Shit
OK, I see how it's going to be.
I get sick with the flu last week, and as I lie in bed having my ass beaten repeatedly by illness, Neteller gives American poker players a brief wave and disappears without so much as a courtesy email to say, "See ya!"
This is a harsh blow for U.S. players and online poker, one that will probably take a while to recover from. Certainly longer than it is taking me to shake off this influenza virus.
At first, I figured maybe this isn't so bad, maybe I will just have to open an account with some other e-wallet. After spending about an hour going from site to site, however, I can see this isn't going to be easy. As far as these services go, there really is nothing as cheap, as easy and as universally accepted as Neteller. Click2Pay looks nice, but it isn't accepted at all the different sites I play, and I really don't want to open more than one account. Epassporte does seem to be accepted at most of the places I play, but damn, they have an awfully long list of service fees and account limits that aren't friendly to my needs. As such, I still haven't made a decision what I'm going to do.
And there's a nasty bit of double suckage in all of this for me. As a poker affiliate, Neteller has been my method of choice for receiving payments from the sites, but that's out now, too. Now I've had to switch to getting paid by check, which takes far longer to arrive and has me wondering exactly how much longer the banks are going to honor checks from gaming sites.
Not too long ago, that wouldn't have been such a big deal. It would have been a loss of a little bit of money, but one I could survive, no sweat. However, over the past few months, my affiliating has really taken off. In fact, in November and December, I managed to make as much as a poker affiliate as I did at my "real" job, a development that had a positive impact under the Christmas tree, I can tell you.
Now, however, not only is it getting harder to get paid, but revenues over the past few days have been cut considerably, a direct result of U.S. players suddenly being unable to fund their accounts through Neteller. For example, I had been averaging roughly $65 a day in affiliate revenue at my most successful program. The first few days after the Neteller announcement, that was cut in half. That sucked but I wasn't too hurt, since it was still considerably more than I had been making just a few months ago. This morning, though, I logged in to look at yesterday's earnings, only to find that I had made a whopping $7 on Sunday.
Ouch.
It's enough to make a fellow spend all morning researching how to open an offshore bank account in the Caymans.
As a point of information, it isn't as easy as walking into your local bank and opening a checking account. Many of those places want a fairly steep opening deposit -- say, $500,000. There are others (www.caymannational.com) where you can open an account with just $1,000, which would be ideal for someone like me, assuming my affiliate revenues pick back up. But your average John Doe isn't going to fork over that much just to play nickel-and-dime online poker, which means my affiliate revenues are probably going to be on a downward spiral for the foreseeable future.
And, to top it all off, my beloved New Orleans Saints decided to stop playing about midway through the third quarter of yesterday's NFC championship.
This paragraph is the one where I would try to tie everything I've said above together, maybe ending with some clever quip or another. However, as bleak as everything is looking right now, the best I can manage is to just tie my ending back to the beginning by offering the title of this post as my reaction to all this news.
I get sick with the flu last week, and as I lie in bed having my ass beaten repeatedly by illness, Neteller gives American poker players a brief wave and disappears without so much as a courtesy email to say, "See ya!"
This is a harsh blow for U.S. players and online poker, one that will probably take a while to recover from. Certainly longer than it is taking me to shake off this influenza virus.
At first, I figured maybe this isn't so bad, maybe I will just have to open an account with some other e-wallet. After spending about an hour going from site to site, however, I can see this isn't going to be easy. As far as these services go, there really is nothing as cheap, as easy and as universally accepted as Neteller. Click2Pay looks nice, but it isn't accepted at all the different sites I play, and I really don't want to open more than one account. Epassporte does seem to be accepted at most of the places I play, but damn, they have an awfully long list of service fees and account limits that aren't friendly to my needs. As such, I still haven't made a decision what I'm going to do.
And there's a nasty bit of double suckage in all of this for me. As a poker affiliate, Neteller has been my method of choice for receiving payments from the sites, but that's out now, too. Now I've had to switch to getting paid by check, which takes far longer to arrive and has me wondering exactly how much longer the banks are going to honor checks from gaming sites.
Not too long ago, that wouldn't have been such a big deal. It would have been a loss of a little bit of money, but one I could survive, no sweat. However, over the past few months, my affiliating has really taken off. In fact, in November and December, I managed to make as much as a poker affiliate as I did at my "real" job, a development that had a positive impact under the Christmas tree, I can tell you.
Now, however, not only is it getting harder to get paid, but revenues over the past few days have been cut considerably, a direct result of U.S. players suddenly being unable to fund their accounts through Neteller. For example, I had been averaging roughly $65 a day in affiliate revenue at my most successful program. The first few days after the Neteller announcement, that was cut in half. That sucked but I wasn't too hurt, since it was still considerably more than I had been making just a few months ago. This morning, though, I logged in to look at yesterday's earnings, only to find that I had made a whopping $7 on Sunday.
Ouch.
It's enough to make a fellow spend all morning researching how to open an offshore bank account in the Caymans.
As a point of information, it isn't as easy as walking into your local bank and opening a checking account. Many of those places want a fairly steep opening deposit -- say, $500,000. There are others (www.caymannational.com) where you can open an account with just $1,000, which would be ideal for someone like me, assuming my affiliate revenues pick back up. But your average John Doe isn't going to fork over that much just to play nickel-and-dime online poker, which means my affiliate revenues are probably going to be on a downward spiral for the foreseeable future.
And, to top it all off, my beloved New Orleans Saints decided to stop playing about midway through the third quarter of yesterday's NFC championship.
This paragraph is the one where I would try to tie everything I've said above together, maybe ending with some clever quip or another. However, as bleak as everything is looking right now, the best I can manage is to just tie my ending back to the beginning by offering the title of this post as my reaction to all this news.
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