We often have newcomers wondering why they are having troubles selling shares on the ChipMeUp.

You need to remember that it’s important for members to purchase shares in people they can trust and sometimes they are reluctant to buy shares in new people without any feedback.
A good way to build up trust/respect is to do the following:
- Buy a few shares to build up some positive feedback
- Sell some shares at a discounted rate (people love a bargain!)
- Don’t overprice the shares you are selling.
- Contribute in the forums/shoutbox
- Make sure your profile is up to date and contains useful information
- Offer ChipMeUp $ as a payment method so buyers have more confidence buying your shares.

It won’t take long before people have the confidence to buy your shares.

User Pezzzzzz wrote this great guide:

Pezzzzz’s Beginners Guide to Selling Shares

This guide is meant for people who are new to staking and looking to start selling some of their shares. If you have tried listing some events and not had a lot of interest then you may find this particularly helpful.

Your Buyers:

Just like in any sales, you need to be aware of who you are selling your shares to. Understanding who is buying your shares, and why, will help you to make events that people want to invest in. From what I have seen there are three main types of backers on this site:

• Recreational investors:

Many players using this site are small time players with very little funds who are looking to get a piece of a big event for a very small amount – they will throw $2 into a share and rail someone in a big event where they might win $200, rather than play a $2 SnG where they might be able to win $10, or they will buy a share in a player they know or like so that they can watch them at the tables.

• Value investors:

The main concern for this type of investor is of course value. They back horses that have a long +EV history, or which they believe show potential for becoming that type of player, and they do so at prices which give them an expected profit. These investors often play for an income (or at least regularly), or have done previously and stake instead while they can’t play – as such they are also often selling stakes themselves.

• High Rollers:

As with any aspect of gambling, there are always a few people out there who just seem to have too much money and love to gamble. These investors may buy shares in any (or every) event, are more interested in the bigger (especially live) events, have their own roll, often play full time, and are relatively unpredictable. You’re more likely to get backing from them by having a reputation, but ultimately they choose to do their own thing. Most people just starting aren’t likely to be looking to these investors to get their shares sold.

Your Event:

There are some important points that will increase the likelihood of sales to at least one of these groups:

Share Size – CMU lets you chop any event up into as many little pieces as you would like. Don’t be afraid to sell lots of shares for a fraction of a percent each – if people want a bigger chunk they will just buy more shares. This is important for getting recreational buyers to take your shares at any time, but it is especially important (to everyone) for selling shares when you first start – it lets people find out whether you are actually going to play the event, and actually pay people out their winnings, without having to send $50 to a stranger on the internet (you can also offer ‘ChipMeUp $’ as a payment method as it re-assures buyers you won’t disappear with their money). Aim for shares < $3, at least to start. Even well established players playing larger buyin events still chop the shares up this small – look at this event for example.

Share Value – This is talked about as the P/V (or Price/Value) for a given event and indicates how much extra than the true cost of a share a backer has to pay. This format is very helpful for stakers because it can easily be compared to a player’s average % profit in previous events (which most stakers will look for on sites like OfficialPokerRankings or SharkScope unless there is enough history already on CMU). If your history shows that you average +35% return on investment (ROI) and you’re selling a share at 15% mark-up (i.e. 115% P/V) then stakers will know that they can expect that in the long run buying these shares will be profitable. If however you average +10% ROI and are trying to sell shares at a 70% markup (170% P/V) then you will have a little more difficulty selling your shares. This is especially important to value investors, but if you go too high then nobody will take you seriously.

Stakeback – This is becoming more and more common in stakes that are offered and is something that almost all starting players should be offering. Basically it means that only profit is divided by the % indicated in the shares – the first winnings that only cover the initial buy-in (or a portion of it if the event lost some money) are divided at the rate investors actually paid. For a simple example let’s say I bought the one and only share in your event and paid $8 for a 50% share in your $11 tournament (a 145% P/V). If you then went on and cashed in the event for exactly $11 back then with stakeback, I would get my $8 back, but without stakeback I would get just my 50%, or $5.50. Any winnings over $11 I will only get 50% of, with or without stakeback, so the maximum difference is only going to be $3.50. This doesn’t change the outcome much in big scores, but is very important to regular investors for getting their money back from all the small wins.

Amount Sold – In any event you list, you can choose the amount of the tournament you are selling. Some new players think that this means they can sell 95% of the event and play in a $1000+ event (which they have no experience playing) for next to nothing. In reality, backers are unlikely to buy a share in a new player who is trying to sell more than half of their event. The lower the total amount you sell, the more confident that it shows you are in the event and it lets backers know you would likely play the event anyway as opposed to being too broke and needing money.

Profile – An empty profile and no previous events played is the best way to ensure you never sell a share. While we don’t need to know your whole life story, it helps us to know that you seem like an actual person rather than a random scammer, that you have played enough poker to talk about it coherently, and that you are serious enough about this to have taken the time to get it done. Put up a profile picture – it doesn’t have to be of you, but it looks much better with something there. Tell us something about your history with the game, what you’ve played, what you’ve won, etc – this is an opportunity to show value investors that you might be a good investment (possibly despite lacklustre results) by explaining some of your development, improvement, or just your thinking about the game. You might also want to mention WHY you want to be staked. Reasons such as “I’m a losing player and I want to make it cheaper for me to play” and “I’m completely broke and need staking so I can keep playing” are not great reasons to list.

Getting Started:

Keeping this in mind, if you are looking to start building a reputation by listing some events, then try listing a couple according to this loose model:

• Sell shares to an event you are comfortable in and you regularly play anyway.
• Sell no more than 30% of yourself (and play regardless of how many actually sell).
• Make the shares $1 or $2 each.
• Have a PV of ~110%. (you may even want to make a PV below 100% as a promotion to attract investors – it’s like a shop having sales in order to get new customers)
• Offer Stakeback.
• Offer ChipMeUp $ as a payment method (this will encourage people to back you as the money is not released to you until you have played the event)

You will find that once you have started selling shares backers will add you to their watchlist and buy your shares again and again. Once you have shown yourself to be both trustworthy and reliable you should have no problem selling shares and can start becoming more imaginitive with what and how you list your events.

Best of luck!

Also please dont constantly spam the shoutbox with the links to your event….

Nice information and yes I agree spamming wont get you anywhere.

NO SPAM

CMU is one of the nicest ideas to have been executed rightly in the Poker arena over the past few years.
We all need to support this community and make it a success.

Aim to contribute to CMU and in the long term who knows you might get your first big win or first big share cash because of CMU.

Regards,
Raj
AAAATISH on Pokerstars
INLOVEWTHPOKER on Fulltilt

I think this is an important feature in the poker online, and live, world, because helps players to build a poker name, and investors to see that poker is a good bussines as well. But the most important think is the common wealth of knowledge and money, of curse, for everyone of us here. Thanks a lot.

And, sorry for my English, I`m learning it. See you!

im a new user and this information is very helpfull, thank you for the insight.

Sa

Thanks for this information.
It’s very important to buy shares if you want to selling some…

hiya guys

im a new user to the site myself and im extremely impressed with it already, ii willl be looking to back a few people at the start and build up a good rep, and then will be selling sum shares in myself. keep up the good work and hopefully be hearing from you soon

Thanks for the info on here. It helped me before plunging headfirst into staking myself!
dazzy_boy

I purchased 30+ shares over my first weekend here and only got like 5 Feedbacks on my Profile. Is that normal ?

i guess thats not normal at all godistar. Everybody who buy’s a share must give feedback imo. I will feedback you 100% And i hope that other people will do that to.

Hi,

I have purchased a few shares, 6 I think yet dont have any feedback, how do I go about getting this? My profile also states that I have purchased 3 shares but this is wrong although I have purchased in 1 person more than once.

Thanks in advance

well thanks for the help

Great advice… Looks like I have a plethora of posting to do…

New here and appreciate the advice…look forward to being a asset to the CMU community!

Ah yes those are helpful advices.. And people who only look to be staked seem less trusted than others, it’s important to not seem greedy. Bad quality in a person anyhow.
Am new around here and am looking forward to getting involved in the community, good luck everyone

- Don’t overprice the shares you are selling

Yes if everyone is fair and keep over price down everyone has a good chance to pocket some jingle jangle.
my pockets jingle just enough when I walk so that I dont spook casper.

hey guys i am a new player, and would be happy if you buy some of my shares :D
and i will make u happy then :D

LOL…IM_MR_SHARK….FAIL!

LOL Rwestover…too obv huh? +1

Thanks for the post and the info!

thanks for useful information, spamming gets people nowhere imo