Dealer Dan, pictured here with WWE Superstar Mick Foley, has been in internet marketing since 1996. He likes hugs, long walks on the beach, and making money while wearing his jammy jams. For more information, you can read all 
I’ve worked with PKR since they first launched back in 2006. I’ve always liked PKR. From a player perspective what they brought to the table was groundbreaking, and I’ve always recommended it to casual players. I also have sent a lot of rakeback players there over the years.
During that time, the affiliate department has also been awesome. I was great friends with Margaret Burke who worked there for years and was the face of PKR Affiliates. I’ve also been working with Harry Barber lately, who has been excellent to deal with. Any time I ever had an issue he would respond within an hour, and was always quick to resolve things.
So it sucks that I have to blacklist them.
Unfortunately, PKR have updated their affiliate terms and conditions to – well to put it bluntly – screw affiliates over. The changes they’ve made are completely insulting.
Here are the changes they’ve implemented in the terms and conditions:
A “dormant account” shall mean any account which for a period of 12 months or more has not either (a) logged into the account; or (b) had funds withdrawn from it.
An “inactive account” shall mean any account which for a period of 6 months or more has not acquired 1 or more Real Player.
A “semi-inactive account” shall mean any account which for a period of 3 months or more has not acquired 1 or more Real Player.
Forfeiture and retention of account monies; For affiliates to which commissions are paid into a PKR player account, such player accounts are subject to the same terms and conditions as they would be if they were not an affiliate. This includes but is not limited to the removal of any unused balance from a dormant account and the closure of such account.
Affiliate account inactivity; In order to remain on any commission structure, affiliates accounts must remain active. Any affiliate with an inactive account will have access to the account restricted and the commissions relating to any tracked players on that account set to 0% Revenue Share.
Should the affiliate wish to once again become active, then a new affiliate account must be created to track this activity. The affiliate will no longer be eligible for any commissions generated by the players tracked under the initial account; nor any subsequent account that has been restricted because of inactivity.
Any affiliate with a semi-inactive account will NOT have access to the account restricted but, for players attributed currently to a revenue share commission, will be moved to a 10% revenue share commission. This will only occur should a 10% revenue share be a lower percentage than they are on currently.
At the time which a withdrawal of these funds is requested, the players that have been referred by that affiliate will be security checked and any accounts deemed as fraudulent/ duplicate will be removed.
I download the terms and conditions of every room on a monthly basis. All of the above text was added since I last archived the PKR T&C on July 1st, 2013. They sent out a notification e-mail on July 19th, 2013 notifying affiliates of the updated T&C.
These term and conditions updates mean simply one thing: they want to screw affiliates over. That’s all it is. There is no more long-term relationship with PKR; if you don’t keep sending them players and money then they’ll stop paying you. Even if you sent 1000 players previously – they’ll stop paying you on them.
What greatly concerns me is the timespans. These are completely brutal for a new affiliate. New affiliates can take a long time to send players through no fault of their own. However PKR are looking to punish these affiliates by lowering their commission rate after 3 months, and then taking away ALL funding after 6 months.
This sort of stuff just adds even MORE pressure to affiliates. Affiliates are already getting hit with Panda/Penguin etc – now if your website gets hit by one of them and it affects the quantity of players you bring in – you can’t even rely on the income from programs like PKR anymore.
PKR are not the first affiliate program to retroactively add these predatory terms. They won’t be the last. But do you know WHY more and more affiliate programs are doing this? Because most affiliates still promote them anyway.
There are many ways for an affiliate program to get you to keep promoting them, or pushing them more. Threatening affiliates by reducing and then taking away their commission and players? Yeah, that’s not it.
Hopefully every affiliate who actually has a backbone will stand up to PKR, blacklist them, and remove them from all of their sites.
That’s what I’m doing.
This article was written on July 19, 2013 however all articles are looked at on a monthly basis and updated to keep them relevant.
If you need to contact Graeme, please see his Contact Page. If you are an affiliate manager wanting promoted please see this page.
