Online Casino Portals: All About The Fun & ROI

Danish business administration student Jan Balslev Pedersen has a domain worth multiples of many hundreds over what he actually paid for it, the result of a combination of a relevant title and hard work building it into a meaningful online gambling portal.

Early last year the twenty-something portalmaster snapped up the domain Online-Casinos.com from the Namewinner.com site. He describes the price as "...a gift" and within days it turned out to be a truly valuable present when he was approached by a casino company and offered $30 000 for it.

He declined the offer because his sights were firmly set on building a quality online gambling portal, but bids from both individuals and companies continued to flow in, several over $50 000 before he had even started enhancing the domain with a content-rich site.

Today, his well-frequented portal attracts at least one approach a week for considerably more than that. And with recent sales of successful portals like Got2Bet.com, Gambling.com, The Prescription.com and Casino.com running into many millions of dollars the potential for this sort of business return is clearly considerable.

"It's an example of the significant return on investment achievable with a carefully selected domain," says Pedersen, who went on to invest hard-won experience and tankerloads of midnight oil in designing a portal and obtaining the high-interest content for it.

"My start-up costs were minimal because a few friends and I did the work ourselves - the start-up cash outlay was under $100 as I recall," he says.

Pedersen was already a self-taught veteran in this highly competitive industry, having started what became a famous Danish casino information site called Casinoportalen.dk back in 2000.

Both technologies and techniques have advanced remarkably since then," he recalls.

"Predictably, I had to learn from my mistakes - principally because I did not immediately take on board the critical importance of really good search engine optimisation. Knowing what I know now about the industry, I should have visited webmaster forums for free guidance. There is plenty of good and free advice on the 'Net for new webmasters - it's just a question of reading, listening and learning in webmaster forums."

Pedersen also learned what sort of content attracted online gambling tourists to his site and then kept them coming back: a dynamic and interesting public forum, carefully researched directories of reliable and safe casinos, relevant news and gaming information useful to online players of all types.

The hard work was worth it - two years ago he sold his interest in Casinoportalen for an attractive profit and had the knowledge and experience to go on to bigger and better casino portal plans.

"Running a successful site is a busy life," says Pedersen. "In addition to all the normal administration required by a profitable business you have to be on the ball on what's happening in the industry and you have to market the site in such a way that players will come back to you despite the stiff competition out there."

A typical day starts with a patrol of the major news sites and forums, checking search engine positioning and attending to advertising and affiliate links.

Several times a week, the Dane will study various casino sites in detail before registering and playing them for real money without the operators knowing he is reviewing their casinos for possible inclusion on his site.

"Publishing unique and reliable reviews generated by myself is a responsibility I take very seriously," he says. "If a player uses one of the casinos in my directory I need to be certain that it has been thoroughly tested for all operational aspects and found acceptable, because if that player has a problem I have an obligation to help him resolve it with the casino if I am to retain my own and the site's credibility."

Typical aspects that are tested include how big the download is and how many games and what type of games are offered. What are the graphics like? Is there sound? Is the gameplay fast? Is there multi-table play? Can you track play history? How efficient is the cashier? What Support is offered? What is the responsiveness like?

Asked which competitive portals he most respects, Pedersen does not hesitate. "Those that offer something different to the player and are known for integrity and professionalism," he says.

"Sites like Casinomeister, GoneGambling and CasinoMan come immediately to mind and seem to have large and loyal audiences and personal values similar to my own. They have unique styles and content to distinguish themselves, and they operate to a high standard."

Issued by: Online-Casinos.com
Phone: (+45) 8620 9096
Website: http://www.online-casinos.com
Date: 06/02-2005