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I have no answers, just that I thought this was an interesting question.
I have tried sending players directly from PPCs to casinos and have not had as good luck as I have sending them thru my sites (which look terrible but have made money).
That said, I’ve not tried extensively sending players straight thru to the casinos.
I’d imagine a lot of it depends on the casino’s landing page.
When I first started out (way back in October of last year), all I did was PPC traffic sent straight to casinos. I developed some of my own portals, simple as they might be, in large part because of conversations I read here from bb1webs and dominique.
But I feel like I did sometimes see better conversions sending people straight to the casino. Not sure if there’s a reason why, other than people who are on a portal might do a little more shopping.
I’m curious Randy, from memory, what do you think the player value was? above or below that of a player’s value sent thru a portal?
Interesting stuff.
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.
I do still send traffic straight to the casino from PPC engines. But now I do it to test click value at a PPC. When the PPC has demonstrated that their clicks are actually worth something, THEN I start sending traffic to my portals.
Originally posted by Randy
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.
Hmm.. so you had pretty excellent ROI with Adwords PPC. I haven´t really done PPC advertising other than with the BTD privatelabel that was really awful and thus I have been relying on free traffic to generate players. Now as I have found a few good places that do convert I am itching to do some PPC, but where to go as Adwords and Overture are out of the question.
I know there are a lot of smaller outfits, but do they offer good traffic or mostly bull?? From what you said earlier about making 10k out of 5k investment it doesn´t suprise me that so many of you do so much better revenue than I do. I guess most of us webmasters are buying the majority of traffic – Right or Wrong?
To get back to the original issue I dont see portals as attractive as I would know they are making money out of the business I bring and all the clorification of the site and the represented gaming properties would rather make me wanna leave rather than go forward. Still, I am making these exact sites. (Funny ain´t it
) Or is the basic gambler so unaware of the biz that they just eat up everything we say?I would rather see a “authority site” that would give out solid and valuable information, but in order to gain such level of authority I think the site would have to be BIG and well maintained offering all sorts of things, news,issues and so on like for example Winner.com. Now to make a site like that is out of my league as it would take a lot more than one webmaster behind it all. So ultimately the question still remains: Do these generic banner hell portal sites work or is it time to develop something else??
Mike many of us make a lot of money from our “Generic Banner Hell Portals.”
Be careful with the anti portal rhetoric….
:beatup:Originally posted by Professor
Mike many of us make a lot of money from our “Generic Banner Hell Portals.”Be careful with the anti portal rhetoric….
:beatup:LOL
– First of all the websites I have seen so far seem to have a bit more content than mine so I am not saying all portals are “banner hell” just that I feel mine are.Well I might have been a bit provokative, but I really feel my “portals” are not converting and thus they dont work.. maybe I need just more and especially high quality traffic to make this work.
From my personal point of view I would have never thought about buying expensive PPC traffic to my portals – no way. I would much rather send that traffic straight to casino, but hey if it works – ok then I will have to give that a try. I just hope I could get myself to do a bit more extensive portal with true content on it and maybe a catchy theme of some sort?
I dont know if it´s a cultural differense or what, but somehow I feel the european players would hate/disbyse the kind of websites I have been creating so it doesn´t feel right to me, but the money is the reason why we are in this business so I guess I should leave feelings beside and go forward.
Maybe my sites just lack the theme that make the site that “something”. I mean am I the only one who is thinking along these lines or are there truly so much new players looking for just a place to bet on?
If anyone who has done different types of sites would care to share their experiense that would be great. What I would be looking for is comparison between the conversions of a generic casino portal and a high quality portal that emphasis on games, tips, tricks, news, original casino reviews and all that what makes the site stand out from the crowd.
And my apologies to anyone who might have felt affendet by the “banner hell” statement I did not mean to affend anyone in this business by my previous statements, but I feel my sites are lacking something(players
) and it pisses me off.Ps. Prof – Should we move on with the Geisha project or does it need a re-design?
We don’t all have to agree what type of site we like to use – the players don’t either.
All business models are valid if they work.
I guess you are right Dominique – there is a lot of fish in the sea and maybe we all can have our share
As I started to think about this theme issue and I decited to act on one idea that has been in my thoughts for some time now. I will let you know as soon I get it finished. Hopefully it will please the players as well – at least it would please me, but I might be one of a million freak when it comes to gambling
Too true. And I’m a big fan of trying as many different sites and business models as possible to see what works.
And what works changes over time too, I think.
Originally posted by Dominique
We don’t all have to agree what type of site we like to use – the players don’t either.All business models are valid if they work.
I might be one of a million freak when it comes to gambling
That’s good. Niche is good for SEO.
…now this is funny, immediatly after changing the Play2deal.com back to Del Rio mirror I had a new depositor. All that time I had the “portal”( http://online-casino-gambling.play2deal.com/online-casino-gambling.htm ) in place I got nothing. This might be just a lucky fluke or something, but based on the numbers it seems the more banners I get shown the less players I get
So in my case it seems that mirrors are converting better and thats fine by me as long as the money keeps rolling in Its very simple why a player is better off choosing thru a portal instead of going straight to the casino.
suppose something goes wrong
Here’s your choices:
1. You signed straight thru to the casino. It’s you and them baby.
2. You signed thru a portal. You now have a 3rd party with an interest in seeing you satisfied, which also happens to be considerably more influentual with the casino than just you, since you’re representing only one player. The portal represents the possibility of an endless supply of players, for all the casino knows.
Now which person, #1, or #2, has the best chance of getting whatever went wrong, fixed to their satisfaction?
Originally posted by bb1webs
Its very simple why a player is better off choosing thru a portal instead of going straight to the casino.suppose something goes wrong
Here’s your choices:
1. You signed straight thru to the casino. It’s you and them baby.
2. You signed thru a portal. You now have a 3rd party with an interest in seeing you satisfied, which also happens to be considerably more influentual with the casino than just you, since you’re representing only one player. The portal represents the possibility of an endless supply of players, for all the casino knows.
Now which person, #1, or #2, has the best chance of getting whatever went wrong, fixed to their satisfaction?
Hmm… you are correct, but then the portal must emphasise the fact that they are the middle man and that they can be contacted if signs of trouble, now I have not had that on my sites as they have been just plain and simple casino showcases. Maybe I should better my output as I dont display my contact information on my sites because of the spam that would arrive with it. Maybe a graphic display of email address or codet text would do the trick. Still I have now so many things going on right now that I have to resolve a few things before really getting into the protal biz if at all as I might be purchasing a casino of my own.
