CAP Euro

I've written this 2 days ago in Barcelona Spain, but fell asleep before posting it…so I am putting it now:

I’m at the CAP EURO 2007 conference right now and things are going tremendously well. The first day’s main event included a late night networking party that gave us all the opportunity to get to know one another and make new contacts.

Day two was the first main conference and expo day. It included the beginning of registration, and lots of different speakers and conference opportunities. Unfortunately, I was so packed, since B4Playing is at the spotlights we had to put our time to meet the people. I must say that the organization is great, and event is a huge success. The afternoon party and networking sessions gave me the opportunity to talk to some of the people I’d already met, and to meet a few more great contacts. I’ll be sure to keep in touch with them! Great opportunities abound!

Thank you to our friend, Rudulf

We want to thank our friend, Rudulf, from SuperPokerAffiliates (www.superpokeraffiliates.com) for his great recommendation of the B4Playing tool and affiliate program. Here is his newsletter:

Dear Affiliates of SuperPokerAffiliates

Welcome to a new season as an affiliate of ours. I have a promise for you! This season will be much more exciting then the last one! We will launch new software tools, redesign our websites, offer competitions and special offers and much more. I’ll probably have to email you more often then once a month.

In the middle of September we will do a complete redesign and re-launch of Calculatem. We believe we can improve conversion and usability of that website. This is good news for you – the traffic you send will be easier to convert, and the redesign will be an excellent opportunity to communicate this to your visitors. New marketing material will be available as well.

I am glad to present a new colleague, Johanna. She will be assisting me with the SuperPokerAffiliates program. She is in charge of affiliate support, so do not hesitate in contacting her at affiliates@superpokeraffiliates.com.

The Calculatem Pro software is now available in several languages: Swedish, German, Spanish, French and Italian. You can change the language in your software by clicking “Options” and then set the language at the top. This is an excellent marketing message for your visitors. Not all poker players are English-speaking.

I would also like to remind you of the download buttons we have launched at SuperPokerAffiliates. Add these buttons or create your own and let your visitors download the software directly from your website. This will increase your conversion, and the users are tracked to you. Most important of all, you do not have to send your traffic to another website.

Take look at a new innovative software tool. B4Playing just launched its software client aimed at poker and casino players. The software is essentially a desktop portal which provides the player with extensive set of information: bonuses, tournaments schedules, exclusive bonuses and more. The reason I am sharing it with you is simply because it can be an excellent compliment to your portfolio. You are used to offer various poker software and it looks like a great addition. From an affiliate perspective, b4playing offers a Multiple CPA (MCPA) commission. You "own" the player and get CPA commission every time the player switches from one poker room to another. Check out their affiliate program at http://affiliates.b4playing.com

Rock on
Christian Rudolf
Affiliate Manager at SuperPokerAffiliates

A word about competition

What will happen if somebody will come up with a competing product?

What is your window of opportunity?

Who are your potential competitors?

Well, my view is very simple: if you do not have competition it is probably a sign that your market is either too small or its revenue potential is too low.

We have heard again and again "how come nobody didn't think about it before?".
My view is that great ideas are very simple.

We are acting in an unlimited market. 20M+ players are active and this number is growing. There is a room for some players. My only focus is to bring the best value to our users. The rest will follow.

Our market has a long food chain. I am not sure competition is the most accurate word for this market. How about coopetition? (hmmm, new word cooperation with competition). We cooperate with the properties, we are recruiting poker affiliates and casino affiliates and we service our users.

Somebody is volunteering to compete?
Itay

Internet- A marketing or technical play?

Back in the late 90’s Internet was a clear pure technical play. We, the ones who were there at that time, had to struggle with a lot of new technologies and a setting up a new site ( which expects to get high traffic) had a lot of technical implications.

During the last 2 years, it was clear to me as a large casino affiliate and poker affiliate that the name of the game is marketing. How do I get to more people? SEO, PPC, textual advertizing, content, content, content.

Well, we are about to go live in 9 days and I watch our R&D team. Stress testing (as we would like to be ready for about 500 downloads a day), bandwidth calculations, backup and redundancy systems, security and much more. I see the 15 PCs simulating various working environment, the new client being built every night and more.

Yes, building a website is very simple these days. However, developing an application is still as complicated as it was when I was dealing with it. And I thought that all is simple these days!

I wrote it in one of my previous posts. I deal with 100s of inputs and have to take 10s of decisions. It is time consuming but I didn't have so much fun for long time.

Yes I know it will be harder on August 15th when we lunch our beta program. As long it will be fun I am ready for these sleepless nights.

Itay