- Joined
- Oct 15, 2004
- Location
- Toronto, Ontario - Canada
Seriously people, if you have $50 burning a hole in your pocket, you could do so many better things than give it to the Virtual Group.
Throwing it down a drain would be more productive for instance.
Failing that, donate it to charity, or put it towards a holiday fund.
Or how about depositing it at a casino which is reputable and one that is not going to give you a whole can of problems.
Exactly Dave, why would anyone want to support a criminal enterprise in any way, shape or form?
What Virtual wanted to happen with this marketing campaign, is exactly what has happened.....players post that they've "recovered" winnings previously denied, then a few players figure what's the harm in taking up that 300% or 500% bonus offer just once....as Chuchu said, they more than likely will get paid, because the spotlight is still shining bright.
I posted this a week or so ago...I must be psychic.
Note the bolded part. Here we are a week, or ten days later....and we are talking about the EXACT thing that I said would happen. I just never dreamed the rep would have the balls to actually post a promo here on the forum, like it's some sleazy EZBoard, from the days of yore.
And then of course, the main objective, which is to get some of the big affies who have previously dropped them back on the bandwagon. Bryan's quote from a week ago:
It has nothing to do with wanting to do the right thing, or turning over a new leaf, or all of a sudden deciding it's more profitable to run an honest business. It's marketing. I'm simply baffled that everyone can't see this.
Again, the above is a quote from another thread...but I wanted to run some hypothetical numbers, so that we can see it won't really take that much for them to recoup whatever amount they have so far returned to previously screwed over players. I also doubt it's anywhere near in the hundreds of thousands. Acepedro, who's owed over 50K hasn't been paid, contrary to what Marty said. And the big million dollar winner hasn't been paid, that I know of. I haven't seen any big press release, have you? And I don't mean paid in dribs and drabs...where he signs some NDA, and gets paid over the next ten years...I mean, cha-ching...a big whopping roll of cash in his bank account.
At best, they have paid out 500 here, 1000 or a couple thousand there....sometimes even much smaller amounts ie. $100 or $200. I really don't think it's anywhere near hundreds of thousands.
I'm not sure if some people realize it...but there are some mega or super affiliates out there who easily make five figures a month or more. They don't have one or two websites....they have dozens, and hundreds. In the now closed "Forum Rule 4.4" thread, some of us tried to convince webmasters to remove all Virtual properties from their sites. Not a ton of success, but there was some....in particular a large affiliate network run by Topboss (Heather). The lady runs a network comprised of about (I think) 120 sites or so. And she pretty much had Virtual on all of them. Kudos to her...she actually did the right thing and removed all traces of them from all of her sites (no easy task apparently).
I'm not using her as a specific example below, but just as an overall idea of how big some of these affiliates can be...and how much reach and influence they have.
So, hypothetically...let's say we have an affiliate/webmaster who runs around 100 sites, all of them catering to different markets/parts of the world. And all with good search engine rankings. Let's say that this affiliate has Virtual banners placed prominently on their main pages on all 100 sites. And each of these banners offers some ridiculous 300-500% no restrictions signup bonus....minimum deposit $50.
Conservatively speaking, that webmaster gets ten new signups/depositors for each site they run (in a month). That's $500 gross...but 25% or $125 of it will go to the affiliate in question. Or if it's a CPA deal, then they might receive $50 to $100 (or more) per player/depositor.
Working on the revshare model..the casino has made $375 in the first month off just ONE of this affiliate's websites. Multiply that times 100 websites....$37,500. And that's just using the scenario of one big time affiliate. Do the math for a few more, and then add in the smaller ones...and the old players who are obviously fooled by this "new leaf" campaign. The numbers start to become truly staggering.
This has nothing to do with players, it has everything to do with getting the affiliates back on board, and getting the casinos some fresh meat to fuck over. They can't do that without affiliates....they need them. This is the ultimate exercise in PR, and spin doctoring. And they hired someone to spearhead it, whose previous rep in the industry was beyond repute.
What they have paid out in the last couple weeks, is a mere drop in the bucket to the POTENTIAL future earnings they can glean...dependent upon how many players and affiliates they can sucker in.
And it makes no difference if it is one 48 hr promo, or an ongoing promo, or whatever. Why would anyone even consider giving their money...$50, $100, $500..who cares the amount...to a criminal enterprise? I would rather set fire to it, and watch it burn, than let these assholes get one red cent from me.
They will go back to their old ways, as they have done half a dozen times in the last decade. This has all been played out before...I'm not psychic. But I could write the script for this with my eyes closed....cause I've seen the play before, more than once.
I was merely stating that I believed that it was unlikely that you would be screwed if you took and won on the bonus at this stage in time because it would jeopardise the exercise marty is embarking on. This was viewed as being shilling in nature and a lot of negative sentiments ensued.
Always a good indication of a casino NOT to play at, when their emails are all about getting around your sp4m filters.
by someone who could voice it without repercussion.
