How to Promote Online Bingo

Article courtesy of Dave @ Bingo Hall. Please join his program and show your support for putting together this wonderful article.

Many casino webmasters are interested in getting into promoting online bingo because it is a growing market niche that is not nearly as saturated as casino or poker sites.

Yet many more webmasters are put off by hearing stories claiming that “you can’t make money in bingo.”

The fact of the matter is that at Winward Gaming Group, BingoHall.com is growing faster than our long-established flagship casino, WinwardCasino.com

Our bingo affiliates are making money. In fact, some are making a LOT of money.

The reason that they are succeeding while others have failed is that they understand the online bingo market. Bingo players are not the same as casino players, so you must target that market differently.

If your casino portal site has a Slots section or focuses primarily on slots, you will probably do better in the bingo market than a general casino site or one that focuses on blackjack or other types of games. Most bingo sites also offer slots because they attract a similar type of player. In fact, at BingoHall.com, the bulk of our profit comes from the video slots play rather than the bingo play! So consider adding some bingo links or bingo pages to the slots section of your gambling site.

It’s important to understand who is the typical bingo player? Here are some stats from a recent study:

Online Bingo Players:
85% women.
66% between 35 – 54 years old.
99% live in the U.S. or Canada
80% also play at land-based bingo halls.
40% do not take part in any other type of online gambling.

Notice that last line … 40% do not take part in any other type of online gambling!

That’s why you are better off creating a bingo-only website rather than trying to generate bingo players from an existing gambling portal site.

If you want to see what some online bingo players look like, surf through the player pictures on our site: http://www.bingohall.com/players.asp

Now the idea of posting pictures of bingo players on the Web may seem crazy to online casino promoters who are used to promising players that their privacy is totally protected, but that is another major difference between casinos and bingo. Bingo is a very SOCIAL game. Players like to play where their friends play. Chat rooms in online bingo sites are the virtual equivalent to sitting down next to your friend at the local bingo hall. Good bingo sites build a sense of “community” by chatting with their players and making them feel part of the “club.”

With that in mind, you might want to create your own online forum on your bingo portal site to give your visitors a chance to chat about various bingo sites. There are many relatively inexpensive web forum programs available. One of the best is vBulletin: http://www.vbulletin.com/

As for the graphic design of your bingo portal site, at the risk of sounding sexist, I suggest using soft pastel colors such as pink and purple and “cute” graphics. Remember, you are trying to appeal to a primarily female audience.

Once your bingo portal site is up and running, remember that bingo players are not casino “high rollers.” You are trying to attract a large number of relatively small players. Be patient. The numbers will probably be small at first, but they should grow over time. The benefit of the “community” nature of bingo players is that once they find a bingo site that they like, they tend to stay around for a long time. So as your player count grows month by month, year by year, you will gradually build up a nice, steady income stream. Of course, the flip side of community loyalty is that it is very difficult to get established bingo players to change from one bingo site to another. So make sure you always have fresh traffic coming to your bingo portal to attract newbie bingo players.