FullTiltPoker Pisses Off Affiliates

On Friday, February 15th, FullTiltPoker.com sent out their affiliate newsletter that told us that starting April 1st, any player who does not make a deposit within the first 60 days will no longer be tracked to the affiliate.

Well… that’s not exactly how they said it… I’ll just cut and paste the snippet from the newsletter here and then go into details about this latest thing to hit the poker affiliate world.

As an affiliate, we want to make sure you get the credit you deserve for directing real-money players to Full Tilt Poker.

Our Affiliate Agreement defines a real money player as someone who makes their first real money deposit within 60 days of signing up on our site.

Beginning April 1st, any player who waits longer than 60 days to make their first deposit will not be credited to any affiliate account. Make sure you don’t lose any of the credit – or players – you deserve. Use our promotions and advice to help turn your play money accounts into real money in your pockets.

Now, here is where it gets interesting. They try to spin it by saying ‘as an affiliate we want to make sure you get the credit you deserve for directing real-money players to Full Tilt Poker” and then they go on to say that going forward they will no longer give credit past 60 days.

They also later insult us by saying they are just now enforcing this rule as they finally have the technology to implement it… Riiiiight.

Come on FullTiltPoker – you are smarter than that, at least address with the understanding that we are competing in one of the most competitive affiliate markets online and that we have a certain level of intelligence!

This has turned into an epic FullTiltPoker Affiliates 60 Day Tracking thread over at PAP, with many affiliates unhappy.

I checked some stats and saw that around 18-28% of converting players came from beyond 60 days, and virtually all affiliates are reporting similar numbers.

It’s a shame, too, because they offer so many other quality features in an enjoyable software, good brand name, and players like to play there… but they really seem to see affiliates as competitors and not partners as all of their recent moves seem designed to maximize their cut of the players value and minimize ours.

Nell – the FTP Rep responds on the boards on page 22…. the affiliates are not pleased.

We shall see how this turns out. For now I will focus my efforts on other poker rooms and see what becomes of FullTiltPoker as the dust clears a bit more and we hear from some of the heavy hitters in the industry, like our man Jeremy Enke himself. *Jeremy Removes FullTiltPoker.com from PAP and the Forums… found on page 25 of the now epic thread. He also calls out directly to the Full Tilt Poker CEO to contact him ASAP on this issue.

I think Justin says it best himself in post 226 – Don’t Insult our Intelligence FullTilt and John H weighs in here with some well thought out rationale about the whole situation

*Updated 2/27 – Jeremy blogs about what the hell to do about this Full Tilt Poker 60 day policy.

*Updated 3/11/08 – Nell the FullTiltPoker Affiliate Rep Responds to Dealer Dan’s question on definition of a Real Money Player.