Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
Youmay well have read about the rampant success of online gambling – a £15 billion a year industry – and thought about getting involvedyourself. There’s just one thing to bear in mind before starting – it’s afiercely competitive marketplace to enter. Make getting started as easy as itcan be by checking out this simple step-by-step guide.
Step 1: Decide whether you want to be an affiliate or an operator
Thefirst thing to consider is: are you sure you want to be an operator? Another way of getting into the gambling industry is by setting up an affiliate site, which earns revenue by directing players to operators. Plenty of entrepreneurs have made money in this way. Here are the key differences between affiliates and operators in the gambling industry:
- Online casinos want to market their services and win more customers
- Affiliate sites publish content that drives customers to different online casinos, encouraging them to make purchases there
Here’s how affiliate marketing in the gambling industry works:
- The affiliate site reviews a casino, product or writes about a certain issue in the gambling industry
- In affiliate-produced content is a link to an online casino which directs traffic to their website
- Online casinos are able to spot whenusers have clicked through from an affiliate site as the link will contain their ID or username
- All purchases made by those customersare credited to the affiliate account, earning them commission for sales they’ve helped create
So your first decision is whether you’d rather make money as an affiliate –potentially working for many different operators – or go it alone as your own casino. And ultimately, that decision might rest of how much money you mightmake.
Yourearnings as an affiliate have noboundaries. Someone might earn zero – someone else might earn one million dollars a month. In general, casinos will pay you a percentage of the gross revenue you’ve helped earn – ranging from 20% to 40%, depending on how many players you’re helping the operator pull in.
Asan online gambling operator – again, there are no limits. The industry is worth around $60 billion, so there’s a lot of money to be made, with many companies listed on the stock market. In order to do this, you’ll have to obtain a gambling licence.
Step 2: Designing your website
Howdo you stand out in such a congested market? Design a quality gambling website– focusing on developing a slick interface, exciting range of games and simple site navigation.
Fromthe moment your user lands on your main page they should be able to access your favourite casino games in just a couple of clicks due in an easy-to-play layout. Make sure you also focus on featuring an exciting range of games, including engaging slots, immersive live casino and a range of classic tablegames suiting all types of players.
Follow the example of 888 online casino and make sure your gambling website has the quality to draw in the huge numbers of customers it does.
Step 3: Choose a payment operator
Depending on whether you’re operating domestically or internationally, you may need to provide multi-currency transaction support. The payment service provider thatyou choose will preferably have excellent customer support and offer multiple payment options.
Fraud detection and advanced risk management are also important factors to consider.
Alongside this, there’s also an obligation on companies within the UK to monitor theircustomers’ spends and intervene when problem gambling becomes an issue. Failure to find a provider that offers all of these services will not only see you falling foul of the law, but will scare off potential customers.
Step 4: Choose a gaming software provider
Now you have your gambling licence and a trustworthy payment operator, you can finally start thinking about what you’re going to offer your customers. Thereare several different gaming software providers on the market to choose from.
Aswith the payment provider, it’s important you find a software provider that offers your customers the very best gaming experience.
You can go for the cheapest options and provide your clientele with basic 2D gameswith dull interfaces – but that might affect how many customers stay on your website and ultimately hurt your profits. Look for a provider with a customizable front-end to separate you from your competitors. This will give you a large coverage of betting markets and access to a large selection of casino games.
Step 5: Invest in technology and resource
Withso much data passing through your server and folder space required, you need to invest in server farms which can give you the computer power and necessary bandwidth you’ll need to serve millions of customers worldwide.
When starting any business – especially one that serves customers across the world –you need to make sure you have the required high quality technology. Only with robust infrastructure and systems can you hope to sustain the levels of growth you should have in sight. For example, a CRM system is essential formaintaining customer relationships and ultimately driving sales growth.
Of course, you’ll also need the right people resources too – including digital marketers, who will help push your brand out into the marketplace and grow your business.
Step 6: Promote yourself
Your website is all ready to go, it looks fantastic and the customer interface is state-of-the-art. Now’s the time to begin advertising and pushing yourself out to the gambling world.
Marketing campaigns – From traditional media advertising such as TV and radio, through to blogs, podcasts and YouTube videos – you needto be on every platform to really grow your presence. It’s wise to invest in a big marketing campaign that builds up to your website launch – though this can be fairly expensive to execute. There’s also organic forms of social media marketing, which can be an inexpensive way to drive customers to your site. Offline marketing is important too – so think about how you might stage in-person events and spread the word through postering and other offline formats.
Bonuses – These are a great way to also appealto new customers. Some big online casino brands offer daily deals as well asone-off chances to win big with free spins. Several gaming sites offer registration offers, like free spins or welcome bonuses, in order to drawcustomers in initially. To keep them there, they offer deposit bonuses, forplayers who add big sums to their account balances. That way, you’re promoting as you go along and build a reputation as a gambling site that not only rewards new players but looks after its existing ones too.
SEO/SEM – By ranking higher in Google search results, more customers will click through to your pages – driving conversions and revenue. With so many factors at play here – including your site speed, content and website technicals – it’s a good idea to hire an agency which can measure your SEO performance and advise how you can improve. They might, forexample, suggest you focus on developing or optimising content on your website so you can establish more authority and a greater presence in organic search results, which would complement the inevitable paid marketing push that’s common place in the gambling industry.
Step 7: Relax and watch your profits grow
Once everything is set-up, it’s all about maintaining a consistent level of service to your customers. Once you’ve laid the ground works with a well-designedwebsite, your main job is to continue to attract new customers with new games, offers and incentives.
The online gambling market moves fast, so keep on reinvesting amounts into your design and promotion. That way you can stay ahead of the competition and continue to reap the rewards of this competitive marketplace.
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