blonde Live Updates - your opinions needed please.

[TightEnd]

Which updates are peoples favs   which ones create the most traffic?

my personal favourites are the GUKPTs and the EPTS with a strong British presence..London obv, Monte Carlo etc

Most traffic? Well thats a bit misleading on its own as each event needs costs apportioning to it to give a cost per unique hit if you get my drift

Needless to say I've got those figures and its influenced my decision to prioritise along the lines tikay is suggesting

[77dave]

With the changes in festivals next year due to the GUKPT im not sure how many of the regular domestic festivals are worth covering.

Id be interested in knowing Snoopys opinion on the recent main event at Luton.

Personally i wanna see the GUKPT events.  DTD festivals. Vic and Dublin EPTS. Irish Open. Broadway festival. WSOPE.

I think thats it, prob missed something out.  i happy without the ept/wpt/wsop

[ifm]

Having only read the OP i appologise if i am repeating stuff.

I'll start by saying i never went near the existing LU till i saw "final table" in the header i then read who was there and binned it.
Couple of points:
They really are not as entertaining as they were though this i believe is down to a lack of "fun" with them.
They started as huge fun mainly down to Tikays daft sense of humour (by miles the best updater there has been) and the interaction with the members.
Where did the norkage go? they are far too serious Snoppy apart (different gravy that chap).
I always follow Snoppys updates cuz for me they are the best in spirit, have a laugh and take the pee.
Best ever was monte carlo the first time because the personalities just sang that time, i have been back to that thread many times and i still laugh out loud at it!!!!!!!!
So for me it's a chemistry/personality thing with norkage please.

[GlasgowBandit]

the problem with us accepting any advertising from rival sites is that it could detract from our main revenue generator, our card-room.

Thats the way our business model is compared to say a poker news/forum site which might promote a load of rooms
and get affiliate income from all of them. We have a cardroom and thats where we need our members to be, playing as and when they wish to.

We have accepted third party poker room advertising and sponsorship business in the past (virgin, Sky, dtd, Full Tilt etc etc)  probably still would do if the terms were attractive, but we'd like to stand on our own two feet and not cut off our nose to spite our face and theoretically encourage you guys to play elsewhere

Right, see where your going with that now.  How do you increase the card room traffic?  Add some guarantees, more satelites?  I have been playing regularly on blonde for the past 2 weeks instead of other iPoker accounts but some of the offers of guaranteed prizes from other skins are hard to knock back.  i don't think the guarantee has to be massive but even unique blonde guarantees are sure to be popular with the regulars on the forum. 

[TightEnd]

We're running more and more sats to various events

Mid year we ran guarantees for a month or two in our regular blonde comps

We didn't hit the numbers required in any comp, and forked out. Doing the same regularly, currently, would reduce our live update schedule further

Its always been another thing on my mind, while I am at it, we promote and promote our leagues, blonde events etc etc (specifically Kev does) and no matter how hard they are pushed we get a max of 50 or so runners

Various reasons I know for this (not least of which for many playing a blonde comp will be a pretty tough $10 or whatever comp!) but the card-room strategy is beginning to have to reflect that we put enormous effort into forum promotion and this seems to hit a "ceiling of effectiveness" and maybe we need to be looking at different approaches.

[TightEnd]

This probably isn't a popular view but I think you should cut back on the number of live updates period. You just don't get anything out of it for your business model. I know blonde isn't just about that but as you are completely and utterly free, people don't even need to sign up to see the updates.
For ones to cut back on then the WSOP, WPT and far flung EPT should all go, as stated there is limited interest in them at the best of times.

This of course, is exactly what we are doing/have done

[ifm]

Talking about blonde comps and leagues etc. as someone on permanent shifts (no longer) i noticed they all seemed to fall on the same days or the same weeks (i.e. 1st and 3rd weeks per month).

I get it's in response to requests but how about proper polls for this sort of thing?

[TightEnd]

Talking about blonde comps and leagues etc. as someone on permanent shifts (no longer) i noticed they all seemed to fall on the same days or the same weeks (i.e. 1st and 3rd weeks per month).

I get it's in response to requests but how about proper polls for this sort of thing?

yes they did seem/do seem to fall into a pattern of Tuesdays and certain weeks etc

Nothing against a poll going forward but as I know you accept, its not easy to keep most of the customers happy and at a certain point in each planning process a decision always needs to be taken which will never suit all

[taximan007]

I do use OTHER sites for updates that Blonde do not cover.

These reports are "just news", Blonde updates are like a family, because of them being interative, but for them to work as some people want, the members have to give something back and interact as well. I think the balance is very good, all things considered.

It really is a "No Win" situation, "you will never please all of the people all of the time"

[byronkincaid]

Its always been another thing on my mind, while I am at it, we promote and promote our leagues, blonde events etc etc (specifically Kev does) and no matter how hard they are pushed we get a max of 50 or so runners

I and I'm pretty sure Brad still haven't had out prizes for winning Leagues 1 and 2. Aaron told me an hour with DC was meant to be equivelent to $500 so if it's easier for you guys to sort out maybe you could just ship the money into my Blonde account? 

[Tractor]

Regarding raising funds to help cover the costs of the live updates, how about a Paypal donate button somewhere on the page?
I donate some money(not a lot) to a couple of other free sites that has this feature, im sure you would raise quite a bit of funds that way.

Apart from that, i tend to follow the UK updates mainly.

[ripple11]

the problem with us accepting any advertising from rival sites is that it could detract from our main revenue generator, our card-room.

Thats the way our business model is compared to say a poker news/forum site which might promote a load of rooms
and get affiliate income from all of them. We have a cardroom and thats where we need our members to be, playing as and when they wish to.

We have accepted third party poker room advertising and sponsorship business in the past (virgin, Sky, dtd, Full Tilt etc etc)  probably still would do if the terms were attractive, but we'd like to stand on our own two feet and not cut off our nose to spite our face and theoretically encourage you guys to play elsewhere

Right, see where your going with that now.  How do you increase the card room traffic?  Add some guarantees, more satelites?  I have been playing regularly on blonde for the past 2 weeks instead of other iPoker accounts but some of the offers of guaranteed prizes from other skins are hard to knock back.  i don't think the guarantee has to be massive but even unique blonde guarantees are sure to be popular with the regulars on the forum. 

Main revenue generator = cardroom = regular quality live updates.

Therefore its vital all members support the cardroom.

 As Bandit does, when on ipoker I now play Blonde, unless its a GUKPT sat for example. ( although "shares for players" satellites for Festivals/GUKPT etc is a great idea to compensate no official satellites)

It would be interesting to know what kind of % increase in traffic/revenue would help to ease any financial pressures on updates?

[Acidmouse]

I used to play blonde as my sole card room but I simply cannot play it with those casino games on, too much of a temptation to dick all my money off..

I will stick to stars until I can either turn them off perm.

[TightEnd]

It would be interesting to know what kind of % increase in traffic/revenue would help to ease any financial pressures on updates?

very roughly, if we saw a 25% increase in net monthly cardroom revenue, we'd be totally self sufficient, all other things being equal

However, our revenues are mainly in $ and our costs in £ so with a weak $ things are very rarely equal!

[brad.strider]

Its always been another thing on my mind, while I am at it, we promote and promote our leagues, blonde events etc etc (specifically Kev does) and no matter how hard they are pushed we get a max of 50 or so runners

I and I'm pretty sure Brad still haven't had out prizes for winning Leagues 1 and 2. Aaron told me an hour with DC was meant to be equivelent to $500 so if it's easier for you guys to sort out maybe you could just ship the money into my Blonde account? 

great idea byron, it would save a lot of messing about on ours and daves behalf.