blonde poker forum

I’m sorry to say that the sponsorship of blonde by Sky Poker will almost certainly terminate at the end of this month.

Cliffs?

It was done on a monthly fee basis, & the cost per acquisition (CPA) was off the scale really. We (they…, I have an identity crisis here!) measure CPA to the penny, & it was just not cost-effective, not by a very long chalk. They actually get more acquisitions per day by organic means than blonde have managed in 9 months, & at a mere fraction of the cost. Think about that. We tried to persuade them that general raising of awareness had a value, & it does, but how do you put a price, or value, on it, especially when negotiating with hard-nosed accountants? The company is incredibly cost-conscious & efficient, & the blonde deal was a bit of an eyesore on the books, & blonde can have no complaints, the deal was "handy" for us.

The deal was for 3 months, extended twice, & eventually, a month ago, extended for December. I then went to one of those uncomfy chair meets, & the decision was made. A really weird spot for me, as I needed to face both ways.

I made Tighty aware a week or so ago, & he has dusted off his potential sponsor file. A few leads so far, but nothing concrete yet. We have enough cash to get through until the end of January, but not beyond. So, we shall have to see what happens.

I’d like to thank those who supported the sponsorship, those who waked the walk, & supported the blonde sponsors. There were a good few, but special thanks to Alex’ & Cos’s gangs, who really helped.

Tighty, as ever, gave his all, & a bit more besides. What a guy he is, & big thanks to him for his effort to puff it. Oddly, he now has a semi-permanent Contract with Sky Poker to manage the SPT, & that will continue indefinitely, he does a terrific job at that.

It puts me in a peculiar spot. I work for them, everyone knows that, & I discuss my job – which I adore, can’t wait to get to work every morning stylee – endlessly, to the point of everyone yawning I imagine. With a new sponsor on board – hopefully – that may have to change.  But that’s a bit personal, so I’ll write more about that awkward spot on my Diary, & before a new sponsor comes on board, if indeed we find one. 

Sky Poker will continue to be successful, the numbers are staggeringly good, & let’s hope blonde will, too.

It’s been fun, but that particular party is over.

I hope some of you will continue to support Sky Poker. We (blonde) have been offered a nice Affiliate deal by them, but patently, IF we get a new sponsor on board, that would not really be do-able. But if we don’t, some Sky Poker Affiliate revenue would make all the difference, it really would.

Thanks.

Sad news, but thanks for the 9 months and thanks to Tikay who probably held us there longer than we deserved (performance wise)

Has there ever been a breakdown of costs for the forum? Both how much it takes to run and how much each share is worth?

Yes of course the costs are known.

As an unquoted company how much each share is worth is unknown, until such times as any are traded

Cost breakdown?

Costs are just 2 things really, Tighty's wages, & the Server Hosting, plus occasional professional fees etc.

The entire sponsorship inciome effectively goes straight to Tighty, that's his wages. Not much, I would say it is sub minimum wage. I pay the Server Hosting monthly fee personally, have done for 2 years now, & am kinda hoping a sponsor will pick that up - one promised to (not Sky), but never did - but ultimately, if the price of keeping blonde alive is me paying that every month (about £200) then as long as I can afford it, I will. Tightys wages are a different matter, I can't, in all conscience, & as much as I respect him, commit to that. He also taps me for odd bills now & then, again, no problem, I cough up, & I top up the Live Update money as & when needed. If a big bill comes along, 5 figures, say, I'd speak to our WPT Champ, he generally is helpful & has already loaned blonde a decent sum.

$821,612 doesn't last long these days.

But seriously, good luck in finding a new sponsor/funding. Would be a shame if this place became a thing of the past.

Playing devil's advocate here, but it's a serious question, what impact on Sky Poker's revenue streams would there likely be if every blonde member stopped playing at Sky Poker?

The benefit of blonde is being measured purely based on new acquisitions, which is never likely to be significant here given that most members already have accounts at most sites.

However, we presumably have some fairly significant rakers who, if they chose to play elsewhere, could potentially dent the bottom line.

Arguably, the blonde relationship ensures Sky's profile remains high among these players and presumably benefits Sky in terms of retention.

Value of each share? See Tighty's answer, really. Right now, their "value" is too cheap to sell, if that makes sense.

About 3 years ago, the company was sold for about three quarters of a million, subject only to Contract. Tighty spent all one afternoon collecting up the Share Transfer Forms, & I was due £187,500 - cash - at 9am the next morning. I even had the signed Form, wiiii, £187,000! At midnight, the deal fell through, just like that. It rained the next morning, but brightened up in the afternoon....

A short time later, Flushy mopped up all the loose shares, I think he invested the better part of £60,000. For that alone, I/we have a Duty of Care to try to protect his investment. I got my shares for free, but if they had a value, I guess it could be said I earned the value via my input & financial assistance.

It's not something that pre-occupies me, or us, really.

Just about nil, or as near to nil as makes no difference, Curtis. It would not make any dent on the bottom line at all. There may be a disconnect here as to how much some may think the blondes rake, & Sky  (http://affiliatehub.skybet.com/processing/clickthrgh.asp?btag=a_4080b_3)Poker (http://affiliatehub.skybet.com/processing/clickthrgh.asp?btag=a_4080b_3)'s daily "margin". The contribution by blondes is not 1%, it's not even 0.1%. Truly.

Of course, if blondes thought a "protest" withdrawal of support to force Sky's arm would achieve anything, good luck them, but it would, of course, place me in a very tough spot, & I guess I'd have to make an extremely tough decision as to my position. They pay my wages - which are considerable - & have done for 5 years now, & I owe them some loyalty, as well as to blonde. Also, many blondes signed up to sky Poker long before the sponsorship deal. Some bugger must have been covertly spamming, maybe.

That would be a nasty spot and very much underserved on Sky Pokers part too imo, I think they should be applauded for their support rather than punished for having to withdraw it.

GL with the new search, its tough out there right now.  Would love a Ladbrokes link up just for the comedy value ;)

That is a shame, the two entities seemed a very natural fit.

Its a shame that most of us likely all had our sky accounts way before the partnership started.

I for one hope that Tikay & Co's 'Sky Hats' can remain on now and then on the forum, as I have really enjoyed some of the inside peeks to skys goings on, and seeing plenty of blondes on the show.

Thanks JR.

In truth, it's not about the survival of blonde, not as such - it's Tighty's wages really. I can manage the rest of the necessary cash requirements for the foreseable future, if I have to, & my "desire" remains (not a given), but we'd have no Tighty, & he'd be in a spot, & I feel an obligation to do my best to sort that. That's the bottom line really.

I tried to word my post in a way so as not to give the impression that I was suggesting this.

I was writing, as a 'hard-nosed accountant' myself as to whether the benefit of blonde was being looked at solely through a KPI where blonde struggles to make a dent but trying to quantify whether there were other benefits of the deal that were not being recognised.

Hope that clarifies things.

why not set up an investment trust? tighty as fund manager, teeks as chairman, i'd stick a couple of grands worth in my sipp for sure.

The issue of being judged on new acquisitions alone is a valid one, though its a fact of life really

Lots of attempts here to get rewarded for reactivating existing customers via blonde (as tikay said, most had accounts before the sponsorship came along) and for the PR/profile raising..but the latter is difficult to quantify

Anyway, looking ahead

As tikay says there is no threat to the site as long as the hosting fees are taken care of

The issue really comes down to

a) trying to ultimately secure a return for Flushy and tikay amongst others. To do that you'd want strong traffic, membership etc as well as making a bit of cash 

b) my involvement. If we were unsponsored and unable to pay wages then I'd have a decision to make. The site would continue along fine enough without me, I'm sure

Hopefully during the next six weeks it wouldn't come to that. 

My phone is on, people!

Well yes, and yes!

We really needed that deal at the time, & it would be out of order to act against their best interests, imo. But of course I would say that, sitting where I do. I don't actually think blondes would do such a thing, anyway. Players play where they wanna play, nothing ever stops them doing that. If Tilt returned tomorrow, with monsta sign-up bonuses, the place would be heaving within days. Incred, but true. Did you know that - until last week, at least - Absolute Poker/UB were still trading?

Sorry, Justin, you have whooshed me a bit there. Can you enlarge? (I know what a SIPP is, of course).

Thinking about some options here, this forum is very unique to your usual poker forum.

How many active members do we have? And a quick assumption on how many are very casual, casual, serious, and very serious? I think we have to know the member base properly before suggesting the right kind of sponsor. Also how much is the banner space on the forum?

Sorry if these questions are coming across as too personal.

Not personal as such, & I have no trouble with them. Don't know the answers, mind. One for Tighty.

I could answer part of it, but it might compromise current negotiations, hope you understand.

I don't mind the questions either, but I'd rather deal with them privately

i'm not joking! tighty used to run a hedge fund but the stress was too high? why not run a low stress IT? you have an interest in investing and have a rep for being trustworthy so would make a good chairman.

if you set it up to preserve and protect the dempsey fortune you'd instantly be up there with Lord Rothschild's :)

that's sad news.

here are two problems which affect the sponsorship by sky greatly:

1. measuring solely by CPA is bad, LPV (lifetime player value) is a far greater measure of how successful the deal is. Of course, being paid by CPA is fine in a straight affiliate deal, especially where cashflow (as I assume it is for blonde) is at stake. Indeed over a sufficient sample size (which blonde should have), CPA and rev share balance out long term in LPV and thus $earned are the same.

2. measuring LPV is bad too, because it doesn't really reflect the value of deposits - which are a super important metric (although most operators (sky not included, btw) don't recognise this).


hope someone is found soon to take over the mantle.

Godd luck anyone who wants to try & protect Flushy's "fortune". For all I know, he's spent it already, the man burns money at an alarming rate!

An Investment Fund? Ooh, that'd be as much fun to me as driving a train, it really would. Bet I'd turn a nice profit, too.

email sent

My Cliffs were in shorthand, the deal was not measured in either CPA or LPV as such, we have different KPI's & performance monitoring techniques. I just mentioned CPA for brevity's sake.

Appreciate the help, but Sky run their business very different from "regular" Online Gaming Sites, they do not use traditional criteria.

Sad news but at the end of the day business is business and Im sure a new sponsor will be found, Tighty you said your mobile is on watch out mate with the sky thing your mobile might be hacked lol

Are some of the things in the op good to have public when we bear in mind what most potential sponsors will want is what sky wanted and therefore make blonde seem a far less attractive proposition to them?

Very sad news, shame to see all your (Tikay and Tighty) tireless efforts to help the Sky deal fall by the wayside.

Good Luck for securing something for the future.

I have never donated to the LIVE Tournament funding requests for Blonde as generally I do not play comps and have no involvement.

That said I love the content of Blonde and would be more than comfortable paying a subscription to contribute to it's continued success (Eg £10 a month).

Not sure what revenue streams this would generate from active members, but is this something you would consider and secondly would other members buy into that sort of subscription when their are so many other ONLINE (although not as unique) alternatives?

We tried to persuade them that general raising of awareness had a value, & it does, but how do you put a price, or value, on it, especially when negotiating with hard-nosed accountants?

If I owned a poker forum and wanted to quantify the value of exposure through my medium this is what I would do.

At the end of every year I would run a Blonde Poker Open MTT hosted on my sponsors site for Blonde members only. An end of season spectacular to find Blonde poker's ultimate player of the year. Non-refundable registration for this tournament would be open from Jan 1st and I would market this event relentlessly throughout the year. Message every member inviting them along to play and have lots of exposure on the forum. As each month went by the total runners for this event would build as a % of people logging onto the forum will be encouraged by the exposure to reg for the big event. If no sky account they will be more inclined to open one as it's for a specific reason rather than just general play.

Decent confidence should mean you can offer a sizeable guarantee for a modest buy-in, like the recent Goliath in Cov. Use banners to advertise that eye-catching guarantee on the up-dates thread. This way you get all those non-members with sky accounts signing up to Blonde and those without either signing up for both. Loads of different events through the year, comps, staking threads, bounties, running a book, side bets, the fun would be endless. By the end of the year x thousand runners could be achieved. Then when I'm sitting in front of them hard-nosed accountants I would pull out my graph demonstrating their most popular MTT of the year at x entry fee was the Blonde Poker Open. If they don't extend I still have tangible evidence to present to my next perspective sponsor

I tell you what I would deffo enter that so I could bust some random Blondes at the tables. Only forum names as well so I can see if I bust Boldie or bvb vs Greekstein, how hilarious. I can see myself lifting that trophy now (sorry if that causes offence). Bragging rights and banter would be sensational. I figure if I couldn't make a success of such an event sponsors would be right to pull the plug.

Lol Mantis you absolute mug

I like James Keys

Naturally the added benefit would be all sky players who have never heard of Blonde would see this big MTT gathering pace in their lobby with big guarantee and  % would be directed to the forum. Thereby utilising the sponsor to grow the membership of the forum.

Not gonna call him a mug because I don't know the guy.

I will say from a business perspective, I'd estimate the ROI of such a plan to be about -85% at best.

just sayin.

The objective is to quantify the value of exposure through forum advertising to a sponsor for the sole purpose of securing continued sponsorship. Hence if you get x thousand runners through forum advertising you have quantified this value in a presentable way. I think that is a more positive and constructive way to demonstrate the influence a forum has to a sponsor than it's players downing tools as has been suggested. So I don't understand the ROI comment and proposed % because you aren't investing any money and your objective isn't to get a return other than continued sponsorship. Having said that the sponsor could agree a % cut of the juice for the comp which could give you a nice return for no investment. So yeah don't understand -85% ROI (from a business perspective). Throughout the year as sky players see a Blonde comp in their lobby they migrate to the forum and greater membership means even more influence moving forwards. And stands to reason more players would open sky accounts which you could link to Blonde which again is the whole objective. Just an idea thou, sure others are welcome.

trust me, they won't. if players behaved like this, marketing would be easy, but they don't and it isn't.

also, the roi for the sponsor of the entire sponsorship agreement would be about -80 to -90% with this kind of scheme. they don't work. One of the things that blonde has going for it in general is a great community spirit and a strong desire in general to 'back the sponsor' but even that isn't enough for plenty of reasons*. Conversely that spirit is the only thing which gives any commercial rationale to sponsorship of blonde by a third party and that's why i'm convinced something will be found. I'm convinved there is a way forward, but it seems unlikely that pure sponsorship alone makes much sense.

*I don't know how much I should go into without talking to Tighty and TK first, so I won't post more on why atm.

I kinda know about marketing and sponsorship. Over the last decade I've been resonsible for marketing several multi-million pound membership based businesses and have negotiated multiple sponsorships and affiliations for those businesses. In my experience sponsors place a higher value on the proven ability to drive large numbers of traffic to their product rather than a notion of "community spirit". If I was a potential investor I wouldn't be able to quantify how this "community spirit" would benefit my buisness financially tbh. I don't agree that spirit is commercial. But that is just my opinion. What's more if I was a potential sponsor reading this thread I wouldn't see much tangible evidence of this "great community spirit". On the day a member is nominated on the advent calendar for being what Blonde is all about his only contribution to is to call another member an absolute mug for submitting an idea. Personally I would be quite embarrased by that member's behaviour and the sense of community spirit on display. That was the second advent calendar nominee of the day who called me a mug in questionable circumstances so I figure the added pressure must do something to anxiety levels. I intend to avoid mondatoo today.

However, you may well be right and I was only throwing an idea into the mix. One resource Blonde does benefit from is a real diversity of community with lots of people from different walks of life, so any brain stroming session for new ideas and marketing strats should be encouraged rather than discouraged with personal abuse. But again that's just my opinion.

It would really help me if everyone could accentuate the positives on this thread please, thanks!

I'd imagine potential sponsors, partners will read it

Tightly
I know blonde have an online shopping link for other sites but could you not make it easier to find, like a link at the top of the forum page, ala the news box.
plenty of people shop online, myself included, but at present I just use these sites when I could be using your links.

Yes good point

We have Amazon and Late Rooms links, will put them in the news box

Never even seen them before. I assume many, like me, have the forum home page bookmarked so never see the actual home page.

yeh was ging to mention the homepage too, is it worth the time writing the articles etc? ofc they are done well as you're a very good writer, but doubt many people actually have www.blondepoker.com as a bookmark rather than www.blondepoker.com/forum.

I do, but i imagine you're right Pleno, only 1 extra click to get here fwiw.

It's a fair point but I keep them going for the completeness of the site, some SEO, really. Given IT resource I'd revamp it, bring it up to date etc but that is not a priority, and no resource anyway

There is obviously a lottttt of good that blonde can offer to a potential partner.

You have direct access to a large community of very targeted individuals who are, in many many cases, far above the national average for disposable income and who are experienced in the betting and gaming markets.

What's more, I would imagine that they are people who are very open to innovation and an innovative offering would go down well with the community as a whole.

There exists an great opportunity for a small early start-up to come on board and get access to everything  blonde has to offer, which is, when you boil it down, their customers. I think a simple sponsorship *could* make sense for some partners (although not someone like Sky with a high penetration of existing customers and a really well known brand name with better direct channel marketing opportunities available to them in general - like their own TV channels...) but there is an even greater opportunity for a closer integration with a small start up.

They would effectively receive free consulting on their business from blonde, who we note are an incredibly vocal community, in addition to the usual stuff that a sponsorship would bring. Working or focus groups (which you pay marketing companies over 900000000 for) are an exceptionally good value add which blonde can offer, given the clientele.

On the home page there are advertising banners for sky poker ,sky bet etc ....but nothing else there is a lot of advertising space for more.... maybe ...even non poker related businesses
IE in the lounge you could have any number of business advertised?

just sayin

The current sponsorship is an exclusive one, no other poker room banners

We have had non poker room banners up eg CardShark, Watches4U  and would do so again

Not as easy as you might think to attract non poker advertisers to a poker site. 

how much does it cost? pm me if you cant post plesase tighty

Next instalment in The Blonde Poker Open marketing strategy:

So we replace all the general sky banners with Click here to play in The Blonde Poker Open with sky. Because members are logged onto the forum we could personalise that invitation so for example when I log onto the forum the banners I see are MANTIS01 Click here to play in The Blonde Poker Open. This is a powerful psychological shift in emphasis moving from a general advertisement for general play to a personal invitation for a specific event. The mistake Blonde makes (if I can be so bold, sorry for causing offence etc..) is that you leave it up to the customer and in sales/marketing if you wait for the customer to make a decision you will be waiting a long time. You need to herd your client base like sheep into a pen. So in this example you are herding forum users into the pen that is sky and you’re using a forum specific event to do it rather than a random general banner. Put simply, for Blonde users The Blonde Open is a more potent sheepdog for driving traffic than the vague please open a sky account sometime soon.

If a member clicks to play they are taken straight to the lobby of the comp on sky (after installation of software). Terms of Blonde membership include data share with sky so no need to go through all the laborious personal details again because you inputted them when you joined the forum. So you go straight to the lobby and the cashier will prompt you to deposit funds to play. Hey presto an activated sky account with real money deposit in an instant. This has simplified and quickened the whole process.  Additionally, you are asked whether you want to opt into playing The Open when you first register for the forum so are prompted to play right from the start. Lots of fun can be had with this marketing strategy eg when a member is registered for The Open their name changes to Gold/Blonde on the forum and hence further subtle psychological pressure is applied on others to register.

What’s more the crown jewels for marketing on this forum for sky is Tikay who often feels compromised but I don’t know why. Sky and Blonde have a fantastic opportunity to use that mutual association for the benefit of both parties. I can see why sky executives would conclude the sponsorship cannot work in its current format but it’s quite another thing to decide its unworkable altogether. With some creative thinking and a more dynamic approach it could undoubtedly be a success. Lots more scope in the non-member live updates market as well but shit I late for work now.

Tighty have you considered placing banners within the sigs of some of the long time posters/ Mods? say Kinboshi will be the amazon mod, Vinny the Watches 4 u mod etc. People will have no trouble finding the links then...

I think banning Mantis might be a good idea.

That's pretty random.  Besides, Mantis is deffo a keeper.

lol yeah - let's ban someone for throwing some ideas into the mix

His ideas are pretty terrible though and there are guys posting in this thread who work within this business saying so, yet he continues to harp on. 

Lol, let's all hate Mantis because we can't make our own minds up.

part in bold makes sense and does work - often when you donate/pay a subscription.

I'm loving the Mantis love in this thread :)

i don't understand why think i am missing something ....again!

He happens to be better qualified than most on this thread to debate business ideas, he has a proven track record in business, he is articulate, intelligent, & presents his cases well. From that you can suss why he get so muck stick on here. I would rather heed his business advice than almost any other Member here.

I will explain the "Mantis" thing in my Diary later today, Lee, please let's not derail the thread further. Thank you.

ffs i was not trying to i was supporting mantis and could not understand the hostility towards him

Yes, I know, & I was explaining why the illogical, unacceptable, & inappropriate hostility.

Let's move on, please.

ok so how much for me to advertise in the lounge

Let me get back to you when the Monte Carlo finishes please Lee, thanks. I will PM you

ok thks

I don't know about any previous history Mantis has with any other posters on this forum, but I can see why there is hostility to him from the number of threads I have read that he has posted in. 

His posts are very matter of fact. 

IMO, his posts on this thread are pretty bad.  The gaming industry works very differently to any other industry and you can't imo just transfer over logic and ideas from other sectors and say "there you go". 

I think the best suggestion, I think it was a suggestion anyway was by Mullhuzz when he indicated that in his opinion - again I think its what he meant from reading the post; is to set up a super affilliate link with a newish company.  That way they get all the expertise of blonde in terms of proper target audience, gamblers, poker players, feedback and blonde get a revenue share by pimping them.

Once again, a problem that I see with the sky deal is that as a bookmaker sky are ridiculed because they won't take bets.  Its all one Tikay coming on here and defending that logic but as punters it irks many of us on here when we see them offering a ridic price on a market only not to accept any worth while amount on it.

So ideally you want a company that's not going to shy away from taking a decent bet and either has a decent poker skin on a network or has a stand alone site. 

You then need all those people who harp on about how good this site is and what it means to them to start spending via your sponsors/affilliate partners.

I remember reading on here well before I was an active member that blonde had its own cardroom.  That was no doubt innovative for a forum in its day, but that fell badly by the wayside for the same reasons as I can only assume that the affilliate deals eventually fall through?

The card-room closed after we were unable to withstand the (at the time) new network rules and began incurring significant fines. It wasn't down to lack of play (although play was below what is once was).

Now the plan is indeed to secure a partnership with a room in the market with whom most of our members will not have accounts already.

There is also a possibility or two developing of a sponsorship with an organisation in the industry not involving a card-room, more a promotional arrangement

Early days, I'm all ears and reading all feedback.

....and because the Network refused to pay one of our players who had won a hefty 5 figure sum, until we paid the requisite fine, also a 5 figure sum. The fine was, at best, a "third party dispute", & they had absolutely no right to withhold that players money. It was from that incident that the parting of the way emenated.

thank you, yes

Unpleasant times.

arg!

I know we were asked to stop but i believe this mantis input is worthwhile

As I have said before, I have met Mantis (Mark) in the real world and he comes across as a really nice certainly intelligent guy.

Mantis knows exactly what he is doing when he posts on blonde in "his style". I decided long ago to stop commenting to his posts, as it becomes never ending. His posting style is that of a politician, not prepared to lose an argument and changing tack when he needs to. He obviously enjoys the controversy, and the discussion he generates (and I believe he usually posts where he probably believes that there is a point to be made - I am firmly of the opinion it never starts as trolling).

I broke my exception of commenting this week after he es sentally gave rubz to Dan Morgan and then went on to criticise a poster for being critical of him.

I think if you want an argument or even a stern reasoned debate, then feel free to  disagree with Mantis on something and you have 10 pages of lively debate/flaming/name calling (whatever your poison) guaranteed!

I personally cant stand it and to be honest when they kick off, rarely even observe them either nowadays.

This isn't an attack on Mantis (although I accept bits are negative towards him). Just understand what he takes from posting on here.

PM with you

Amazon and late room links are now in the news box top right of forum

what news box? I don't have one

It's too fecking small man!!

Nobody ever notices the news box because to be quite frank it's crap.

They're revenue generators ffs!!

They should be in your face bright colours so that we can't miss 'em.

lol, I don't like the News Box at all, too small, a bit pointless

However I can't change the design of the forum software

How about a 'sticky thread' with the links in it at the top of every board?

or banners..

but yes, thanks

Will pm soon really busy at min...I never noticed the news part !

a lot of people don't Lee. Understandably, its a puzzling piece of forum design

Bloody hell. Most of my wife's internet shopping has been on amazon this year and I never knew about this link :(

The news box must be movable to certain extent,I use the SMF default theme rather than the blonde one and dont get a news box at all.I have a news bar just above the home and help buttons.

ah, that'd be why I don't have a news box

and that's news to me

off to consult the administrator....

The news box is quite discreet, and only shows one link at a time.
Perhaps until you can get it changed just put a stickied thread at the top of the rail or lounge and have just links in that thread. Easy for all to use then! Oh and get some more links, must be able to get some referral links for plenty of retailers

Any news ?

Not yet. Ongoing etc.

Soooon?  ;)

Geo

Hopefully

Not a lot I can say until things are clearer. Sorry.

Some stuff is on the table, guys, including sponsorship offers, + the suggestion of an offer to buy the whole site. Also, some discussions are taking place. In Australia.

Fingers xxd we can put something together.

Apologies, poor APAT related attempt at humour, not a nudge

Geo

Speaking of apat is anyone else having trouble posting there?

It's been slow for a few days and wouldn't load at all last night. Seems to be back up now though.

hmmm can't get apat to load this morning

i know, down again

are you a member of the facebook group? updates and info on there is probably your best way of keeping in touch

Nah, proper old school me, don't do faceback ( and thank fk with all the hacked accounts recently)
looked at the player info for Brighton this Saturday so should be okay.

on a thread which is super important for the future of the forum, there are multiple posts including from the gaffer about another forum. Realllllly? Edit/remove all imo Including this one

You mean APAT?

Don't you realise that the 2 forums are linked in many ways including by many members?

There's no need to remove them whatsoever.

I use the Amazon link all the time but have no idea if my purchases are ever tracked. Can someone nudge me that it's been working?

Yes, a quarterly payment summary is received

i understand yeh, theres an apat threas somewhere right? Surely best place to post.

Nvm tho.

Excited to hear about news from aussie millions

It was never aimed for posts about apat to be here, just how the convo flowed. Besides everyone knows what has happened with skypoker and blonde

pads has a point.

don't cannabalise your own traffic.

Don't think you understand the link between APAT and blonde.

The two are very much intertwined, and are mutually beneficial in terms of attracting new members.

Note: All this assumes that APAT also affiliate to poker rooms. I don't know for certain that they do (didn't visit their website) but it seems like super likely ofc.

I'm almost certain you're grossly overestimating the effect (without knowing the numbers of course) and it still doesn't matter - cannabalizing your own traffic is more or less the nut worst thing you can do as a poker affiliate. One example is how FTP cannabalized their own traffic by only offering rakeback when you used an affiliate which lead to new traffic being intentionally rerouted through affiliates even though the traffic in question likely already knew about FTP and would have signed up anyway. This of course only served to reduce the ROI of marketing campaigns to the point where they were snap spending £30m every three seconds (exaggeration, ofc) on marketing trying to compete with Stars who were always going to win the marketing battle, in part because they retained all of their own pure traffic and this was simply augmented by affiliate traffic (another reason: affiliates get a really shit deal from Stars whereas the Tilt deals are twice to three times as good).

New members mean, with the greatest will in the world, very, very little, once you reach a critical mass of membership which Blonde has certainly obtained unless they are also affiliated and generating rake (via a CPA which is nice but they need to keep playing (usually for the first 90-180 days) to keep the global CPA price up or by a rev share or hybrid deal). Whilst new members add a great deal to community and replace those who, for one reason or another stop posting and getting involved but without affiliation they add nothing to the bottom line. How you ascribe a value to those players (from Blonde's pov, not a sponsor, who has a lottt more outs, cheap marketing, brand awareness, etc, etc, etc) is a discussion that isn't really for this thread, but when I tell you that it isn't very high at all once you reach about 5% of registrations making one post per month (and do some other maths with pageviews and active logins, etc), I'll hope you'll trust me.

I understand the connections just fine. The head/chariman of blonde/apat are exactly the same, but afaik the leading shareholer in blonde has nothing to do with apat amirite?

If somebody was looking to buy blonde or interested in buying blonde and the major thread on the site about the future and past problems spirals off into basically "news about apat" another british site, I would probably either 1) end my interest, 2)go and visit apat. This is obviously fine for a crowd of blondes but not the major shareholder or lots and lots and lots of other members (The new breed of blonde ) who don't post on apat.

If the forums are so similar and so linked then why would it not just be one big forum, double the traffic/members/posts would be more appealing for anyone who was looking to buy into a poker forum.

stop exaggerating. One member asked if their forum was down, a few people answered, that's it

By persisting with this nonsense you are perpetuating the "problem" you are complaining about

i disagree, i recommended deleting all the comments (including mine)

There's a big difference between a full blown discussion concerning another site/forum - which this is not - and one question about a site being down

If it was the former, I would agree with you. It isn't.

Sorted.

http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=56712.0