Affiliate furore over Affiliate Edge changes

Changes at Affiliate Edge, a formerly respected and award-winning online casino group trading for the last decade as the Club World Casino group, are creating increasingly large ripples in the affiliate marketing community as evidence of de-tagging players referred by affiliates surfaces, prompting growing numbers of affys to remove their links to the casinos in the group, identified as:

Aladdin’s Gold Casino
All Star Slots Casino
Buzzluck Casino Review
Club World Casino
Highnoon Casino
Lucky Red Casino
Manhattan Slots

In the online affiliate world, affiliates shoulder the cost and hard work of attracting players and referring them to online casino operators, in return receiving a percentage of the player’s deposits for life under a formal affiliate contract.

When an operator unilaterally detags a player, it automatically cuts off the referring affiliate’s income and livelihood.

Affiliate blogs and websites are warning players that it is only a small step between a company defrauding its affiliates in this way to creating payment problems for players.

As the story developed and a growing number of affiliates rogued the company this week, the sorry story of the demise of a once-superior online casino company started to emerge on information websites like Casinomeister.com.

It seems that the decline began late last year when the top man at Affiliate Edge, a highly competent, trusted and savvy operator, was ousted in a hostile takeover by his allegedly inexperienced partners (none of the individuals involved has thus far been named).

The new operators assured certain marketing partners that the day-to-day operations would continue unchanged and with more or less the same staff, but balked when reminded of their inexperience and asked who was advising them.

It became apparent that their advisors were individuals associated with Affpower, a notorious company that in the past has been accused of offering pirated games, or as one webmaster put it:

“The dodgiest – the most unethical casino group to rear its fugly head in years. The Affpower operators think it’s totally fine to steal software – act as if they run legitimate casinos, and detag players from affiliate webmasters’ accounts.”

It seems that the influence on the new Affiliate Edge owners was soon evident as affiliates began to complain that their statistics were showing sudden and dramatic declines at Affiliate Edge, usually a manifestation of de-tagging.

Then, two key and highly experienced staff members, affiliate manager Martyn Beacon and casino manager Karolina, revealed without giving reasons that they had submitted their resignations and were serving notice. Both have been the recipients of top industry awards and are highly respected, triggering speculation that the environment at Affiliate Edge had changed….and not for the better.

With an increasing number of affiliates checking their stats and reporting similar drop-offs, a call has now gone out for them to bring their evidence forward to collate the statistics into a more informative whole…the results will be interesting to see.

Attempts to give Affiliate Edge the right of reply were not successful.

Among the many sites carrying details of this issue, this is the most informative:

http://www.casinomeister.com/forums/online-casinos/77738-club-world-casinos-licensed.html