Should You Offer Rakeback As A New Poker Affiliate?
March 28, 2008 | General Affiliating
The background
If you have been playing for a while, or you are familiar with the world of online poker, you will know that rakeback is made available to players at certain poker sites. There are many poker websites out there offering all of the standard links and bonuses to poker rooms to make money, and there are also a number of rakeback sites out there offering rakeback to players instead of the standard bonuses.
Without going into too much detail for those that do not know, rakeback is where players are able to get a percentage of their rake back if they sign up through certain affiliate websites, rather than through other affiliates or by directly signing up for the site.
Therefore this makes it attractive for players that know about rakeback to only ever sign up through a rakeback affiliate site wherever possible, instead of missing out on the opportunity to get some of their money back.
So now am I already hearing most of you saying: “Why would I want to set up a new poker website and not offer rakeback then?”
The problems
1) Firstly, players that sign up for rakeback are getting their money from your affiliate earnings. Say for example you are getting a standard 35% commission from a poker room, and offer 30% rakeback to your players who sign up to that poker room. You will only be receiving a total of 5% of the money that your rakeback players generate, because the other 30% will be going back to them.
2) Secondly, you get the best commission and rakeback deals by sending lots of players to poker rooms in the first place. If you are a new affiliate, the affiliate programs have no reason to give you better rakeback and commission, so you will be stuck with a low rakeback rate to offer your visitors.
So because these rakeback visitors are knowledgeable, they will know you are offering a low rakeback deal, and look for some other rakeback site offering something better. Rakeback players are very educated poker players, and so they will always search around for the best deals.
3) Thirdly, poker rakeback is an incredibly competitive market, with big websites investing lots of money and working hard to make sure they are at the top of the search engines for all of the best rakeback terms. Rakeback affiliates are so competitive that it would even be difficult to rank for many of the smaller terms that could bring in visitors to your site looking for rakeback.
Because of these problems, it means that as a new affiliate you will be working very hard and competing against other big affiliates just for a small slice of affiliate income. So anyone with a bit of common sense will tell you that it’s not going to be worth your while to put all your effort into trying to make money as a rakeback affiliate. Not as a new affiliate anyway.
So what should you do?
Just stick to promoting online poker rooms normally.
Just because a number of poker players know about rakeback, it doesn’t mean that they all do. There are still thousands upon thousands of players out there that are completely unaware about rakeback, and you have the opportunity to snap them up through your poker website offering the standard bonuses the poker rooms offer. There is no need to concern yourself with rakeback as a new affiliate.
There is also a large amount of money to be made offering standard bonuses, so don’t feel as though you are missing out by not offering rakeback. If you are still not convinced, take a look at www.everypoker.com. That site makes more money in one month than most people make in a year, so don’t think that there is no money to be made by becoming a standard affiliate. The overwhelming number of poker players are still unaware that rakeback is available.
Even if you are still afraid to miss out, there are a number of poker rooms that do not offer rakeback whatsoever. So if you affiliate for these rooms, the rakeback players will not have any reason to not sign up to the room through your site if you are not a rakeback affiliate, because they would not be able to get rakeback for the room anyway.
Rooms like Chili Poker, Titan Poker, Chan Poker and many more do not offer rakeback, so give them a try out.
Summary
As a new poker affiliate, you should sign up to affiliate programs normally, and leave rakeback alone. It is a far too competitive market to try and make money in, and it’s more likely that you will fail if you are just starting out. Maybe in the future when you are a more educated poker affiliate you could try making a rakeback website, but as a new affiliate you should stick with the tried and tested method that is more likely to make you money.
No comments yet.