Bringing high value players/traffic

[Ridge]

We all hear this a lot in this business, AM's want us to bring in high value players, but that's not always controllable trough organic search results. So, I thought we could start some discussion on how to bring in "valuable" players.

Let's start with the obvious:

Freeroll based sites and freerollers are not high quality - so if you have a freeroll based site/forum your value will be low in general

Targeting "free Poker money" type terms will not bring in good players in general. They are looking to play for free and not deposit.

Search terms are important - Some terms have a tendency to bring in different value players. I don't have a great list of keywords that are "higher value" than others, but I do know that in general players looking for rakeback are usually pretty good grinders even at low stakes.

Incentives - This goes back to freeroller to me, they are looking for free money usually, but I know poker savvy and PSO have had some good success, but I'm not sure that can be duplicated w/o a huge budget


To make it easy, in my mind we have a few types of players:

Bonus whores
Rakeback Players
Casual Weekend players
Freerollers
Affiliates that blow their money at random (Me, jeremy, MJ)


Ok, that's all I have lol - please chime in and add your thoughts and tell me what I'm missing. Also add what you do to bring in higher quality players. I know we won't exchange the uber secret baller stuff, but general guidelines will be cool.

[MJ]

Service the hell out of the few you get, that's my only limited advice.

Great post btw, the few I've gotten were purely luck that was literally just one player who knew others. This player happens to play 25/50 NL and comes to me with any issues he has, but also sends everyone he calls a friend my way because he knows he is getting special treatment.

Not extra money, not freerolls and rake races - just quick advice and trust that he's getting the best deal through me each time.

Looking forward to other responses.

[Sebastian]

Hi Randy,

I've thought about this stuff a while back,

I thought of optimizing for stuff like : "play high stakes online poker" and other keyword variations that include "high-stakes", "high-limit", "real money" etc... Never did it though.

I find that bonus sites do attract decent players too. These players don't know about rakeback yet and just want to get maximum return on their investment.

The best way to filter players is through forums though. Say you have a high stakes poker forum with serious players, just include a thread on the best rakeback deals.

[Ridge]

Forums is one I should have mentioned, I'm luck enough to know quite a few high volume grinders through my forum.. there is real power when you can send 40-50 players to a given room if the deal is right.

[Jeremy]

Unfortunately in this day and age, I think if you want to recruit high value players on rev. share from SERP traffic, you have to be willing to offer rakeback.

With the advent of multi-tabling a few years ago, the term high value player took on a whole new meaning. And with that, the term rakeback also became main stream amongst these players.

And as someone who has never really been interested in dealing with a bunch of rakeback players hitting me up on messenger 22 times a day asking for their $46.32 rakeback payment, I am looking closer into casinos, bingo, and sportsbetting now.

Call me greedy, but I like the idea of someone randomly signing up on my tracker and making me a few hundo inside of 30 minutes.

MJ is right though, in the rakeback game it is all about service and being an onlibe VIP concierge.

[MJ]

I find that bonus sites do attract decent players too. These players don't know about rakeback yet and just want to get maximum return on their investment.

Key point in that statement is that smart players know how to look for value, make sure to always be giving the best possible deal.

[Jeremy]

I thought of optimizing for stuff like : "play high stakes online poker" and other keyword variations that include "high-stakes", "high-limit", "real money" etc... Never did it though.

Yea, this sounds good in theory. But how many 10-20NL+ or high stakes players do you know that need to use google to find the games their looking for, let alone that would sign up to play higher limites without rakeback.

[Sebastian]

Yeah Jeremy, I agree. So Rake or break then.... or go casino like you. I must say I make most of my affiliate income from poker rooms that have integrated casinos. The temptation for players to play the side games is too hard to resist I guess

[corpfan1]

Back up your online work with OFFLINE work.

Many high limit players, do that kind of play LIVE and have never even tried internet play.

Also, high-limit online players sometimes are stuck playing at 1 room. If you talk to players "offline" who play online, sometimes getting them to switch rooms is your key.

Backing up a chat with a nice business card can go a long way.

[TheShortStack]

Service the hell out of the few you get, that's my only limited advice.

I often hear this idea about servicing your players, but I'm guessing you can only really do that if you have some sort of a forum and you get to know your members.

Is that correct? Or am I missing something obvious here ...