With all of the new competition out there, and with everyone 'at war' with each other, I see SBR as having a great opportunity to jump out as the #1 resource in the offshore community. In my opinion, here is how they could do it (feel free to argue, add, or anything else to my post):
1.) Clean up the list of books on SBR. Narrow it down to 100 'name-brand' outfits. Get rid of all the books like nobodyhaseverheardofme.com. It makes the list very intimidating and hard to follow for a guy that is cruising around to find a good book to play at. Since no website is free, charge each of these 100 books a nominal maintenance fee to be listed. This fee could be as little as $100 per month which would cover the cost of servers and bandwidth. Let the books know that paying a maintenance fee in no way alters opinions on their overall rating. Books should still comply because there have been no truer words than the only bad publicity is no publicity. There should also be a set criteria for what makes a book deserve a certain mark. Objective ratings rather than subjective would hold much more value.
2.) Keep the forum completely uncensored. Obviously dont let anyone advertise products, sponsorts or not. In fact, I wouldnt even allow sponsors on the forum aspect of the company. It gets too easy to look the other way or let certain situations be influenced. Allow no touting or contest to be entered into the forums at all. Only genuine posts from genuine users. If someone has a problem with the book, let them speak. If it is found that an agenda was used by the poster, edit the post with a clear reason as to why it was edited for the community to see.
3.) Make the Live Lines the primary focus of the sites revenue. Take a small maintenance fee and list all 100 books that you deemed apropriate for the rating system. With cookies and the new advances in the net, let the players decide what books to look at. With a very modest price of $500 per month per book, you are looking at $50,000/month, or $600,000 per year for this feature alone. Do your best to make the lines as accurate at possible. When you hover your mouse over the banner up top, maybe have a tooltip box show what their current rating is.
4.) Come up with a couple more innovative features (some of which I mentioned at the bash) to add to your revenue. New features will continue to make your site grow.
If you can do this, and seperate yourself from the shadiness of this industry. You could catapult to the top, and help gamblers around the world. Commetns and additions very welcome.
1.) Clean up the list of books on SBR. Narrow it down to 100 'name-brand' outfits. Get rid of all the books like nobodyhaseverheardofme.com. It makes the list very intimidating and hard to follow for a guy that is cruising around to find a good book to play at. Since no website is free, charge each of these 100 books a nominal maintenance fee to be listed. This fee could be as little as $100 per month which would cover the cost of servers and bandwidth. Let the books know that paying a maintenance fee in no way alters opinions on their overall rating. Books should still comply because there have been no truer words than the only bad publicity is no publicity. There should also be a set criteria for what makes a book deserve a certain mark. Objective ratings rather than subjective would hold much more value.
2.) Keep the forum completely uncensored. Obviously dont let anyone advertise products, sponsorts or not. In fact, I wouldnt even allow sponsors on the forum aspect of the company. It gets too easy to look the other way or let certain situations be influenced. Allow no touting or contest to be entered into the forums at all. Only genuine posts from genuine users. If someone has a problem with the book, let them speak. If it is found that an agenda was used by the poster, edit the post with a clear reason as to why it was edited for the community to see.
3.) Make the Live Lines the primary focus of the sites revenue. Take a small maintenance fee and list all 100 books that you deemed apropriate for the rating system. With cookies and the new advances in the net, let the players decide what books to look at. With a very modest price of $500 per month per book, you are looking at $50,000/month, or $600,000 per year for this feature alone. Do your best to make the lines as accurate at possible. When you hover your mouse over the banner up top, maybe have a tooltip box show what their current rating is.
4.) Come up with a couple more innovative features (some of which I mentioned at the bash) to add to your revenue. New features will continue to make your site grow.
If you can do this, and seperate yourself from the shadiness of this industry. You could catapult to the top, and help gamblers around the world. Commetns and additions very welcome.
