GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 4 - April 2008

GPWA Affiliate Interview Series | GPWA TIMES 19 City currently residing in: Chaos most of the time! Age: I’ve been 29 for a while now…. Favorite food: Seafood One book everyone must read: I don’t really get much time to read for relaxation — but when I do, I do enjoy a good mystery; it takes my mind away from a busy day. Sites: Bonustreak.com, Casinobonusstreak.com, Microgamingbonusstreak.com, and the new baby Streakgaming.com Bonustreak — “Definitely not Lindsay Lohan” How long have you been working in the online gaming industry? Since late 2004. We understand the first game you played online was bingo. When did you start playing bingo online? In the very boring winter of 2003 I would have to guess. Why did you start playing online? Well I was at a friend’s house and she told me about this site where you play bingo for prizes, I think it was Moo Cow or Cash Cow bingo, some- thing like that, and well I bore easy so I played that for about a week and got pretty tired of it. I started searching for more free chips to play more bingo… and came across casinos which also offered free cash to try their slots. We’ve noticed that you promote bin- go on your sites. How has bingo done for you? I have to be honest and say not very well at all. I find bingo very hard to convert for us. Maybe we haven’t spent enough time market- ing to the right demographics. This is going to change over the next year. We plan to do more geo-targeted marketing with bingo. When I was in Barcelona I found out that bingo was very popular there, so I think Europe will be our main focus with bingo. How is promoting bingo different from casinos and poker? Bingo for me has simply been a tough sell. Not really sure why that is, either. I mean, when I think of bingo I think of all the older (no offense, Mom) ladies sitting at the table with their cards all nice and neat, daubers all around, several knickknacks (you know: the acorns, onions, and don’t forget the bells). Maybe that generation just doesn’t go online? We are just now getting into the poker market as well. We never really promoted poker be- cause we simply don’t know much about that game. To me, if a person wants to market poker right he needs to learn poker better so he’ll be con- fident that his players are not getting false information from any of his sites. What about the industry interests you? The online gaming industry is almost like exploring a new universe; it is an ever changing industry and you have to stay on your toes to keep up with the daily changes. There is so much to learn and so many un- explored avenues in this industry I am quite sure I will have no problem finding projects to keep me busy. After you started playing online, you started to participate in forums.What attracted to you to forums? I would have to say the community of other players, and the constant postings of new promotions. After some time, you became a mod- erator of a forum. Which forum was that? No comment. Is it still around? Nope. And what lessons did you learn there that you’ve carried through to your own forums? The lesson I learned was there are people out there who will say anything and do anything to get good hard working people for ev- ery dollar they can. I quickly realized there are forum operators / owners in this biz, not many, but some who are going to push players and tell play- ers what they want to hear to hand money over to casinos. I was determined to not become one. Having player loyalty and having players trust your opinions are more important to me – they will stick around if you are honest and have conviction. I think you also need to make yourself available to them. I am a slots player after all; I treat my play- ers as I would want to be treated. INTERVIEWWITH Christine M. | Bonustreak Continued on page 50