If you've used online casinos at all, then you will be familiar with their tendency to make bonuses available both when you sign up and on an ongoing basis. As this list of bonuses shows, there are certainly plenty out there, and they're quite varied from casino to casino. You'll also probably be familiar with the saying “you don't get something for nothing,” and this is enough to make a lot of people fairly skeptical about casino bonuses. Why, after all, would online casinos, whose goal is to take your money, be interested in giving you money for little or no return?

It's important to fully understand where you stand in regard to online casino bonuses. With so many of them available, it's natural that you will want to be able to judge them fully and with a clear head. You will obviously want to be confident that your playing time at an online casino is filled with as many advantages as possible for you, because it is certainly true that the casinos have more than enough advantages of their own. So let's go through a few points about online casinos and underline what they can mean for you.

Any bonus is better than no bonus

You can think of casino bonuses as the casino fronting you some money to bet with. If you don't win anything, then the casino doesn't seek to take anything back from you. No harm, no foul, it was nice to have the chance. If you do win something, then you have wagering requirements to fulfil and the casino may get some of its money back that way. But you can still walk away from this with some money left over from the bonus play, and as a result you are up on the deal. To make a long story short, you would otherwise have had to fund those bets yourself - so it's worth taking casino bonuses, because it's risk-free money.

Read and understand the terms and conditions

Of course, casinos are businesses and will look to ensure they take care of their bottom line, so they don't just hand out money to their customers out of the goodness of their hearts. These bonus bets come with strings attached. That's fine - but you should know what the strings are. If you don't follow all of the requirements laid out for you, you will forfeit any potential gain from the bonus, and there will have been no point taking it. Again, this is free money, and leaving it on the table is an odd decision to make, so ensure that you are using the bonus properly.

Remember the casinos with the best bonuses

A good casino will be aware that people come back to the casinos that have given them the best chance of profiting. They'll be comfortable enough about this, too, because in the long run the house does always win. A casino that gives you a good bonus on signup, and follows this with good ongoing reload bonuses, is worth sticking with and playing at on a regular basis, because it demonstrates that they know what goes over well with customers, and they will usually keep offering useful bonuses.