Sacrificing my Trading..........

Profit since last update £145.54

I’m sorry to say this but the profit for the past week looks nothing like the P&L for The Form Analyst. However, unlike other times, my own profit is much lower and I’ve struggled with my trading over the past week and finding enough time for it.

When I started the tipping, it was always the case that it would run alongside my trading/gambling on Betfair and I couldn’t see a reason why they couldn’t work in harmony. The past week though has shown me that I need to choose which means more to me and concentrate on that. At the moment, The Form Analyst means much more than my own trading and therefore, I’m happy to sacrifice making money on Betfair to put my efforts into making money for the subscribers.

I’m sure a few of you will read this and think that’s what I am paid for by the subscribers but as I’ve said since day one, the time and effort I put into The Form Analyst far outweighed my return for the first 3 months but I knew that before I started. Therefore, I worked very, very hard trading my own selections as well as lots of other selections which included night racing when I got in from work where possible.

You can see the results on my November P&L and as I said at the time, I was putting an amazing amount of hours into form study and trading and ultimately, it started to take its toll and I ended up in hospital with a nasty infection. Thankfully, it was nothing too serious and I’m over it now but I’ve no doubt that the strain of The Form Analyst and my own trading had taken its toll on me.

Part of me working so hard to make money myself was because the subscription fees were so low and I wasn’t even getting anywhere near the minimum wage for my time and effort. Obviously, with the results I‘ve had, I’ve started to attract a couple of new subscribers and I took the decision to increase prices for new subscribers on Saturday night.

I’ve spent a long time over the past week or so checking out my competition in the tipping market and looking at prices and the profits that they achieve long-term. The conclusion was that I believed I was underselling the service in quite a big way and this led me to have a rethink of the prices. I didn’t see too many services out there that can compete with my results and I’ve increased prices as a result.

I’ve said this to the subscribers but one of the reasons I’m only offering a maximum of 3 months at a time is because I believe I can keep these results going and I’m not going to try to tie people in to long-term subscriptions off the back of good results. In 3 months time if I’m not doing so good, I’ll look to reduce prices a little and hopefully convince people to stay with me. I like the way this model works and the better I do, the more I can charge although I won’t ever ‘milk’ it the way other services out there do. If I can increase my membership, I’d reduce prices and ultimately, the aim would be to reach a level of membership and close the doors on new subscribers. I’m not even half way there yet!

I was looking at one service out there that charges £2,000 a year and from looking at their results, I struggle to see how they can justify this sort of price. That looks to be a case of someone living off past results and I can’t imagine that too many people fall for that sort of thing.

One thing I quickly realised in this game is that you are only as good as your last few tips. When I was on a losing run a few weeks ago, people were saying that we were in the shit again and yet, we were up over 30 points in 2 months. I know people get frustrated at losing runs as do I but I would never judge anyone in the short-term at this game. I’m a great example of what can happen in the short-term and why it can be misleading. I’ve had two horrendously bad losing runs in the short-term but bounced back each time.



As you can see, it’s a fairly easy decision to spend less time on my own trading/gambling and I’ll put all my efforts into The Form Analyst now. I reckon I may have been spending 120 hours a month on everything and when you consider I work full-time, it’s not too surprising I ended up in hospital.

I’m going to reduce my trading time considerably and I won’t be trading all of my own selections now. Being honest, I was a bit annoyed in the past week as I’ve hit a fair few winners and all of them have shortened a fair bit pre-race and if I was taking the trading seriously, I could have won over £1k but something has to give. I’m sacrificing my trading.

A few of you may be shocked at this considering the strides I’ve made this year on Betfair but the skill I’ve developed will always be with me now. I will continue using Betfair when I’m in the house and have some spare time and I will continue trading some of my own selections but I can’t go flat out like I was doing for 2 months.

Hopefully, with the increase in prices, this will ensure I feel like I’m being paid for my time now and I won’t need to trade like mad to make additional money. One reason for trading my own selections so much was to prove that I can make money at this game. I had to prove it to myself first and foremost and I have done that now. I know I have a strategy that I can use to earn consistent money on Betfair and it’s a great place to be in. I now need to try to conquer the tipping world…………

I’m currently up 60 points since the inception of the service in October. Lots of people mocked me on this blog when I said I would attempt to make 240 points a year from the tipping game. I can understand why to be honest as very few tipsters in this game would aim for that and even if they aimed for it, very few would achieve it or even look like achieving it. I’ve got a long, long way to go before I get anywhere near that target but the great thing about that target is that it is a big target. If I was to end up with 230 points profit in year one, would that be a disaster? Would 220 point be a disaster?

There are some services out there that would consider 60 points a year a great year. If I hadn’t started off so well with this service, maybe I would have saw 60 points a year as a great achievement but not now. I’m bang on target for my 240 point target and that’s the aim. It’s about 1.01 that I don’t make it but I’ll work my ass off to try to make it.

I hope everyone is doing well and I hope you are having a good time on Betfair and the like. Going by my blog hits, I doubt anyone is still reading this but I’ll continue updating it weekly until The Experiment finishes and I’ll pull everything together at the end and calculate how much I’ve made this year and what it has meant to me.