I think you're unfamiliar with the online poker affiliate marketing industry. Full Tilt is paying affiliates 20-30% life time commission on net earnings less fees, in addition to allowing for a small (2-3%) cut from sub-affiliates you refer. As an affiliate, you can incentivze the sign-ups however you'd like.
The way most affiliates incentivize you to use their affiliate link is by giving you a cut of the revenue.
How did you think it worked? Full Tilt giving rake back direct to players just because they signed-up thru some 3rd party link? Why would they do that?
The reason why some people who sign-up can't get rakeback and are told that "their affiliate doesn't support rakeback" is that some affiliates chose to get paid a flat CPA fee of $75-100 rather than a lifetime percentage. This is also how PokerStars, etc, runs their programs.
I'm not going to get in to this further because I don't think it really pertains to the topic. But I'm quite familiar with the poker affiliate market, as I've been involved in it for the last 4 years. Most of your paragraph 1 is accurate, although the last part is not (affiliates cannot 'incentivize' how they like. FT caps all RB that can be proffered to 27%; pokerstars does not permit any cash incentives at all, etc). Most networks these days offer RB in-house or what can be offered is fixed; FT will put players on to one specific RB provider if they request it (and don't have a prior arrangement with another affiliate). The margins these days for affiliates is very thin, normally taking 1-3% with the rest kicked back to the player.
but we are getting way off-topic. I was correcting the original comment above about what the definition of rakeback was.
The way most affiliates incentivize you to use their affiliate link is by giving you a cut of the revenue.
How did you think it worked? Full Tilt giving rake back direct to players just because they signed-up thru some 3rd party link? Why would they do that?
The reason why some people who sign-up can't get rakeback and are told that "their affiliate doesn't support rakeback" is that some affiliates chose to get paid a flat CPA fee of $75-100 rather than a lifetime percentage. This is also how PokerStars, etc, runs their programs.