CPA or Revenue Share
February 20, 2008 | General Affiliating
When you sign up for an online poker affiliate program, you will normally be offered a choice between a CPA plan and a Revenue Share plan. Some rooms like PokerStars will restrict affiliates to CPA only, but 80% of the time you will have a choice between the two. But which one should you choose? And which one is going to be the most profitable for you as an affiliate? Well before we answer these questions, let’s give a brief overview on what CPA and Revenue Share are:
CPA: This stands for ‘Cost Per Acquisition’, as you will be paid a lump sum of money for every real money player that you send to the poker room. There are usually a set number of raked hands or points requirements that each player must meet before you are credited with a CPA, which helps to prevent fraud. This is because it is not going to be profitable for the room to pay you $100 or so for the people depositing and playing a small number of hands and then leaving.
Revenue Share: This is also known as MGR, and refers to the plan that gives you a percentage of a total players rake for the life of that player. Therefore if you refer a player to a room offering 25% MGR and generates $200 in rake in one month, you will receive $50. This will continue from month to month for the life of that player, so every time they play at the room you will receive a percentage of the rake that they generate each time.
CPA vs MGR (Revenue Share)
Now the question is… should you choose the MGR deal or the CPA deal? On first impression it looks as though CPA plan is pretty sweet, I mean send a few players to a poker room in a month and you are already making a few hundred dollars. But although this sounds pretty good, it’s the Revenue Share plan that is going to be earning you by far the most amount of money in the long run.
Many new affiliates will go for the CPA deal because they do not realise the true value of the players that they send to the online poker rooms. Sure, a number of players you send to the room will play for micro-stakes and earn you very small amounts, but a large number of people will actually play for the moneymaking stakes in around the $1/$2 games or higher. If you refer someone that plays at the $1/$2 no limit games and plays for just 10 hours a month, that player will generate around $2000 in rake. So on a 25% MGR deal you are going to get a nice $500 cut.
Another thing to remember is that the CPA deal is always going to be working in favour of the poker room, and not yours. You might think that if you send some small-time players generating $5 or $10 for the room and still get paid your $100 CPA for each of those players, you are sadly mistaken. When an affiliate manager browses over your account and sees that your players are not worth much to them, it is within their rights to withhold the money from you until they start generating more money. Why would the poker room want to pay you $1000 for referring 10 players if those players only make $50 for the room? The simple answer is… they wouldn’t.
At the end of the day, the affiliate is always going to get the raw end of the deal with CPA. You are never going to get paid more than what your players are worth, and you are never going to get paid enough for what the big players are worth. So it makes sense to stick with the honest and more profitable MGR deal. You often find affiliates switching from CPA to MGR, but it is pretty rare to find an affiliate switching away from MGR.
Special Cases
There are however a handful of situations where I might voluntarily choose a CPA deal over MGR. This first will be when the CPA is incredibly high in comparison to the MGR. For example, if the CPA is $150+ and the MGR is 20%, it is going to be difficult for the majority my players to earn me $150 in at the end of the day. The players would have to rake $750 for me just to break even. However, the room is still going to pay me if those players generate $150 or more in rake directly for the room. So in this case it’s probably going to work to my advantage to choose CPA over MGR.
The other time I might choose CPA will depend on my goals as an affiliate. There may be instances where I would want to earn a quick payment for my efforts for a website that I am working on, and so a CPA plan would fit this nicely. However, the majority of the time I am going to go with the deal that will make me the most money overall, and that’s MGR.
Conclusion
The only real downside to the MGR plan is that it may take a few months before you build up a good player base and start generating a solid amount of money. With a CPA deal you can start earning some high figures right from the off, but with MGR it is going to take a little longer. But if you plan on being a dedicated affiliate and want to choose the plan that will earn you the most money in the long run, you should choose the MGR plan wherever possible.
To check out all the CPA and MGR deals on offer from the poker rooms, visit the poker affiliate programs page.
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