If there ever was a poster-child for poor communications, Bwinners would be it. I did a post back in early January where I noted that Bwinners decided I wasn’t sending them enough traffic so they shut down my affiliate account. That’s cool. I wasn’t really promoting them. But look at the communication:
WTF?!? Bwinners only wants to “work with the best” and I obviously didn’t make the cut? Why don’t you just call me a worthless piece of trash. Who is the passive-aggressive idiot writing these emails?
And then they make it pretty much official with this follow up email:
Now, I’m totally cool if an poker room chooses to trim things down to people who are actively sending them customers. It makes sense. I wasn’t linking to them. I had planned on doing something but never got around to it and the affiliate account sort of stagnated. So I’m fine if they want to close the account down due to inactivity. But the whole thing about wanting to “work with the best” was probably the most ill conceived corporate communication I’ve run across.
Well, that’s what I thought until I got this email from Bwinners.
Wait, now you’re sending me a newsletter about your affiliate program you deemed me not worthy to be in? Are you people out of your minds? And there’s no way to unsubscribe from the list! Even though they don’t want me as an affiliate they’re more than happy to spam me with this month’s promotions which . . . I have no incentive to promote since I’m no longer an affiliate. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.
Bewinners seems to be such an appropriate name for the program though. Much like the author of the phrase “winner”, Charlie Sheen, Bwinners is on a downward, out of control, spiral. What’s next the “7-gram rocks” promotion? Maybe they’ll change the name from “affiliate program” to “troll program.”
I don’t see why they would close an affiliate account and do it in such a way as to piss off the person who opened the account enough that he will never again promote them in anyway… very bad business…. i don’t think it costs them any money to keep the account open however im sure it takes administration costs to open or close an account…. to burn the bridge like that towards anyone is just so bloody stupid it defies me…. today he sends no hits next month his site becomes the most popular on the internet and bewin get none of the traffic …. yeah they’re idiots you’re quite right bill 🙂
I take it you haven’t read http://www.belosers.com
I find it interesting that the last two posts both originated from IP addresses in Vienna, Austria where BWin’s corporate offices are located. Or maybe it is just coincidence that these two superaffiliates both live in Austria. 🙂
@SuperAffiliate: I didn’t pursue the project because I had other projects I was devoting time to that would and have become more profitable. I was spread to thin so I back-burnered a few things to focus on the most important stuff first. I’m happy with the decision.
Like I said, I’m not complaining about not getting the privilege to do business with Bewinners. Considering their recent affiliate program changes I think I can find a better deal on the Ongame network if I want to send players. All I’m saying is that this isn’t some mom and pop operation. They’re a multi-million dollar company. I expect them not to be completely retarded when it comes to communications.
I’m just pointing out the total disconnect. I would have had nothing to say about the topic had they just sent me an email telling me that they were closing my affiliate account. Like I said, it’s a fair enough decision on their part and they’re more than entitled to do that. I don’t understand what the point is. I can’t really think of any advantages they gain out of it. I can think of some disadvantages but that’s just me.
I only wrote about it after they forgot they closed my account and have since kept on communicating to me as if I am still an affiliate and don’t get me an option to opt-out. And to make the same mistake twice . . . well, that’s just incompetence. Incompetence that should be pointed out.
Let’s talk about something important. You call yourself an affiliate? You certainly aren’t pal ’cause the you’ve been kicked out. The top-tier affiliates make mucho dinero. The so-so affiliates get a set of steak knives. Third prize is you’re kicked out. You get the picture? Betting companies spend loads of money on their own marketing and branding, and you can’t garner customers using these marketing leads you’re given, you can’t close!… hit the bricks pal and beat it ’cause you’ve been kicked out. You think their marketing and branding is weak? You’re weak! I’ve been in this business 15 years. What kind of car do you drive, a Hyundai, I drive an 80,000 dollar BMW. You’re just wanting. You can’t play in the man’s game, you can’t bring in new playing actives, then keep to your blog and tell your troubles to those that don’t care. Because only one thing counts in an affiliate’s life. Get customers to sign up and bet money. You hear me? ABC. A, Always, B, Be, C, Closing. Always be closing. Always be closing. AIDA. Attention. Interest. Decision. Action. Attention. Do I have your attention? Interest. Are you interested? I know you are ’cause that’s why you’ve visited my site. You close or you hit the bricks. Decision. Have you made your decision for Christ? And action. AIDA. Get out there, you got potential customers coming in, you think they came to your site to browse news? A potential customer doesn’t visit your website unless he wants to deposit and play. They’re sitting out there waiting to give you their money. Are you going to take it? Are you man enough to take it? As a super-affiliate my watch costs more than your car. I made 970,000 dollars last year, how much you make? You see pal, that’s who I am, and you’re nothing. Nice guy? Who cares. Good father. Get off the internet and go play with your kids. You want to be a super-affiliate, then close. You think this is abuse? You think this is abuse….You can’t take this, how can you take the abuse you get on a sit. If you don’t like it, delete my post. Using the same banners and marketing materials you’ve got, I can make myself 15,000 dollars. This month. Can you? Can you? Stop whining and get mad! You know what it takes to be a super-affiliate? It takes brass balls. Go and do likewise. The money’s out there, you pick it up, it’s yours, you don’t, I got no sympathy for you. You want to go out on those sits tonight and close, close, it’s yours, if not, you’re going to be shining my shoes. And you know what you’ll be saying. Bunch of losers sitting in a chat-room: ”Oh yeah, I used to be an affiliate. It’s a tough racket.” I’m posting because it’s my gift to you. A real favor, if they kicked you out, it’s probably better for them, because a loser is a loser. Bewinners!
Other than that fact that I agree with you about the Newsletter, which is just stupid on their part,… your long term versus short term argument is always one used by losers. Affiliates that succeed are those who make a habit of doing the things poor affiliates are uncomfortable doing, because poor affiliates make promises they often break when signing up from the getgo. With such drawn out and elaborate comments, you’ve obviously time to devote to your affiliate sites, so perhaps you should spend less time in your little group therapy session here and more time writing content. Gotta go, time to work on my site. Losers!
@Seth: I didn’t suggest that they have to give anyone a personalized, hand holding approach. Simply don’t send out dick-ish emails. And let people unsubscribe from your affiliate marketing newsletter (especially when they’re no longer affiliates).
I fully support them for wanting to clean up their books. However, unlike the play money players you mention, it really doesn’t cost them anything to keep affiliates who aren’t sending customers. Those affiliates are simply rows in a database unlike play money players on a poker site who consume bandwidth and generate CS overhead.
But, cool, I can respect them on wanting to get rid of the dead wood. But there’s a right way that leaves the door open for doing business in the future and there’s a wrong way which is insulting the affiliate.
I’m not complaining about my personal situation as much as I’m making a point that the way BWin went about it is pretty much the worst way you could do it.
In an industry that is so ultra-competitive having people that would take this route is a perfect example of why sites like Tilt and Stars are eating them alive. BWin doesn’t have the luxury of pissing off people whether it be affiliates or players.
Silly me, I expect a certain level of competence and professionalism in companies making tens or hundreds of millions of dollars a hear. They can afford to hire people who have some common sense.
Just wait until they fully merge their arrogance with the arrogance of Party Poker. I’m sure they will both be a joy to work with.
(Again, I pretty much completely agree with you. Having worked for PokerRoom/bwin as a freelancer for 5+ years, I have plenty of even worse stories of bwin fail that’d make the baby Jebus weep.)
I guess it just seems like they’re embracing the same logic that you yourself have advocated in the past for online operators that struggle with the hidden costs of things like offering players the chance to play for free chips, or having to keep token amounts of loyalty points on the books for accounting purposes, etc. Why keep perpetuating an inefficient system that’s of zero value to you? Just because you’ve done it that way in the past? For fear of pissing off someone who’ve you’ve established is of zero value?
I think we both know that, like play chip players, affiliates are either motivated or they ain’t. The cultivation idea sounds good in theory, just like converting play chip players to depositing players sounds good, but the success rate of that approach is likely abysmal to the point of not even being break-even.
So you’re right, another approach (and one some affiliate programs pursue) is to send a gentler email similar to what you propose. But to what end? Is that really the nudge you needed to get started on your idea? Maybe, but I just think that’s rarely, rarely the case, and the more normal response is to just ignore it. Except in that scenario your affiliate managers are at best emailing a form letter to all inactive affiliates assigned to them or wasting an enormous amount of time sending personalized emails to inactive affiliates who just ignore the emails and send zero traffic and zero revenues.
I’ve probably signed up for hundreds of affiliate programs over the years that I had plans for, but never got around to putting up even a single link. I don’t even want to think about what I’ve spent on domain names over the years with big plans that, in reality, sat there untouched for a year until I let them expire.
Again, just guessing, but I’d bet if you analyzed what typically happens for every 100 affiliates that sign up, over 90% probably never send any traffic or generate any signups. It’s just the nature of the beast. If that’s true, then if you do go the hand-holding route, you’re going to have to be really damn good at it, or else you’re going to waste a lot of time and resources.
I’m probably just being contrary, but I almost prefer the bwin approach as far as dealing with inactive affiliates; yeah, I don’t think anyone enjoys having it rubbed in their face that they’re not “the best”, but if I’m doing absolutely nothing for someone, I don’t feel like I can really complain when they cut me loose. Or that they owe me a long, gentle goodbye.
I’m the one who, of my own accord, signed up for their affiliate program and signaled my intent to promote their program, only to in fact do absolutely nothing for months. (And yeah, I got the exact same emails for the exact same reason in the past from bwin, so I’m not just talking hypotheticals.)
So I dunno. Like I said, I don’t really disagree with anything you say, I just was a little surprised as I’d have guessed you might see this as a weird sort of progress, instead of just accepting the status quo and carrying loads of inactive affiliates on your books that you, with a high degree of certainty, know will never make a single penny for you.
And just to be clear, I’m really only talking about their brusque approach to “breaking up” with new affiliates who’ve produced no results, and not the more predatory stuff like retroactively changing terms, as that’s completely unforgivable and they should have been tarred and feathered for that.
@Seth, I can appreciate that point of view. However, Bwin began their affiliate pruning shortly after introducing some fairly predatory rewrites of the affiliate contract that were made retroactive. In other words, you thought you were sending them customers under one agreement and they changed the agreement and said that the new rules apply to the customers you sent them under the previous agreement. That’s not winning. That’s not even bi-winning. That’s just trollish behavior. 🙂
The second issue is that they can cultivate their affiliates. Why not ask me why I’m not sending them any customers? In my particular case it’s because I signed up when I had an idea for a particular type of website I wanted to get rolling and Bwin would have been a good partner for that. But life got in the way and I never launched it. So I ended up having an affiliate account but I wasn’t using it. Why not prod me a bit? Maybe I might have picked up the idea again.
There’s no cost for them to maintain my account. I’m an entry in a database table. That’s what makes it such an epic fail in my eyes. Rather than saying, “Hey, what do we need to do for you to start sending us some customers?” they said “Hey, you haven’t sent us any customers so we’re shutting down your account.”
What does doing that really save them? They can delete my record out of their affiliate database which saves them maybe 1KB of disk space. What is that . . . a penny (or even less) per month? Hey, I’ve been to Bwin’s offices in Stockholm and they spend money dotcom style with lavish offices and all. I know that .01 per month isn’t killing them.
But, more importantly, who sends out an email that says that Bwin only works with winners and you don’t make the grade. That has to be the most asinine email from a poker room I’ve ever seen. What’s next? Are they going to start sending out emails to players saying “BWin only wants good poker players. You haven’t generated enough rake to qualify to be a BWin player so we’re closing your account jerkoff.”
Like I said, I wasn’t really promoting them. Not a single dollar is coming out of my pocket due to this. But it just boggles the mind that someone would write that email. Seriously, how do you write that? How is that person still employed in this industry?
I mean how much trouble would it have been to write the following:
And no, it’s not a mistake that I’m getting the newsletter. There is no link anywhere in the newsletter allowing me to opt-0ut. And since they’ve told me that I can no longer log-in to my affiliate account that means that I can no longer change my communications preferences on their site. They’re forcing me to receive their spam with no way of opting out.
I’m no longer an affiliate (by their choice). They’ve already told me they won’t pay me for any referrals. Why the f*ck would I want to get their affiliate newsletter? Obviously they didn’t delete my record from their database which means that whatever supposed reason they had for deleting me in the first place is total BS. They still want to market to me they just don’t want to pay me unless I’m sending them a sufficient amount of traffic.
What makes me angry is not the affiliate stuff. I don’t care if promote Bwin or not. That’s not even an issue. My ego isn’t shattered that I am not up to snuff. It’s that whoever is running Bwin’s affiliate program still has a job. In an industry where everybody but Full Tilt and PokerStars is struggling to stay alive it seems beyond comprehension that a top 5 poker room is this incompetent in their communications.
(Playing devil’s advocate a bit here, as even I would admit that bwin’s capacity to fail at even the simplest of things is pretty epic.)
As someone who has railed against the inefficiencies rife in the world of online operators, I’m a little surprised that this bothered you to this extent. It sounds like you agree with the principle (periodically assessing the value of affiliates and removing those that are of zero value) but just don’t like being told bluntly that you’re not “the best”.
If you don’t promote them and send zero traffic, should they really go out of their way to break up with you gently? What would they have to gain from that exactly? For you to continue to send them zero traffic?
Would it really be better if they sent a “No no, it’s not you, it’s me. You’re SUPER and you have a great smile and you’re going to make some other affiliate program REALLY happy, it’s just that I’m way too demanding and can’t appreciate the good things that are right in front of me” email?
I guess to me it just seems like a game of mutual annihilation on both sides; you ignored them entirely and did nothing to promote their program and they they respond in like fashion with a curt, non-gentle email and closed your account.
Affiliates that are of value (and send traffic) don’t get that email, so I’m not exactly sure how that’s sending an inappropriate message if the only people that see it are affiliates of zero value (or negative value, even, if you count in the cost of adminstering/managing the account).
Most opt out/unsubscribes take awhile to process and aren’t immediate, so it might be a case of lag time as far as getting the newsletter after being told you were getting he boot. Knowing bwin, though, you’re probably right in that your doomed to forever get newsletter spam from them.
Again, I’m probably harder on bwin than most folks on the planet; I guess I was just surprised that their approach seemed to bug you so much in a situation when the alternative (being warm and fuzzy and gentle) serves no utility for them whatsoever, if they’re communicating with affiliates that have proven to be of zero value.