My first private tourney

[Justin]

Well tonight was my first private tourney. I held an Ohio St vs. Michigan tournament through a new site I set up.... HoldEmRivals.com

I had anticipated 100-200 new players from the campaign on CPA at Bodog, which would make me around 10k-20k.

Well not everything went over as well as I had thought in Michigan. I spent $1500-$1900 on promos for the tourney I believe. Ill know more tommorrow when I add it all up.

As of last night I had 28 signups and 17 depositers. There was a big influx of players signing up today, so Im not sure how many new players I got off that.

Overall we had 49 players in the tournament. Its still going on as we speak. Im hoping I picked up about 10 more players today so I can make some money off this to finance some projects coming up.

I will update tommorrow when I get my stats and let you guys know.

[J S]

Buckeye, thanks for the report man, keep us in the loop as to how it went. I think your next tournament will be even bigger... i'd do a 'round 2' in another month or so, tap the email addresses you've collected, get them to your community etc...

I hope it works out well, I like the concept! What kind of things did you do for promotion?

[pokerguy]

Congratulations, sounds like you found a good marketing avenue. B)

[gumbajohnny]

Do not get fustrated if you hold it they will come.
Good luck.

[Kyle]

Is there rake requirement for Bodog CPA?

[BruinEric]

Thanks for letting us know how it is unfolding. I've been following your effort here because I'm trying to come up with a "business plan" for doing a similar thing.

When you have the energy, let us know what promotion avenues you took and where the money went. It might be interesting to discern what works and what doesn't work.

[kksuited]

100-200 sign ups would be insane. If you can get that, you need to start your own affiliate world site

Let us know how it goes.

[Justin]

Bodog stats didnt update today for some reason.

I emailed my AM tonight. Hopefully I know tommorrow how I did. Ill go over some of the marketing we did when I get it all figured out.

[Justin]

Stats updated today.

I pulled 28 new depositers off the tournament. Got a few other signups at Bodog this month as well.

$2800 on CPA

I spent around $1991 on all of the promotions and paying people to help.

- Rush Flyers $260
- New Site $100 Host
- New Site $100 Design
- New Flyer Design $60
- Michigan jersey $50
- Poster Design $100
- New Banner $50
- Shelb and Katie Modeling $100
- Hotel 64.79
- Gas 28.00
- Staple Gun 25
- Gas 21
- Shirts 15
- 49 Paid for players Rake
- 5 ipods : $500 (maybe a bit more)
- Press Release $80
- Helper $140
- Helper $50


The flyers were really nice I got 10k of them made and only handed out about 2k tops. I dont think I used them enough.

I wasted money on having 2 girls model for the posters. I paid them $100 total and also ordered a MIchigan jersey for the one girl. The pics looked like shit, and I just ended up getting some off of istockphoto and had a guy work with them for me.

I paid him $100 for the poster design. They were really sweet posters and I had setup to get 100 of them for $200 (18x24). Then I didnt get an answer form them. So I went to Kinkos and they wanted around $16 per poster!. So I just said fuck it Ill take the loss on the posters.

The tournament was supposed to be somewhat even OSU vs. UM. However only 5 UM players played and 44 OSU. I had a page on the site where i had every player listed for what team they were playing for. I added about 15 UM names and made it look like they just didnt show up. I didnt want it to look like it was our fault that UM players didnt play, and that we were trying to tip the scales to one side.

A lot of work for a small profit. I def. overestimated the interest in the tournament as I thought I would pull in more players in. But I guess I made money and I can use it to fund more projects I want to do. At leas I didnt fail horribly on the first tournament attempt.

On some more good notes. A lot of the people are now coming to OhioStatePOker.com more often. Everyone said they loved the tourney and had fun so it seems like It will help in the long run.

Thats about it.

[Kyle]

Amazing, you should be proud of yourself. Wont the university kick you out of school though, you must be walking on a thin robpe