Casino Sign-Up Bonuses
More importantly, once a casino site has secured a customer, they are very likely to remain loyal to that site. A customer may have an account with a site selling books or music, but they will not hesitate to defect to another if they believe they can get a better deal on the product they want there. With most gambling sites offering basically the same array of games, there is really little benefit for the customer to leave one site, and sign up with another. They will likely be happy where they are, and reluctant to learn how to navigate through another web site, not to mention having to enter all their personal details once more.
For this reason gambling sites are all clamouring for the mass of potential customers who have not yet affiliated themselves with anyone in particular. Besides lavish advertising campaigns, on which more money is likely spent than any other form of advertising throughout the internet, the sites employ numerous other tactics to try to ensnare new customers.
All major sites will have “welcome promotions,” and “Sign up bonuses.” Some are fairly mundane: perhaps a few free tokens on a certain game, which must be used by a certain date; others however offer extremely generous packages. You can be given a £20 free gaming credit, or two £15 credit vouchers for different games in the casino. The offerings really can be quite generous, such is the competition amongst the sites to secure new customers. An online gambling analyst recently compiled a listing of all the sign up offerings, and revealed that an astounding £20,000 could be collected simply by signing up with every site. The largest bonus found was a staggering £2,500!
Obviously the sites are not giving this money away. You cannot sign up, then immediately close your account and collect this money. The introductory offerings are only valid for playing their games – and even if you win, there is most often a stipulation that you cannot withdraw your prize until you have paid in an equivalent sum of money.
Many other sites protect themselves by requiring the player to play a minimum number of games before he or she can collect any winnings at all. You may well have won the jackpot on your very first game of roulette, but you wont be allowed to collect this win until you have played another 19 games, by which time, so the sites hope, you will have lost rather a lot more.
Yet another cunning scheme the sites have created, to mitigate the theoretical loss incurred by such generous sign up fees, is to demand the player “play through” the deposit a certain number of times. If you are given a £50 sign up gift, you might be required to pay in 5, 10, or even 20 times this amount before you are eligible for any winnings you made with it. That translates to having to pay £250, £500, or even £1000 before you can claim the prize you won.
Many casinos demand that you reach a minimum level of winnings before you can withdraw money. You may have won £400, but until you reach the £500 level you cannot claim any of your money. Many casinos that offer a generous sign up bonus limit the prizes that can be made with it.
The best advice is not to be overawed by generous sign up offers from casinos that seem too good to be true. The old maxim that anything that seems too good to be true usually is certainly applies here. This is not to say that you cannot win money with these introductory offers. More importantly perhaps, these offers give you a chance to learn to play the games online, without fear of losing your own money. You may be a poker whizz amongst your friends at home, but online you might need a little warming up. The introductory offers give players a chance to become acclimatized to the online gambling system, which is certainly a good thing.
