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Real Newbie here and wanted to get as much info before I venture into the online gaming market. I do have some general questions but basically I am looking for general guidelines of how to begin and what to watch out for in getting into the business…. Im based out of the US and will market both in US and Europe. I appreciate any advice or insight. Cheers…
When I got started, I read every post ever made in this forum, starting from the beginning. It took a good little while, and some of it didn’t make sense, but after a while I had one of those “ah-ha” moments, and felt like I could get started.
In terms of what to watch out for…most PPC engines are a bad investment, and the folks selling “targeted traffic” are ripping people off, so be really careful of them and stay far away from them. (I have some luck with espotting and 7search.com, but others here don’t even recommend them.)
Thanks Randy! been going through the site, i really appreciate this type of forum. I’ve been looking to joining partypoker.com affiliate, but whats your opinion on CPA vs %commision on monthly gross?
How are webmasters finidng customers? Are there any general stats as to the gambling population? growth? signups/year? average spending per customer?
Bottom line, can i do this for a living?Just to give you some sort of an idea… I put my site up December 1st and now it’s Janurary 21st. To date, I’ve made $50. I think things will pick up– I hear a huge ingredient is time! I don’t know if you have experience building websites, but you’ll want to learn about meta tags, pay per click search engines, search engine optimization, and advertising in general.
If you haven’t yourself gambled online before, I suggest playing at a bunch of different casinos yourself. This really helps you understand the bonuses, terms and conditions, and the pluses and minuses of each casino. I used to work on my website about 6 hours a day..and I still consider myself a complete Newbie. There’s just so much to learn. This is a great resource though… people are so helpful and friendly. Randy’s right…read all the posts here that you can! Good luck, it’s a long process, but I think it’s fun and I’m sure it can be very rewarding.
HeatherI have had some experience building sites as well as implementing SEO techniques… i haven’t even bought a URL yet.. i think i need to see what kws to target the promising players, just need to get my hands on data.. even player profiles..
ill let you guys know what i find…As to how to find customers: SEO is your best friend these days. If you have good SEO and get players coming to your site, and your site offers good information and is worth coming back to, you will have a start.
Yes, you can make a living and a lot more – but there is a big investment of time, and for a long time I invested all income back into the business.
Times change, it seems more so in this business than any other. What I learned 3 years ago about it, doesn’t much apply anymore. That is what makes CAP so valuable – while no one will hand you the recipe for their “secret sauce”, most here will freely share a lot of tips.
First, get your domain. I like domains that either describe what the site contains, so you will get search traffic because your name is your keyword – or get a domain name everyone can remember easily so you can brand. Some SEO guys will tell you that the domain doesn’t matter at all – if you are willing to put in the time needed to acquire enough knowledge to pull that off, I guess you can call your site xyz and be happy. Personally, I don’t think that’s the smart way to go.
Then gather your content and try to be a bit original. Make sure you don’t copy from others.
Now do your site and constantly check SEO developments. Work on your SEO until you see results. Now you can try to dip into PPC or other advertising.
If you want statistics on player demographics etc., pick a handful of the reputable and responsive programs and ask questions. They will vary somewhat from casino to casino – and that is the reason why so many of us can coexist peacefully. Different programs convert for different people because of different look and feel and information offered on websites. So the demographics can vary – and while you can get a mean statistic, the success really lies in finding a niche, a group that appeals to you so you can cater to them.
i agree with the other posts here that jumping into this is a big time investment…i come from an internet professional services background and spent the better part of 12 months planning out our site concept, creating user experience documentation, coming up with the name (going the easy to remember branding route), designing the logo, designing the site, employing an SQL/ASP developer…then in the case of my site, it took a couple of months just to enter all of the data into the database (over 800 sites so far)…but that is where i see our value coming in, a fully searchable database of every online gambling site (1400 sites to go)…
once the site was launched (first week of january) all my time was spent on signing up for affiliate programs…then a serious push for seo and dabbling in some ppc…traffic is just beginning to build 10-20 uniques per day right now…but the next trick will be figuring out conversion rates from raw traffic to depositing player…
speaking of seo specifically, it sounds like you have some prior knowledge…how long does it generally take (assuming a knowledgeable start) to achieve decent optimization results…i’ve spent a lot of time on it so far and am frustrated that google can’t pick us up any more than showing http://www.playersjet.com with no title or description…
Wow, that will take a lot of ongoing time to keep updated. The bonuses change constantly…
It looks like a very nice site and with good SEO you should be getting listed easily.
With new sites I usually use the $20 submission service by ineedhits.com, it’s done by hand and it has always worked well for me. Of course you can save your $20 and do it yourself.
yes, the maintenance will be heavy, but hoping that some of the features we have going into the site will be worth it by keeping people coming back and suggesting it for others…working on an online poker tournaments list with my developer as i write this…that will be something else to update frequently…also, changing out sporting events on the sports books page, updating payout percentages, etc…yes, i’m hoping this can replace the regular 9 to 5 gig with time…eventually to achieve less work for more return…
with regard to seo, i have been using a product called webceo…which has an automated submission feature and then can run reports to check on results (been running them once a week)…i’ve gotten some decent results on minor search engines, but am being patient for good rankings on google/yahoo/msn/lycos…webceo is free btw and is much better than other tools i was looking at…they do charge for a full featured version, though i haven’t really seen the need to go that route…for me that would basically mean their keyword suggestion tool (similar to what overture offers online, but with deeper information) would give me more than 5 suggestions
ok, enough promotion for that product…
Yikes, I would never pay them more than $20. Anything else isn’t worth the money.
Are you asking if there is anyone else out there to enter you in the search engines? If you’ve already spent all that at ineedhits you ought to be covered!
Once the spiders start coming they keep coming.
