5dimes - pissed off

[Sherlock]

5dimes are off for 3 hours. Creatives do not work, text links are untracked. The shop is great, but living in middle ages in terms of servers.

Their response is: You know, NFL has started and there is a lot of traffic. Jesus ******* christ. The start of NFL is unexpected like snow in winter. 1st day of the season is better for registrations than Superbowl. Well.. would be...

[Sherlock]

omfg they just told us there was no loss when all creatives were offline all the time and ended in whitescreens

[PROFRBcom]

5D is not very affiliate friendly... not unless you do massive amounts of business with them.

[Sherlock]

Well. I do massive business with them...

But it is what angle you use to look at them.

Their gif banners and system is obsolete. The % rev share is low. Their owner is CEO, he is famous for multiple threats of bettors - yes he is going to live chat personally, he is claiming he is a god, and yes, he is de facto head ofaffiliates as well 5dimes is a mafia.

On the other side:
Only their affiliate stats show you who bet on what and how much at the second the bet is made. Their deductions are transparent and low. Their retention rate and handling big square bettors is A+++. Their crazy owner/CEO/head of everything knows the business and leaves his heart there. So it is a well run mafia.

We were forwarded by Tony to some other person so let we see how they handle it. I do not care about money lost (it would have been huge numbers today), but what I care is if they fix the problem. And affiliates simply refuse to see the problem and that is very sad. Bettingpartners last time promised to fix the traffic problem, but nothing happened. Betfair were offline as well.

Did those guys ever heard about cdn?

[eaton2003]

5dimes is a good shop, and offers some real solid betting lines for their players. However like the majority of sports books they focus on the squares. As for the affiliate software it is proprietary yet dated. I only send traffic to 5dimes through text links and any banners I have promoting them I host myself. 5dimes are picky on the affiliates they select but several top affiliates would agree that their player value remains high and they have a loyal based of players. GoldenAffiliates.com which is the affiliate program behind VietBet and Betanysports is well worth looking into as these are essentially white labels of 5dimes but have more competitive commissions and a well managed affiliate program.

[Gamer]

I didn't know there are white labels of 5dimes. Interesting!
By the way, text links works the best and I always host banners, etc. on "my own", for any affiliate programs.
Thanks for sharing information.

[Sherlock]

The best programmes do not allow you to host your own images, it is always js. With 5 dimes it would be possible because they are obsolete.

However when their downtime occurs it does not help you even with textlinks. Their affiliate domain used for textlink is affilaites.5dimes.com while the target url is 5dimes.eu. Whole domain affiliates.5dimes.com was down, so nothing worked.

[PROFRBcom]

I've seen so many problems with white label poker operators over the last dozen years, I tend to avoid them. I presume that sportsbooks could run into the same problems... The pattern tends to go something like, the white labels don't advertise well, in an attempt to get more volume they aggressively recruit the wrong type of customer (high volume, low margin) as well as recruiting an over mix of shadier affiliates who are only concerned about commission %. In the end the skin fails, players and affiliates get screwed much of the time, bleh!

I suppose with sportsbetting being the main focus it could be different, given the much higher margins available... still, the thought irks me

[justbookies]

I've seen so many problems with white label poker operators over the last dozen years, I tend to avoid them. I presume that sportsbooks could run into the same problems... The pattern tends to go something like, the white labels don't advertise well, in an attempt to get more volume they aggressively recruit the wrong type of customer (high volume, low margin) as well as recruiting an over mix of shadier affiliates who are only concerned about commission %. In the end the skin fails, players and affiliates get screwed much of the time, bleh!

I try to avoid white labels too. As well as your reasons I have seen them put out of business when they fall out with the main operator. White labels are just affiliates in drag.

PS: I have been impressed with 5dimes over the years. Sure the software is pretty unique with no bells and whistles but it works, is fast, to the point and easy to use. I can see why their sportsbook has a good reputation in the US space.

[universal4]

I think all the BEST programs allow you to host your own creatives, and I highly doubt I would work with anyone who didn't.

Many many times over the years we have seen banner servers go down for one reason or another, and "WHEN" that happens, it will often affect page load times on thousands of affiliate sites around the world. The absolute best defense against that ever happening is to serve the creatives yourself.

I do not currently work with 5 dimes, but after the last few threads I have read about them, their elitest attitude and the possibility they demand creatives to be served by them, I will likely not even bother considering them as they do not sound very small affiliate friendly anyway.

Rick
Universal4

[Sherlock]

Actually 5dimes asked us to store their creatives now, so times changed. After we store the most exposed banners, they are not down anymore.

++++++++++++++++++++

Great news about 5dimes is - and especially for US based affiliates - they they do payouts in Bitcoins now. They just sent us over 100 BTC as affiliate payment, very easy, I am quite excited about the option. They are somehow partnered with bitstamp, so they can do pretty big payments I am sure. And the exchange rate is absolutly fair.

Good job. Which bookie is next?

[Gamer]

Sherlock, I know you doing well with 5Dimes and all informations about this program are welcome.
I am not much into the "ready made banners" provided by affilaite programs.
However, if I use any banners - I always host them by myself, for any brand.

That's really great news for you, mean receiving affiliate payments in BitCoins.
I never heard about any program that offer this way of payments.
I understand that you have account at bitstamp, Sherlock?

By the way, you have not answered my question, posted somewhere on this forum.
If affiliate that permanently reside outside US, but host his site in California, US - it is wise for him to promote e.g. 5Dimes services that are targeted for US players?
I would appreciate your answer, Sherlock. Thank you.

[Sherlock]

No, I do not use bitstamp. I have more EURos than USD and the best exchange for EUR/BTC is http://kraken.com, where I have account and buying now massively. It is my bet on BTC finally. I think bottom was reached. Just opinion of course, but I have big money on it. For buying BTC with USD is best btc-e.com, who has usually 5-10 USD/BTC better exchange rate than Bitstamp and rest of market. Hard to say why, but they are anonymous, Russian and less trusted.

I just said that 5dimes use middle Bitstamp rate, when they convert USD <-> BTC. You do not need to have account at exchange to be paid by/pay to 5dimes (as affiliate or player).

Sorry that I did not see your question. I would not be scared of the hosting if you are outside. Worst that can happen is that the hosting company will show you door, after the legal gambling mafia will knock on their door, but I hope there is long way there, because so far nobody had problems.

BTC payment to USA is for sure great improvement. Much faster and not so suspicious as payments from returned goods from Mexican florist shop or how the Carribean bookies always smuggle the money into states Affiliate then can exchange BTC back and mark it as "internet promotion services" and no authority in the US will be able to proof something else. I hope guys from Cris, Betonline and Calvin Ayre read this.

[Gamer]

Thanks for your feedback.
Just visited kraken.com. The deep of the market is mpressive! They found niche in Euro exchange.

I just wonder whether 5Dimes have so many clients that bring in BitCoins.
!!?? it's seems so, if they are able to pay you in BitCoins.

"so far nobody had problems" - you calmed me very much!

[Sherlock]

Yes.. and they are California based ironically. Kraken's CS is perfect, their boss is answering on forums, SEPA depositis Austria->Germany, where is their bank takes 24 hours. BTC payout from Kraken is in 5 mins.

I do not think there will be many BTC clients at 5dimes, but I think they have some deal with Bitstamp about the middle rate. So I guess 5dimes do not hold bitcoins, they just bring some liquidity on BTC market and they offer more options for customers. Just guessing of coursebased on communication with them about the payout, where they acted like that they need some 3rd party approval (which came quickly). If they had the BTC, they would not need some approval. Either way it works and works quite well.

[DanHorvat]

5Dimes have an A+ rating over at SBR, and the "I am God" speech was delivered to a player who won $50.000 on a $250-limit market using fradulent activity.

FYI.

[Sherlock]

I just wonder whether 5Dimes have so many clients that bring in BitCoins.
!!?? it's seems so, if they are able to pay you in BitCoins.

I have made graph from 5dimes blockchain analysis, because I figured out we amazingly can see how many customers they have (I am curious if they know that their BTC accounting is public case). 2 payments came to me from same address. Not sure if they use more. I have blacked out the address though.

It seems payments are slightly rising, hopefully soon we will see exponencial curve.

[PROFRBcom]

What exactly does the left axis represent in your chart Sherlock?

[Sherlock]

vertical axis is amount of btc that goes in (blue) or out (red)... (my 100+ affiliate transfer is seen top right)
1btc ws worth of 300-450 usd roughly during the last weeks
Yes bitcoin fluctuates, but now hardly few percent per day to common currencies. 5dimes made the exchange rate as promised, derived from market rate at given minute. One can obtain BTC transaction withing minutes and thencan immediatelly exchange it back and withdraw to his US bank. That is something, what isfor US bettors HUGE improvement. 100x faster, 100x cheaper, 100xmore anonymous, than other financial transactions they must do with their Carribean bookies.

it is ike open bank account statement...bitcoin works like this, all payments are anonymous in a way, that who has "password" to the "bitcoin" has the money, so it can not be told who has the money, because nobody knows who has the password

but in other way is bitcoin much more transparent, because when you know the unique "bitcoin address", you can see all transactions of that address [e.g. on websites like http://blockchain.info, from where I took the data for the graph]

I am not writing it in precise terms, so if here is some bitcoin specialist, do not kill me. I am trying to write it in simple terms. Maybe I am writing something that everyone knows, but I did not know those things in close past, so I guess it can be handy to other ppl, since you ask.

[Sherlock]

I just got weird payout rule by 5dimes. They have limit 10k/week for payouts in BTC. Since now I accumulated more than that, I asked for higher payout limit. They told me ok, be it 20K, but you will pay 5% fee. Weird.