Any luck with Rake Race Sites?

[SmackDog]

Just wondering if anyone has good luck with rake race sites?

I'm thinking of starting one, but am wondering how difficult they are to start up and how much time they take to run?

Thanks.

[Newjabber]

So you want to host your own rake races? Why not just promote the PAS rakeraces?
I have a pretty sick rake race domaine, so hit me up if you dont have a domain for the project yet.

[actyper]

Easy to start up, and for a standard site simply a once a month update to refresh all new race offers. With so many rakeback providers doing their own rake races, you are pretty much forced into promoting those in conjuction with the sites own rake races. With my site i'm promoting a PAS rakerace site, but I really haven't taken the time to optimize it yet.

[SmackDog]

I was more thinking of just doing rake races without promoting rakeback with it.

More just promoting things like win an iPod Touch, etc. Or do to many players know about rakeback now to pull this off?

[Newjabber]

I was more thinking of just doing rake races without promoting rakeback with it

Thats like sleeping with a women without having sex man.

Serious though. I dont really see how that would be a good idea.

[Randy Ray]

What is a "rake race"?

[Trev]

I was more thinking of just doing rake races without promoting rakeback with it.

More just promoting things like win an iPod Touch, etc. Or do to many players know about rakeback now to pull this off?

I don't think you can run rake races without offering rakeback....

[actyper]

Right now i'm seeing rake races as more of a retention tool vs an acquisition tool. If you can find a way to get the players to signup, like your idea of ipod giveaways etc, it can definately work.

[Hazo]

What is a "rake race"?

I know nothing about rakeback but I assume it's where a competition is held for a month and the person that rakes the most amount of money gets a prize.

So the more you play, the more rake you get etc.

[pokerprop]

I had to scroll up to make sure this thread wasn't a few year old bump or something.

Rake Races are a way of getting around rake caps and the players looking for them or even care about them are rakeback players, and mostly volume players at that.

The part that through me off most was iPod. That's already been well done when iPods where new. I doubt there is too many that will be excited anymore about winning an iPod. i know this was just an example but if the promotion is iPod only than 2006 or 2007 might be calling looking to get their promo back.

To add something of potential value or at least spark thought or debate to this post:

I'd argue rake races are a horrible idea for even a rakeback site to market and I'd prefer they'd just go away. From my experience conversions occur best when spontaneous, it's like the impulse by factor. The work it takes to get a person on that page could be done just the same to a page with strong content and a single compelling ad, or a subtly dropped ad depending on market. - Now in this situation here rather than doing that you've presented them with something else to think about. "Wait what is a rake race?", "hey is someone else offering a better rake race?", "do I even have a chance at winning this rake race?", "is this a scam or will they really pay that if I win?" "is this fair or are there house accounts that always win the top price?" the list of potential thoughts that a reader can generate are large.

Now assuming someone already knows what a rake race is then cool build a site that wows them include rake race comparison, history of rake races, the value of rake races, pretty much everything there could ever be written about rake races and be the #1 site on that topic. That probably works.

But as far as the typical site using rake races as a conversion tool. I'm not going as far as to say it can't be done. Though i'd place an entertainment sized wager to say more sites are hurting their conversions including rake race promotion than are helping them. This is general statement of course. However for a general poker site more then 9 out of 10 visitors don't care about the rake race. It's a good after the fact tool to get big players raking more and to stop them from jumping ship. For conversion I'd say no for most (not all) cases.