Wayne Howe from HowAbout Bingo

How would you describe HowAbout Bingo to someone who does not know what you are doing?

– HowAbout Bingo is basically a news and reviews website dedicated to online bingo in the UK. However, unlike other online bingo affiliates that are owned by large corporations, this site is very personal. 

– Everything on the site is designed, built and written by myself. I give my honest opinions and do lots of video content including interviews and gameplay of the various new bingo sites and games being launched. The site is still only 8 months old but already I have reviews for over 50 UK bingo sites and how-to-play guides for over 60 different online bingo games.

How did you end up in the casino industry?

– Completely by accident. I had just finished a Geography degree at Leeds University when I was looking for my first proper job. I stumbled across an entry-level position as ‘website administrator’ which I later found out was for a free bingo website. So I then became the manager of this online community, which was quite an interesting position to be in. It was such a fun job and I quickly fell in love with the industry from there. 

– I managed that website for 7 years before moving up within the company to manage the UK’s largest bingo affiliate, where I would have stayed had the website not been sold.

What made you want to start HowAbout Bingo?

– Well as I mentioned the site I worked on previously was sold and all staff were made redundant as part of that sale. I was fortunate enough to go freelance and was rehired to help with the site for a couple of years, but it was never the same. I missed being able to control the creative direction of the site, and I grew frustrated with how slow things moved inside of a large international company.

– In the end, I decided that I could do a better job myself and took the brave step to quit my freelancer role with that affiliate site, and go it alone. It was really bad timing as only a couple of months later we were in a national lockdown, but I managed to get through all the home schooling and eventually design and release a fully functioning affiliate site around 9 months later.

What personality traits in you make you a skilled bingo affiliate? What have been your biggest challenges?

– I think my willingness to try new things is one of the reasons why I’ve got where I am so far. I’m not scared of failure, and I always have a back-up plan to my back-up plan when things go wrong. I’ve tried a few things other than HowAbout Bingo during the last few years, and not all have been successful. But every one has helped me develop and improve and learn along the way.

– The biggest challenge of all has been trying to juggle family life and work life during a pandemic. I cannot tell you how difficult it has been with three children at home during those lockdowns. Time becomes more precious, and you have to learn to prioritize everything you do. 

How have you changed as a person from running HowAbout Bingo?

– The biggest change I would say is that I have become much more confident having forced myself to be the face of the site and appear regularly on video content. A few years ago, I would have been terrified to do it for fear of people laughing at me. When I published my first few videos, many friends and ex-colleagues who I thought may take the mick were in fact very supportive, and it just gave me the confidence to keep going and get better and better at it. 

– Doing the interviews on the podcast has also helped me grow that confidence further by approaching leaders in the industry and chatting to them, whereas before I would usually shy away from even speaking to anyone outside of the company I worked for.

What are you most proud of?

– I’m most proud of the response that my website and content has been getting within the online bingo industry. It’s still very early days in regards to getting enough traffic to the site in order to be profitable, but traffic and rankings are growing steadily and it’s all looking OK at the moment.

– But when high profile people at operators you respect get in touch to say they want to be on your podcast, or that they saw my video or my review and think it’s great, that’s a great feeling. I did a video recently for a new game by tombola, and one or two of the developers who built that game got in touch to say thanks for the review and that my opinion was really respected within the team there. 

Where do you want to be in 5 years?

– I suppose the business response would be to say I would like HowAbout Bingo to grow and become one of the biggest affiliates in the market, but really while that’s an ambition I do have, I’m not going to sacrifice myself to get there. If in 5 years the site is still plodding along, or heaven forbid, it’s no longer there, as long as I’m happy and have a good work-life balance to live comfortably with my wife and kids, that’s all I need.

– If anything, I want to have established myself as an expert in the field of online bingo, so that not only is my site respected by players and well visited, but I’m also respected in the industry and hired for consultancy work. I’m doing a few bits of that at the moment and I do enjoy dipping my toes into the operator side of things – just not full time!

Personal and professional, where can people find you online?

– You can find me in all the usual places such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. I can also be contacted at [email protected]