Introductions

[Craig]

Please feel welcome to introduce yourself to the community!

[Craig]

Hi everyone, my name is Craig and I'm the lead designer here at Poker Affiliate Solutions.

How long I have worked with PAS
I've been employed full time with PAS since about April. I've worked with various skin owners even before that setting up custom skins.

History in the industry
I started playing poker seriously in about 2005 and grinded low and mid stakes short handed limit holdem for a few years, and had about a full year where it was my chief source of income. While playing I met quite a few major players in the industry and started designing websites in my free time and learning how to be a good designer/website coder.

Short Bio
Before working design full time I got a couple degrees in psychology but stopped short of my goal of getting a phd. I worked with the severely mentally ill for a year and enjoyed it but was tempted away by lots more money and new experiences doing freelance design. I've resided entirely in the US and have now l lived in Wisconsin, Ohio, Texas and Minnesota. I'm pretty much entirely self taught when it comes to design and I really enjoy learning new techniques and continuing to hone my skills.

My relationship with PAS
As lead designer I handle support regarding design customization, implement custom design solutions for publishers, create banners and other marketing material, and work to implement and improve user interface elements.

The future
I love my job with the great people at PAS and look forward to continue to contribute to the growth of the company. I look forward to continue meeting and working with publishers from all parts of the globe and expect to continue to get better at my job. In the future I anticipate taking on more managerial responsibilities as the design department continues to expand to meet the consistently growing demand.

[Chad]

My name is Chad, and I head up the tech department. I've been with the company since 2005.

Like most of us, I got into this business after playing poker for a while. I met most of the people here through online poker and various forums.

Right away I enjoyed seeing another side to poker through affiliate marketing. There's never a dull moment as we try to innovate and stay on top of the market. PAS has been especially rewarding because we get to see other affiliates benefit from our efforts as well.

[Pokeraddict]

I'll use Craig's outline...

How long I have worked with PAS

March 2008

History in the industry

I started playing poker online in 2000. I have played poker since 1990. I worked as a prop for now defunct poker rooms Victoria's Poker and Big Bet Poker as well as a couple of bigger rooms still open. In 2004 I launched Rakerebatereview.com, a rakeback directory site. That is how I first met those involved in PAS. Between RRR and PAS I worked for Bonuswhores.com before the founders left the company.

Short Bio

In my younger days I played live poker on the side and managed a delivery business. In 2003 I was able to quit and play poker full time. Propping and 2+2 helped me find connections that helped me find success in the industry including PAS.

I am married with a 9 year old son and 2 year old daughter. I live in the Black Hills of South Dakota between Rapid City and Deadwood. I'm originally from Atlanta.

My relationship with PAS

I write content and handle player and publisher support. I also watch the industry for news that pertains to PAS and the affiliate business.

The future

As support expands there will eventually be the challenge of having multiple support employees. As time goes on I have a feeling my job will be nothing like it is now with the growth. I see myself on board for quite a while.

[Tony]

Hey guys! My name is Tony and I am the Affiliate Manager at PAS.

How long I have worked with PAS

August 2008

History in the industry

I started playing poker at a very young age with family and friends. In 2004, I started playing poker online as a hobby and truly enjoyed the strategic aspect of the game. I am a member at several poker forums including 2+2 and Pocket Fives.

Short Bio

I interned at an e-commerce company while in college, learning online marketing basics and providing customer support. My role at the company evolved over time as I got more into sales and marketing. Sometime in 2005 I befriended Chris and Byron up here in Saint Paul. Long story short, I found myself working at PAS in August 2008. Poker and online marketing are simply a perfect fit for me.

My relationship with PAS

I manage support for PAS publishers. I have probably spoken to most of you, if not, please please contact me (publishers at pokeraffiliatesolutions.com).

The future

Like PokerAddict stated above, as the company expands I see myself working with several support employees. The online poker industry is growing more and more. We are seeing online poker booming in Europe and South America. Like American players a few years ago, these players will eventually look to sign up through rakeback affiliates. I love my job! I feel extremely fortunate to wake up every morning and go to a job that I truly enjoy.

[GFPC]

Hi guys,

My name is Steve, and I am the administrator for the website Get Free Poker Cash. The site has been up about 1 year, and has went through many changes.

I started out in this industry as many of you, playing poker online. I instantly love thee game but did not play to well at first. Through trail and error I started to do better, as I visited the forums and read books and articles.

This is when I decided to spend most of my time building a website to help other players chose poker sites to play on. To help them select good programs and be safe on the internet. Thus I joined groups such as GPWA, eCogra, and CAP.

I spend much of time online working for my players, helping them with site selections, and general affiliate type stuff. I spend allot less time playing poker because as you know affiliating takes up most of your time.

I love what I do, and enjoy watching my players develop their skills and learn the game of poker, and I try to get them involved in regular events on the internet. We just had a Battle of The Forums on a site and have our final ready for the finals. I support them all the way - go Team GFPC!!!

I joined PAS because i only heard quality things about them, and know I can trust them and use their resources to help our players as well. We hope to develop a great relationship with you guys here.

Already they have designed the rake back site, and so far it looks wonderful, and I am so appreciative for their support and design. A few tweaks here and there and should all be up and running smooth in no time.

I welcome all correspondence and feedback in the months ahead, and am glad i joined PAS.

Best wishes for everyone here!!

[Rodolfo Lacerda]

Hi guys,

my name is Rodolfo, i'm from Brazil and i'm the admi of MenosRake.

I started playing poker in 2005, when I was 17. When I turned 18, I became a pro.

From my beggining (2005) throw 2007, I had a poker blog where I used to wirte normal stuff: some tips, reviews, articles, my day, etc.

At that time I added a rakeback link for my visitors. Never did anything than that to promote rakeback. One day I tilted and deleted my blog (very imature decision).

One day, looking at the revenue that I got from the blog players, I thought "this can make a good semi-passive revenue".

So I started to search and discovered PAS.

I've been with PAS for 5 or 6 months I think. I'm realling liking the services that PAS provides.

I'm still a poker pro, since that represents by far most of my income, but other than that (and poker affiliate) I study accountand at the university.

Today i'm 20 and I have a lot to grown in the poker bussiness. I'm sure that with PAS on my side, this grown will be fast

[Joe Tall]

Hello all,

I'm Joe Tall. I have been playing and teaching poker professionally for nearly five years.

I own and operate the coaching sites: JoeTall.com and DeucesCracked.com. Each of the coaching sites has a PAS skin installed.

Those of you who have a PAS skin and want DeucesCracked memberships offered to your customers, let me know. (we offer the DC memberships at a 30% discount to PAS publishers.) The program is a big success for us. Your members will get free DC memberships at $500MGR (actually 500 GR in 30 days), and the system is automatic.

Here is a graph of the MGR for an old student of mine that has been a member of DeucesCracked and DeucesCracked Rakeback since the inception of the program (March 07):



As you can see, he has earned much much more for us than the membership cost.

We teach them how to play better. Which keeps them from going broke and helps them move up and play more. It's a win/win situation.

Feel free to contact us if you are interested in the program: support@deucescracked.com

-Joe

[Rodolfo Lacerda]

Well, obviously each skin has its own business plan, but I wanna say that having free deucescracked membership atract a good amount of players

[Chris Carlson]

Hey everyone, I’m Chris Carlson the dude who founded the company that owns PAS, and its predecessors/counterparts raketracker and yourpokercash.
This is going to be a walk down memory lane for me and i have a feeling it will become pretty lengthy. you’ve been warned, proceed at your own risk.

I was bit by the poker bug in the winter of 2004. I went on an incredible tournament run capped off by my winning a party poker Friday night special in limit holdem for a $32k score. I thought it was retirement money and life had never been so good. I went on such a crazy winning streak in tourneys i thought my shit didn’t stink. i blew off most of money at the cash game tables. I was able to pick myself back up, began propping and exercising a modicum of bankroll management, but I did realize I didn’t have what it takes to become a professional poker player.

Around this time I met Herb(inthacup) as my rakeback provider. He was 'the guy' for rakeback even though eugeneel(anyone remember that name?) was the self proclaimed 'the guy'. Herb ran an awesome operation and taught me so much. He was invaluable in helping me establish the company that now runs PAS. I watched him and how he managed his rakeback players and always thought I should get into this, then squashed that idea with thinking it’s too late to get in that business!!! The poker boom was just starting and I thought i was too late to jump on the rakeback gravy train. Thank god I one day found myself in IRC and a player vanveen was soliciting offers for Rakeback at empire poker. I quickly pm'd him and said I can be your guy. Mind you, i had no affiliate account, no clue how to run this thing, but i saw the opportunity and grabbed it. Veen i hope you find this post and don’t get mad at me that you were my guinea pig I acted as if and things turned out swimmingly, funny enough veen turned out to be one of my highest rakers of all time. Herb helped me through these early stages and soon enough, I became the guy for rakeback. I was processing hundreds of players a month via excel spreadsheets. Here is a copy of my excel master file that enabled me to run my emerging business.




I was on twoplustwo forums, IRC channels and on instant messenger ALL DAY, EVERY DAY for almost 2 years starting winter of 2004. I had no life; I lived on the internet for socializing, playing poker and my emerging business. Luckily I was fired from my job as an equity research analyst with Reuters in March of 2004. I was less than productive at work since I spent my days reading the forums and playing poker all day, I was a baaaaad employee. This turned out to be the best thing for my future since it enabled me to create my company.

Around this time I had players always asking me for what their current earnings were. This coupled with the excel file I used to manage my players made a light bulb go off in my head. I had raketracker all sketched out. It would be a marketing tool, a resource for players, an accounting device, and a crucial piece to help my business scale. Via IRC I met Ryan whom I outlined my vision to. He got it right off the bat and we went to work shortly thereafter. I was in NY and he was in Cali. We spent most every night on IM across the country working on what was soon to be raketracker. Ryan is a brilliant individual and like Herb, a fundamental piece of the PAS team. Raketracker took off like wildfire. One of the best recommendations i got early on was from Granny Mae(anyone familiar with him?), he told me that if I desired to grow I needed to hire people. So I went and found a CS rep so I could continue to make deals, recruit and paint my vision to Ryan so he could make a website.

I’m not sure where we are at in terms of timeline, but let’s fast forward about a year. Raketracker is the leader in rakeback on the internet. We are sending on the order of about $5million a month in gross revenues to party poker and its skins. I was the man, or so I told myself. Ryan and I had created a beast from nothing and we were so proud of ourselves. At this time we rested on our laurels and I was constantly patting myself on the back about how brilliant I was. This time of stagnation taught me a valuable lesson. If you are not working on growing or innovating your business, competition will come in and surpass you. As I’m patting myself on the back, people are watching what we had done and tapping into their own resource pools to develop their businesses. A decent sized handful of competitors appeared and subsequently surpassed me while I took my back patting hiatus. Luckily we grabbed enough market share in the early days to still have a healthy company, but was no longer was raketracker the brand for rakeback. Karim and raketherake had begun to really pull themselves ahead of the pack. They did a terrific job of marketing their services and developing their brand, kudos to them (bastards!!! LOL)

Sometime within this first year I was approached by Herb to work on developing some other business ideas. Yourpokercash was what finally shook out of those brainstorming sessions. Most of our company’s resources were dedicated to developing YPC. Herb also brought on Chad(2000flushes) into the PAS family. They hit it out of the park with YPC and it was the first freebankroll provider for absolute poker, ultimate bet, full tilt, and cake poker.

In February of 2005 we tried to develop a poker community site. We were going to squash twoplustwo. There were so many things we would do if we had owned 2p2 that they weren’t doing, why don’t we make a site that has all those features and everyone will flock to it. We tried to build this general poker portal and it failed. We did manage to build a small community with some semi useful tools, but the time and energy to build a community is pretty substantial. The ROI was also very poor compared to our experiences at RT and YPC. We finally shelved CR. Raketracker had an affiliate program, friend referral schemes, but I was still hearing an opportunity to offer a product for affiliates.

AffiliateEV.com was launched to offer resources to poker affiliates. They could piggy back off my accounts to get increased percentages, and be able to use my data basing to provide statistics to their users. We launched this in conjunction with the affiliates/rakeback forum at twoplustwo which we had recently negotiated with them and had gotten off the ground. I received a lot of heat for creating that forum. Affiliates thought no good could come of it and players blasted me for the rules we put in place. Around this time a lot of littler affiliates were appearing and getting players onto skins by offering very hi rakeback percentages. These affiliates then went belly up and left thousands of players without their rakeback deals. About now some affiliates pushed the rooms into establishing rakeback caps, or maximum amounts that affiliates could pay players in rakeback. This wasn’t established everywhere as some networks don’t allow rakeback and some chose not to set up such rules. But this was a huge step in establishing some order within rakeback and providing rules and regulation (if you could go so far as to call it that).

AffiliateEV didn’t turn out all that well, and i think it’s another result of my company trying to do too much with too little. We were running raketracker which was signing up around 500 players a month all of which usually require a good amount of customer support and then YPC which was signing up 5000 players a month that required a lot of resources on our side to process and run through our systems.

I guess I should note here that I really didn’t have any playbook or experience in running a business. I started as a nickel and dime affiliate with no small biz experience. My father was a great business mentor to me as was Herb. But now we are a legitimate business and through trial and error I was learning what it takes to create and grow a company. I made tons of mistakes and I still do, but the most important things to me are to surround myself with people smarter and more capable than myself as well as providing my end user value. I always strive to provide value to my users, my partners, and my employees. I think if I can juggle those tasks and get some lucky breaks my business will continue to grow.

As a result of my inexperience some projects we attempted failed due to improper resource allocation and some of my existing business suffered as a result of that same issue.

There was a clear demand for the affilaiteEV idea, and although AEV failed my eye was still on that endeavor which eventually came to be PAS. PAS is still only a fraction of what I see it being upon completion. But i now have a superb staff to help run our business. I have run into issues with building out my complete PAS vision, which is to be expected. We have been working tirelessly to build out the remaining features that I think will make PAS the first true affiliate network in the online poker market.

In October of last year I had an idea to solidify PAS's position as well as help build out my vision. I purchased rakebacksoftware and hired Arthur. At the time RBS was the only real competitor of PAS. Arthur and I worked out a fair price for his site and an arrangement for him to come work for my company and help its software development efforts. In these past 18 months the company has almost doubled in staff. We hired John (pokeraddict) the founder of rakerebatereview, a pure blooded player advocate, and a tremendous resource for anything gaming related on the internet. John is an encyclopedia of anything gaming online. Craig came to PAS, with a background of doing design work for many online poker sites. I also hired Byron, an attorney by trade, to help me manage the growth and make sure we are making sound decisions and steps in building the Commission Junction of poker. We used to have an office in TN and MN. We recently closed the TN office and relocated everyone to MN. Our productivity, communication, and responsiveness have improved drastically since all being located in the same area. We also found a wonderful Controller/CFO in Jill, who if you haven’t worked with yet, I am sure if you are owed money you will encounter Jill somewhere along your lifespan with PAS. Our most recent hire is Tony, PAS's resident affiliate manager and terrible foosball player; this would obviously be debated by T-bird. Side note here, I am the self proclaimed best all around foosball player in my company, and most likely the Midwest. BUT, I return from my recent honeymoon only to hear the consensus is that Craig has overtaken my position as number 1...............now that is some bullshit!


I am starting to ramble here, and if you have gotten this far, congrats, i hope it wasn’t too painful. On our immediate horizon we have just leased 4,000 sq. feet of incredible office space. The space is raw and I am able to build it out to my specifications which have always been a dream of mine. The loft is brick and timber and in a very cool up and coming part of town. I think this is going to go a long way in my company’s morale and sense of legitimacy.

We are still navigating this push to complete phase 2 PAS, but you are going to see substantial upgrades and enhancements to PAS over the next 6 months. If you know me, you can be sure that we will continue to work on PAS and try and make it the best, most innovative product out there, we hope you get to experience some of what it has to offer.

thanks for reading!
CC