Incentive Marketing, No Deposit Bonuses, & Free Poker Money
By admin on Nov 17, 2008 in Incentive Marketing
Every few months you will see a new affiliate posting either over at one of the industry forums on how they are not being treated fairly by a poker affiliate program regarding their CPA’s. Anymore before I even read the entire post or hear the complaint, I already know the story.
I’ll preface the rest of this article by saying that in rare occurrences, the free money or no deposit schemes by affiliates do give value to the rooms. 95% of the time however, they are nothing but fraud and a way for the affiliate to make a quick CPA.
Like I said, there are sites that have found a way to do free money schemes successfully. However, this can be attributed to the fact that these sites have been around forever and send hundreds of players via incentives each month. With them, it is a numbers game. Plus from knowing many of these affiliates personally, I can tell you that these sites have sophisticated security measures in place, and they are in constant contact with their AM’s.
Unlike some new affiliates that try to offer these incentives or free money to “friends”, these webmasters have negotiated deals with the poker sites that take into account lower player values. When you are sending several thousands of players per month to one site, you can afford to have some bad players. As a new affiliate that has not proven yourself, unfortunately, you cannot when offering incentives.
Most of the newer affiliates you see trying to make a quick CPA (and subsequently not getting paid) have a business plan that resembles the following; Don’t be this type of affiliate:
Typical CPA Scam Business Plan
1. Affiliate Signs-up for a large CPA program with low requirements. And then the affiliate makes no mention to the affiliate program that they are doing free $50 transfers or incentive marketing.
2. They call all their friends and offer to transfer $25-$50 to them as long as they do the following; Play micro limits and make sure they don’t bust before playing X amount of hands or earning X amount of FPP’s (depending on CPA requirement)
3. These affiliates will often login to messenger and contact everyone they know, even some people they don’t know with the same offer for free online poker money.
4. The worst is when they build a storefront or generic website to look like they’re actually marketing. In all honesty, every affiliate manager is smart enough to know that a four page website with 0 backlinks and no Alexa ranking is not sending 50+ players a month!
5.Of course the affiliate will log in every day, check their stats, and then get excited seeing their CPA balance going up every day.
6. Collect money, take the profit, and repeat with the same people and a different room the next month.
In the old days this may have worked. In the current poker affiliate marketplace however, giving away free money, incentives, or no deposit bonuses rarely works. The internet is filled with habitual freerollers looking for free money. Usually if someone is searching google for “free poker money” or whatever, it is because they don’t have their own, or they have no way to deposit on their own.
Or when operators analyze the affiliates player value, it is more than likely because the affiliate implemented steps #2-#3 of the plan above.
As an affiliate though, if you truly believe you can send medium to high value players using one of these methods, then I encourage you to offer this type of incentive marketing on a revenue sharing plan versus a CPA. This way it is a win/win for both the affiliate and the operator.
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