times by enough people; it become the truth as the public perceives it, and in the gambling niche that is more than enough to do you in on the net.
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I’m going to f_cking hate having to add RB to my warning list. its such a waste. I fully expect my players to stop playing there. will I get them back somewhere else? anybody’s guess. but one thing for sure, I’ve never seen it happen yet where if you pour gas from one container into another; that you end up with the exact same amount after the transfer.
and RB IS going to lose big. but the only consolation is going to be that fact.
Nobody is going to win. RB’s ad budget to counteract the bad press will easily eat up any extra income they think they’ll see.
my last line to Wayne was
is it really going to HAVE TO HAPPEN for them to get it? read the writing on the wall and save all of us before its too late.
what a waste.
ps.
this is really going to hurt me, but I am not only prepared to back the group despite possibilty of brokering a special deal, but I’ve already begun removing their links from prime spots and will do more if Wayne doesn’t have good news sometime today or tomorrow.
here’s the reason for not brokering a special deal in case others are thinking about it.
you either act now as a group while you have some bit of power, or you wait 6 months and get f_cked all by yourself and WHEN that happens; don’t come to me to whine about it.
here’s the reason for not brokering a special deal in case others are thinking about it.
you either act now as a group while you have some bit of power, or you wait 6 months and get f_cked all by yourself and WHEN that happens; don’t come to me to whine about it.
My thoughts exactly, cuz they have shown there true colors and they will screw you down the road.
here’s a post i made somewhere else that i think also applies here.
if you want this to have impact, its as (I believe) Dave said; you got to do more than take their links down, and quite frankly, IMHO if you don’t put them on your first page; then you probably aren’t going to make much of an impact.
I’m not pressuring anybody, but if everyone could find a small space (took up about the area of a 120 x 240 area using small print) to put them listed by name on your first page… you’re going to make impact.
Even moreso than the fact the visitors will see it, what would be great is if when an RB manager goes and visits site after site, they see a their casinos by name under a warning.
What I plan to do is the above, at least for a while. If I see I’m getting support from others, and its considerable; I’ll keep the list where it is.
otherwise I’ll probably do like I’ve seen some others do, which is throw up a blacklisted casinos link on my first page and go.
but I think the latter will have much less effect.
and I’ll tell you something else, … if you want to look “cutting-edge” then its a good idea because if I were a player and I saw gamingclub blacklisted on the first page of many sites except yours…. well I’d think you were either behind the times or not trying very hard to keep me protected.
. I think its important that if we’re gonna shit in our nest, that we do it right.
to me, a half-assed campaign would be the worst because its going to cost me money as it is; I’d sure like to get something for the thousands its going to cost me.
*I hasten to add that i still have hope however small that RB will come in tomorrow with a decent proposal.
