I think that my approach before was okay, but it was fundamentally unsound. I spent $5000/month advertising on Google Adwords for one particular casino, and I generally saw $10,000/month in revenue. And I signed up between 30 – 40 new players each month.
The reason my strategy was fundamentally unsound was that I nothing to show for my advertising money but money. Not customers.
Now that I’m a “real webmaster” (notice I didn’t say a “good” webmaster), I have an opportunity to gain customers. I might have a player now who plays at 3 or 4 of my casinos instead of just one. If someone thinks that http://www.25casinos.com is useful, they might bookmark the site and play at all 25 of the casinos there.
If someone enjoys my poker blog, they might eventually sign up for multiple poker rooms. If someone likes my message board, they might sign up with multiple poker rooms and multiple casinos.
I get so little traffic now that Google has pulled Adwords that it’s hard for me to pin down an average player value. AND, I don’t really have a way of knowing if that player I sent to Crazy Vegas is the same player I sent to Blackjack Ballroom and to Breakaway Casino and to Cirrus Casino, and she’s just playing at all 4.
But now that I’ve launched a few real portals, with distinct personalities, I’ve put myself in a position of potentially building a relationship with people on the web. And I’m convinced this will be more profitable in the long run than anything else I could do.
Anyway–didn’t mean to ramble. I just thought I’d put some of this down in writing so that the folks on this board who’ve been such a good influence on my thinking can see some of thoughts they’ve catalyzed.