Hello DPers, I've been wondering, how much of $$ was spent by those guys to start out? Well, not thinking of development expenses -- finishing local project of that grade, I do know a price and after all, coding something large eventually results in a process of putting the money from the left pocket to the right pocket. Also, not about to think of any weird kinds of advertisement. Taking out a default bundle of white-hat SEO and a bunch of ADs posted via any banner service, can anyone roughly remember how much of actions was taken by any of those two kings to reach the first 10,000K of users?
Party Poker, at least, paid millions of dollars in promotional fees to those of us known as "bonus whores". They gave a $100 bonus for a $500 deposit if you played something like 100 raked hands and they and their clones did this about once a month each. I would play 4 hands at a time and clear these bonuses at something over $25/hr plus winnings for my recreational time, I couldn't pass them up on their offer. But, in one of the rare instances where this actually applies, Party Poker made up for it in volume. The bonus whores may have cost them millions but the founders of Party Poker made far more than that when the stock went public. It was a threat to their cash flow but they adjusted the bonus requirements over time so that it wasn't so beneficial to those who exploited it. Tom
That was the mostly required piece of information, thanks. So it made the whole thing up to 'quickly gather then release strategy' once more.
Poker is a pretty high paying niche. The thing is, the big casino's know full well once they rope a client in, they can make residual income from that client for years down the line. Hence they offer big commissions on PPL etc. Of course, the legal restrictions for the US market have caused problems for a lot of American affiliates. I read a report a few months back saying that the online gambling niche is worth about $18bn per year, which probably explains the $70 per lead that some of the bigger poker companies offer to get business.