Getting to know rake races: Industry View

Your blog is really quite interesting to read. To tell you the truth, after checking out your site last week, I decided to deposit to play a bit and get a feel. I literally got out my mastercard, was ready to punch in some numbers (had searched the internet for some bonus deposit code or whatever, didn't find any), and then realised my credit card funds have to go through moneybookers.

Well, that's a pretty big deal. I forgot my password and I would now have to take a picture of two separate pieces of id, validate/connect that with my email, and send it in just so I can get my password back to be able to transfer funds onto your site. That's a lot of hassle to simply get money on a site. The fact that your mastercard transfers go through moneybookers is what essentially stopped me from depositing. I imagine, if I'm a poker player that logs in a decent amount of hours from time to time, that this could potentially be a huge issue with other people as well (especially 'new' players which it seems you're trying to market your company to).

Anyways, just a thought.

cliff notes?

On April 05 2011 02:44 devon06atX wrote: Your blog is really quite interesting to read. To tell you the truth, after checking out your site last week, I decided to deposit to play a bit and get a feel. I literally got out my mastercard, was ready to punch in some numbers (had searched the internet for some bonus deposit code or whatever, didn't find any), and then realised my credit card funds have to go through moneybookers. Well, that's a pretty big deal. I forgot my password and I would now have to take a picture of two separate pieces of id, validate/connect that with my email, and send it in just so I can get my password back to be able to transfer funds onto your site. That's a lot of hassle to simply get money on a site. The fact that your mastercard transfers go through moneybookers is what essentially stopped me from depositing. I imagine, if I'm a poker player that logs in a decent amount of hours from time to time, that this could potentially be a huge issue with other people as well (especially 'new' players which it seems you're trying to market your company to). Anyways, just a thought.

Hey devon06atX,

Thanks for the comment,
This is always an issue to be able to take credit cards directly;
we do do it for Visa directly, but unfortunately for the MasterCard it is through Moneybookers (this puts me on tilt sometimes as well when I'm trying to do some online payments as well).
And I agree with your comments, I've seen the failed deposit record of other players as well,
and I will speak with Merge about right now (about the Mastercard through Moneybookers),
but obviously that doesn't hep you.

If you'd like to try out the site, anytime, then just PM me and I'll figure something out.
After all, if I can't do anything, then entire point of me being the CEO and this being a boutique site,
would be pretty meaningless.

Again thanks and Cheers,
David

On April 05 2011 03:01 thumbz555 wrote: cliff notes?

crap,
sorry will edit with a summary.

easiest way to get ppl to sign up immediately would be

- 35% rakeback plus xxx % if you rake xxx amount
- since you own the skin and can make these juicy private deals, its the easiest way for now to get people in
- banners, bells and whistles, site pro players only attract fish and recreational players

id suggest split your budget for both, and see which one works more then proceed accordingly. personally i dont even know how to join a rakerace, and ive been grinding for years, really never had an interest in them and how they work.

On April 05 2011 03:47 whamm! wrote: easiest way to get ppl to sign up immediately would be - 35% rakeback plus xxx % if you rake xxx amount - since you own the skin and can make these juicy private deals, its the easiest way for now to get people in - banners, bells and whistles, site pro players only attract fish and recreational players id suggest split your budget for both, and see which one works more then proceed accordingly. personally i dont even know how to join a rakerace, and ive been grinding for years, really never had an interest in them and how they work.

Thanks for the feedback, I'm pretty committed to the mainstream market aside from LP and one other poker community as regulars are usually only attracted by fish; so it really is long term position.
And the main thing is, I know the outcome of just doing private deals and rakeback and ultimately it won't help make any site become a top ten site, but it will definitely get cash flow (but my objective is to go for top ten in 3 years).

Ultimately it is a volume game that I'm focused on, but I'd rather put nearly everything into mainstream marketing. I do know how to do these things properly by my results when I was a director at PS, but of course I need to get to a certain level of establishment before any of those main stream marketing channels really do have their maximum effect, so I've decided to try to make a type of rake races work at HeroPoker.

If you've been grinding for years, you should try out a rakerace, likely I won't have one that will be appealing to you, if you do want to engage it, but I think you're missing out on a lot of free money for a grinder.

Cheers,
David

Hey David,

I've said it before, but I love the blog and find it very educational. I'm young and have been studying internet marketing for a bit now, so reading your blog feels gives me a feeling that's probably the same as a microstakes poker player reading high stakes hand discussions. I recall you mentioning that one of the thing you did as a senior management consultant was to sidestep competition. While not quite the same, this hits home for me in terms of niche markets and not competing against stuff Walmart sells .

I have a few questions and thoughts from perhaps a different perspective (albeit a microstakes fish's perspective on marketing!).

Seeing as Hero Poker is relatively unknown, how does a person find out about the site? Is there a primary focus on search, word of mouth, referrals, etc? It seems like you're definitely doing everything you can, but I'm just curious if there was emphasis on something specific.

Your presence and involvement in the community gives me a ton of trust for your poker room. For the same reason, I feel like running a blog on your main site as well as something as simple as having a picture of you in the Message from the CEO section could help in the long term (btw as of now your facebook link on HeroPoker.com doesn't seem to be working).

I don't want to ask too many questions about things that might be a bit personal or private within the company, but is there a big difference between how many people you had working with you as a director of PS and now?

By the way, this is totally random, but you should totally have an option for a free t-shirt on a first time deposit. Your logo is way cooler than Stars and FTP and I would totally wear a Hero Poker shirt that said Be Epic everywhere .

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/...poker-built-hu4rollz-feature-1011360/

Im not sure if you've seen this, but i think its worth looking into. Seems like a ton of trouble to intergrate it into the client (im pretty sure you dont have an option) but to have it on your homepage seems doable.

Anyways, I find this blog interesting and I hope good things will come from it. All the best

Edit: Maybe not the facebook-crap but there are loads of other services that is possible to take care of that will make your site seem more hospitable and "in touch" with the clients(=players)

On April 05 2011 10:13 edzwoo wrote: Hey David, I've said it before, but I love the blog and find it very educational. I'm young and have been studying internet marketing for a bit now, so reading your blog feels gives me a feeling that's probably the same as a microstakes poker player reading high stakes hand discussions. I recall you mentioning that one of the thing you did as a senior management consultant was to sidestep competition. While not quite the same, this hits home for me in terms of niche markets and not competing against stuff Walmart sells . I have a few questions and thoughts from perhaps a different perspective (albeit a microstakes fish's perspective on marketing!). Seeing as Hero Poker is relatively unknown, how does a person find out about the site? Is there a primary focus on search, word of mouth, referrals, etc? It seems like you're definitely doing everything you can, but I'm just curious if there was emphasis on something specific. Your presence and involvement in the community gives me a ton of trust for your poker room. For the same reason, I feel like running a blog on your main site as well as something as simple as having a picture of you in the Message from the CEO section could help in the long term (btw as of now your facebook link on HeroPoker.com doesn't seem to be working). I don't want to ask too many questions about things that might be a bit personal or private within the company, but is there a big difference between how many people you had working with you as a director of PS and now? By the way, this is totally random, but you should totally have an option for a free t-shirt on a first time deposit. Your logo is way cooler than Stars and FTP and I would totally wear a Hero Poker shirt that said Be Epic everywhere .

Hey, thanks for the questions,
it actually helps me think things through as well.
Hero Poker is quite unknown and it is difficult even to get poker media to pick it up except for the editors I know personal, and of course I'm buying advert space,
but again, Hero Poker isn't going to be site that appeals to regulars in any case on a mass marketing level for now.

But you can break it up into 2 sections: Awareness and Referrals

Awareness:
Pre 2004, it was all SEO, and it is still SEO (Search engine optimization), but you can't screw around with (google) like you could pre 2004 and even if you screw with it, the other sites would see what you've done and either adjust for themselves or bring it up to google.

While a site like PS will be on every major affiliate site out there, PS is asked not the other way around so its a lot of free awareness presence, but the major media that attracts players is TV by far. Nothing compares; did you know that UB experience a jump in their traffic after the 60 minutes report?

Poker magazine adverts don't generate sign ups unless there is a specific promotion such as a WSOP satellite etc; otherwise, the primary benefit for the awareness is that at least people consider you to be a legitimate site.

In the same way, I may get hundreds of sign ups from other media channels than LP or the other poker community I work with, and may only get a handful here, but I can gain a lot of legitimacy. This is critical and a very specific brand aspect I need to achieve or else I'll automatically be pigeoned holed as 'another fly by night' skin.

Referrals
But it is is actually referral which are your strongest driver for real revenue growth. Elky was introduced to PS from a referral and Elky to me etc. While I live in Korea, I do visit Canada once every 2-3 years as I was born and educated there. And while many of my friends from high school do play poker, but even those commercials with PS didn't really stick with them, they were like, 'oh, you're a director at THAT company, the one on TV', what was it, Star poker something?. I mean to a serious poker player, how can you not know PS, but its like how can some people not know Hermes or LV? But some people still don't even though there is so much awareness marketing, so referrals are fundamentally the key. But, it is something that is a very long term and organic process.

The main thing I'm doing right now for the next six months is really defining this company and what we are representing, the brand of Hero Poker; the market focus and what value we can say we really represent. Once that is fully defined without question, then we'd finally have a product that is ready to simply be pushed out as is. It may seem quite strange, in that I should be focused on revenue rather than our brand values or that I should have sorted this all out before hand. But for the awareness to work, people need to automatically associate our adverts, our logos, our players with what we provide. So I am taking things relatively slow in that I haven't cut deals with every major affiliate site out there, and haven't done any major events with my pros except for the Aussie Millions this year in Jan.

That being said, we are going to go full on into a single national market for the rest of the year and engage it with the full mass marketing spectrum of magazine adverts, live tournaments and educational workshops etc. It is a strategic market for us and so if you are a poker player in this market you're gonna think we've invaded the country. But in this case, our legitimacy is simply earned by the partners we work with on the ground there and promotions specific only for that market.

If I did that for the online space for regulars, I think I'd have to do daily 25k guarantee tournaments, at least 5 X 100k rakeraces and throw myself at the mercy of the twoplustwo posters and send my pros to play on HighStakes Poker. And i'd probably burn through all my marketing budget in 5 months with zero retention simply because while I may look legitimate, there still wouldn't be any level of true referrals. But I guess the highest form of referrals is really that 'word of mouth' point and I think you need to build up to that level of reputation to really get an authentic level of word of mouth, otherwise is all just brief curiosity.

* Thanks for mentioning about the facebook link, I'm going to tell my programmer to switch to the Hero Poker Pros FB page. I just got a photo taken for this magazine interview that will come out next month and I may upload it there, but here it is here. I think it a bit too aggressive, but they wanted a very corporate photo simply because of my background differentiates me from many of the other sites out there. I don't know, I'd rather be known as professional than a poker player turned CEO, after all we are talking about people's money. In that respect I was hesitant to include myself in any videos as well, but I trust that my producer when he said, at least they will think we have a sense of humour.


Photo for Gaming Magazine for next month
http://a4.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/208500_165797860141356_100001334288882_338220_2606953_n.jpg
With my 2 and half year old son, I put him in the tree and he wouldn't leave it.


LOL, there isn't much difference with the number of people I worked with and when I was a Director at PS because I was always understaffed and it was hard to find qualified staff. I've basically hired on really key specialists that can manage the entire division for me who I can just say, 'do it' and it gets done at the highest quality. Of course they are former industry contacts and I know what I wanted. I pay them well, but I'd rather have these few key guys on board who can take a budget, make the most out of it and hire the right people for the given project. But, I've purposely taken on as much as I can where I am expert on the strategic marketing side and for media production, design, programming and financial analysis are in the trusted hands of a very select few. But things really aren't that different, I'm still working 15-18 hour days. Being part of a network does feel like I'm still at PS, I don't actively manage security, customer service, deposit/withdraw and product, but as the CEO and network partner I do make it my point to monitor the reports daily and have quarterly meetings with the network and speak with the CEO and CTO regularly about the state of things.

In terms of affiliates, I have only 6 and the rest I always did at PS anyways. I've never been a mirco manager, rather I'm good at putting people who are talented in the right position. That being said, I've pretty much structured it so that I am basically still focused on quality, marketing and kept the scope manageable.

I'm actually get the t-shirts done now, well its in progress, because I wanted to get more fitted t-shirts and polo's sized/cut to that of the RL polo custom cut, so I'm more going for quality and hopefully I'll have it done by the month's end. But that is a great suggestion to hear: what our current strategy is to actually send it any player that hits the Legionnaire level (150) with a full package of t-shit, polo, cap, gym bag and hoodie. And of course it would be a no cost, but maybe you're right and getting out t-shirt would be better. In any case, as soon as its done, I'll send you one. ^^

But feel free to ask away, its helpful for me as well.

Cheers,
David

Sexy

This blog is awesome. Very interesting. Thanks

On April 05 2011 10:17 rednalluk wrote: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/...poker-built-hu4rollz-feature-1011360/ Im not sure if you've seen this, but i think its worth looking into. Seems like a ton of trouble to intergrate it into the client (im pretty sure you dont have an option) but to have it on your homepage seems doable. Anyways, I find this blog interesting and I hope good things will come from it. All the best Edit: Maybe not the facebook-crap but there are loads of other services that is possible to take care of that will make your site seem more hospitable and "in touch" with the clients(=players)

Thanks for the link, this is the chili poker thing, right?
Before we launched, I did think about this a lot; but honestly, I couldn't figure it out in what way to leverage it like they way they have.

I did do some research on the past with poker communities that were integrated with card rooms such as pokerpages and pokah!. but the social media thing, its really interesting, but to say that it rivals 'rush' is pushing it. I think a lot of those social media functions that Chili made really are insightful poker things that regs will like, but is it a game changer or a gimmick? And while those type of social media tools work for Zygna, your wins and achievements are plentiful to share, but the reality is that a lot of non-serious poker player are constantly reloading every week to simply enjoy the game.

If you look at it the social media thing, PS homegames is very integrated with FB and one innovative thing they did was to circumvent the no gambling adverts by creating an automatic wall post every time you create a home game, which is quite good. But will serious regs really want to play against their friends? No, so this is an acquisition tool for casual home game players, or friends of friends much like this 'social media integration'.

And its just not clear to me if this is a strong retention tool or an acquisition tool. I'm not knocking it, I think it's pretty cool, but I still can't figure out if social media really is that effective for real money poker players; but the link was really helpful because I actually didn't know about this until you linked it.

I think I will give it more thought as I wanted to do something with the company which makes hold'em manager and this is something I really stopped considering, but will again.

Thanks very much for that,
if you ever decide to sign up,
let me know your account and I'll put a small something in for you to muck around with;
and of course the same goes for edzwoo as well,
I'm thinking of putting something into every account from LP in anycase.

Sincerely,
thanks.
David

^^ thanks, lol,
the picture was taken at the Grand Hyatt in Seoul;
and I'm happy to be blogging here as well.

Cheers.