How to Start and Manage A Successful Poker Room

This is the Beginner’s Guide to making a new gambling project sustainable. Now that you know that you want to start your poker room or online casino, you are to make a success plan. To survive at the highly competitive market for more than a week you should exactly know what to do, when to do it and what resources to use. If you’re wondering how to start a poker business or launch a full-fledged casino brand, the key lies in solid planning, reliable technology, and deep market insight.

We at EvenBet Gaming have launched over 60 online gaming projects, and have enough success experience to share. Whether you’re exploring how to start a poker website or build a multi-product platform, the fundamentals remain the same. Here’s the checklist of the most important thing a first-time casino or poker room owner should do.

1. Before the start – get ready for the journey

• Make sure you are choosing reliable software with sufficient functionality.

  Before you start choosing a vendor, make a list of must-have features and desirable ones. When you start searching for poker software providers, you’ll already have questions to ask and a list of demands to be considered. Try all available demo versions, especially back office demo. If managing players, tables and finance is not easy and clear for you, you will not be an effective room manager. The right poker room management software will help you streamline operations, reduce manual work, and keep your poker room profitable from day one.

  In addition, find out all possible info on online poker software reliability and security – QA, bug fixes terms and timelines, reviews, RNG certification, etc.

  For example, EvenBet Gaming has a software RNG certified by iTech Labs, its own QA team and testing bots, and it has been polished and fixed for over 10 years of development.

  If you’re looking into how to start a poker room or how to open a poker room legally, evaluating the vendor’s licensing support and technical track record should also be part of your due diligence. It’s a foundational step in building a stable operation.

• Consider different monetization schemes.

  There are more than one way to earn from online casino or poker. Very few countries allow real money online gambling without getting an expensive license long procedure. Obvious way to avoid it are:

  • Social or mobile gaming with no real money involved (player purchase in-app items).
  • Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies usage (many countries do not consider them as the real money).

Understanding how do poker rooms make money can help you align your product model — whether it’s subscription-based, ad-supported, or rake-driven — with local regulations and player expectations.

• Plan your marketing efforts and budget.

  The biggest mistake of all online gaming newbies is the underestimating of marketing role and costs. Nobody on the web makes purchases “naturally” today. If you don’t promote your website, you’ll lose to ones who do.

  Even before you invest in software, you should know your players’ acquisition and loyalty tactics. Consider budget and role of all common tools:

  • Online advertising
  • Social media marketing
  • Affiliates system
  • Bonus programs
  • Special events and sponsorships
  • E-mail marketing
  • Using poker pros.

  Some vendors provide built-in affiliates and bonus tools, but nevertheless they are not completely free in usage (you’ll need to pay the bonus at least).

  Try to reconstruct player’s journey. How will he find your casino? Where and when? What must he find during his first visit? How will you make him come back and pay?

  Whether you’re figuring out how to start a poker club for local players or building a global-facing platform, the first user experience is what makes or breaks retention.

   

  If you have answers to these questions, you’re on the highway to profit.

• Be good at numbers.

  How many players and how many payments should you get to return your investments in software and marketing? Make these numbers clear, and you’ll always know how far you are from the first profit.

2. Right at the start

• Ensure you’ve setup everything right.

  Check all your tables and tournaments options, and make your poker website software ready for the launch in a moment. Make sure that bonuses, affiliate rewards, rakeback and other promotion and loyalty tools are on and ready to start.

• Get ready to collect data.

  Setup analytics tools for your website and casino or poker room. In back office or using poker room management software, create templates for all custom reports that you’ll regularly need. Advanced poker room manager software can help you automate this process, allowing you to monitor performance, user activity, and financial metrics in real time.

3. Along the way

• Check the data.

  Every campaign and significant change in user experience should be tracked and analyzed. When you’ll have enough users, you may even perform marketing experiments and find out tactics that work best for your audience.

  If you or your team have some marketing analytics experience consider calculating ROI and the economic significance of every campaign before the start. That will save a great deal of your promotion budget.

• Monitor the tables and tournaments load.

  Fast changes in their structure based on the players’ demand may increase your profit.

• Search and benchmark.

  Never stop searching for new marketing ideas and channels. Find out what your competitors are doing and acquire their best practice.

The most important tip: keep calm and head to success! If you’re still figuring out how to start an online poker website, don’t worry — we’ll guide you through each essential stage. Keep in touch with us as long as we are going to discuss each step listed in details.