The way in which we can make money has changed. Now, with the internet at your fingertips, with the right amount of brains, strategy, and hard work, you can make a steady income, and you can make it from anywhere and be your own boss.
While there are plenty of people out there selling the advantages of drop shipping, or starting an Etsy store why not go big instead? You might think that online casinos are simply the realm of those who know gambling, know the market, but this isn’t true. With the right amount of research, you too could be a casino baron or baroness on the internet.
Aren’t there laws around starting your own casino?
You bet there are – depending on where you live, where you decide to start your own casino business, where the servers are located… The truth of the matter is that it can be a regulatory nightmare to try and start an online casino, but this can be avoided, depending on the model that you use.
Casinos where you play with (and for) real money are banned in a lot of countries, or highly regulated. For these type of online casinos you will need to have a license to operate within the country you want to set it up in. There are particular countries, such as Gibraltar, the Isle of Man, and Malta, where it is relatively easy to set up an online gambling business. These countries obviously attract the biggest online gambling houses, such as PokerStars and Microgaming. Due to their legality in these countries, it means that running an online gambling business out of there makes the most fiscal sense.
However, you don’t need to have an online casino that plays real money to win real money – there are other options, too.
Models of online casinos
Like we mentioned previously, there’s the cash for cash play casinos, but these are hard to set up – you’ll need to invest a lot of time and money and hire some clever cookies to get one of these off the ground, but there are other models that work well for those without any prior experience in the industry, or who want to bootstrap – that is, get started in the business without a whole lot of funds behind you.
Social casinos are the way to go for a less regulated approach. With social casinos, you can charge a fee to buy an app, or have microtransactions where you offer players chips in exchange for their money – but you don’t pay out. Players play for fun, either playing against a computer, or more often these days, playing with other players all over the world.
It’s the thrill of the win and accumulating “fake” money where the rush comes from for these players, rather than actually enjoying a “real” win.
These types of casinos are far less regulated. You can develop them for a website, or develop an app – although there are more rules around getting casino apps approved for both the Google and Apple app stores.
Another way to develop your online casino is to make it fully free to play, but have it supported by ads or affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing for casinos is where you have your own casino but link to some of the bigger ones – you’ll get a share of any profits the business makes from the player who clicks through on your link. This site surprised us with its awesome affiliate set up and large amount of no deposit bonus codes it offered to other casinos.
How do you start on online casino?
There are two routes to go down when making your own online casino, after choosing the model of play you would like to use to help make money.
The first route is developing your own casino from scratch – either getting someone to develop the games for you and build out your app or website, or to do it yourself. The DIY method of doing things is obviously going to be the most cost effective, but it also means learning programming if you don’t already know it and learning all the rules and maths behind casino games. Sure, its achievable if you start small and build from there, but really you only want to do it this way if you’re really interested in a long term project that will be an exercise in learning a new skill.
Getting someone else to build a custom design may be expensive if you don’t have a friend that knows how to program and wants to start a business together. You can pre-purchase ready made casino designs from other people, embed other people’s casinos in your website design for a fee, or buy them outright, like at EveryMatrix.
As you can see, there are plenty of options when it comes to starting your own online casino. The trick is to research the right model and way of implementing your solution before diving in with just anything.