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Hi there,
I have been pretty happy with Absolute Poker and tend to recommend it to other affiliates.
However, there is the rake-back issue and I wonder what the future stance of Absolute will be on that.
As I am sure you have already realized, the affiliate community in general does not look favorable on rake back schemes. Apart from unethical people actually spamming poker rooms, this sort of policy could well cause a war where affiliates have to offer greater and greater rake backs in order to keep their rightfully acquired players.
This is very worrysome to us, and some Poker programs have already taken steps to put a stop to it.
I am hoping Absolute will be one of them since they are otherwise one of my favorite programs.
Thanks!
an other problem:
I saw it on absolute and decided to check it out
,
I saw your name at Absolute Poker site,when I was trying to register for a tourney I qualified for.
Some webmasters use poker rooms to advertise there casino/poker portals.
Regards,
vd752Yes, that will be the spamming problem.
It is most hurtful to affiliates when accompanied with rakeback offers.
Dom,
I agree with you completely. Rake back sites seem to really be popular these days. In the long run, I think it will have negative affects on affiliates. I have much respect for sites like Paradise and Party. They do not allow rake back and enforce their policies. As for the other sites, I hope they get their act together.Hi everyone,
Thanks for bringing up these concerns. Happy to hear that you like working with Absolute Poker and we want to work with you to make the Absolute Poker affiliate program the best poker affiliate program out there.
While we do permit certain affiliates to offer rake backs, we think it’s important for the affiliate community to know that we work with and approve all of our partners’ strategies very carefully and underhanded tactics are strictly prohibited. We do our best to monitor and police the activity of our approved affiliates. If you come across anything such as spam or anything that raises red flags please do let us know.
Things change in this industry all of the time and Absolute Poker does it’s best to accommodate change and do its best for the affiliate community. Our stance on rake rebates and other incentivized offers is certainly not set in stone and we are always open to discussing these issues and making future decisions based on the feedback of the community. We constantly re-evaluate our policies and will not hesitate to change them to accommodate the best interests of our affiliates.
Feel free to contact Jennifer Moore, Absolute Poker’s Affiliate Director to discuss any of these issues on a one on one basis – [email protected].
vd752, would it be possible for you to get in touch with us regarding these examples you mention? We’d love more details on this issue so we can get to the bottom of it. You can contact myself or Jennifer.
Thanks everyone,
Sarah-Jane
Thank you Sara Jane.
Since I consider it a very major issue affecting the entire future of poker affiliates I will be in touch with Jennifer, or maybe she can find me.
I am happy that you guys are so responsive.
Thanks again for your answer.
Rakebacks are bad business and should be banned. I will not promote any site that endorses it. Lets say I sign up a heavy player, one that plays high limits, 2-3 tables at a time for up to 40 hours a week. He uses my affiliate link and I do not offer him a rake back. Weeks later, he comes across an ad offering a rake back for absolute poker. He punches in the amount of hours, number of tables, and limits he plays into the rake back calculator and determines he can be getting as much as $1500 a month back in rake. He is going to abandon ship and sign up with this program and I lose a great player. This is not fair to the affiliate who originally signed him up.
It is also not fair for the poker site themselves. Lets say he never used an affiliate link to sign up, so absolute poker would be getting 100% of the rake. Now he sees that ad offering rake back, he is going to sign up and now absolute has to forfeit some of the rake to the affiliate who signed him up.
True, acesup.
Additionally, you will be forced to do rake backs yourself in order to continue to compete. Players will get wise to rakebacks and use them the way bonus abusers use bonuses now. Casinos without bonuses do not get players these days.
Affiliates will be forced to take paycut after paycut to stay competative.
Right now most programs do not allow rake backs. The one program that openly pushes them is sun poker, and I have yet to hear from a non rakeback affiliate who makes money with them. Sun is for rakeback affiliates only, if you don’t want to take a cut in your pay there is no point in advertising them. The rakeback affiliates get the signups.
Absolute isn’t down that far the rakeback road yet – but it will happen if we do not stop it now.
Absolute is a class outfit though, and I am quite sure we will find a way to deal with this.
There are also some UB affiliates that offer rakeback. They also make it very easy to track individual players. Unlike Party who forces you to make an individual tracker to track a player and then shuts your account down. For once, way to go Party.
ultimate bet is one of the most popular targets of rake back sites. i emailed my affiliate manager at ultimate bet to express my concern. i didn’t get the response i wanted. (my affiliate manager is with ultimate bet, not income access)
That makes things look a lot worse – another decent poker program embarking on a policy that is so harmful to affiliates in the long run.
I hope Income Access will represent us in this respect. I have much confidence in Income Access placing value in the well being of affiliates. With three poker programs on board, this is a major issue of cencern for Income Access.
I am sure this will get sorted out – all these years IA has always come through for affiliates.
Hi Everyone,
I’m happy to reply to this thread; your opinions and feedback are really appreciated. We definitely sympathize with your concerns about rake rebates. It has definitely become a growing trend among new Poker affiliates.
Yes Dominique, we do value our affiliates’ well-being and we wouldn’t tolerate an affiliate doing anything that directly harms another. Affiliates will always look for ways to be more competitive as the market grows. It’s important to distinguish between genuine incentives that reward good behaviour and those that lend themselves to abuse. Rake rebates in themselves aren’t necessarily bad, but affiliates who abuse them to steal players or unfairly compete with other affiliates can be. I think that any affiliate that runs an ethical business, incentives or not, could be successful in the long run. Those that work with no regard for others will probably promote themselves out of business.
As for some of the more specific concerns:
acesup wrote:Lets say I sign up a heavy player, one that plays high limits, 2-3 tables at a time for up to 40 hours a week. He uses my affiliate link and I do not offer him a rake back. Weeks later, he comes across an ad offering a rake back for absolute poker. He punches in the amount of hours, number of tables, and limits he plays into the rake back calculator and determines he can be getting as much as $1500 a month back in rake. He is going to abandon ship and sign up with this program and I lose a great player. This is not fair to the affiliate who originally signed him up.While no system is perfect, UltimateBet has procedures in place that ensure a player can’t create multiple accounts tagged to different affiliates.
Thanks again for the feedback, and I can say this: no matter what issues come up, we will always do what’s best for our affiliates and our clients.
danielb wrote:Hi Everyone,It’s important to distinguish between genuine incentives that reward good behaviour and those that lend themselves to abuse. Rake rebates in themselves aren’t necessarily bad, but affiliates who abuse them to steal players or unfairly compete with other affiliates can be. I think that any affiliate that runs an ethical business, incentives or not, could be successful in the long run. Those that work with no regard for others will probably promote themselves out of business.
Well, this is true with most things in the affiliate world.
Rake back is different though.
By allowing affiliates to offer rake backs, the affiliate program is in effect forcing all their affiliates to take a 20% cut in pay if they want to stay competitive. No one is going to sign up with me for Absolute without a rebate if the next guy is offering a 20% discount. Players would be stupid to do so.
So now I am forced into a 20% paycut, and the next guy loses his edge. So he offers 25%. Now I have to follow and so on.
Rake backs are an excellent idea – but should NOT come out of the affiliate’s pocket. If a Poker Room were to offer rakebacks to it’s players, both affiliates and players would flock there. It would be a very sensible way of promoting a room for the operator – sells better than bonuses, no abuse possible, and players only get it when they play.
Rake back is a dynamite idea if it is used that way – but if it is used to force all affiliates into paycuts in order to compete, the Poker room is doing something very unethical and harmful to the industry. Poker rooms will become unprofitable for affiliates to promote.
The reason rake back affiliates are doing well now is because they are syphoning possible players from the available player pool, and they do this at the cost of other affiliates. When we are all forced to take a paycut aff programs will have achieved the ultimate situation:
a salesforce that does not ask for insurance or retirement, builds advertising vehicles for free, purchases ads for the program, only gets paid when the program makes a profit, and puts 20% of it’s own earnings back to the customer as incentive.
Damn, try that in the real world!
Programs allowing rake back to be offered by affiliates are forcing us all to take a 20% cut in pay. This is not only unethical, it is injurious to the future of online poker.
Wake up, guys!
“Rake backs are an excellent idea – but should NOT come out of the affiliate’s pocket. If a Poker Room were to offer rakebacks to it’s players, both affiliates and players would flock there. It would be a very sensible way of promoting a room for the operator – sells better than bonuses, no abuse possible, and players only get it when they play.”
It hasn’t worked out that well for Gus Hansens site Pokerchamps.
“While no system is perfect, UltimateBet has procedures in place that ensure a player can’t create multiple accounts tagged to different affiliates.”
This does not directly address the problem. When I played more online poker I had accounts at about 15 different rooms, but when I learned about rakeback I found a deal with an affiliate promoting yet another room and started playing there so the other 15 rooms were out (theoretically). So the affiliates and the sites lost a player (me). In addition, I was able to simply switch sites within the same network so everything was the same but the skin. Now that I have started in the affiliate end, I despise rakeback and hope to never be forced to offer it.
I don’t really promote poker so I’ve no vested financial interest in the success or failure of affiliates promoting rakeback schemes. Having said that, I’m not sure what the issue is here.
Surely, competition is the cost of doing business. If one business wishes to undercut another then that is their prerogative. It is your choice as a competing business to follow suit or not. If you wish to compete with the rakeback sites, then you know what you need to do. If you don’t, then you have to find your own angle to bring in the players.
