Free Money from online bingo sites

Personally I feel that with the industry seeing a huge influx of new bingo sites being launched, many offering up to £30 no deposit required welcome bonuses that the industry as a whole should scrap the free money given without depositing. I think free money brings bingo bonus hunters to a bingo site, not the bingo VIP's that most are looking for.

I can see the industry changing with many sites withdrawing the free money in favour of increased first deposit bonuses and this, in my opinion, is a good move. I don't profess to know everything about bingo but I have seen quite a few angles of the industry. I started out as a bingo player, moved on to becoming a bingo affiliate and have even spent time as a bingo chat host and now I write about bingo for a living.

So let's look at it from each angle individually:-

Free Money as a Bingo Player

I first played bingo at a land bingo hall, the Mecca Bingo club in Hayes, after being persuaded that it wasn't full of old grannies with blue rinses back in 2000. Online bingo however was introduced to me by Think Bingo after seeing their advert on television back in 2006 offering me £5 free to try their site.  It was initially the offer of free money that drew me to the site, had I have had to deposit my own money I doubt I would have bothered.

So, from that aspect as a bingo player then free money is definitely a draw but let's look at the flip side of this coin.

As a bingo player of all the online bingo sites available online today I tend to stick to playing at just three, Foxy Bingo being my favourite, Sun Bingo being another site I like, and Bingo Café the last.

Only one of the above sites requires a deposit to play for the first time at their site, the others both offer no deposit required welcome bonuses. While I am sat playing bingo for all I know a new player who has yet to deposit any of their own money at the other two sites is walking away with a percentage of my deposits in their back pockets.

Foxy Bingo however have tried to cover this angle by providing "funded players only" rooms which in all honesty are the ones I tend to frequent when playing there.

So in short, as a bingo player there are pro's and cons to the free bingo money offered.

Free Money as a Bingo Affiliate

As a bingo affiliate free money draws players to a bingo site but doesn't make them deposit there. On numerous occasions I have had emails from affiliate managers asking me to promote their bingo site and guarantee depositing players. My standard response to this being "I can guarantee you traffic to your site but ultimately your site is responsible for making people want to deposit there".

Without going in to too much detail a bingo bonus hunter is of no value to a bingo affiliate, they will simply chase all the free bingo money on offer and never deposit anywhere, in some case creating multiple accounts.

Depositing players are bread and butter for bingo affiliates, bonus hunters can sometimes cost affiliate money as it has been known in the industry for a site to charge the affiliate a percentage of the bonus money awarded to players!

As an affiliate free bingo money looks good on the bonus pages but isn't what attracts the bingo VIP's.

Free Money as a Bingo Chat host.

In my time working as a chat host, and I have only ever worked on one bingo site so cannot speak for all, it was moaned about in the chat room how it was always "newbies" winning the pots.

Give a new player £10 free and more often than not they won't spend the money trying all the games but spend it "maxing" out on games therefore giving them better odds of winning. If they don't like the site they will continue to keep maxing until all the money is gone and leave. Although this means the money goes back into the pot for the funded players it does cause tension in the chat rooms amongst players who have deposited.

The site I worked at was on the Cozy Games platform which may be unique in that it differentiated between depositing and unfunded players by an icon next to their name, a smiley face indicated and unfunded player where as a crown showed a depositing player. Maybe this was the reason for the tension. In sites like Foxy Bingo you can't tell the difference between the two.

I would imagine on the whole though that free bingo money offers don't make a difference to a chat host.

My suggestion to the industry as a whole would be scrap the free no deposit required welcome bonus and increase the other bonuses available to your bingo players. Increase the first deposit cash match bonus, increase awards on chat games, provide more guaranteed jackpot games - these are just a couple of options to give back to your players without providing for the bonus hunters.

If the whole industry did this then all bingo players would benefit as well as the site owners and affiliates because we would see the disappearance of the bonus hunters!