Read on to get a basic understanding of what you have to do to start a successful online casino.
Table of Contents
Create a Unique Selling Point
You may think online casino are a piece of cake. Tens of thousands of people will start coming to your casino to spend their money just like that. It’s not that simple.
There are dozens upon dozens of online casino out there. The market is extremely competitive. Other casino owners won’t let you take their customers away, you’ll have to be the best.
To stand out of the crowd, you need to have a unique selling point. The more, the better.
It can be anything, really. You can start by making a great memorable brand name and logo. There are many casinos out there that are great but not memorizable at all. People don’t give them another look.
Make your name and logo unique and easy to recognize, and you are already one step ahead of the competition. Just don’t go with bright colors only, it’s not the only thing that attracts people.
Just as few people will gamble at a dirty and unattractive casino floor, few will stay for long on a poorly made website. While the main reason people visit your website is slotted, if they see bad design, they won’t be compelled to stay.
Invest in a good design that is in line with your brand book. Having a mascot is also a good designer move. But don’t chase the looks. There are dozens of beautiful but unusable sites that fail to make revenue. Great user experience is a must for a casino.
Brainstorm for other features you can make unique about your casino. Accepting a new cryptocurrency? In-platform tournaments? Social elements? Whatever it is, make it perfect, and be vocal about it.
Sort Out the Paperwork
Brainstorming is fun until you are hit by the cruel reality. There is some paperwork to be done before you can start a casino. Tons of it in fact.
You’ll have to gather dozens of documents to register a company, go through the registration process, obtain a license, and pay tons of legal fees along the way.
This is further complicated by the fact that you can’t legally start an online casino in South Africa. You’ll have to take a license from Curacao, Malta, or the UK Gambling Commission.
A cheaper license like the one from Curacao is preferable for beginners. It has a lot of drawbacks, like the regulator not stepping in disputes, but other than that it is ok. Be sure to step up your game when you grow bigger.
Create a Business and Marketing Plan
No casino has ever worked without a carefully prepared business plan. If you care about your business’ future and about your investment growing, rather than being wasted, invest in planning. Either hire a consulting firm or a team of in-house experts to help you with that.
Think the budgeting through. What are you going to spend money on, and how much? How many people do you hire? How much profit do you expect within the first year of operation? What may be the worst and the best case scenarios of the business? Can you acquire more funding if needed?
Create a content plan. You are not going to start with a whole portfolio of 500 games. Unless you have a really good funding, that is. If you don’t, you’ll have to decide what kind of games and what software developers are you going to prioritize.
Think years ahead. Create different funding scenarios and make plans of what you are going to buy next.
Marketing is the key to such a competitive market as gambling. If you fail here, you lose your money. Take extra time to think about the marketing strategy through. Any link opportunity counts.
Make a solid conservative marketing plan, but don’t be afraid to test the wildest ideas. Often they fail, but they can become your golden opportunity.
Analyze and Adapt
As you launch your website, analyze everything you can. The first 6 months are crucial to your business. If you survive that, you probably will be fine.
How to survive the time when most businesses fail? Change.
You may think that your business plan is the best in the world, but if it doesn’t work, you’ll have to alter it. You should also run some experiments to see what the plan works and what doesn’t. Gather as much knowledge as you can and act on it.
Now you have direct access to the information on how people behave and what do they want. Your main goal is to understand that. Do it, and you are on the way to success.
