Net Bet Blog

In a previous post we looked at the rise and rise of online Bingo. All serious players in the online gaming market need to have a Bingo offering as evidenced by recent entries from 888.com, PartyGaming, Ladbrokes (see advert on the right) and others.

Side by side with the growth in Bingo rooms comes the growth in Bingo Portals that act to funnel potential players to the Bingo rooms acting as super affiliates.

The key to the success of a Bingo Portal is the value added facilities that they offer to the Bingo player. These might include room reviews, loyalty points, bonus offers and importantly a sense of community. The punter has to have a reason to return to the portal even after they have signed up and are happily calling “house” on one of the recommended sites.

In a previous post we looked at BingoPort.co.uk. In this post we look at a relative new comer that goes by the name of Bingohideout.co.uk to see how they compare. How many portals can co-exist profitably? In the current land grab how much money should be spent on development? As Cryptologic (CRP) recently found the casino portal business can be a highly profitable one (see previous post on this topic).



This is Bingohideout.co.uk’s pitch:

Welcome to Bingo Hideout
Bingo Hideout is a social network for online bingo fans. Here you can make friends with like minded people, chat in the Bingo Forum and tell others about yourself on your personal profile page.
Find, rate and review bingo sites in the Bingo Directory, read the latest Bingo News and get up to £100 in FREE Bingo Bonuses when you sign up.

Bingohideout.co.uk has everything you would expect from a portal site, most importantly a forum, bingo room reviews, a blog and bingo related news articles. The site is professionally designed and has a female friendly look to it. The Bingo room listings are comprehensive although there are only a limited number of punter reviews. There are however a couple of elements that require attention such as the features and support section (currently empty).

The portal business is a highly competitive one. Every portal needs to have an excellent SEO set up or they will fail to get the punters through the door. The provision of a free bingo site and loyalty points would help although this sort of scheme is often difficult to police effectively.

I have added bingohideout.co.uk to the Bingo links section and we shall return to this topic later this year to see how our two portals are doing.

From an investment perspective there is no doubt that portals can make serious money but they require serious up-front investment and some clever marketing both on and offline to maintain a good market position in the face of limited barriers to entry and some big players sniffing around this market.

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