Sunday 9 November 2008

46 points profit in 8 days!

Profit since last update £118.76

I’m not sure what happens but every time I write a blog post, it appears I then follow it up with a succession of losers! Thankfully, I stopped the rot yesterday and managed to pull out a 22/1 winner (20/1 SP) which was a nice way to stop a poor run.

One of the most satisfying things that has happened during this tipping spell to me was when I saw that someone had re-subscribed to the site today. Given my current form, this wouldn’t be a surprise that someone had re-subscribed but this person had the worst luck of all time!

Basically, he joined after I had hit 5 winners from my first 11 selections and he probably thought it was the best investment he could have ever made. Unfortunately, his first 34 ‘tips’ lost and he lost 45 points during this run. Before he joined the site, he asked me how many points of a bank would he need and I said 60 points although most people on the site were playing with 100 points in a bank.

Therefore, he had lost 75% of his bank if he was playing with a 60 point bank and I’ve no idea what must have been going through his head. I haven’t heard a peep from the guy to be honest and I’m not sure what I would have said if he had got in touch with me. Anyway, his 1 month subscription was up today and by my reckoning, he must be about 1 point up overall after this month.

Clearly, this isn’t what he hoped for when he joined the site but to be able to get back to level from being 45 points down takes some going and I was pleasantry surprised that he has joined for 2 more months!

The plan has always been for me to have a go at this for 3 months and then see what options are on the table. One thing that is a shame is that I haven’t had a new subscriber apart from the guy above and I’ve now lost a fair few who gave up on me too early, so it’s not like the service is growing at the moment.

One thing I would need to consider in the future would be the potential reward versus the time, effort and mental strain that comes with providing the service. One thing that I decided a while ago was that I would never charge a high price for the service no matter how good the service was. I like the idea that normal people playing small stakes can use the service and this is vitally important to me. I’m in the same sort of boat and therefore, I would never consider pricing the service outwith their price range.

Obviously, this does raise lots of questions about you can run a successful service and charge a low price when you don’t have many subscribers! If I decide I would like to carry on with this, I’d really need to look into growing the subscription list. However, I could somehow try to link the service to profits made in some cases which would help to fund the service. Why should someone playing £4 a point pay the same as someone playing £50 a point? They both value the tips differently, so maybe they should be charged differential prices?

I think there is a lot of trust between myself and all the guys at the site. If I did think of doing something a bit different with subscriptions in the future, I'm sure they'd be keen to give a view of how things can work also. I'm just throwing around some potential ideas in my head but we'll see what happens!

I’m trying to not think too much about the future as things can change in this game very quickly I’m finding and the next long losing run could just be around the corner but that’s the life of a tipster I guess.

I’m sure a few of you are tracking my profits/losses on Racing Index. I decided a few weeks ago that I’d never manage to do well on RI simply due to the fact that all my winners have shortened significantly and therefore, it’s not a true indication of my profit.

Amazingly, I’m now in profit on RI and when you consider I was 28 points down on the 30th of October, to be in profit now shows the sort of form I’ve been in recently. To SP, I’ve made 36 points profit in 8 days and to suggested odds, I’ve made 46 points profit in 8 days.

46 points profit in 8 days...... :)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good to see things have turned around yet again Graeme :)

You've got to have a bit more patience in this game as you know your p\l is never going to be a steady upward curve when you're picking 20/1 winners.

And you've really got to stop trying to re-invent the wheel every month or so with some new pricing strategy etc. Just go with the flow for a while as you need some sort of track record before starting a push for extra subscribers.

I'm not too surprised you haven't got new subscribers as I'd assume the majority of punters would have signed up from reading the blog in the early days and probably max'd the amount of blog readers already.

I'd wait a while to get some good results on board then consider some sort of advertising if you wish to increase the subscribers. Plenty of cheap ways to advertise but I guess a lot depends on how many subscribers you want to aim for.

Graeme Dand said...

Hi Steve.

Thanks for the comment mate.

I’ve not put much thought into what may happen past the first 3 months to be honest as I’ve always seen it as a trial period of some sort.

At the moment, the guys at the site seem to be having a great time and they are a nice bunch of guys. I’m not sure how viable it is to keep it going at the current subscription levels and member levels but it’s something that I’ll need to work through in December with the guys.

I was interested to hear your views on cheap ways to advertise mate. I’ve not decided if I really want to grow the business to be honest (I’d rather have the 10 decent guys than 30 numpties) but what sort of things would you have in mind?

I’ve been struggling with ideas myself if I did want to advertise the site and I agree the blog has been max’d to the full, so not really an advertising tool for me.

If you can spare 2 mins, be keen to hear any thoughts you may have mate. Either post them on here or drop me a note mate.

Cheers,

G

Anonymous said...

You see adverts on other sites (lay the odds springs to mind) for all sorts of tipsters and systems. Might be worth looking at this kind of thing.

Anonymous said...

Brilliant Cheltenham results for you Graeme! Glad to see you graph has zoomed north again.
Best wishes, George H.

Graeme Dand said...

George,

Things are going great at the minute mate.

I will get around to updating the blog this week for sure.

I've been busy the last week with the Tote Ten To Follow comp, so no time for anything else!

Keep reading!

G