In our second interview of this interview series with RBE partners. Today’s interview is with Sebastien Owner of pokercollectif.
1. Hello, please take a moment to introduce yourself, explain how did you get started as a poker affiliate, and did you have any internet marketing experience before hand?
I’m Sebastien Dessureault, known as ‘sebasdess’ online. I start as a poker affiliate in 2006. I was a poker player at that moment, and I was participating in french-speaking poker community. I was doing a lot of bonus hunting, then I discover about rakeback. At that time, rakeback was not really well-known in the french community, and I decide to open a poker community and offer some rakeback deals. I had absolutely no internet marketing experience at that time: I was a clueless noob! LOL! I teamed with a webmaster who did believe in my project, then open the website. Surprisingly, it was an instant success and we became one of the biggest french-speaking poker community within one year.
2. why did you choose RakebackEngine to power your website?
At that time, we were looking for partners to offer rakeback. Unfortunately, everytimes, we had to send our traffic elsewhere. As I was working hard to get traffic to my site, I was quite disappointed by having to send this traffic to another partners! Also, as those partners did not usually provide french instructions, I was looking for something else… I found RBE and for once, I was able to keep my traffic for myself!
3. How long did it take you to start making a steady income and what was your big break?
We did work really hard for one year with basically no income. At that moment, we were splitting about 1000$… three-way! We were working 8h+ a day, 7 days a week. We obviously made tons of mistake, but we were working hard. As a poker player, I adopted the same mentality: hard work, discipline and trying to learn more and more and more. Our project was like a little snowball rolling down a hill, and our effort were rewarded!
4. Did you play poker before you became an affiliate and how important it is to know about poker as an affiliate?
Yes, I did start playing poker at the beginning of 2005. In my humble opinion, it is really important to know about poker when you are an affiliate. You got to know what your customers look for. You got to be able to answer your customers in their own language. It is way more important to understand the “online poker world” as a poker affiliate than in any other affiliate business.
5. Do you outsource or you still hands on and what’s your target market?
I still do a lot of works. I still do most of the “affiliate” works and my partner do the “computer” works. As it is really time consumptive, we also hire others people sometimes. We are targeting french-speaking players mostly, and as there is a lot of change in France right now, we have TONS to do!
6. Do you reinvest into your business and what percentage do you reinvest?
We do reinvest into the business occasionally. It’s not really a percentage, but in 2011, I guess we will keep a % every months to reinvest in the company. Still not sure about the % numbers!
7. Do you make use of the social media tools such as Youtube, Twitter, and Facebook to promote your business, and if so, how?
We start using media tools a couple of months ago. We are promoting on Twitter and Facebook for now, but also on some social sports community and others stuff. We are posting strategy articles and news about poker. I think this is important to “think outside the box”. Facebook and Twitter are great tools, but when there is tons of website providing the same content than you are, your content will just get lost into this “sea of information”, so you need to do more than juste posting a link on a facebook page!
8. What do you think about the rakeback industry, and where do you see it going?
It’s getting harder and harder. Unfortunately, there is a lot of people willing to “prostitute themselves” by giving away ridiculous percentage. Unfortunately, this is hurting the whole industry. I think that, at one point, a change will be needed. Also, as there is a “nationalization of online poker” trends right now, I think online poker will have lots of changes in a not-so-far future.
9. What tips would you give for someone looking to get started in the rakeback business?
Don’t think you can just put a website online and think money will flow your way. You have a lot of works to do, it’s a daily job. Content and niche are the key. Always ask yourself why people would like to visit your website instead of someone else website. If you can’t answer this question, you’re not doing it right.
10. Have you thought about promoting sports or casino, and if so is that a different target market to your rakeback players?
We will start to promote sports in a near future. It’s a different market target, but not so far… some winning poker players trying to do EV+ move everytimes just like to gamble on anything EV- just for fun. So I don’t think casinos/sportbooks are that different from rakeback players. But I don’t like promoting EV- deals, so I’m a little scare about promoting casinos/sportbooks..
