Over the last two weeks, this has been THE biggest issue in the poker affiliate industry that I can remember in the last couple years. The current thread running at PAP has 360+ posts in it and almost 12,000 views. I think some affiliates have been wanting me to come out and publicly rip on FullTilt. I have spoken my peace a few times buried in that thread about how shitty I think the situation is.

There is no doubt that whatever excuses there are, if this involves rakeback, or if the policy gets changed to 90 days or whatever……….there is a certain amount of greed being shown by the executives at FullTilt. There are so many various arguments to this whole thing from each side, that it has really become quite a complex situation. Hell I could write an entire weeks worth of blog posts about all the various arguments.

• Is it FullTilt’s job to convert the players after we send them?
• What is FullTilt’s involvement with rakebackpros.com?
• Will existing players in our accounts be grandfathered out of this?
• Will these players continue being marketed to and converted with better offers after the 60 days is up?

In my opinion what the FullTilt executive team is thinking is this; They spend exponentially more money on print, television, and offline ads than on affiliate marketing. So if we send a player, and they don’t convert in that 60 day time frame, their real money conversion had to with some other form of marketing that FullTilt was doing and not our affiliate campaign. I might agree with this if it were 365 days or even 180……but 60 days, Hell No….. It is FT’s job to convert my PMP’s with newsletters, emails, bonuses, and great events like FTOPS. Some players may take longer than 60 days.

But if I don’t send FullTilt these players in the first place, they will never have this opportunity to convert them over the next few months (post 60 days).

Here’s the thing though. I have been in this industry for quite a while. There will always be some bullshit going on that is not fair to affiliates. I remember when Party/Empire were the same company and Empire offered rakeback while Party didn’t. We had the same issues there. I can think of multiple issues with rooms not tracking right over the years. Or times when rooms merged or were bought out and the affiliates lost their players. I also remember after the UIGEA I had money just disappear out of some affiliate accounts, and heard there is no way to pay us.

Hell, speaking of UIGEA, that stung harder than this whole FT thing ever will. The point is that we work in the online gaming industry. As much as I would love to see these companies affiliate programs operate with the integrity of CJ.com, Linkshare.com, and the big retail affiliate programs, it will never happen.

Although I strongly disagree with FT’s policy, there is plenty of money to be made with the other big rooms. Plus the whole thing is giving me a headache. I am not going to stress about it as there is really nothing any of us can do. If you are planning on removing Fulltilt from your sites, that’s 100% your decision. Be smart though and make this a positive by leveraging it. Tell the other A.M.’s you want to send them your FT traffic and negotiate a better deal.

Great Post, the UIGEA definitely hit harder. I think the biggest issue for me about the ftp situation is that if ftp can get away with it other poker rooms may try to also. So then it becomes an industry standard.

“In my opinion what the FullTilt executive team is thinking is this; They spend exponentially more money on print, television, and offline ads than on affiliate marketing. So if we send a player, and they don’t convert in that 60 day time frame, their real money conversion had to with some other form of marketing that FullTilt was doing and not our affiliate campaign. I might agree with this if it were 365 days or even 180……but 60 days, Hell No….. It is FT’s job to convert my PMP’s with newsletters, emails, bonuses, and great events like FTOPS. Some players may take longer than 60 days.”

Some players signed up with my links months ago deposited now when I placed some banners with new FTOPS event series on my site (And also some topics about it). So I helped converting old sign ups.

I really just don;t push FT that much anyway. They left a sour taste in my mouth a long time ago. There is plenty of programs to promote that bend over backwards to help us. I won’t waste my time on a site that doesn’t care..

I think we need to move on, their minds have been made up, and start looking at other alternatives. If you have a choice between running a tournament for your members at FTP or PokerStars.com, I think the choice is now obvious. The only way for us to really have an impact is to stop complaining about it, and hitting them where it counts (in the number of players we send them).

I hope with all the outrage that they will change their policy. I could accept 1 year as the cut off point.

60 days is not long enough. Six months would even be fine IMO but its not really affiliates jobs to convert the player once over to the site. Its the sites job at that point. FTP really misses on a lot of points. They lack many tournaments that other sites already have. The step tournaments at PP were great to bring in lower level new players. I wouldnt mind seeing FTP add more options. I am still waiting for a site to add a HU MTT tournament format.

“As much as I would love to see these companies affiliate programs operate with the integrity of CJ.com, Linkshare.com, and the big retail affiliate programs, it will never happen.”

I DISAGREE: Someday, we will be working with mgmaffiliates, or venetian affiliates, or thewynn affiliates…..when the industry is legalized and regulated.

5 months or 5 years from now, it will happen (fingers crossed).

Regulation would be the way but it has to be done in a way to make it easy for the user and the company providing the service. Many things would have to change. Its going to be awhile I think. I actually thought partypoker would go private and come back into the US but that hasnt happened.

Party Poker is on the verge of collapse.. They have blown up their own market..

Blown up their own market?

Nice post