Success with giving away free money

[kaus]

I am trying to think of ways to get more people depositing so I was considering the deposit so much play so many hands and recieve XX amount in return. Are these a good investment? I would love to hear both the positive and negative feedback about this type of promotion.

[haynesey]

Originally Posted by kaus

I am trying to think of ways to get more people depositing so I was considering the deposit so much play so many hands and recieve XX amount in return. Are these a good investment? I would love to hear both the positive and negative feedback about this type of promotion.

I have seen people do this, on rev share obviously. Normally i've seen it on FTP where you earn 30% of what they rake even before they deposit. I think the problem is getting the initial deposit. If they wanted to play at a site which you promoted, and had money to deposit, why would they need more enticing?

[losercore]

In most cases I think it's bad business these days. All you're goint to get is scammers and nothing else.

[yodiyanka]

It can attract scammers but it can also attract real new players. I think it depends on what you propose your players.

If what you plan is a "money back" scheme (where the player gets refunded directly) it will attract 95% of bonus hunters, but if you
offer them poker related products that enhance their will to deposit then it will better work.

For example what I would give away would be poker sponsorships at other rooms or casinos (maybe owned by the same group), poker books,... you can imagine a lot of things.

You will have to talk to the rooms to make an agreement with them, because they may think that this doesn't get them valuable players...

[kaus]

Originally Posted by losercore

In most cases I think it's bad business these days. All you're goint to get is scammers and nothing else.

Maybe a dumb question but how do you get scammers if those players have to be tracked back to you? What about players who look for an extra incentive...yes possibly a bonus hunter but could they not turn into a real player and a loyal one at a that.

Just trying to understand it more thats all.

thanks for the advice

[losercore]

First you are going to deal with 1,000's of players saying they signed up and they want their money. You better have one hell of a tracking system. Second you are not going to be sending, in most cases, quality players to a site.

I did this for awhile and with a good CPA program you can make things work. You do need to be different than others though.

This is against most T&C's of the rooms so you risk not getting paid if theese players just play the minnimum hands and then take off. Any room will reserve the right to call them fraud players, because they are, and can refuse to pay you. But wait! You said you would give them all XX when they reached the minimum hands. Now the room won't pay you, but you can'y pay the players and no-one is happy.

Otherwise you do with MGR and it's just a rakeback program...

I know it seems frustrating right now and it would be so easy to give 1/2 your earnings away just for some earnings period.

There are much better things out there to do.

[losercore]

Let me just add this.

This was a common method for a lot affiliates years ago. It worked years ago because the poker rooms turned the other way a lot and did not care. Nowadays unless you are a select few (PSO, Savvy and a few others) you are not going to get away with it for long and will most lickley loose money and gain headaches.

Here is an example of something I did about 2 years. I offered 2 free poker books for ever new player a Titan that met the hand limits and i got a CPA for. With a negociated $200 CPA I figured this would be easy. I had tons of advertising and got this going well.

Within the first 3 months i had sent almost 75 RMP's to Titan (CP) and was paid. I then went through the awful task of figuring out the legit players form the ones that said the signed up. Titan does not give you personal information like most rooms don't and you are stuck with 75 players that you got paid for and 200 forms filled out that said they signed up and met the requirments.

Oops! That sucked. it was so hard to figure it all out that it was not worth it and I think some legit players got screwed and some scammers got 2 free poker books.

So I did it again with Party in a different way. Party always looked the otherway for this until now. That worked but Party held my money for 4 months while "Investigating" my payment.

Really it sucks

[kaus]

Thanks for the reply, I wasnt planning on doing it without discussing and getting approved by an AM first. I see your point and was going to g at it with mgr not CPA...might need to some more thinking first.

Thanks Core!

[PartyForFree]

Originally Posted by losercore

First you are going to deal with 1,000's of players saying they signed up and they want their money. You better have one hell of a tracking system. Second you are not going to be sending, in most cases, quality players to a site.

I did this for awhile and with a good CPA program you can make things work. You do need to be different than others though.

This is against most T&C's of the rooms so you risk not getting paid if theese players just play the minnimum hands and then take off. Any room will reserve the right to call them fraud players, because they are, and can refuse to pay you. But wait! You said you would give them all XX when they reached the minimum hands. Now the room won't pay you, but you can'y pay the players and no-one is happy.

Otherwise you do with MGR and it's just a rakeback program...

I know it seems frustrating right now and it would be so easy to give 1/2 your earnings away just for some earnings period.

There are much better things out there to do.

Originally Posted by losercore

Let me just add this.

This was a common method for a lot affiliates years ago. It worked years ago because the poker rooms turned the other way a lot and did not care. Nowadays unless you are a select few (PSO, Savvy and a few others) you are not going to get away with it for long and will most lickley loose money and gain headaches.

Here is an example of something I did about 2 years. I offered 2 free poker books for ever new player a Titan that met the hand limits and i got a CPA for. With a negociated $200 CPA I figured this would be easy. I had tons of advertising and got this going well.

Within the first 3 months i had sent almost 75 RMP's to Titan (CP) and was paid. I then went through the awful task of figuring out the legit players form the ones that said the signed up. Titan does not give you personal information like most rooms don't and you are stuck with 75 players that you got paid for and 200 forms filled out that said they signed up and met the requirments.

Oops! That sucked. it was so hard to figure it all out that it was not worth it and I think some legit players got screwed and some scammers got 2 free poker books.

So I did it again with Party in a different way. Party always looked the otherway for this until now. That worked but Party held my money for 4 months while "Investigating" my payment.

Really it sucks

No offence, but just because you couldn't figure out a way to make it work doesn't mean there isn't a way too. I personally believe that most problems are solvable.

First off, you can ask you AM at Titan to open up the players TTR ID's in their stats. I can see the activity of my players, on both CPA and MGR accounts. As for players saying they met the play requirements and didn't, again, this is an easy thing to do in a number of ways. If you have access to player stats with a unique identifier (player name, TTR ID, etc...) then technology can easily determine for you which players have met requirements.

If you're talking about a relatively small number of players like 75 over a few months, then simply ask your AM to confirm if these players did or did not qualify you for a payment.

Much of this will depend on the room you deal with.

We're going to be offering Stars for free gift promotions soon. Can you see your Stars players names in your stats? No. Is there a way to make this type of promotion work? For me, yes...there is.

I'm not saying kaus should or should not run with this type of promo, simply that there are ways to make most things work if you examine all the ways of doing something.

In my opinion, there are so many affiliates competing these days that incentive based promos really do sell well. I could go to your site and get a deposit bonus. Or I could go to PSO, my site, or others and get the same (sometimes better) deposit bonus AND a set of chips, or dvds, etc...

[DealerDan]

Originally Posted by yodiyanka

I think it depends on what you propose your players.

This is a very key line. You should know your players, and market to the different demographics. Really too much to go into - but for example if you have a bunch of beginner players, you can market to them by telling them two "must-read" poker books, giving reasons as to why they NEED these books. Then at the end of said article or webpage you state that they can get them free by playing at site XXX and generating $XXX in MGR or whatever.

Incentive based promos - if done well - can be very lucrative. However for every 1 person who does it well, 99 others will fail