Creating a Poker Site from scratch...

im bookmarking this thread, would love to know as well.

you'll need to buy some poker software from a gaming company or you can hire a programmer to do you own. Depending on where you look it'll cost anywhere from $20,000 to $40,000 for a really p2p poker software. Some will let you license the software for a cut of your profits or a flat fee and some will just let you buy the source code and not pay any royalties to them. You'll need an offshore license most likely from panama and you'll need an offshore merchant account as well as offshroe hosting. Usually also in panama. Some casino hosting companies will keep everything on lock down so its really safe for you, others will just tell you to update your server daily.

I think many casinos are hosted on very high end bullet-proof servers (with fast connections, obviously).

Very good information

Would you guys say that developing poker software from scratch is a profitable business venture?

i would do it if people paid me enough

Even if you spend $100k, or $500k on the software and you have a good/great business plan, you could be into 8 figures (long term).
Do you have any business experience?

If you had an 8 figure budget to advertise so you could compete with the big already established players in that market segment.

lets hear more

.indeed.

Why do you say that Steen? What are the hidden operating costs that give you that figure?

Doesn't pornstar2pac have gaming experience?

Maybe he can shed some more light here for us.

Security, security, security.

You are going to get serious hacking attempts so the code and servers (as mentioned above) have got to be bullet-proof. And NO down time so reliability will be of huge importance.

Suffice to say the cost and barriers to entry into this market are substantial...

From Scratch - meaning you build the software is a very long and potentially expensive proposition - however depending on the market approach - it is sometimes the best or only route - then you have the costs of verification of your software - there are a number of firms that do this - to provide a 'trust' factor to users - its very easy to be in for over $100K with software/verification/license/banking/customer service and thats before dropping a dime into marketing and seeing any type of return.

www.pokerpulse.com

any boards like gfy in the poker industry?

http://www.kahnawake.com/gamingcommi...plication.html
Pricey application for a credited casinos

Yeah, you better be careful if you go down that road... It's so easy to introduce security holes, & you could get fucked pretty easily if one exists.

I've also heard of people using DOS attacks on casino sites to cheat.

It's certainly possible, but you better have some serious cash and talent behind you.

I would say that you need a programmer full time for security and optimizing the database each day.

I'd say you are a little late to the market on this one. My understanding is that growth has levelled off on poker. So as Lenny2 said you'll need a thumping great budget to break into the market.

Lol damn my last post was all over the fuckin place. Yes it is still a good business to get into if you have enough money to start it up. Creating your software from scratch may not be the best choice for when you are first starting out. I'd go with ready to go casino software so you only need the merchant account and hosting and you'll be somewhat set aside from advertising but most casino/poker systems will have a built in affiliate tracking feature. What you may want to do first is signup for a poker/casino affiliate program so you can learn the traffic flow and all the basics just like you would with the adult industry. Im sure most program/paysite owners didnt just wake up and started building thier sites instead they learned all the basic things and traffic generation. Learn to do that first then when you feel that you have gained enough experiance with poker and casino sites you can purchase the software. I don't remember the exact site but its somewhere on my computer, its company that hosts just casino sites and has some top notch security against hackers and ddos attacks at reasonable prices because those hackers will come and they will come often. Security for you and your players should always be #1 on your lists of priorities when running a casino. When you actually go and buy the gaming software you'll want to make sure you can contact the company or person who is selling you the software is actually legit by verifying phone numbers and mailing addresses. There are alot of scammers out there who hide behind prepaid phones and mail drop's so if you can try to meet face to face with them or at least make sure that the phone number is traceable to a physical location and that all the info matches. Make sure to also demo thier software so you know you aren't getting some piece of shit software that was made back in 1998 since things have really changed since then and todays new gaming software is much more high end. As for advertising its not as hard as some people make it out to be. I won't give out too many details here because i don't want everybody and thier mom doing it but a good way to advertise your poker/casino site is to give out info for free. We live in an information age and if you tell people how to do something they'll do it. You can give out info on how to play poker, strategies, start a poker player forum/chat/blog or whatever you want. Just learn to build steady traffic without paying $10 per click. Also use adwords but use it carefully. They won't let you link directly to any gambling sites but what you can do is give out free poker playing info weekly via email. All they have to do is fill out a form with thier name and email on it and you'll have a pretty nice list of poker players within a month that could easily generate money for you. You don't want to spam them just include your affiliate link or whatever in each newsletter along with the tip of the week.Then once you get the idea of how to build a site with steady traffic and can get decent rankings in the se's start your own casino/poker site. Oh yea, don't forget that tgp galleries don't just have to advertise "free" porn trials. They can advertise free tips as well

I would like to know as well

Great post Hydro - its folks like you that keep real webmasters coming back here!

Any new additions?

Very good information hydro, il hit you up later if you dont mind !!