Give away e-book for poker signups?

[wjb316]

Hi everyone,

I was wondering if you think it would be a good idea for me to give away Kill No Limit for people to sign up at CPA poker sites. Should I e-mail the AM at each site and ask for permission?

It's a pretty damn good strategy book (includes the book, videos, charts and more) and I think the player quality would be pretty high. My main poker site is all about cash game strategy.

I was thinking about doing this with PStars, Party, Sun, Everest and any other US-friendly sites that I can find that are quality and offer CPAs.

Also, I noticed that in the Party affiliate area, there are options to have separate trackers for Rev Share and CPA. Does that mean I can pick and choose between Rev and CPA by simply changing the trackers?

Is there any chance I could talk Full Tilt into giving me a CPA deal to try this out?

If anyone out there has experience with incentive marketing, let's hear your thoughts! I have several sites with decent traffic and a small e-mail list and feel like I should use the e-book to its full potential.

Also if you can, tell me anything you know about tracking players, knowing when they qualify at various site, etc. Some backends are good about that, others are pretty barebones.

[pokerlover]

Does that mean I can pick and choose between Rev and CPA by simply changing the trackers? :

yes

[Spry]

Yes this can be a good idea, but you'll need to get this approved by the AM and they will probably have certain requirements that the people meet prior to paying you your cpa.

I did this for a while with the poker dealing course we sold with pretty good success. I did however give this up a good while back because the value for the poker rooms wasn't as great as our normal traffic (but the room wanted to keep on doing it regardless) and mainly because I wanted to try and recruit more affiliates to promote the course ourselves. I didn't have a way to track and credit affiliates for signups that I received from poker rooms so it was easier to just turn off the free offer for playing online poker than to develop that or manage that.

If you couldn't get one of the rooms to do it for a CPA deal you could consider giving it to your players who sign up for rakeback through you or something similar.

[MJ]

I think this is easier to pull with MGR than CPA usually, but definatelly a good idea regardless - incentives work.

[wjb316]

Thanks a million for the feedback everyone. Keep it coming!

I think this is easier to pull with MGR than CPA usually, but definatelly a good idea regardless - incentives work.

Why is that? How do you work an MGR incentive deal exactly? Generate XX in rake? That might not be too bad either.... Hmmm..

What about potential customer service issues? Anyone ever get problems with players not being tracked then asking where in the heck their incentive is? I have a real problem saying NO to my visitors...

[Mark]

With deals like these I tend to see the player value as being lower. Many of the players will just sign up to get the free e-book and not generate much business. Sure, it's the poker room's job to convert the player but when they are being given a free gift to sign up, it's a bit different.

In the end, you want to make sure the deal works for both sides. You want to make sure you earn money and you want to make sure the poker room is happy with the CPA. If you setup a $200 CPA with a site and they get 10 players that generate $10 in rake, I can guarantee you won't be working with that site on CPA any longer.

I have seen others go the MGR route where they require a player sign up to a site, generate $x and then get the e-book. That can help you earn more in the long run.

Mark

[Unknown Webmaster]

Here is what I would do...

Set up a MGR deal with some rooms that does not offer rakeback, and start giving the away a videos with some really awesome information. If you are targeting beginners, I would probably go for 3-betting, isolating limpers with "junk" to isolate or something else that will get them to feel that I changed their game. This would be combined with gathering their email addresses.

After that I would offer them to get the book by signing up on a MGR deal at poker room that does not offer rakeback, but will give you individual player stats.

Then I would offer a free session review to everybody who has signed up to a poker room to get the book provided that they pay 3k$ in rake or something. This could also be done on an individual basis, where you focus on getting people to start playing on their accounts under you if they just took the book and left the room.

[Spry]

Regardless of which ever way you go, you'll want to clearly lay out exactly what the person will be required to do to get the free copy. If this is mgr you need to pick that number and I wouldn't really worry about working a deal with the AM since it's at your agreed MGR rate. You'll need to clearly explain how they register and track their progress. If this is sign up and verify your account (lay out this process even if it takes a bit of time or is a manual process). I found most success by telling them that they had to reach a certain # of fpp's from the site (or whatever the site called them). You would also want to know what kind of $$ you could expect from that player reaching that point (but really you want to figure out the lifetime value of said player) so you can know how much you are earning from each copy of your course you are providing them with.

and on the rare occasions that you have a major dispute with one of your players... it's a digital product. It's not costing you additional money to pack and ship him a copy from your warehouse . That's part of the beauty of digital products... if you'd rather just give them a free copy than tell them no, go for it. Less headache at the least and time wasted dealing and having someone irate.

Another issue is if you discuss rakeback in your guide or not? You may have to offer it if so? I'd go with a room that has casino integrated as well if you do go the mgr route.

[actyper]

Personally in your case I would stick with "a free book" combined with raking x$ along with rakeback. Though i'm sure the quality of your book is great, its not a well known or sought after product. But if you market it as a "free bonus" you get more incentive from your rb players to play more. What i'm saying is that its probably not enough to get someone to start playing at x site, but its a good extra incentive to get somebody to play more.

Also incentive marketing can be a headache sometimes seeing if this guy tracked properly or not, how much they played, etc...

[wjb316]

Awesome responses.. .You all have given me a lot to think about. Thanks for the detailed replies everyone.

Oh also - if anyone who has done something like this in past reads this, could I trouble you with a PM? I'd like to hear about some things like which rooms you were able to track, how you went about tracking, etc.