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Author Topic: State of the Forum  (Read 30278 times)
cia260895
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« Reply #150 on: July 18, 2008, 09:21:34 AM »


We have been obliged to remove a number of Posts from this thread, following a serious "flame" of one Member by another, & the subsequent exchanges.

Subsequent action will be decided later today, until then, that Members Posting Rights have been withdrawn.



Testing, testing...1.....2.

ditto
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M3boy
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« Reply #151 on: July 18, 2008, 09:26:35 AM »


We have been obliged to remove a number of Posts from this thread, following a serious "flame" of one Member by another, & the subsequent exchanges.

Subsequent action will be decided later today, until then, that Members Posting Rights have been withdrawn.



Missed it all Sad

"phew"
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M3boy
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« Reply #152 on: July 18, 2008, 09:34:33 AM »

just got in

I'd better clarify the advertising points as there are questions

Very occasionally the ad deals are negotiated direct with the advertiser, but a while ago I recognised I needed expert help to assist blonde in making the most of its fast growing traffic, and in the last six months we've come to a couple of arrangements with two media suppliers

The need to do this became clear earlier this year. Our card-room was beginning to struggle, it wasn't acheiving the revenue for us that was needed to a) pay staff...(and none, absolutely none, of the staff earn what I would describe as "fair" rates for the job they do..for all of them to some extent its a labour of love) and b) cover the costs of the forum, doing live updates, promoting the company, putting bashes on, adding value to card-room leagues etc . The reasons for this struggle are referred to elsewhere but over and above anything else I suppose competition in the marketplace for big rakers became even more intense than before, and the top end of our rakers disappeared elsewhere as we couldn't match what they were being offered..

I mananged to get some sponsorships and board tenancies in Jan and Feb, but it didn't do everything we needed money wise

So the next step, and it was one taken a bit reluctantly, was to monetise the traffic on the forum

With specific regard to the ads, we're paid (our will be when we fulfill the deals, often they are post-paid) on a Cost Per Impression basis....ie at £x per 1,000 impressions. If you have a forum with for the sake of illustration only 1m impressions a month at £5CPM then that's worth £5000 and this might be over typically a number of months. Don't take this as a figure we're earning per advertiser, its less..its an illustration

So to answer one question, you don't need to do an "action" by ordering a product for us to get paid (you would do if it were payment on CPA, Cost per action). An impression on the forum page is enough. What does help though is the ratio of clicks to impressions on an ad...if we have a good % of click throughs then we are more likely to a) get renewals and b) charge higher rates. Unique users are important too. A characteristic we have (I call it the Boldie effect) is that we have some users that impress a lot, but the more uniques we have the better as some deals are on frequency cap..ie only your first few impressions in a given period count for the deal, and thus rewards higher numbers of uniques compared to comparatively few people who look at a lot of pages.

One media seller handles our business for gambling related advertisning and another handles our business for non-gambling advertisers.

Specifically for the latter we have a rate card, and the supplier a list of customers prepared to pay that rate and the agency chooses from that "pool". The fact that there are currently "Erection Product" ads in their two slots is not a conscious decision of mine, or anyone at blonde its from the "pool" of advertisers.

I'm a bit embarrased by it, not because of the subject matter as such but because I don't think, as a number of people have pointed out, that it sits too comfortably with our community ethos. Indeed I've asked my contact if ads of a suitable value from another advertier could be used instead.

On a wider issue, blonde isn't rolling in money. Far from it. At the moment our costs are way higher than our non advertising income and the ads are a means to an end. In an ideal world we wouldn't promote third parties, and we'd have a card-room that made us self sufficient. It doesn't, despite an awful lot of hard work to help it happen. We could reduce costs, whether that be people, bashes, live updates, whatever. I'd like to avoid that because I believe all areas of blonde have a good future, and potential.

I'm acutely conscious that commerciality doesn't always fit with a community. Its a tricky balance to strike especially when I have shareholders who need a fair return on their investment. If they don't get that then logically I'm not here, and someone else will have a go. Or the shareholders decide that the company needs to go in a different direction.

hope that helps



Just a point with regards to the shortage of money - was there really a need to cover the WSOP? I mean, it was availiable on the net anyway, and before it was posted on blonde in most instances.

What exactly did this "trip" cost Blonde?  - Do you really think Blonde benefit from this sort of update because I dont.

Same goes for the EPT - the ones that are abroad.

This would be the first thing I would cut to save revenue.

Maybe you should balance the "we are not making enough money, please play at our cardroom" posts , with "Do you want us to spend £xxxx's to cover xxxxx event? or do you think the money could be spent more wisely"

Also, where is "blonde" company registered please?
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boldie
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« Reply #153 on: July 18, 2008, 09:38:08 AM »

just got in

I'd better clarify the advertising points as there are questions

Very occasionally the ad deals are negotiated direct with the advertiser, but a while ago I recognised I needed expert help to assist blonde in making the most of its fast growing traffic, and in the last six months we've come to a couple of arrangements with two media suppliers

The need to do this became clear earlier this year. Our card-room was beginning to struggle, it wasn't acheiving the revenue for us that was needed to a) pay staff...(and none, absolutely none, of the staff earn what I would describe as "fair" rates for the job they do..for all of them to some extent its a labour of love) and b) cover the costs of the forum, doing live updates, promoting the company, putting bashes on, adding value to card-room leagues etc . The reasons for this struggle are referred to elsewhere but over and above anything else I suppose competition in the marketplace for big rakers became even more intense than before, and the top end of our rakers disappeared elsewhere as we couldn't match what they were being offered..

I mananged to get some sponsorships and board tenancies in Jan and Feb, but it didn't do everything we needed money wise

So the next step, and it was one taken a bit reluctantly, was to monetise the traffic on the forum

With specific regard to the ads, we're paid (our will be when we fulfill the deals, often they are post-paid) on a Cost Per Impression basis....ie at £x per 1,000 impressions. If you have a forum with for the sake of illustration only 1m impressions a month at £5CPM then that's worth £5000 and this might be over typically a number of months. Don't take this as a figure we're earning per advertiser, its less..its an illustration

So to answer one question, you don't need to do an "action" by ordering a product for us to get paid (you would do if it were payment on CPA, Cost per action). An impression on the forum page is enough. What does help though is the ratio of clicks to impressions on an ad...if we have a good % of click throughs then we are more likely to a) get renewals and b) charge higher rates. Unique users are important too. A characteristic we have (I call it the Boldie effect) is that we have some users that impress a lot, but the more uniques we have the better as some deals are on frequency cap..ie only your first few impressions in a given period count for the deal, and thus rewards higher numbers of uniques compared to comparatively few people who look at a lot of pages.

One media seller handles our business for gambling related advertisning and another handles our business for non-gambling advertisers.

Specifically for the latter we have a rate card, and the supplier a list of customers prepared to pay that rate and the agency chooses from that "pool". The fact that there are currently "Erection Product" ads in their two slots is not a conscious decision of mine, or anyone at blonde its from the "pool" of advertisers.

I'm a bit embarrased by it, not because of the subject matter as such but because I don't think, as a number of people have pointed out, that it sits too comfortably with our community ethos. Indeed I've asked my contact if ads of a suitable value from another advertier could be used instead.

On a wider issue, blonde isn't rolling in money. Far from it. At the moment our costs are way higher than our non advertising income and the ads are a means to an end. In an ideal world we wouldn't promote third parties, and we'd have a card-room that made us self sufficient. It doesn't, despite an awful lot of hard work to help it happen. We could reduce costs, whether that be people, bashes, live updates, whatever. I'd like to avoid that because I believe all areas of blonde have a good future, and potential.

I'm acutely conscious that commerciality doesn't always fit with a community. Its a tricky balance to strike especially when I have shareholders who need a fair return on their investment. If they don't get that then logically I'm not here, and someone else will have a go. Or the shareholders decide that the company needs to go in a different direction.

hope that helps



Just a point with regards to the shortage of money - was there really a need to cover the WSOP? I mean, it was availiable on the net anyway, and before it was posted on blonde in most instances.

What exactly did this "trip" cost Blonde?  - Do you really think Blonde benefit from this sort of update because I dont.

Same goes for the EPT - the ones that are abroad.

This would be the first thing I would cut to save revenue.

Maybe you should balance the "we are not making enough money, please play at our cardroom" posts , with "Do you want us to spend £xxxx's to cover xxxxx event? or do you think the money could be spent more wisely"

Also, where is "blonde" company registered please?

Did Blonde cover the WSOP?

*Edit I'm not being clever here..but there was one thread about the WSOP2008 and that was mainly chip counts and all that. I thought everybody out there was there on account of already working for somebody else, no?
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Acidmouse
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« Reply #154 on: July 18, 2008, 09:39:48 AM »

No. I thought most of the blonde people there were working for pokernews and sky? just snoops letting us know the winners?
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boldie
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« Reply #155 on: July 18, 2008, 09:40:24 AM »

No. I thought most of the blonde people there were working for pokernews and sky? just snoops letting us know the winners?

indeed...(sorry mate eddited my above post while you posted this)
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« Reply #156 on: July 18, 2008, 09:51:08 AM »


Just a point with regards to the shortage of money - was there really a need to cover the WSOP? I mean, it was availiable on the net anyway, and before it was posted on blonde in most instances.

What exactly did this "trip" cost Blonde?  - Do you really think Blonde benefit from this sort of update because I dont.

Same goes for the EPT - the ones that are abroad.

This would be the first thing I would cut to save revenue.

Maybe you should balance the "we are not making enough money, please play at our cardroom" posts , with "Do you want us to spend £xxxx's to cover xxxxx event? or do you think the money could be spent more wisely"

Also, where is "blonde" company registered please?

Blonde didn't cover the WSOP. Snoopy and I were working for other sites, he was still doing his blonde stuff on top of everything else whilst I occasionally chipped in. Last year's WSOP coverage had some of the biggest hits of 2007, but Tikay, Tighty and myself were all agreed that because of the restrictions in place (1 post an hour, poor access, photos to be deleted with 72 hours) that we would not be able to provide the updates to a standard that people are use to.

For a site that prides itself on it's update quality, and blonde is very highly thought of in the poker media world and in online poker in that regard, you cannot be perceived as having that if you don't cover the big events. Secondly, our sponsorship deal with William Hill requires us to cover the EPT's. I can accept that some people aren't particularly enamoured with EPT's, but we also receive good traffic for these from sources that generally wouldn't have found blonde, it's just that at the moment they haven't necessarily been converted into cardroom signups.

P.S

Why are you trying to lose me my job? Wink
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tikay
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« Reply #157 on: July 18, 2008, 10:14:53 AM »


Thanks for all the comments & feedback.

I shall reply as appropiate, hopefully, later today. Please bear with us unil then.

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TightEnd
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« Reply #158 on: July 18, 2008, 10:17:34 AM »

Paul

Chris has covered the WSOP and EPT points.....


blonde is registered in the UK, the card-room is licensed in Curacao.


On a general note we (I) think long and hard about costs, and the value for money of particular costs with regard to revenue, traffic etc

Not wanting to particularly re-open a debate we've had before, but I think we'd be a less comprehensive site, with less traffic, if we didn't do all the updates we do.

Albeit of course I could ask all the updaters not to go 5 star, or take limosines, not use Platinum Amex cards and not to expense the hookers.

(Joke!)
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M3boy
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« Reply #159 on: July 18, 2008, 10:18:22 AM »

Wasnt aware about the situation re WSOP - ty

Nor indeed about the EPT situation - ty again.
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kinboshi
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« Reply #160 on: July 18, 2008, 10:18:39 AM »

I'm going to Curacao this Autumn.  Just thought I'd share that with everyone...
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« Reply #161 on: July 18, 2008, 10:19:36 AM »

I'm going to Curacao this Autumn.  Just thought I'd share that with everyone...


Is that near blackpool?
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« Reply #162 on: July 18, 2008, 10:23:27 AM »

I'm going to Curacao this Autumn.  Just thought I'd share that with everyone...

I hate you....just thought I'd share that with everyone. Really mate, I'm stuck in freezing Bathgate doing my shitty work and you're telling me you're going to Curacao? Ban him someone, please!


Before you're banned though, you going on holiday, playing poker or smuggling drugs?
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M3boy
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« Reply #163 on: July 18, 2008, 10:24:30 AM »


blonde is registered in the UK, the card-room is licensed in Curacao.


TY, what is the registered companys' name?
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boldie
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« Reply #164 on: July 18, 2008, 10:25:05 AM »


blonde is registered in the UK, the card-room is licensed in Curacao.


TY, what is the registered companys' name?

You thinking of buying shares?
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