European, International Players ONLYSundet Warburton recently predicted that by 2012, all online casinos sales will be done online, effectively cutting out the middle-man retailer
Sundet Warburton isn’t alone with these new ideas. Fellinger Congleton, who manages one person company, believes the internet marketing boom has created a huge market for small time business owners. “For the first few years of my career,” said Kiley Niedzielski, “I was working 9 to 5 at a marketing firm, doing the typical corporate thing. Now, however, I have my own website, production center, and payment processing. This allows me to work from home under my own rules and with unlimited income potential.” “After starting an internet online casinos sales division in 2003, we saw our sales increase three-fold,” said Tanja Mertz, director of marketing and sales for Ankrapp Therriault and Rindfleisch Petrucci Associates, “and this resulted in the creation of more jobs and employment opportunities in our company. Our number of employees has doubled, and our number of IT staff has quadrupled in a year’s time.” “When we added a website and shopping cart system, our numbers went through the roof,” cried Paglione Pellegrino, Sales Director for Nyhus Cortis Corp, a online casinos manufacturing company, “this, teamed with high positioning in the major search engines really created a whole new market for us that was never expected.” Without a doubt, in the pre-internet marketing days, most online casinos resellers only used the internet as a means to communicate via email with current customers. “Things in the industry really turned a corner when people began to acquire, not maintain customers online,” said Bemrose Barch, a noted internet marketer and web designer. “When acquisiton via online services got big, companies in the online casinos sector finally woke up to the idea that the information super highway was here to stay - in a very big way.” Marketing online, however, is not as easy as it looks. Thousands of websites compete for top positioning in the search engines, and, as search algorithms change and top search engines create new market areas, some websites can lose out. One day, you might be number one for “buy online casinos”, a week later, number 100. The difference between these positions is obvious: no one wades through 100 results for a online casinos product unless the first 99 are extremely poor. In general, most competitive industries online rely on top 10 placement, because of the reality of how web surfers behave. Equally important in the online sales arena is affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is reselling your online casinos product through individual webmasters and their websites, giving them typically 5 to 20 % for each successful sales. This form of marketing is purely results driven, and it requires only a small investment on behalf of the company running the affiliate program. “We rely on affiliate marketing to drive our online casinos sales and lead acquisition, mostly because some webmasters in our field are better at marketing online than we are,” said Eboni Ibarra, Marketing Chairman for Lightner Sivia Partners LLC. And, as internet sales in the online casinos industry explode, parallel growth is being noted in the internet marketing field, particularly search engine and affiliate marketing. “Search engines and affiliates have doubled our numbers,” said Bosquet Weigle, director of marketing for Eboni Ibarra INC., “and where there was once one or two big internet marketing firms, now there are well over ten in our industry. This growth speaks to the power of the information super high way.” It’s no secret that the internet is a driving force in the online casinos sales market. Most consumers will research their purchases online before actually going to a store, so that they understand online casinos product specs and use requirements before having to deal with a live salesperson. “I prefer to take my time and read about it all online first,” said Fidelia Farguharson, a recent customer of the Marcella Pawlicki Chain Outlets, “I’m not a high pressure sales type, and rather just go to the store and check out sas soon as possible.”