It would be really great if Global Poker had an affiliate program, where affiliates could get a small kickback for referring people or even a referral program. I recommend Global Poker to everyone and I think an affiliate program or referral program would improve the growth of the site.

what are the odds of Global doing something like this?

**** affiliates

they're leeches who want to get lifetime payments for a 1 time service

They do have an affiliate program. However, if you aren't pushing a large amount of traffic, they aren't interested. Furthermore, it is not a public program.

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Kahn

if theyre such leeches, then why are the companies that offer affiliate programs so willing to pay them? its not like its an involuntary exchange

so something like the 2+2 website might be large enough to have an affiliate program? interesting...

i guess im wondering then if theres any chance of them deciding to offer a public program like that in the future?

Affiliates are considered something between employees and business partners by the US government. Global tries hard to not garner the wrath or attention of political hacks at the DOJ.

Having a public referral program would be an unnecessary risk, imo.

The site is doing well and growing as is. Let’s keep our greed in check and remember what happened the last time we all had this much honest fun playing poker online.

i agree with what youre saying, but...

Buying space to advertise, is quite different from having boots on the ground inside the US. I do not mean that it is unadvertised word-of-mouth.

It is more about jurisdiction. I would be surprised if there is a single employee of Global anywhere in the US, be it marketing, support, or affiliate.

They do have a few separate businesses set up, but they have some sort of presence in the U.S for sure.

Job posting for Boulder, CO:

https://vgw.co/careers/?gh_jid=4093014002

Well, then I am wrong, and my entire reasoning is wrong. Interesting career opportunity, I suppose.

Kind of an odd statement, so just to clarify, 2+2 doesn't have an affiliate agreement with Global Poker. As a matter of fact, aside from our bonus book program (where we receive a one-time CPA payment that doesn't do much more than cover our costs for the free books we send out), we don't enter affiliate agreements with poker rooms.

Did 2+2 at any point in its history for any sites? If yes, then why/when did it stop? If no, then why not? I would think that would be a good source of extra income given the amount of players it could connect to the sites. Perhaps the legal grey area online poker operates in may be a substantial factor to the owners of 2+2 when considering it.

selling adspace directly on a prepaid basis is probably a more stable source of income than setting up affiliate deals. if poker sites offered rev share deals on deposits it would be dank af for affiliates (but i doubt they'd ever do that lol)

I don't doubt that may be true, but it's not like they'd have to stop doing one to do the other. Not many people are opposed to easy additional income without a pretty good reason. I would assume that they could get a substantial cut of the rake produced by the players in any partnership just based on the amount of players they could connect to the sites. It seems like a no-brainer to me if you're not worried about something potentially negative happening or how it's perceived. Perhaps there are other factors I'm not considering as well.

i always assumed 2+2 adspace was in conjunction with affiliate deals. i guess theres nothing to back that assumption, but it just seems like the obvious thing to do

The management even visits the USA. They were at G2E in Las Vegas recently.


2+2 banners and whatnot come as gratis with certain advertising packages. However, Bobo knows the truth and you should take his word on this as Gospel... that is his department at 2+2

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Kahn

Not to my knowledge. Not in the last 10 years or so for sure, aside from the book bonus deals, as mentioned.

Definitely a factor, considering 2+2 is based in the US.

This is true.

I've never heard of rev share based on deposits, because deposits aren't revenue. Rev share, AFAIK, is usually based on a share of the rake less any costs the poker site deducts, based on the affiliate agreement.

If you mean entering an affiliate deal with one site while entering a flat advertising deal with another, that would certainly be possible. If you mean having both with the same poker room, that would be unusual - typically it's going to be one or the other. The idea of a revenue share deal is that they are giving you a share of the revenue in return for you bringing them players - so the advertising would be up to you. If they're paying for advertising, they're not going to want to pay a share of revenue as well. Of course, that's not to say some kind of hybrid deal wouldn't be possible, but I don't see a site willing to pay the same advertising rates as every other poker room, and then give a rev share on top.

Well, you've sort of alluded to one of them here. I'm quite happy that we don't work with poker sites on a rev share basis, because that makes us much less beholden to them, or not feeling a need to push one brand over another because they pay us a higher rev share. Now, of course some poker sites pay for more advertising, which gives them more banners, or a sponsored thread or forum, but to me that's different than us choosing which sites to promote ourselves. For example, I'm sure many of you have seen sites that provide "rankings" of poker sites that are dubious, at best. That's something we've never done here. I think that as a result, 2+2 is able to provide a much more neutral and unbiased place for people to be able to discuss the pros and cons of different sites. That's not to say we get it perfect; there have been times when people feel we deleted something we shouldn't have, or continued with a troubled poker site longer than we should have. But I think that overall, we do a pretty good job of allowing our posters to discuss and bring forward issues with all poker rooms, whether they advertise with us or not. And of course it's possible for a site to have affiliate deals and still give unbiased information - I just don't think it happens nearly as often as it should, to say the least.

Another reason why direct advertising works well for us with poker rooms is that having a presence on 2+2 is about a lot more than player acquisition. The idea with affiliate deals is usually that you get paid for new players you bring to a site (although some sites do allow a certain amount of "retagging"); a lot of value on 2+2 is providing a liaison with existing players. Many of the benefits a site gets from being on 2+2 (building brand, developing relationships, promoting to existing players) wouldn't be reflected in an affiliate deal.

Basically, looking strictly at revenue/cost there are pros and cons to each. If a poker site typically works on an affiliate basis, what they care about is how much it costs to acquire each poker player, and sometimes those poker rooms aren't interested in working with us. With an affiliate deal, they can fix their costs for each player. But with flat advertising, if they can generate good value from it, they've capped their costs regardless of how much benefit they derive. On our side, we are capping our revenue, but that is a floor as well as ceiling.

Could 2+2 have made more money when poker was booming by having affiliate deals with Full Tilt, Poker Stars, and others? Quite possibly. But 2+2 has done just fine over the years, and at this point the status quo is well entrenched. And this site might not be the same, or be perceived the same way, if we had been in affiliate deals with poker rooms for all of these years and allowed that to change how we ran the site. For better or for worse, no affiliate deals with poker rooms for the foreseeable future.

We have entered affiliate deals at times with other advertisers, like DFS, and sometimes consider alternate models like that for different products.

Just to clarify, one can look at it a couple of different ways. We actually sell the banners and provide sponsored threads, forums, and other extras for no cost based on the amount of the spend. But you could look at it the other way - that you pay for the thread or forum, and get banners for free.

In spite of all I've said above, I strongly disagree with this as a blanket statement. There certainly are sites out there that exist solely to get you to click on a link so they get paid, and won't lift a finger to assist you - and they're not limited to poker, of course. And there are affiliates who pull shady **** to poach players from other sites & affiliates and generally give the industry a bad name. But there are other affiliates who provide a lot of value through different promotions, and help players iron out difficulties with poker rooms. There have definitely been times when we've seen players have an issue resolved that may never have been achieved without the help of their affiliate. And they provide a service to every poker player when they bring in new blood to poker rooms, which does happen.

Affiliates, like many other businesses, can be good or bad.

Thanks for all of the insights Bobo! I definitely learned a few things.

Affiliate programs are good when you bring in net depositors.

Affiliating with something like 2+2 would be bad for a site, because it brings in grinders.

Grinders don't generate rake, only Net depositors. Grinders just give net depositors a poker table to generate the rake.

At the end of the day, ALL RAKE is paid by net depositors. They lose money to grinders and then grinders pay the rake.

As we see with poker stars, and other sites. You can market(rakeback) to build a very active poker room with grinders, and once you are established, pull the rakeback out and you are already established brand with depositors.
The poker stars model