Real Money Bonus Offers at Online Casinos
You've deposited your hard-earned money in online casinos and wagered it to have some fun (and hopefully get lucky!) - shouldn't your efforts be rewarded by the casino operator giving you benefits for your loyalty? Real money bonuses are meant to do just that. In essence, a real money bonus is a financial incentive that a casino operator gives you to reward you when you deposit funds and play with it. This is separate from a no-deposit bonus in which you get a few free chips/free spins to play with just for signing up.
Real money bonuses are various types but mostly come under one of three umbrellas - match-deposit bonuses, cashback offers, and loyalty bonuses.
What Are Match-Deposit Bonuses?
Match-deposit offers are a popular real money bonus available in online betting houses today. Put simply, you make a deposit and the operator will double (or sometimes even treble!) the amount so that you end up with a far greater amount available to you for wagering. As an example, a site may offer a 200% match option up to $500 of deposits - in this instance, if you end up depositing $700 (in one or many deposits), you will have a total of $1700 to wager with over time (your initial $700 + another $1000 as a result of the 200% deposit match up to $500). All regular/frequent players find this the best offer while playing/depositing. Keep in mind though, that all operators will have stringent requirements to fulfill (typical a certain quantum of punts) before they allow you to walk away with any money. For instance, a 30x wagering requirement in the above example means that you must wager up to 30 x $1000 = $30,000 before you can withdraw funds emanating from your deposit bonus.
What Are Cashback Offers?
Cashbacks are another common type of promotional offers offered by gambling operators. With this offer, you can get a refund on your wagers (or rake, as it is called in certain circles) - this can be either a refund based on your losses or on the amount wagered. This is a very good offer to make use of if you intend on playing frequently.
What Are Loyalty Bonuses?
A loyalty bonus, typically part of a site's "VIP" program rewards players for wagering real-money funds on the site over a consistent period of time. This is a premium offering meant to reward loyal players with exclusive offers, perks, services, and of course cold, hard cash! Typically, a site's VIP casino bonus program will have a ladder structure - the more you play, the higher your VIP designation and the more perks you enjoy. For example, a new player may be designated a "Bronze" member, followed by going up to "Silver", "Gold", "Platinum" and higher membership levels as one plays more frequently and wagers more money on the site. A VIP casino bonus program will give its recipients greater rewards than the ones received by "regular" players, and this may include benefits such as concierge services, free cash, access to exclusive promotional events, faster deposits/withdrawals, and so on.
These are the best and most common types of real money bonuses available to online casino players - however, there may be others (typically different variations of the above) offered by different websites. Online casinos give out these offers so that customers get money to try out their games so that they may play more frequently on the site in the future. Typically, odds favor the house and you are more likely to give the funds from these bonus offers back to the online casino, but who knows - it may just be your lucky day and you may end up winning big using these free funds!