SEGA Casino have thrashed Eurogrand Casino’s bonus, offering 200%, up to a massive £2010.

The name that gave us Sonic the Hedgehog and other games that brought joy to a generation have emerged as the leaders on casino deposit bonus offers.  I’m lost for words, but to say that this is hot!

Before you decide where to play, check out what bonuses are on offer – many casinos will offer one or more of the following:

• Deposit bonus – Usually given as a percentage match, you will be given bonus funds when you make a deposit.  For example, a 400% match bonus means that when you deposit £/$100, the casino will give you an extra £/$400, giving a total bankroll of £/$500 to play with.  One of the biggest bonuses of this type can be found here.
• No Deposit Bonus – As the name implies, you don’t have to make a deposit to receive this bonus.  If you are looking for one, you can find it here.
• Cashback/Loyalty Bonus – When you wager, the casino keeps track of the amount you have played and will give you cashback accordingly.  Some casinos will give you an extra bonus on any losses, as well as cashback.  All Slots are currently offering the best deal (in more ways than this, but read on for info on that!)

As covered above, there are different types of bonus and the vast majority have wagering requirements attached. This is where the rules start to differ from bonus to bonus… Some casinos will not let you withdraw any amount until you have wagered the required amount, allowing you to take your balance (including any bonus amount remaining) and withdraw.  Other establishments will let you keep the bonus amount separate: When you come to cash out before the wagering requirements are satisfied, you will be unable to withdraw the bonus amount, but will be allowed to withdraw your original funds and any winnings.  At the time of writing, All Slots are offering the best deal here too.

There are some tips and tricks that will help you make the best of these bonuses, even with the great deals on offer.  Sadly, that will have to wait for another time…

Take care and happy gaming!

I have been asked about traffic a few times and the best ways to increase it.  The first part of my answer is always a question:

“What kind of traffic?”

I usually get a blank look -  implying that I’m probably the last person the questioner should have asked and they would probably have elicited a more useful response from a sock.  That is, until I clarify…

“Do you want targeted traffic, or poorly converting traffic?”

Of course, the answer is targeted traffic… Knowing this, you can immediately discount link farms and submission to “paid to click” sites – they are poor sources of traffic at best and, at worst will hammer your search rankings.

One thing I get sick of hearing is “Content is King” – and I’m definitely not the only one.  It’s true, but what if you have the content? What if the problem is having no visitors?

A good checklist to follow is:

Search engine URL submissions – Google, Yahoo, Bing & Ask are the ones to hit first, but there are many more out there…

SEO – There are hundreds of tutorials and tools online.  My current favourite is W3Optimizer Online SEO Tool – there are free tools for checking your website’s SEO score (Or for less than $10 a month, you can get incredibly detailed reports on your site and those of your competitors).

Directory submissions – Directories are a great way to build relevant backlinks to your site, improving your search engine ranking.  DMOZ, the Yahoo directory and Alexa should be your priorities.  In addition, if you search for “gambling link directory”, you will find a wealth of sites that will host a link to your page(s). (Clearly, if you are not promoting a gambling site, search for directories related to your site’s subject area…)

Social networking marketing – Got a Facebook, MySpace, Bebo or Twitter account? Why not tell people about your content?

Free traffic sites – Be careful with these. A lot of “targeted” traffic sites are poor. However, Traffic Swarm is a good place to start.  I’ve signed up with them for a free account, and I’m certainly liking the results so far.  If you wish, you may pay for a “Pro” account, but it’s far from necessary.

Blogging – If you run a website without a blog, why not set one up? Blogging is a powerful tool for increasing your exposure online.

Article Submission Directories – If you write articles for your new/existing blog, why not syndicate them through an article directory? When your articles are distributed, any links to your homepage will remain intact, sending some link juice to your primary site, while letting more people know about your excellent content… Ezine Articles is a good place to start, but (as always) there are many, many more!

This list is by no means an exhaustive list (there just isn’t space!), but I hope you find it useful.

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This article is about Google Adwords, and my tales of woe…

Widely regarded as *the* PPC proving ground, Adwords is used by countless affiliates.  Because of the enormous market share enjoyed by Google, and the syndication of Adwords feeds through the in-page integration offered by Adsense, the potential audience is almost unimaginable.  As such, it seemed like the place to start for what I was hoping would be a more fruitful campaign…

To create the campaign, I used links from my affiliate provider to get started.  These pointed to various offers by the same casino, so I created different adverts for each offer, varying the wording and creating the perfect ad copy.  I then set my demographic targeting, my budget limits and attempted submission…

Before going any further, it is worth noting the important features of creating an ad:

The Adwords advert creation box

The first problem that may be encountered is with the “Display URL” and “Destination URL” data:  A lot of affiliate links provided by 3rd party companies do not link directly to the target site.  I found that this can be something of an issue, as Google immediately picks up the difference between the URLs (regardless of the final destination) and disallows the ad.  Furthermore, if one is fortunate enough to get past this hurdle, Google’s advertising terms forbids the use of pages which perform a redirect…

You’ve guessed it, I fell foul of both.  There have been various suggestions about how to get around this, including using a time delay in the redirect to “fool” Google into thinking that the page is a static part of the site – I’m not sure this actually works, or that you would get away with it for very long…

Back to the drawing board then. For my second attempt, I tried a link to a poker site at which I’m a member

Display URL = Check

Destination URL = Check

No problems then? Wrong.  What I’d not realised was that Google’s policy on gambling advertising insists upon having a gambling certificate.  Bearing in mind I wouldn’t wish to do anything illegal, I called the Gambling Commission for advice…

I was told that I didn’t need a gambling license, nor would I be issued one – why? Because I don’t operate a company that takes wagers.

I though that this must be a mistake on Google’s behalf… Get hold of them, let them know what I was told by the Gambling Commission and everthing will be fine, right? No.

Despite all of this, Google’s representative insisted that, even if I was advertising a casino (who held a license), I would need to be individually certified in order to advertise. Game over.

Find out in the next article how I got on with non-gambling advertising – if nothing else, it’s cheap laugh.

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PPC advertising was disappointing...

In “Facebook Ads (Part 1)“, I had a bit of a whinge about their advertising policies of the time.  Not to be discouraged by a minor setback (and still hard-up), I changed tack: Non-gambling ads. There shouldn’t be any problem there, right? Again, I am pre-empting the inevitable comments when I say that I know that PPC advertising is not any guarantee of making money. It has to be said, though, that I didn’t realise quite how poor it would be.

I placed a number of adverts, worded carefully and with no enticing pitch. Not a usual tactic for advertising, I hear some say… But it is when you are paying per click! The rationale here was to ensure (in so far as is possible) that anyone clicking on the advert, with its plain and honest text, was more likely to be interested in the product.  More than this, I even targeted ads by demographic – who could want cheaper car insurance more than 17-27 year old males..? I set my daily budget, watched and waited (after the annoying wait described in Part 1)…

Results: Millions of impressions, hundreds of clicks, no conversions.

I’m not at all concerned about the impression:click ratio – I wasn’t paying for impressions and the ad wasn’t designed to grab every viewer’s attention, so no problem. I was disappointed with the conversion rate for clicks: Accross all the advertising campaigns I ran (>1,000 clicks) I didn’t achieve a single conversion. Not one.
From reseach into PPC, one might be led to believe that a 1% conversion rate is low, but 0%?

Down (but not necessarily out) I did some more research and found that my experience was not unique – It may not suprise you to read that I no longer advertise with Facebook, in any capacity.
There is a happy ending though: I did manage to scratch enough cash together in the end for web hosting and bills…

Eurogrand's Bonus Offer

I joined Eurogrand some years ago, looking for online slots when online casinos were slim pickings. The slots, by the way are still slick and great fun to play, with classic layouts, novel layouts and win lines numbering from 1 to 100. There are some pretty big jackpots too – I love playing the “Spin 2 Million” game: 5 lines, £2million jackpot and some high-paying bonus rounds. The “Deep Blue” slot is another favourite – the free spins feature is one of the best paying of its kind.

Despite all this and some pretty good wins, I somewhat wish that I had waited. It’s not the software – in my experience, that has always run silky smooth, with good graphics and very few (if any) connections dropped. It’s not the change in customer support – which has been helpful, quick and efficient througout. So why do I wish I’d waited?

The match bonus.

Recently, I was researching for my next article when I found a casino bonus website. I was looking for the biggest bonuses available – a topic I thought could be worth writing about (also a topic from which this post drew my attention), when I found the Eurogrand match bonus of up to £1,000.

If you followed this site prior to its complete destruction at the hands of a Russian porn king, you will know that I like bonuses and have made a profit from 90% of the bonuses I have used. Following my discontinuation of advertising on certain social networking site, I saved my winnings, looking to bankroll my next casino venture. By this point, I had £500 ready for wagering…

Let’s face it, a grand is a lot of playing power – especially when half of it is the casino’s money. Since winning just shy of £1,000 from a £42 bankroll (£10 deposit + £32 Bonus), I have been itching to test my usual strategy of big jackpot slots on a larger scale, but it wasn’t to be with Eurogrand, as I’m not a new member (They do, however, offer frequent bonuses for existing members, albeit it not to the extent of this massive match bonus).

It’s not all bad though, as I ended up depositing at my old Intercasino account instead and coming away over £2,000 up. If people are interested, I’ll do a review of their site also.

Don’t forget to subscribe to our mailing list for previews, exclusive casino bonus codes and strategy guides…

I was thinking of writing a review for Eurogrand myself at some point, but there’s not a lot I can add to this, except to say that my favourite slot was “Perfect Planet” and that, for my cashout, customer support actually contacted me, to make sure everything was going smoothly! Excellent casino!

A while ago, I was pretty hard-up: Web hosting fees were due, bills – I’ll save you the sob story!
Coming to the point, I investigated boosting traffic and marketing with Facebook advertising, looking to encourage a target audience to visit, or promote products for comission.  How did I fare?

Not well..Here is part 1 of why not:
Facebook has some “interesting” policies in regards to advertising.  One of these covers extremely irritating delays, while adverts are screened.  Before anyone points out the pitfalls of unfettered access to advertising media, I  understand why this needs to happen to some degree- I don’t particularly want my (admittedly most used) social networking portal to be covered in adverts for viagra, get-rich-quick schemes and some kind of “manual male enhancement device”. I do, however, want my advert to be reviewed in good time, not delayed for several days and then falling foul of their “ban” on gambling promotion.  I say “ban”, as I pressed the Facebook employee as to why my adverts for a review site were not approved, yet there are a plethora of adverts for casinos and poker sites… After some email back-and-forth, I was rewarded with an interesting revelation:  The “ban” is not a blanket ban – it is a selective ban.

You see, it transpires that you *can* advertise gambling on Facebook, but only by entering into a formal agreement in which you are obliged to spend a minimum of US$30,000 per annum.

I know that sites have a duty to their visitors, but I feel somewhat annoyed when the moral grandstanding is a facade for protecting lucrative advertising revenue.

I notice that the terms describing the prohibited nature of gambling promotion have since changed to include the all-important phrase “without authorisation from Facebook”. A nice retrospective bit of arse-covering.

Still, chin up! I look forward to rebuilding the content for you over the coming weeks.

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