Affiliates Pay a Portion of their Commission Back to the Player

If you play online poker you are contributing rake to the house; that is, you are paying a fee to the poker room for each hand you play. Therefore, what is referred to as "rake" is the cut that the house/gaming operator takes out of every pot played for real money. Affiliates receive a commission on the total "rake" and then pay back a portion of that commission to their players (known as rakeback).

Poker rooms want affiliates to drive traffic to their site and will pay them a commission for new signups. The commission is calculated as a percentage of the rake for card rooms that pay rakeback or the commission can be a flat rate bounty (CPA or Cost per Acquisition). With commissions as high as 20% to 50% for rooms that pay rakeback, it can be a very lucrative business to recruit players for the poker rooms -- and the best thing about it is that fees are payed continuously on each player. CPA, on the other hand, is a one time signup fee that you can earn.

Some poker room affiliates become "rakeback affiliates" or "rakeback managers" — that is, they will pay a portion of their commission back to the player. Typically, the portion of the commission paid back to players can be as high as 80% to 90%. The commission paid back to the players is referred to as "rakeback" and is used as a way to entice even more signups through your affiliate links. The "rakeback affiliates" are good business for online poker players when they generate a lot of rake because the player gets most of the commission payed directly back to them.

Rakeback, then, is a percentage of the rake that a player earns for playing poker online. Rakeback is also known as rake rebate, rake return, rakebacks, cash back bonus, etc. Simply speaking, earning rakeback means that you will receive a percentage of the rake you pay to the card room operator. The percentage amount that a player can earn back from the cardrooms depends on the affiliate they can hook up with. Affiliates that have recruited a large player base earn a higher commission from the cardroom; thus, the affiliate can pay a larger rakeback percentage to each player.

Online poker players leave behind serious amounts of rakeback every single month — anywhere from hundreds of dollars by a small player to many thousands of dollars by big players. This money is left behind because not all online players know about rakeback. In order to get into a rakeback or rake rebate program you must signup through an affiliate of the cardrooms, but, most players go directly to the cardroom site to signup, therefore forfeiting rakeback that they could be earning.

As an example of how much money an online poker player can earn in rakeback, consider the following:

• The poker player signs up through an affiliate to qualify for rakeback
• The affiliate pays 35% back to the player
• 200 hands are played per day at $2/$4 limit
• The player earns $7.70 per day, $53.90 per week, $234.85 per month, and $2818.20 per year in rakeback.

Different card rooms pay affiliates different percentages, and therefore, players earn different percentages from affiliates. The same cardroom will pay affiliates a different percentage based on how many new players an affiliate has brought in to the tables. For instance, affiliate A might earn 40% from Cardroom A and affiliate B might earn 50% from Cardroom A, based on the fact that affiliate A has signed up 30 players and affiliate B has signed up 1000 players. The larger your player base, the higher your commission earned from the card rooms.

In addition, the rakeback managers themselves keep anywhere from 1% to as high as 10%. Therefore, if a cardroom pays 35%, and the rakeback manager keeps 10%, the player can only earn 25% in rakeback. It pays a player to shop around for a good affiliate, especially if you are a high-volume player. Squeezing 1% here and 1% there out of the right affiliate can amount to significant dollar amounts.