http://www.culture.gov.uk/what_we_do/gambling_and_racing/3310.aspx

ADVERTISING OF FOREIGN GAMBLING
The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport has now confirmed that Antigua and Barbuda will be added to the list of places allowed to advertise remote gambling in the UK as if it were an EEA state. This decision follows a reconsideration of Antigua’s application following further representations made to the Secretary of State. A full assessment of their application was made to ensure it met the criteria set out in the Government’s ‘Whitelisting’ document.
Regulations have been laid in Parliament and will come into effect in 21 days time on 20 November 2008. After this date, gambling operators licensed in Antigua will be able to advertise their remote gambling services in the United Kingdom.

The States of Alderney and the Isle of Man and Tasmania are the only two other jurisdictions to have previously been added to the list of places permitted to advertise.

The effect of these decisions is that only gambling operators licensed in EEA countries (including Gibraltar), Alderney, Isle of Man, Tasmania or Antigua and Barbuda can lawfully advertise gambling in the UK.

Haven’t checked it for a while though – probably some updates need doing but it’ll give you a pointer to what sites to avoid. Most of the big UK sites that weren’t white listed have made the leap to white listed regions, so now there’s very few who aren’t save to to promote.

Just out of interest on this point then – is there a list of bingo sites that we should be wary of?

The bulk (Virtue Fusion, Globalcom, St Minver) I’m presuming safe?

Jason

However, I guess the wider issue here that joe touches on is the approach that some affiliates take. Indicative of this is that some UK bingo affiliates continue to break the law by promoting bingo sites operating outside the UK white list.

It hasn’t happened yet but given that we are at the lower end of the industry vertical, so to speak, I think it’s probably only a matter of time before one of us gets a doing from the enforcement authorities. I think we’re probably much easier pickings than the operators who have much bigger resources to defend themselves. We carry as much responsbility as the operators to maintain the repute of online bingo. But none of us are perfect!
simon

I am certainly not advocating that only one site/person should be allowed to cover a story. The nature of news is that there will be multiple people covering it and everyone will see it from a slightly different angle. I know there will also be some ripping off of content – I used to work for national newspapers for five years and on the night shift we would sit there waiting for all the rival titles (with the exception of The Star, The Sport and The Express, none of which ever had any story worth following) so we could ‘follow up’ any scoops they might have. However that follow up did at least involve calling the parties involved, a total rewrite of the story and some genuine journalism.

My comments were instead aimed at the sites that employ lowly paid cut and pasters who take my content, change three words in 800 and then post it as their ‘original’ content. That irritates me because 1) it’s theft and 2) (more importantly) it screws with my SEO as I then get penalised for duplicate content.

Often these sites have a ‘preferred’ operator they work with, usually because they are on a great revenue or CPA deal. A complaint to the operator about this stolen content in my experience elicits a “not my problem” response rather than a “we’ll ask them to stop response”. Personally I’d like to see that change but not all operators think like that.

I’ll try to be less contentious next time :0

PS In terms of this specific comment:

…. further, when Mr Smith is singing the praises of Bingo News and the lengths they go to in obtaining quality news, he might like to know that rather than generating ‘fresh content’, at the moment they are currently running a news story about a bingo winner that is now one year old!

Bingo News rotates all their stories (more than 1,600 and rising) on a rotation on one spot on the home page. Apart from that position, all the content on the home page should be no more than 72 hours old and is usually newer than that.

Personally I think it’s wrong pointing any fingers at another site and saying “they’re doing this wrong” unless you’re 100% perfect… which means I can now rip into all of you (i’m kidding – honest).

I take issue with the “honourable exceptions” as well… if we’re going to ask bingo ops to “sort out” naughty people for copying then having been copied verbatim by *cough* and *ahem* billy big bingo sites in the past it’d have been interesting to see what they’d have done in those circumstances (or even now… answer is nowt!).

Anyway… water under the bridge now.

Imo a lot of affiliates try bingo, on the surface it’s a doddle of a sector. You buy [name]bingo.co.uk slap up some links, tell people it’s free and job done. It’s only when you start to look at adding content, developing unique features and working with operators that you realise it’s not that easy.

The key though is why do we all build bingo sites? Is it because we want a community on our servers chatting about bingo and commenting on our blog and news content? Or is it because we want them to actually go and spend money and earn us commissions?

Most affiliates will say the latter, sensible ones will say yes to the latter, but have one eye on building a brand and community as well. Offering users a good experience is also subjective.. I’d like to think we do – but I’m sure if you read the stuff I write (we have one writer btw) it’s perhaps not inspiring to you… but then I’ve read some of the examples given above and I’m not inspired – it doesn’t make you wrong or right though.

Conclusion… Jason waffles a lot… no seriously, concentrate on what you’re doing, if you’re right then the users will love it and things will build. Google may also love it and that will help. Spend your time worrying about “others” and it’s time wasted imo (although it’s well worth keeping an eye on copying – but it can be dealt with).

If we all approached bingo in the same way then it would be very boring indeed.

Jason

Content for BallsUpBingo has never been outsourced and one of the things that is time consuming is making sure the content is up to date and accurate. Many bingo portals dont even check their reviews regularly. A recent update to software for example may not be picked up and therefore leave outdated screen shots on many such portals.

Any writer worth their weight will actually research their content rather than just rehash any writers content which seems to be what happens when outsourcing

Clearly SEO is important too, but I still think interesting copy will get people coming back, after all isn’t this article proof of that!