Why won't sites let current players sign-up for rakeback?

[BurnleyMik]

I posted this in another forum, but didn't really get any answers. Can anyone shine any light on this?

Link

[RakeBackDirect]

Essentially, its my assumption that pokes sites feel as though if they already have you as a player, why give you rakeback. Rakeback is a marketing method to attract new players to a particular poker room just like first time deposit bonuses, etc. You can’t continue to receive first time deposit bonuses after you have deposited for the first time, much like you cannot receive rakeback if you did not sign up for rakeback before becoming a player of a given poker room. I hope this explanation helps!

Tim
RakeBackDirect

[BurnleyMik]

Thanks for your answer Tim and I can understand what you are saying, but surely it would be better to give you a small percentage of your rake back to you, than to lose a regular player?

I am not sure if you read the other thread, but basically I know that the sites already have you as a player, but a lot of players, myself included, did not know what rake back was all about when we first started playing online poker.

With rakeback being quite an important part of any regular players earnings, I think its a big thing if you cannot get it, therefore I would rather take my business elsewhere and sign up for a new site rather than play at one of the first sites I used and not be able to get rake back on my play.

As already stated I think the rake back paid by the site is around 37%, therefore that means 63% profit, but if I move away from the site because I cant get rakeback then they are losing 63% profit, for the sake of having to pay 37% out. Surely 63% is better than nothing at all??

I am not saying that they should make rake back common knowledge to all players (or should they?), but if you did not sign up through an affiliate and then request rake back on your play at a later date, then would it not be better for the site to allow this than to lose you playing there altogther??

It seems a false economy???

This is also stopping me playing regular poker at the site I actually prefer because there is no point giving my money away, as I would be doing without rake on my play.

So back to the original question.... why are sites 'cutting-their-noses-off-to-spite-their-face' so to speak?

ty

BM

[Bobo Fett]

I think it depends...are you talking about players that signed up through affiliates or directly with the site? In the latter case, the site certainly has the ability to do so, and I think they might be wise to do so in the case of players that aren't going to play there otherwise. However, if the player signed up through an affiliate originally, it gets tricky.

Poker sites have 2 primary ways to bring in new players. They can advertise themselves, or pay affiliates to bring in players for them. Obviously by utilising affiliates, they save themselves advertising costs, and are able to instead pay the affiliates. So the affiliates market to the players, and in return for bringing them new players, the site pays the affiliates...either a one-time CPA payment, or a share of the rake, or both.

Affiliates use a number of methods to bring in new players. Some affiliates are very small...maybe someone has a blog or other poker site with a banner ad or two (or several). Generally, these affiliates are not giving anything back to the players...one could argue they are giving back in the form of quality content. What kind of quality depends on the site, of course. Then there are affiliates that give out gifts in addition to the site's sign-up bonus - like PSO, Boogster, PokerSavvy, etc. Other affiliates choose to give players back a share of they rake they receive from the site - hence, rakeback. Some of the "gift" affiliates also offer rakeback at some sites.

Now the problem is, these affiliates have spent money bringing in these players. In the case of the blogs and other small sites, this investment may have been very minimal. In the case of the gift and rakeback affiliates, the investment may have been quite substantial. Also, for the gift and rakeback affiliates, there is quite a bit of overhead involved with reporting as well as communicating back and forth between players and sites.

To just allow a player to up and leave one affiliate for another at the drop of a hat would be devastating to the poker sites' relationships with their affiliates...for good reason. How happy would you be as the owner of affilate xyz if any player you spent money bringing in could be snatched away by another affiliate at any moment? Since the sites count on these affiliates to bring them players, they don't want to damage these relationships. Some sites are more stringent about this than others...Full Tilt, for example, is very strict...Cryptologic, fairly lenient. It would be interesting to hear from affiliates how this affects their relationship. It seems to me there are a lot more FT affiliates than Crypto...is this strictly tied to the size of the sites, or does their policy in regards to player movement have an effect on this?

Now, I think there could be some ways the industry could get through the aforementioned difficulties. Perhaps an affiliate agreement could have a set time limit...this could even renew automatically, but would allow a player to change if they wanted to. For example, maybe a player is tied to an affiliate for 6 months, or a year...if they don't give a month's notice they want to change affiliates, they are renewed for another term. Maybe it should be tied to dormancy...IE if a player never plays at a site for 3 months, 6 months, a year, what have you, they would then be allowed to change affiliates.

I'm not sure what the answer is, or if there even is a workable one. I do know that it seems silly to keep a player tied to an affiliate when that commitment means the player will never play at that site again. At the same time, players can't expect a site to allow them to change affiliates whenever they like. The site has contracted with the affiliate to bring them players, and whether the player likes it or not, the site has made a commitment to the affiliate. Players shouldn't forget that for the most part, rakeback is NOT something being paid by the site to the players...they are giving it to the affiliate in return for bringing them players. Some affiliates choose to give the players a piece of this, others do not. When a player chooses to sign up through an affiliate, that affiliate has been compensated by the site and a commitment has been made by the site to the affiliate. Players have their choice how to sign up, they are in control of whether they receieve any compensation. Unfortunately, many players are ignorant to the world of kickbacks and rakeback when they first start out...some remain that way for a long time, or even forever.

The more I think about this, the more I think the affiliate-poker site relationship should at the very least have an expiry period. If an affiliate sees a player has dropped off for a few months, they can check in with the player and see what the reason is...perhaps encourage and/or entice them to continue playing with them, thus keeping their relationship alive.

That's my $0.02 and then some.

[pipedreamz]

i think the sites should look at it like the matrix. if people that are plugged in wake up and leave but are unhappy,

the sites should entice them to come back and join the matrix willingly with perks, so that both can benefit.

otherwise the people will join a different matrix with better perks.

(i'm very bored in my philosophy class, so excuse the geekiness)

[JechtSphere]

I've been emailing Full Tilt about the way they're handling this issue recently, and a lot of you are pointing out the same obvious points that I am. Below are the two emails I've sent thus far:

I'm planning to be playing a lot from spring on through the rest of 2007, and I won't be doing so without the opportunity to cash in on rakeback like many other players receive. Now I know for fact that many of the top online players didn't have rakeback when they began playing on Full Tilt, but surprise! They're receiving rakeback now.

I know it can be done on your end, and I know there are multiple rakeback sites that will take me under their wing given the OK from you guys. I'll be paying over $2000 in rake to an online website each month, that's $24,000 a year. If you guys can't be so generous as to offer me rakeback simply because I had an account prior to knowing this existed, than something is wrong.

I know the top online players don't play at other sites for one reason; the rakeback. Your site is the largest site that offers rakeback, and that's why they are where they are. I also know that various top players didn't HAVE rakeback when they did start playing. But they do now. I know you guys can wave the flag and allow rakeback on any account you so wish.

I'm not asking for a lot of return on my $24,000; just the simple 27% offered to other players. I don't see why this can't be done. Can't wait to hear your response.


They're reply was simply the standard:

Hello,



Thank you for your email. Unfortunately we are no longer switching existing players to Rakeback accounts. I realize this causes a certain amount of frustration and inconvenience but at this time there is nothing more that can be done.



Once again I apologize.



Best regards,

Lisa

The Affiliate Team at Full Tilt Poker

And my reply was:



Do you have any idea how many accounts are lying around not being played because they aren't allowed to have rakeback? That means the money is going to the competition that will offer them such treatment. I think that if I compiled a list of the revenue you're missing out on across the board, just using users from the 2p2 forums and the pocketfives forums, you'd be in for a shock.

Which leads me to my next question; how does one become an affiliate? How does one become the guy who goes out there and gets people to sign up for rakeback accounts, etc.? Why not have a branch of affiliate that goes out there and recruits those dead-accounts to come and play based on the fact they'll get rakeback? It's a savvy business decision that anybody with ANY sense of business and profit at all would be chasing.

The goal of the rakeback account is to lure users in to play, correct? And your thought process at this point is that "well if we have them with real money accounts already, we don't need to offer this lure to an existing user". That's wrong, and selfishly so. There are numerous users out there who AREN'T playing on their existing accounts simply because you folks are being so pigheaded as to not realize this is disgustingly unfair to those left in the cold.

Tell me how you think it would go over if the great majority of your playerbase, the flapping fish in the sea, knew that they're being milked for money that they could be seing a percentage return on? Do you think they'd be rather pleased with that? Unlikely.

But those aren't the people we're worrying about. The people we're worrying about are the ones who are willing to play in extreme volume, generate massive amounts of MGR, and in the long run MAKE you more money than what you would be shelling out to the people I can bring to your footsteps. It just doesn't make sense to turn down so many willing users when I know it happens to certain persons accounts so often.


I think if enough of us got hasty with this, change will occur.

[Red Lion]

You are aware that you may already be attached to an affiliate right?

[JechtSphere]

I'm pretty sure I'm not though.

[Red Lion]

But you don't know for sure.

[JechtSphere]

Well either I signed up via pocketfives or I did it direct through the fulltilt site, it's that easy, so it's 50/50. My memory fails me as to whether or not I was a member of P5s when I signed up, and if I was whether or not I used their link.

In any case, what are you getting at?