Affiliate Edge Terms and Conditions Change

**MichaelCorfman** · 23 March 2017, 1:55 pm

As has been well-publicized in posts in the GPWA forum, Affiliate Edge recently made a change to their terms and conditions. Specifically, they introduced a very steep quota:

Affiliates who send 5 FTD's or less over a 2 calendar month period collectively will be marked as 'non active' and will be reduced to 10% default commission.

In response to this term change, I had the following email exchange with Stuart Ferster, one of the three owner's of Affiliate Edge that has been in communication with me:

Originally Posted by Michael Corfman

Stuart,

I’m sitting here kind of shaking my head in disbelief.

You have a brand with some fires to put out right now or the whole thing will burn down.

Why, in that context, would you choose to throw gasoline on the fires you already have to deal with by making changes to Affiliate Edge’s terms and conditions?

If you think about it, even for a second, I’m sure you will be able to see you are getting bad advice, especially right now.

I don’t know who is advising you on these matters, but the actions taken based on their advice indicate that they are not someone whose opinion you should trust. It is clear you will be much better off if you terminate your relationship with them immediately.

Originally Posted by Stuart Ferster

Hi Michael

Thank you again for the email.

This was a business decision, Let me explain. When the business was run by xxxxxx we noticed when we took over he had allot of payments to 'consultants/others' we noticed in recent times that affiliates were not earning what they should for sending traffic. (make of that what you will) we want all active affiliates to grow the business and be paid for EVERYTHING, to do this with a streamlined business we cannot justify as allot of programs do paying no negative carryover and for affiliates who have not been active for years and even run forums and other saying US gaming is not legal and we wont promote to pay them money.

Originally Posted by Michael Corfman

Stuart,

I understand what you are saying.

However, I respectfully disagree with your analysis of the situation...

The terms you have adopted will mean the vast majority of affiliates will decide they cannot work with you, and for those affiliates, attacking your brands will make business sense. Not a good situation if you want to survive over the longer term. It moves your organization from being one with friendly affiliate relations to one [with] perhaps the worst terms I have seen for any affiliate program. Such a transition, together with the fact that the vast majority of affiliates will find it makes no economic sense to work with you, will fuel a significant and even more negative reaction than you have already seen. In fact, I expect even many affiliates where it might continue to make personal economic sense to continue to work with your brand will decide that they don’t want to do that just because of the negative publicity from others.

Originally Posted by Stuart Ferster

I will discuss this email with the management team urgently

Originally Posted by Stuart Ferster

regarding the new terms - they are the managements decisions and are final. It is done to create more traffic and grow the business and we have had no complaints from active affiliates, the same way we have had no issues from any negative forum posts on anyones forums from active affiliates directly and we are currently reaching record numbers so we are happy with the honest and fair way we are running this and find that paying affiliates the full amount owed and on time and working with ones who are serious in promoting the brands is our business goal.

I have not yet replied to the last email I received from Stewart, but the only thing I can think to say right now is "Good luck with that." So I am waiting to see if I can come up with a more constructive response.

Michael

**GCG** · 23 March 2017, 2:12 pm

Why not reply : ""Happy spending the stolen money""

We all will remember what you have done to affiliates and players, you criminals belong in jail.

**Former Member 14** · 24 March 2017, 2:01 am

Originally Posted by MichaelCorfman

I have not yet replied to the last email I received from Stewart, but the only thing I can think to say right now is "Good luck with that." So I am waiting to see if I can come up with a more constructive response.

What more can you say (or anyone else), when the proverbial door has been slammed shut in your face.

**casinocrush** · 7 April 2017, 5:00 am

Such a shame about this group - they were pretty good and consistent particularly compared with some other RTG / other US casino affiliate programs. I had noticed that commission hadn't been paid and had them marked as 'to check back' as I know occasionally some programs have issues - but it looks like I should have been checking back here a lot earlier (been busy having twins though! lol) ...

When I saw Martyn's email about leaving I knew something must have got very bad.

Anyway, thanks for posting this -- I have sent a number of messages to the new guys chasing up payment and warning that they'll have to be removed if I don't hear but it seems that this place with so many previously good performing brands now don't wish to continue.

I'll be posting player warnings in my forums shortly -- recommending them not to play and of course explain why this is. Time to swap out all those forum post placed banners to competitors as it's been at least a week having sent a few emails and contact forms and nothing - not even an acknowledgement.

I think they will start to see an increase in negative posting on forums soon enough ... what they don't understand is that most affiliates probably were giving them a chance to get things sorted and back to normal and caught up with payments etc.

It's always nice for competitors to see things like this though with a growing number of affiliates ready to swap out banner positions from these to others

Cheers all

G

**sweetbet** · 7 April 2017, 7:27 am

Originally Posted by casinocrush

It's always nice for competitors to see things like this though with a growing number of affiliates ready to swap out banner positions from these to others

The traffic that I was sending to their competitors got quite a boost after I removed their banners.

**FictionNet** · 9 April 2017, 7:06 am

Originally Posted by casinocrush

... what they don't understand is that most affiliates probably were giving them a chance to get things sorted and back to normal and caught up with payments etc...

That is precisely what I was doing, trying to be understanding, at least while Martyn was still involved. I received a few BS e-mails promising payment, but whoever sent them to me didn't have the courtesy to include a name. Considering I haven't received a penny for revenue since December last year, although I'm due payments, I think I've been pretty relaxed about the whole thing and not given them a hard time. And although I have reduced exposure, I STILL haven't blacklisted AE - and the thanks I've had for that is to be ****** over.

I'll be blacklisting AE today.

**casinocrush** · 10 April 2017, 6:49 am

Yes, I still had no reply from the various email addresses including from the new guy that had been included on Martyn's departure email.
I've now blacklisted them and re-directed any existing placed banners to that page and will be swapping the banners out completely over the course of the next few days so competitors can expect a nice boost soon

Seems like greed has taken over these people but karma will take care of them and maybe they'll end up choking on it lol

Bye Bye Affiliate Edge then ...

**sweetbet** · 10 April 2017, 6:12 pm

They're following the same path as so many other rogue affiliate programs followed before them. At first they'll delight in all the money they stole from affiliates. Then after a while without strong affiliate traffic, the highly competitive nature of the business and decreasing new player numbers, their money train will start to slow down. Then they will probably change the name of the program, like so many others before them, their terms and conditions and then come back crawling. Some might re-list them, but the majority of affiliates who were really screwed by them will not. Their stench will follow them and ultimately they will crash and burn.

**Cash Bonus** · 12 April 2017, 11:29 pm

I'm sure everything will get sorted out.

**TravG** · 20 April 2017, 6:17 pm

The ones this hurts the most is those affiliates who promoted AE actively when everything was going just about as good as it could be. You always knew you were not getting cheated, you would be paid in the beginning of the month and when you needed help you could always expect to receive it.

In my case, since I promoted AE pretty heavily a good chunk of my revenue comes from them. As a result I am stuck because I cannot afford to go to 10% commision, so I have to make sure I send at least 5 new players every 2 months. Not that sending 2.5 players a month is really an issue, I would rather promote a brand because I know they are good, not because my hand is getting forced.

I hate to say it, but for me as long as they continue to pay both affiliates and players, I will keep things "as is" but the first sign of serious trouble I may have to "cut my losses". Is the fact I have not been paid yet for March the first sign? Supposedly it was sent today so I really hope it was. I guess we all just have to wait a little and see how this all shakes out.

**Miles_Videoslots** · 21 April 2017, 4:18 am

I get why so many people kept faith with AE Great AFFILIATE TEAM , Martyn and Stephen did a Fantastic job , The casinos were well run and good products too and as an affiliate manager that's been around many years its really sad to see whats going on ..but maybe this was a case of too many eggs in one basket its a pity so many affiliates will suffer now that one of the good guys is fading fast . I get why now affiliates like LCB,ASK-GAMBLERS , CASINOTOPS ETC have done so well for themselves and will continue to do so is that they try promote a huge variety of casinos so should one fall over there is another willing one there to fill the void .. maybe a good way to start looking at this industry is yes there are the top 50 guys out there and these are the guys everyone wants to work with but maybe now its time to spread or hedge your bets if you like throw the neat out a little wider

**sweetbet** · 21 April 2017, 5:28 am

Originally Posted by Miles_Videoslots

I get why now affiliates like LCB,ASK-GAMBLERS , CASINOTOPS ETC have done so well for themselves and will continue to do so is that they try promote a huge variety of casinos so should one fall over there is another willing one there to fill the void

I totally agree Miles. That's excellent advice !!

**GCG** · 22 April 2017, 3:42 pm

Originally Posted by sweetbet

I totally agree Miles. That's excellent advice !!

so you sign up to 50 programs (at the basic rate of 25%) and e.g. they all have 2 or more casinos, you sure need a ton more traffic and that is their advantage.

A few clicks here and there does not make much difference then keep at 10 good programs

**sweetbet** · 22 April 2017, 6:37 pm

10 good programs can turn to 9, then 8, then 7, etc, taking a big chuck of your income with them. If there's one thing that I learned from the Affiliate Edge scam, it is never to rely too much on any one program. The AE thieves stole a big chunk of my income because I had them in the top 10 positions for many years never thinking that the program would turn rogue.

Joining 50 programs that don't have activity quotas, negative carryovers and are affiliate friendly is a far safer option because all you really need to make money is just 1 or 2 decent players at any one casino. You don't need tons of traffic. It doesn't matter whether you earn at casino A or casino Z, you will still earn, and when you add them all up, you will probably make as much as you would at a handful of great programs, but with far lesser risk of being affected by any one program.

Top listing 10 casinos on a particular page, doesn't mean that you can't add a long list of other casinos somewhere lower on the page. Maybe the player has tried all of the top 10 listed casinos and wants to look at one of the casinos listed lower on the page.

The visitors are happy because there's a regular addition of new casinos. The search engines are happy because there's regular fresh content. And the affiliate is happy because they don't have all their eggs in a handful of baskets.

**FictionNet** · 11 May 2017, 12:46 pm

To update this with a weird development, it seems that AE have paid us for March and April's revenue. No sign or mention of January or February's money but hey ho... that was unexpected. Doesn't change how I feel though.

**allfreechips** · 11 May 2017, 6:46 pm

i think the stats havent changed in since last month for me, i am not sending any more traffic but stats seem to be frozen in March or April

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