If a new site was to start the process of gaining some of the market share what advice would you give?

everyone knows pokerstars and full tilt are so popular but there are other sites out there that still do well.

is there anything a site could do in the area of rakeback, bonuses, hem etc to make them appealing?

or is the market share of pstars and ft just too great to fight?

any intelligent comments welcome

Advertising is the best thing you can do. Attract the casual players and the regs will follow.

Lower rake.
If you can offer 3% rake and keep other things equal.

4-max, with rake cap at $1 or maybe $1.50. That makes per-hand MGR around the same as full ring.

No rake, 10% fee at cash out instead.

This,
Advertising and having the money to do as much advertising as poss, will help gain your "new" site market share.

Good stupport
at least 30% RB
trustworthy rep
lots of advertising

Good for the small stakes players but Id think the HS players wouldnt, not sure though. It would be interesting to see the math on this.

heeeelllllllllllllll nnnooooooooo!

Never even thought about this idea before. On it's face it's terrible though. Imagine someone deposits 100k, breaks even on a 20-minute high stakes session, and then has to pay 10k to cash out.

Still, it might have some merit. What about 10% fee on cashing out any amount above what you deposited? NOt saying this is a good idea--just thinking out loud.

on the whole 10% thing.

what about a tax system where u pay an amount to the site depending on how much u cash out.

10% seems quite high though???

new site named betraiser does this.. !0% on witdrawal.. and I think it is only on profits

Then a new thing would be introduced called: cashoutback...

Two biggest things: Advertising and allowing U.S. players.

As far as bonuses, I'd do random small gimmick rewards like:

Have a magical hand generated every so often. Maybe it's T3 for the "magical" day. Then, when someone is dealt that hand, have a bonus pop up that says, "Congratulations! You just got the magical hand. A bonus of $20 has just been deposited in your account."

Then, another day, have a magical hour, where if someone simply opens their account during that hour, they are told, "Congratulations, you just opened your account during magic hour. Open one of the three magical doors to receive your prize." Then they would be given three doors, with small prizes behind each--like $10, $25, and $75.

Casual players love stuff like this. It also gives them incentive to play and login to their account as frequently as possible.

@ Adronicus

That's not a bad idea imo, actually from an Entrepreneur perspective, wow awesome

As Hans landa says: BINGO!

lol @ this

yes, this is key

you can have the best software, 95% rakeback, great support, superfast cashouts, etc etc etc. but no matter how awesome the site is, no regs will stay if you don't have fish playing.

******ed promotions to attract the fish and rb to attract the regs = win

Simples

i can't believe people don't realise 10% fee on cashout is wayyyy better than rake, i'll do some math fo ya!, 10k games, $9+$1, 5% roi, $0.50 profit per game $5k profit. 10k games $9+$0, $1.50 profit per game, $15k profit, cashout $13.5k profit.

how people with 3k+ posts are strongly opposed to this idea is beyond me, unless they play $10,000 sngs and play like 1 a week or something.

although for a new site, i doubt this is gonna attract fish, because a lot of people wont realise how good of a deal it is.

Exactly what I was thinking. However it's more clear on SNGs than cashgame, but still much better option than even as high as 60% rb. Unless you play 5/10 or higher.

Interesting idea. You get these I assume.

Generous REFERRAL BONUSES.

Let your existing players recruit new players, and pay them to do it.

Encourage recruiters to play microstakes in public WiFi places like Starbucks. Allow recruiters to have a separate microstakes-only recruiting account. Allow recruiters to provide instant funding of new recruited accounts using prepaid debit cards. No play money accounts. Grant immunity from association with these new accounts.

Pyramid

The irony is there are sites that could compete with stars if they actually wanted to.

Cake could be a truly great site if they fixed their software, paid people on time, customer support wasn't shady and stopped lying to players, stopped charging people to withdrawl.

They main reason I believe everyone plays at stars is they are a class act.

agreed, if cake change nearly everything about themselves, they could compete with stars!

Lots of options, don't put stupid people sitting at table avatars, non terrible support, etc allow up to 30 tbls