It’s obvious that the poker boom is over and there’s not that great of a development any more. Now, the focus should be to conquer new markets and gain new costumers. But this is a slow process. The main problem right now is that there’s not enough new money in the system. There are not enough new player that deposit 1000 Dollar and don’t give a damn whether they lose or not. And even micro limit players have a educational opportunities right now. They can browse through the internet and find plenty of useful strategy articles and how they can improve their game. Overall, it’s getting tighter and even professional players that used to make good money can’t play profitably any more! A great example is iPoker. It used to be one of the fishiest networks and a great place to make money. But now it’s filled with grinders and winning players that have to share the losses of some donkeys.
To make the story shorter: Free bankroll models don’t work any more although they had some great success in the past. For example Pokerstrategy.com only grew through this free bankroll and free poker education model. Now it’s one of the biggest, if not the biggest affiliates in the world. The main reason for this success is a free bankroll model with a good ROI. PartyPoker spent $ 50 + 100 in free poker cash. The PartyPoker players were bad enough that you could make a lot of money with very simple strategies. Even with a simple starting hand chart you were able to make some money at the micro and small stakes. Overall this model showed a nice profit and a small percentage of those players are making thousands of rake each month right now.
But in this current situation it is more difficult. They have big problems with fraudulent activities. Full Tilt also provides this $ 50 free bankroll for Pokerstrategy members. And they abandoned this deal in certain markets like Russia already!
So a good business model turned into a bad one within a few years. It’s a bit sad but I’m sure it still works in a small circle. You can’t make an international site where millions have access to this deal and can abuse it. You just have no control over that. But you can keep it small and stay in touch with your players and most important: add value they don’t find somewhere else!
I don’t like this free money model at all. It doesn’t matter if you’re a freeroll affiliate or offer free bankrolls. You won’t make money with your players unless you offer something really unique and the opportunity that players can improve.
I prefer the rakeback business. Sure, it’s not an easy niche but it’s the one where the money is.