While the percentage revenue plan (PRP) on various affiliate programs seem nice, hidden fees exist that will negatively affect your earning each month. Keep in mind that poker rooms like Full Tilt have frivolous fees that subtract from your monthly MGR totals. It is even possible for players to earn negative revenue each month. Poker affiliates have been fighting with sites like Full Tilt for a long time over such petty fees on PRP accounts without any luck. Before you sign-up under the percent of revenue generated plan realize that you are likely to be penalized beyond belief on a monthly basis. This article may even convince you that a cost-per-acquisition plan is the better choice. Here are a few affiliate terms and associated penalties you will run into as an affiliate.
Player Rake – Rake generated by the player in ring or cash games. This is what MGR & PRP affiliates make profits off of. This is also a major determining factor in the amount of rakeback a player receives.
Player Juice – Tournament or Sit & Go fees player has paid. If a player enters a tournament that costs $20+$2 an affiliate will be credited with $2.00 worth of "juice".
Fraud
When you refer players to a poker room and they become involved in fraudulent play you will get charged for it. Full Tilt and other card rooms are tracking game play for fraud. Collusion and outright cheating that results in a player winning a large sum of money will be reversed. As a poker affiliate you will suffer the most if the cheating player signed up through your affiliate link. Things could be going well for a month and then suddenly you get slammed with a fraudulent player and lose most of your revenue. Fraud also applies to deposit and withdrawal transactions. Stolen credit card deposits and phony withdrawals caught by a poker site will also penalize your affiliate revenue.
Bonus
One of the more common and understandable ways affiliate get penalized is through bonus redemption. A referred player who takes advantage of a deposit bonus will be penalized on your MGR as they clear their bonus. This is usually a one time monthly charge, since players only qualify for one bonus in most circumstances. Bonuses are a good thing for MGR and PRP affiliates since players usually play even more poker with the bonus money they have earned.
Player Added
This hidden fee is also one of the most difficult ones to explain. It involves the amount of additional money added to a tournament that the player plays in that isn’t covered by the collective total of players who entered. Added Money tournaments, Guaranteed tournaments and Freeroll/Promotional tournaments all qualify under "player added" fees. This is another ridiculous affiliate fee poker rooms add in.
Transaction Fees
Depositing and withdrawing money in and out of a poker account costs money for the poker room. Transaction fees are probably the most frivolous of the penalties associated with being an affiliate. Poker rooms should be thankful they can even get people to deposit money on their poker site. Affiliates shouldn’t have to be responsible for transaction fees – besides 90% of the people playing deposit money and never withdrawal from their account.
Used Points
If one of your affiliate referred players makes a purchase from the Full Tilt Store using "Full Tilt Points" (FTP) then the value of each point used gets deducted from your rake. The present value of a FTP in the store is .005 of a dollar. Full Tilt points are earned by players when the house takes rake out of a pot or tournament entry cost. Let’s say a player under your affiliate account decides to spend 80,000 FTP’s in the Full Tilt store on an IPOD – as an affiliate you would be penalized (0.005*80,000)*27%=108$
Before deciding what affiliate payment option to use consider the fees listed above. While collecting a percentage of revenue for the lifetime of a player may be enticing, you can certainly get yourself into a big hole if the quality of your players is poor. A one time flat payment may be a much better alternative and save you a lot of headaches down the road. On the other hand, if you are able to land talented players likely to play for a long time, it would be wise to utilize a percent revenue plan.
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