Casino portals for dummies

[spinoza]

I am planning on starting a casino portal. As I am new to this business I have lots of questions. Maybe you can help me answering a few.

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2) Would you recommend to introduce your site with full casino promotional banners, or would you recommend to drive traffic to your site based on content alone, and add banners later on?

3) Is it an option to not engage in any affiliate programs but to only charge casinos for advertising on your site (if at all possible)?

4) Could anybody give me a rough estimate as to how revenues compare to costs (hosting, advertising etc) possibly relating to the number of hits your site gets.

Kind regards,

S.

[baraucs]

1) Legal issues. I've noticed that the Goodlatte bill HR 3215 is also targeting sites that advertise online gambling. So it might not be a good idea to host a casino portal in the U.S. even if the bill wil presumably never make it into law. What jurisdictions do you find best to host a casino portal, both in terms of legal concerns and cost/efficiency?

I don't think cost is a huge factor for the most part, many of us use relatively simple shared hosting plans which don't really cost much at all in the grand scheme of things, and are available all over the place. Sure enough, were the bill to pass the US would be a bad place to operate a gambling portal as it is being targeted, and I'm guessing they'll be looking to make some quick examples if things go through.

2) Would you recommend to introduce your site with full casino promotional banners, or would you recommend to drive traffic to your site based on content alone, and add banners later on?

I'd say advertise off the top. These days you'll appear commercial just because of the content regardless of whether there's ads everywhere or not, so why pass up some potential income off the start?

3) Is it an option to not engage in any affiliate programs but to only charge casinos for advertising on your site (if at all possible)?

Anything's possible, but for a new site I'd say no. It's hard enough for people who've been around for a while to get CPM deals, but you'll have to prove yourself first before anyone would even consider it. CPM dried up big time over the last couple of years, an advertiser won't be able to gauge your traffic quality without spending money on it they may not recoup. With so many people willing to CPA these days, it's a tough sell.

4) Could anybody give me a rough estimate as to how revenues compare to costs (hosting, advertising etc) possibly relating to the number of hits your site gets.

Unless you'll have a LOT of traffic and/or some very specific hosting needs, you should be able to get by with shared hosting for relatively cheap - less than $50 a month, and probably much less than that to start. Revenues are inconsistent, some folks could buy a new car every month and some of us are saving up for a bus pass. As such, the relationship between cost and revenue depends on:

- How well you can convert the traffic you have
- How much money you spend on getting traffic

Some people spend a lot on generating traffic, but know how to make it back and more. Some people prefer to concentrate on free SE traffic, in which case any revenue over hosting costs could be considered 'profit'.

Matt


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[spinoza]

Thanks for great reply, baraucs. Very informative. Are you already buying a new car each month? I only wish I got some more replies!! There must be plenty of experienced webmasters reading these boards. Come on guys share your thoughts with a newbie.

Additional question: As I read posts between webmasters on this and other gambling related forums I tend to conclude that marketing your site is far more important than the actual content of the site (the majority of sites offer no real content at all, no offense). I have been working many of my free hours in the last couple of months mainly focusing on developing 'quality' content for my future site. Am I on the right track? If you would divide your time between marketing your site and developing content for it, what percentage would you spend on each?

[VPJunkie]

Content, content, content!!! If you check my site, you'll see it's primarily content, which has served me well with SE traffic. Also, because of content, I don't have to spend much on advertising, if anything.

Make sure you pre-sell your casinos - it makes a world of difference in your conversion rates. And keep it fresh.

[spinoza]

It's interesting to see your site is focusing on video poker. I've taken a more general approach, but it might be worth considering developing a few specialized sites. I suspect narrowing your focus will work out better in terms of search engine rankings. And maybe video poker attracts more 'real' gamblers, instead of 'bonus hunters' who are playing mainly blackjack. I've searched Google for 'video poker' and indeed noticed your site is ranking in the top ten (of 756000). You would expect www.videopoker.com to rank higher, but it doesn't. However, when you omit the space and search for 'videopoker' www.videopoker.com shows up first (of 167000) and your site doesn't show up at all. Hope they don't read this post.

[VPJunkie]

:LOL: :LOL: :LOL: BUT, if you do any other searches with ANY other video poker term, I'm usually #1 or in the top 3. And that's where most of my SE traffic comes from.

On any given day, 95% of my traffic comes from other 'video poker whatever' terms, not 'video poker'.

[spinoza]

Impressive! Hope I will be joining you there soon! In the meantime I will be studying http://www.searchenginewatch.com until my eyes hurt.

S.