MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT: APCW HAS MERGED

[RobWin]

LOL...Pina, why the heck are you so quite this morning ??

[Pinababy69]

LOL...Pina, why the heck are you so quite this morning ??

No coffee yet Rob.

[lots0]

I feel privileged... I have been banned from CAP, GWPA and the APCW... for years now.

Bryan is the only one who will put up with me...

After my Oh so public CAP banning by the professor for disagreeing with him about 888.com, I thought they (888.com) were a Rogue outfit because of things most players would never be aware of.

The owner of CAP, the professor (Lou Fabiano), did not like the fact I disagreed with him and he was so classy that he used the info I used to register at CAP with to look up my credit report and some other personal information about me and then publish some of my personal info in public here at CM and on his own forum (the personal info of mine here at CM was removed) The Professor even went so far as to try to contact the "Owner" of my home to tell them I was running an illegal gambling operation on their property... The joke was on the professor though... I own my own home and I live in a State where online Gambling is not illegal... Then the professor even called my local Sheriff's Office to "Inform" on me for being involved with online gambling... But like I said, Online Gambling is not illegal in my State, besides the Sheriff is my Cousin...

CAP a real classy outfit... NOT!

In my opinion, the business of online gambling would be far far better off without any of the four, CAP, GWPA. APCW or Casino City involved.

There is name for people that will do anything for money... "Whore"

[Casinomeister]

Let's tone things down please:

1. General Posting Rules:

1.1 - No "Flaming": Please do not post any messages that harass, insult, belittle, threaten or flame another member or guest. Abusive behavior will not be tolerated and your account may be suspended. Please refrain from potty mouth language.

Lou is a member of this message board and should be given the respect like any other member. This is a discussion about the APCW merging with the GPWA - not a bash fest. Thank you.

[lots0]

Let's tone things down please:

1. General Posting Rules:

1.1 - No "Flaming": Please do not post any messages that harass, insult, belittle, threaten or flame another member or guest. Abusive behavior will not be tolerated and your account may be suspended. Please refrain from potty mouth language.

Lou is a member of this message board and should be given the respect like any other member. This is a discussion about the APCW merging with the GPWA - not a bash fest. Thank you.

I removed the references to "Fat Lou" as that may have been a little over the top... But the rest is true.

People should know what kind of a person they are dealing with at CAP.

[dominique]

In theory Dom, I agree with you. Unfortunately, the truth is that most players don't even know what an affiliate is. They don't realize that when they click on a banner, that affiliate gets a percentage of their losses for life, or a flat fee for them signing up.

That is why forums like this one are so very important! BTW there are other payment options for affiliates too, % of deposit, % of wagering etc. Different casinos offer different types of reimbursement.

The major one though is....if a webmaster pulls a banner/advertising from his site, the money is cut off. If he is just an affiliate and does the same, in most cases, he will still collect his percentage of losses on players he has under him thus far.

In theory. Many affiliates have a rude awakening when they realize that a crook is a crook is a crook, and low and behold, that crooked casino won't pay their comissions. What goes around defintely comes around in that scenario.

It is very hard to be totally impartial when it is your livelihood.

Darn right. And any business owner worth their salt knows that the customer is king. If an affiliate is not partial to the player, they won't last long.

The thing is that there are hundreds of sites going up every day that are built by newcomers who don't know sh!# from shinola (just type online casino into google and look at the number of results), and these are visited by equally uninformed players. Most of these sites are extremely short lived, but there are always new ones to take their place.

Like with everything else, information is vital, and thank god there are places that do grow to have some reach thanks to players who support the effort these places make to distribute information.

What I would really like to see someday, is a site similar to this one, an info site.....with NO advertising. No banners, no clickable links to any casinos. Just info. I doubt it will ever happen, but in a perfect world and all...ya know.

That would have to be a very rich person who can afford to work full time for free and pay several others a salary to help. Most people don't realize how much work goes into a decent site.

These are the questions an affiliate should ask themselves before going into business with a new program:

- Is the casino they represent reputable?
- Do they pay the player in a timely manner?
- Are their bonus terms player friendly and easy to understand?
- Do they have good support staff/phone support/live chat?
- Is there a history of player complaints, and how were these dealt with?

If there are negatives in any of those things, then don't offer them to a player. Pretty simple to me. But unfortunately, when you read CAP, what you see is more of this:

- How much rev share/CPA do they offer?
- Do they bundle?
- Do they have a monthly negative carryover?
- Will I get paid on time every month?

Totally ass backwards, and until EVERYONE starts putting the player first and above all else, this industry will never be right.

All the above matters, if an affiliate fails to pay attention to all of it they fail. Affiliates need to spend a good amount of time on RESEARCH! IMO players should go to a site because it has done the research for them and saves them time and - yes- money they would have lost to crooks otherwise, as well as a bunch of headaches.

I think it's a bit unreasonable to expect any one place to provide all possibly applicable information needed to present a clean site that is able to survive.

CAP has it's purpose, it is for affiliates what Meister is for players, a way to reach out to reps and get things fixed. Don't think for a minute that affiliates don't get screwed every bit as much as players do. You are dealing with the same outfits in the same industry. Getting paid is a major, major issue for affiliates and many times payments are late (or never arrive) and there are no groceries on the table because of it.

CAP could not possibly compete with Meister and provide the fresh, unbiased and blunt feedback players give here. Nor should it. CAP and Meister are two places with totally different knowledge bases and that is good just the way it is. Reps, operators and affiliates alike need to come to meister regularly to see whats going on.

If I were an affiliate and had the choice to promote a 32Red type of casino at a 20% commission rate, or a Virtual clone at a 40% commission rate...I'd take the 32Red product everytime, and tell Virtual to kiss off.

Smart decision every way you look at it. The affiliate who chooses the crappy casino with the high comission will never see that player again. The affiliate who chooses the good casino with the lower comission will have a happy player coming back again and again and end up making more money in the long run. Promoting crooks is not only immoral, it's also stupid.

Dom, I'm sorry if some of the stuff about CAP offends you...it's just an opinion, mine. Honestly, I don't know how you stand it there...because you don't seem to be the "standard" type of affiliate they represent.

No offense taken at all. I have been a volunteer moderator at CAP for some 7years. Affiliates need a place to get the business information they need, and they need a place that offers them recourse when affiliate programs don't keep their end of the bargain. Same as players need Meister to stand up for them.

As to the banning stuff, like I said, not surprising.

I wasn't going to comment on that, but - deja vue all over again. Before Michael's time, GPWA was on a banning streak and banned Meister, greedygirl, Jtodd, the Professor, Dean Ing (one of the original founders) and yours truly, just to name a few that are still around today.

I agree in general that people who insult and attack others on a message board should be banned. There is no need and no excuse for that. I disagree with bannings for political, business or personal reasons.

That's all I have to say about all of that. Luckily I am just a volunteer and have no hand in banning anyone. So I will graciously sidestep the issue and just say one thing:

We all need each other to make this industry a good place for all. Let's help each other and not infight - infighting leads to self destruction.

So, and now I am going downstairs and play some slots. My last day in Vegas today...

[Casinomeister]

...GPWA was on a banning streak and banned Meister...

Don't forget, I quit before they banned me.

But that was the old GPWA

/derail

[DiamondGeezer]

Win, you may want to read Diamond Geezer's post again. In the paragraph I quoted, he is describing Casinomeister/Bryan to a tee. Bryan has stressed more than once, that he is really not an affiliate, but a webmaster. And I think if you ask him, you'll find that most of his advertising on here is paid for ie. media buy, and not on the affiliate model. That's a guess, but it's the way I've always assumed it is done here.

FTR, I'm no fan of the affiliate model either. Yes, there are good affiliates, but unfortunately in eight years of online gaming, I've found that the bad ones outweigh the good, by a good margin.

Go punch in online casinos/gambling into Google, and search some of the sites that come up on the first couple of pages. I think you'll find that many of them promote what the "good guys" consider to be rogue casinos, especially Virtual and all their clones. It's a losing battle, especially when you have webmasters such as JTodd/APCW, who "did" have some credibility, now supporting shitholes like the Gambling Wages casinos.

Thanks Pina that is exactly what I did mean. Infact it was me who called Bryan an affiliate a while back and he did put me right on that one .

I am not saying all affiliates are bad but that the business model is not good. It is only natural that many affiliates are going to end up promoting casino's that offer them the biggest incentives. I don't blame the affiliates so much as the big companies for using the system in the first place.

I have always thought that when a big reputable company like William Hill or Intercasino allows themselves to be advertised on affiliate sites that also promote rogue casino's they are adding a lot of legitimacy to the rogues. Players will go to the affiliate site and see these reputable brands and then see the rogues and they think 'well if this casino is alongside Intercasino I guess they must be ok'. IMO it gives the rogues a lot more credibility in the eyes of the player when they see them like this. I mean if you were making Mercedes cars you wouldn't want to sell them down at the cheap second hand car lot would you? You would either want your own site or to be on a site with companies of a similar standing. You see this in real life when the Mercedes dealership will often be nearby a Jaguar or a Lexus for example.

So I don't blame the affiliates but the industry. I have never blamed an affiliate for when I haven't been paid by a casino because if a casino is determined not to pay there is not a great deal affiliates can do about it. As we see day after day. It is great when they do help but you can't expect it as such because you don't have a contract with the affiliate like you would at a travel agent's.

I think the root casue of a lot of the problems lies with the big companies. If they got their act together and controlled their brands better the rogues would struggle to get the publicity they need.

[dominique]

I remember it well, I was logged in and watching. You quit and it was followed by a "don't let the door slam you in the axx" and immediate banning.

All water under the bridge.... long gone.

[lots0]

A great post Dom... Too bad your not running CAP... It might really be an asset to the business instead of promoting all those "bad" casinos to unwary and uninformed web masters.

Dom let me ask you a question...

If like you say CAP is really about helping affiliates and if like you say promoting Rogue Casinos is really bad for affiliates...
Why does CAP promote so many "Rogue" casino programs to new webmasters?

(I don't think anyone buys the old... "keeping lines of communication open" bit anymore. It just does not make sense.)