A Note to All Casinos - You will Be Removed

[casinoranking]

These past few months have seen some exponential growth in the traffic that my websites are receiving. In the meantime I have witnessed the worse and best that this industry has to offer.

Some casinos like Casino Profit Share ran a special promotion in May and paid 40% commission for Music Hall Casino. I decided to take this group up on this generous offer, and featured this casino. For the first time I hit the 5 figure mark with this program. The support has always been upstanding, if I send an email i get an immediate response.

Casinos that start commissions off at 35% are willing to negotiate special rates with me, and I sometimes decide to list these casinos and to cooperate in an effort to bring in the most new players and to have a mutually beneficial relationship.

As time goes on most casinos have increased my commissions. Not only that but they are there for me if I need them. I normally have a great time with most affiliate managers. Hannah from slotland is a great example, she is always courteous and willing to help.

There's a lot of casinos that are also great with support but I will skip out for the sake of brevity.

Yet during all this. Some casinos that offer some of smallest commissions available (25%) seem to try to give me some negative incentives. Unless I keep sending them new players they will move my commission down to 20%. One great example of this is Roxy Affiliates.

Well Roxy, I am going to remove all of your links. The reason I did not promote you is because I never made good money with your programs. Instead of fixing the problems with your conversion and retention rate you decide to penalize affiliates. All this will serve to do, as in my case, is to remove the last links that were going to your website. I had no problem doing this with referback, and I earned A LOT more with them. I am sure I wont be the only webmaster to do this.

You seem to be forgetting that at this moment in time, there's too many casinos and affiliate networks for us to send our traffic to. When a network makes a move like this, it's the incentive that we need to send our traffic elsewhere.

20% is a slap in the face. It's a slap from any program. And please dont tell me it's because your costs are high, if that was the case no other microgaming casino could afford to pay us 30 - 50% commission.

[chill]

Totally agree, your gone and I won't miss you a sec and vice versa, but that's another story.

[kidd75219]

I also agree. Your links are gone. Why send someone to a cowardly place that is afraid of high rollers? Who wants to play Jungle Jim Slots for a maximum coin size of a dime, when all the other casinos are half a buck. And it's like that with the majority of your games. Roxy Palace definitely does not want your high rollers.

And to launch a sister site without offering it to the affiliates? That is really chickens**t

[1CasinoListing]

Ooops... either I missed this posting when I started to write mine in the other thread... or it took me so long to write mine that this one was started in the mean time... anyway, what I had to say can be found here: https://www.gpwa.org/forum/viewtopic...418&highlight=

[win_your_wager]

Same here. Removing Roxy links (& some others) from my sites on the next update I do.

[universal4]

After my brief meeting with Garth (it lasted about 27 seconds) in Las Vegas last year, I could clearly see how little affiliates meant to Roxy. The recent actions drive that point home.

Thank you for that 27 seconds as Roxy was the first property that came down when I got back....and that saved me from having to pull them now.

Rick
Universal4

[Amateur]

Yes Rick,

I remember how he asked you to do him the favor of removing his casino from your network!!

It was very nice of you to oblige him so quickly. Apparently your cooperation wasn't enough for him, and he has set about driving away others as well.

These results should satisfy him very nicely.

[universal4]

Yes Liz....and by the way, I have DOUBLED the size of my network since then.

Rick
Universal4

[bigbcasinos]

If the actions of Roxy and others makes you remove their links, then of course it's each persons right. And believe me, they for sure were aware that there would be a reaction.

It was however hardly the affiliate manager that chose the affiliate program changes though. These changes were brought on by management.

This includes a number of other groups too.

Lets not make this personal and about the actions and emotions of the affiliate manager.

[Amateur]

Yes Rick,

I remember how he asked you to do him the favor of removing his casino from your network!!

It was very nice of you to oblige him so quickly. Apparently your cooperation wasn't enough for him, and he has set about driving away others as well.

These results should satisfy him very nicely.

Garth did that!!

[chill]

Yes Liz....and by the way, I have DOUBLED the size of my network since then.

Rick
Universal4

you got 2 sites now?

[bigbcasinos]

Lets not get into wars here.

The point then is that an affiliate manager, one who's sole reason for employment is to work with an affiliate, asked an affiliate to leave. I have to read more into it than simply "he doesn't care about affiliates"

I read into it that there was a full on personality clash. In cases like this, it is sometimes better to cut ties. Happens in the real world too. Divorce can be rather messy and so on and so on. It all comes down to what caused the divorce? Something went astray in the affiliate/program marraige (aka relationship) so they divorced.

Garth has never asked me to leave (nor anyone else that I am aware of) and I am not his biggest affiliate by a long chalk. When I phoned him today and discussed this program change with him he wasn't overjoyed that some webmasters were leaving, not by a long chalk. He has to support his management though and work with them and the affiliates.

There is NO reason to climb into the affiliate manager. I will defend that to the hilt.

To state, and I quote

he has set about driving away others as well. These results should satisfy him very nicely

is unsubstantiated and incorrect. You have no right to put words in the mouth of another.

I will ask Garth to post here though but if I can say it for him, affiliates are indeed welcome at Roxy Palace.

[DVS007]

I can assure you that Garth had nothing to do with the recent changes in the terms and conditions. Trust me when I say he doesnt have that kind of power over the owners. This is a case of "dont shoot the messenger". Much better to send the messenger back with a message to the owners if you would like.
I can only speak for myself but Garth has always provided me with the highest level of support.
In the interests of professionalism lets keep in business and not personal.

[Amateur]

Not to squabble, but facts are facts, no matter how you slice it. Garth did, in fact, tell Rick to remove Roxy from Rick's sites. You may not like it, Rick didn't like it, but it did happen exactly that way.

He may be the nicest guy in the world, but why try to deny something that is a fact?

[VPJunkie]

I agree that Garth isn't responsible for the changes in the T&C's, but he is entirely responsible for affiliate relations, or the lack thereof.

[casinoglen]

OK. Time to step in.

As I recall, the thread was started with a comment that a casino was being taken down, because of percentage drops. It has nothing to do with why someone may or may not have removed a particular casino nearly a year ago.

Garth's ability to work with an affiliate or lack thereof has nothing to do with these MGS casinos across the board dropping peoples percentages or anything else. I can only guess that the decision came from "upstairs" as many of the others have stated. I don't know, I wasn't there.

But in my opinion, the remark was uncalled for, because it has nothing to do with the issue at hand. Perhaps many will disagree with me, but that's the way I see it.

I'm working in the background, amongst other things, trying to get things turned around at least for GPWA members, which would be a start in the right direction anyhow. Casinoranking started a very legitimate topic, globally explaining to programs why he was going to remove them. Roxy just happened to be one of the ones pointed out. Garth's attitude in Vegas last year was not the subject of the thread............

Instead of getting into a lot of he said she said, why don't we try to work on getting things turned back around, because maybe I read casinorankings wrong, but it looked to me like he was trying to get doors opened up by at least letting everyone know why they were losing him.

That said, let me let everyone know right now, that I speak on behalf of myself, and no one else. Everyone is not going to like everyone. That's a fact. I'm sure there are members in here who don't like me as well.

Bottom line: let's keep the threads on topic, and again, I'll ask one more time, leave personalities out of it. If you want to get on to someone, do it in private. That's not what GPWA is about. It's counter-productive and stunts the growth of ANY organization.

[Amateur]

It would be extremely joyful if personalities had no effect on the outcome of our business relationships. In a perfect world they would not.

Unfortunately, as we have seen oh so many times, this is a business, where all we have to go on is the personalities of the individuals we have to deal with. We don't have personal meetings to go on, so when we do meet one another, one would think that it would be an opportunity to strengthen relationships.

Sometimes, that is not the case, and has a bearing on what business can take place with a program.

In keeping with this topic, whether to keep a program up, or take it down, is directly affected by how we interact with the people who represent the program, and what relationships have developed between an affiliate and a given program.

Affiliate managers move from one program to another. Whether you had a good relationship with a person, directly affects whether their new program will get a chance when that person comes on board. Whether I like a manager also makes a difference when making business decisions. Whether online, or out in the "real" world.

In essence, we're making "hand-shake" deals, since the contracts are not worth the paper they are "not" printed on! We are taking the word of the people we deal with. And that means we have to decide whether they can be trusted to keep their word..that's a matter of "personality", or "integrity", or whatever euphemism you want to use.

Can you imagine your employer stating that payday is on the 1st and 15th, and then telling employees they wouldn't be paid that day. How long would that place stay in business? How long would you work for them? How long will your lights stay on if your bill isn't paid?

That's how it is. Our business relationships are built on personalites, on trust. Can't get around that, much as it would be nice to do so.

[ntaus]

I hesitate to say this but I have to support and encourage Brian for his diplomacy in advocating moderation on this board with all the garbage that we've been getting lately in several threads. I have never seen him allow his emotions to set off flames in any situation - this is business folks

My applause, also, to DVS007.

John, thank you for stepping in. This situation with casinos changing T&Cs and then almost immediately effecting their changes is bound to upset us all - but we can't make any difference by emoting.

I'm a very small mover but I have business with Roxy and have seen my percentage cut to 20% this month. My present policy is to wait and see what eventuates. Roxy will have to present some kind of defense for making this abrupt change without prior notice and for the new casino about which we weren't told.

Of course, the fact that it takes me three hours to pull down all my links and a full page review for each casino (sometimes on two sites) and substitute someone else might have something to do with this approach

ntaus (the sheila)

[Maxfalcon]

Sorry to be as late, but can someone recall me which MGS affiliate programs have changed their T&C lately? I missed a lot of things - really couldn't afford to follow everything.

If I remember from what I briefly seen:

- Referback (initiated this a long time ago)
- Brightshare
- Roxy Palace
- Vegas Partner
- Fortune Affiliates

Are there others missing?

From my point of view, I would have understood a move for a program starting paying at let's say, 30%. For a program paying at 30,35 -> 50, dropping their percentage to 25%, or anything above, for no new players, would have been OK, but from 25 -> 20%... it's really low guys! We're in the casino affiliate marketing... wake up! It's highly profitable and everyone knows it...

After, maybe Microgaming is becoming too greedy! For my part, I will continue sticking with PlayTechs!

[roxymanager]

Hi all,

I have not gone through all the posts yet - I will do as soon as I am done here - but just want to clarify one thing.

I WOULD NEVER "order" a webmaster to remove our links. Seriously, that makes no sense whatsoever.

I did briefly speak to Rick in Vegas. The first thing he told me we was that we do not convert for him. I said that I understand and am aware that no one casino converts for every webmaster and I understand if he removes us. Actually I think it had something to do with Poker, not casino.

Again, I WOULD NEVER tell anyone to remove our links unless they were fraudulent (but then I would simply lock their account). I may suggest taking us down if conversions are not good until we can make changes but tell someone they HAVE TO remove our links, not a chance.

I do apologise Rick if it sounded like that but I am sure you would have told me what to do with my "order" if that were the case.

Ok, back to the thread and I will then respond to any further questions, just wanted to clear that up.