The AskGamblers goes back to 2005. Its founder, whose name many of you know already (yes, yes, you've guessed it – it's Igor Salindrija), was a law student, renting an apartment with his roommate and living a typical student life.
A designer by nature, he was constantly looking for creative jobs in IT and mostly finding web design gigs. But, little did he know that in just a few years, he'd be building an iGaming empire.
Read below to see how the story of AskGamblers further unfolded.
How Did AskGamblers Come to Be?
Similar to most big stories, the story of AskGamblers begins in a garage; well, metaphorically speaking, it starts in a garage. In reality, it began in a casino, with a struggling designer looking to earn a quick buck.
So, this is how it goes…
One evening, Mr Salindrija noticed his roommate getting dressed up in a fancy white shirt and black pants. Dressed like that, he looked like a waiter or a bartender. In fact, he just became one; he got a bartending job in a newly opened, fancy casino.
As Salindrija explains, he knew nothing about casinos, nor did any of his friends. Apparently, his roommate was his first connection to this industry.
Weeks passed, and his roommate kept telling him about his new job and its decent salary. After thinking about it, Igor decided to try and get a job at that casino to make some extra money. The only open position was a bartending night shift. Although he was not confident in his bartending skills since he had never done anything similar before, he needed the money, so he went for it.
Reminiscing about the gig, Salindrija would often joke he was the worst bartender in the world, serving wrong orders, falling asleep at the bar, and doing his graphic design work at the counter. Ultimately, all this led him to quit.
As he was leaving the night shift, he saw one of the bosses enjoying his morning coffee in the downstairs casino lobby. The boss had heard the story about the new guy who did his design work at the bar. Naturally, he was curious to know what that whole thing was about and if Salindrija knew anything about building websites.
Destiny wanted it that the casino needed someone to build a website for their business to move into the online space. As luck would have it, Mr Igor did know some web design and - instead of quitting, he got offered a promotion at their Headquarters!
The HQ Thrill
Like most would be, Salindrija remembers being overwhelmed with the HQ; with hundreds of computer and TV screens and busy employees running around, it felt like a dream job, one he felt he truly belonged to. He got his own desk and a new laptop and immediately started learning about online gambling.
This was a whole new, unexplored space, having him spend his days and nights researching online casinos, games, online marketing etc. He felt that combining his design skills with the huge resources that the company had would make them the best business in that space.
Being curious and entrepreneurial by nature, Salindrija started discovering things he was positive he could easily do on his own. He noticed many popular websites that promoted casinos and was 100% confident he could do it better, relying on his skills, experience and knowledge gathered working in that specific company.
Salindrija started building his own website, mainly focusing on the design since that was his most valuable skill. A few weeks later, he launched AskGamblers.
Official Start of AskGamblers
The time of AskGamblers launch was the era before Facebook, Twitter and other popular social media to help any website or brand gain initial traffic and buzz.
So, how did AskGamblers even got noticed?
As Salindrija spoke about it on occasion, it was tough to get noticed, and he needed to figure out how AskGamblers could get noticed in the first place. Building buzz about AskGamblers was going so slow, without funding or online media.
Like every (young) entrepreneur, Salindrija too admitted he was obsessing about every single detail of the website; there was no room for mistakes. He kept constantly changing and improving things over time, hoping to make AskGamblers better than its previous versions. He needed more money to pay the people to work for him, so he relied on volunteers, i.e., mostly his friends, who helped him add new content, search and update information, etc.
Limitations
The iGaming industry celebrates gamblers as they are at its core. Playing casino games gives you the best experience and insight about this industry, far better than any you can get from a book, blog, or online forum. Salindrija, however, never gambled and wasn't whatsoever interested in gambling. He learned everything about the industry while building the business.
Another limitation was the language barrier. His English was pretty good, but he still needed help writing official articles, blog posts, reviews, and everything else. Like the realistic and honest business person he was and is, he would always hire native English speakers to do that part of the job so that AskGamblers could be taken seriously from the start.
Even with these limitations, Salindrija had a clear vision of what he wanted to build, and nothing ever seemed impossible.
Clutter
It was true then as it is true now; those who want to build a strong, reputable iGaming website need to have all the casinos in the world in one place. So, the founder of AskGamblers did just that – he gathered the best casino brands on his website to offer to players.
When that wasn't enough, he and his team wanted to expand to include various game types such as poker, sportsbook, bingo, lottery, backgammon, and skill games. After a year of working on it, more was still needed.
At one point, as Salindrija would narrate, they had so much information it became a huge hassle to control and update. All these different websites were changing rapidly, so updating the old content was a massive amount of work that kept the entire team from putting up the new content. This strategy didn't work out since the initial AskGamblers database became too complicated, and the staff was constantly overwhelmed. It was time for a considerable change.
The option was to continue and pursue having the entire online gambling content on the website or focus on something more specific.
After detailed market research, Salindrija's team discovered that AskGamblers is predominantly recognized as a casino portal. So, they took this as a clear sign to shift the website's focus to that specific segment. They ended up cutting out around 80% of the entire web content. Some could argue this was a big sacrifice or waste, but in reality - it was the best decision they could have possibly made.
A businessman and visionary, Salindrija did what was necessary at that moment, turning that move into another important lesson learned through his experience.
Our Promise
As time progressed, AskGamblers became a trusted name in the industry, a well-known casino portal more and more players went to.
As no work of this magnitude is ever done, so wasn't the work on AskGamblers; Mr Igor and his team still wanted to differentiate themselves from other portals and set a standard for others in this business.
AskGamblers used to and still has everything you need to know about casinos. The brand offers outstanding casino reviews, the newest bonuses and promotions, the hottest news, author blogs, forums, all types of casino games, a casino complaints resolution system, casino newsletters and much more.
After all these years in the gambling industry, Salindrija recognized that trustworthiness was the most appreciated service AskGamblers could offer to the players. Sketchy casinos are quickly recognized by the players and last only a short time. Salindrija made it his ultimate goal to promote trustworthiness inside the gambling industry. That, ultimately, became the brand's mission.
Get the Truth. Then Play.
Being trustworthy, honest, and always on top of its game, AskGamblers became synonymous with fairness and dependability.
In 2009, the brand launched AskGamblers Casino Complaint System (AGCCS) which helped players resolve their disputes with casinos. These disputes are usually about difficulties in paying out players' winnings. To this day, AskGamblers has helped thousands of players get a total of 49.7 million dollars in unpaid winnings. This turned out to have a significant impact on the industry. In fact, years later AskGamblers continues to improve this service and now accepts complaints in multiple languages and for multiple platforms, including sports betting.
Alongside complaints, AskGamblers introduced a Certificate of Trust, an in-house quality measuring system deciding whether a casino is high-quality, dependable and fair, then awarding it the Certificate should it pass all requirements. Another milestone, the Certificate of Trust!
AskGamblers is constantly trying to recognize reputable and spot rogue casinos so players can get promptly warned before they start to play. All the information collected over the years through the brand's complaint system or user reviews is transparent and gives the best, most accurate insight about each casino. This amount of information allowed AskGamblers to create its unique and trusted algorithm called CasinoRank. Much like all other features on AskGamblers, the work is never done on the CasinoRank algorithm either, but is instead improved and upgraded regularly.
One of the ways to combine incentive and trustworthiness is AskGamblers' very own AG Coin. This unique form of online casino bonus was established in 2018 with the aim of allowing players to claim cash securely through AskGamblers.
Other than delivering fact-based, reliable, and unambiguous content thoroughly reviewed by experts, AskGamblers values its users' opinions the most, so much so that it displays them on the official website with pride. Just look at the inaccuracy report! It is a feature that allows users to signal when casino information needs updating and helps the data be as current and accurate as possible.
What's more, AskGamblers is the first brand to include players’ opinions in the AskGamblers Awards voting system, which is one of the reasons AskGamblers Awards is such a beloved event in the industry and among the players.
Last but not least, AskGamblers takes pride in its podcast where, once again, it highlights players' opinions and makes a point of discussing important iGaming topics often seen through the eyes of players and for the players.
AskGamblers is known for always working hard to keep its reputation intact and stay the casino portal that promotes trustworthiness among casinos. AskGamblers's motto sums up perfectly what they, as a collective of professionals working tirelessly for the same goal, stand for: Get the truth. Then play.
