What is Poker Affiliating?
Every single online poker room needs one thing to
make money: players. Every room is always competing to get players
to play at their tables, so they’re looking for any edge they can
get to bring in more players. The main way poker sites can bring in
extra players is by having an affiliate program.
How affiliating works is that the poker sites reward you for sending
them poker players. You can do this in a variety of ways with
websites, offline promotions, etc.
But once you recruit a player, they are yours for life, and this is
where it gets interesting. How the poker sites pay you is either by
CPA or MGR. I’ll explain those two options now…
CPA: (Commission Per Acquisition) With this method you receive a
flat rate whenever a player signs up and plays for real money under
you. CPAs usually start out around $75-$100, and once you start
sending more players, your CPA will get increased from anywhere
between $125-$200, or even more if you’re sending great players.
MGR: (Monthly Gross Revenue) This method pays you a percentage of
the amount a player rakes. For example, let’s look at a hand where
your player is at a full table, and the rake reaches $1. Since there
are 9 players at the table, your player’s portion of the rake is
$0.11. Then, you take your percentage of that amount.
Common rates start at 20%-30%, so in this case, you’d earn about
$0.02 for the hand. Now, two cents doesn’t sound like much, does it?
However, let’s take a look at the numbers here.
Let’s say that once you get your affiliate website established,
you’re recruiting 15 real money players every month. And, let’s say
that the average player plays 7 hours of poker a week. Since most
tables have 100 hands per hour, each player is playing 700 hands a
week. Multiply that times your 15 players, and you get 10,500 total
hands a week. Multiply that times 4 weeks in a month, and you get
42,000 hands a month under you.
Now, multiply that times your average $0.02/hand, and you get just
over $800. All of these estimates are very conservative, and the
fact that most players play more than one table at once makes them
even more conservative. Either way however, $800 is a lot of money.
And, with MGR, this is where it gets interesting…
See, the $800 was for your first month. But, the next month you’re
going to get at least 15 more players. And the next month, you’ll
add another 15, or more. So, your player base keeps growing, and you
keep making more money, because once a player is signed up under you
on MGR, they are yours for life!
If you're ready to get started, then check out this article on How to Get Started Poker Affiliating.
