Freerolls As A Business

By Author: thomasgalvin
Total Articles: 612
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This article’s focus is on Freerolls as a business- and marketing strategy as attracting and keeping customers in the poker business become increasingly more difficult.

Financial crisis, decreasing popularity of poker, a lot of countries making restrictions on online gambling have forced the online Poker Rooms battle for customers like they never had to do before. Earlier poker players and dollars made from poker rake figuratively where hanging on the trees and all the poker rooms had to do was to offer a small bonus in order to attract new poker players but the Golden Era of poker is fainting, online poker business is becoming more like any other online business and now running a successful poker business a question on coming up with new ideas, aggressive marketing and be on the edge with new poker promotions. This is not only a battle for new customers it is also a battle for survival especially for the smaller poker rooms. This is where freerolls come into the picture. Freerolls is a way to attract new players by offering them entrance into free online poker tournaments. ...
... This might seem like a weird idea to many why offering free money to players who do not deposit anything. Well a lot of players who play freerolls will never deposit and WILL give up on poker after trying it a couple of times. On the other hand there are quite a bunch of poker pros who started out as freerollers and turned pro in time just by winning small money and then they started playing big times later – most noticeable is the Norwegian girl Anette Obrestad who started out playing freerolls – most likely because she was too young to play poker and had to fake a higher age – well this is just my interpretation of her username Anette_15 - in the age of 19 years won the World Series of Poker Europe – she was still too young to join the WSOP in USA as minimum age for playing on casinos is 21 years old. Getting a pro from freerolls is a huge gain and you only need 1 pro in like 2.000 new players to have made a good deal. Pros make money to the online poker rooms like crazy – some pro poker players rake (the term used for poker fees to the poker room) way more than 10.000 dollars per month. And even though the poker rooms often pay back these players in bonuses, prizes from rake races, loyality programs, rakeback or similar these players minimum generate between 30.000 to 40.000 $ to the poker rooms per year in some exceptional cases even up to 100.000 $ - and that is commission for one poker player! Paying to high rakeback or other kinds of underhand deals will of course lower these numbers.

Another advantage for the poker sites while they wait for the pros is that in every 100 signups they will pick up a couple of bigger players who are just testing out the software or doesn’t have the money right away but eventually won’t mind depositing and generate value for the poker room.

Using freerolls as a part of your promotional strategy is also a way to marketing a positive image to your existing customers. Showing your customers that you are willing to give freerolls make them stay with you and play on your site even though the just went broke and the customer thinks your site is rigged and you guys are the worst bunch of scumbags in the world. Using freerolls is a way to let your players having a successful experience on your site and making them reevaluate where to deposit next time again – where they already had decided to test out another site that wasn’t rigged.

Don’t kid yourself though! Using Freerolls in your online marketing is not a short term strategy – if you are looking for fast money – you should pick another strategy. Using freerolls as a long term strategy is a profitable strategy in two ways – first it helps you keep some players around who were about to give up on you and secondly it will attract a lot of new players – a lot of players who are worth nothing to your poker room probably around 95% - a few pros around 0,1 to 0,3 % - a few whales around 1 % in my experience - and then the hobby players who wants to test the software stick around and play a bit eventually make a few deposits and make some rake here and there. These players will probably not make that much to you but they will actually in time more than finance the freerolls you are donating – so they are the ones who are paying for you fishing for the whale and the pro – plus the freerolls help you keeping the doubters around!

For more information about Freerolls and Play Free Poker Online; Please visit Poker-freeroller.com