Calculating Poker Deals: How Much Can You Really Earn?

Wednesday, 29 May 2019

The affiliate marketing is a bit of a strange area of business where people (looking from the outside) often tend to have a completely wrong idea about actual affiliate earnings. This is especially true when it comes to online gambling and online poker as most people don’t quite understand how the revenue share model works in this particular niche.

“Most people don’t quite understand how the revenue share model works”

In this blog, we’ll try to explain some basics of the rev share model and how you can calculate your earnings. It should be an interesting read for both people looking to get started with affiliation and those who simply look to find some answers about what are realistic expectations of an online poker affiliate.

Net Revenue vs. Gross Revenue

Affiliate deals can vary greatly in terms of what percentage is offered to affiliate partners. You’ll hear all sorts of numbers, from just 10% to 60% or more from different sites. Also, some sites offer sliding deals based on the number of new players you send to them during a month or on the total revenue your affiliated players produce for the site.

Exact numbers notwithstanding right now, the first thing you need to know about is that there is a world of difference between deals based on the gross revenue and the ones based on the net revenue.

“There is a world of difference between deals based on the gross revenue and the ones based on the net revenue.”

Gross revenue is the total revenue that a particular customer or a group of customers brings in without any deductions, operational fees, etc. Net revenue can be much trickier, especially in the poker world, where it varies from one site to another.

Gross Rev Share Calculation

One thing you may have noticed if you’ve been doing some research on the topic is that rev share affiliate deals based on gross revenue always feature a lower percentage. For example, you may be offered just 15% or 20% and this may seem very low when compared to another site offering you as much as 70% on the net revenue.

However, you shouldn’t jump to conclusions.

In a gross revenue share deal, you’ll get a percentage of whatever your players produce for the site, i.e. pay through the rake.

Only deductions you can expect in gross revenue share deal can be the bonuses given by the site as this money needs to be accounted for before doing a calculation.

So, without any bonuses, if your players generate $15,000 in rake in a month and you have a 15% gross rev share deal, you’ll get $2,250 – plain and simple.

If there are bonuses involved, different sites tend to do it differently. If your players receive $3,000 worth of bonus funds or rakeback straight from the site, this will usually be removed first. So, the total number the calculation will be based on will be $12,000 in this particular case. But, other than the money given back to the players (which makes perfect sense) you get the full share on the rest of it.

Net Revenue Share: Anything but Simple

Now let’s take a look at how net revenue share is calculated.

“Unlike the gross revenue deals, these are greatly dependent on the site you work with and can include different aspects.”

However, the reason why you’ll see net revenue deals have much higher percentages is because there are many deductions that come into play before the final net revenue number is determined.

Here is an example:

Let’s say your players pay a total of $20,000 in rake during a month. If your deal is 35% net rev share, you might think you’d get $7,000. However, this is not the case. The site will firstly apply various deductions, such as:

• All bonuses and promotions (welcome bonus, rakeback, etc.)
• Deposit fees (these can be anywhere from 2% to 7-8%)
• Operator fees (10%-15%)
• Network fees for rooms in large networks (10-15%)
• Various other deductions

So, looking at these numbers, you can expect around 30%-40% to be deducted from the gross revenue right off the bat. So, now you’re looking at around $10,000 - $13,000, before removing any promotional money, which can be another few grand. So, from the gross total of $20,000, you could be left with a number of around $8,000 - $10,000. This number will be used to calculate your affiliate earnings, i.e. you’ll get 35% of $10,000.

Conclusion

Hopefully, these explanations will help shed some light on how poker affiliate commission is calculated and what kind of earnings you can expect.

“The difference between net and gross revenue shares is quite substantial, which doesn’t mean ones are better than the others in all cases. It all depends on the particularities of a deal and what the room has to offer.”

Armed with this knowledge, you can now continue to plan for your successful career as a poker affiliate. And, if you weren’t planning on building this kind of career, perhaps this blog could give you the push you needed to give it a try.