Monday 23 February 2009

Out with a whimper!

Loss since last update £123.20

It feels a little bit sad that my 12th and final month of The Experiment is going out with a whimper. Being honest, when I started the month, I thought it would have been easy to smash the £7k mark for the year (I was only £78 short ffs!) and at the back of my mind, I maybe had pretensions to get somewhere near £8k if I got off to a good start. I think I’ve been in profit for 2 days this month, so never a chance of achieving anything near the £8k!

Before anyone worries, I haven’t traded one single day in front of the PC this month. Weekends just haven’t allowed it and I’ve traded 48 races this month and about 40 have been on BF Mobile, so it’s not like I’ve spent much time on it.

So, what has gone wrong this month?

Basically, I’ve developed an unwanted knack of not following my own tips from The Form Analyst! As you know, I am TFA but this month, I’ve only traded 2 of my 6 winners. I’ve traded nearly all of the losers though. That sort of thing doesn’t help obviously and even though I’ve had a few £50+ wins, I’ve had a couple of large losses (one £100 loss :( ) and it’s just turned into a nothing month for me.

Obviously, I’m not going to worry too much about this month and I’m not going to let it spoil the enjoyment of what I have achieved on BF this year and the fact I have started a tipping business off the back of this blog. Pretty impressive stuff in my opinion and I’m really looking forward to the next 12 months to see where I go at that game.

I sort of gave up on trading from about August and I turned my attention to trying to be a tipster. Before August, I’d never given anyone a horse-racing tip in my life to be honest. Yeah, I’d analysed races before and followed my own advice but I would have always classed myself as the worst tipster of all time. I remember writing a post on the subject and it was true. Every time I was sure a horse would win, it never did when I told others!

I have now been running the tipping service for 5 months and it has been very tough going. I think one of my problems with tipping is always going to be the fact that my knowledge of horse-racing and my ability to read form is never going to match my ability as a tipster. I used to think that it was achieveable but I know it isn’t now.

To be able to fully implement what I know about horse-racing form, I’d have to be playing this game full-time. At the moment, I spend 2-3 hours in the evening before the day’s racing and then a little bit of time each day when I see the market shaping up. As my results have shown, it isn’t enough to be as successful at this game as I wanted to be.

When I started out, I thought I’d cruise to 240 points profit a year. Anyone playing £100 a point would win £24k no probs and it would be like taking sweeties from a kid. Being honest, I still think I can make 240 points a year from tipping but it just won’t be as easy as I thought it would be.

I think one thing that needs to be pointed out is that my target of 240 points a year is a lot of points! I quote things like this all the time as I have great belief in myself and my ability as this game. To my knowledge, no tipster in the game consistently makes this many points and I can’t imagine too many tipsters with no experience start out trying to make this sort of level of profit in their first year.

One thing that makes me laugh is that I’m always being compared to other tipsters in the game who are clearly very good and are much more experienced than me. It’s very flattering to be mentioned in the same breath as Equine Investments, Tipping Legends, Maths, SLH, Optimum and the like. These services are all well established services with massive client bases. I’m sure a few of these are full-time services and that maybe explains why they can charge such a high subscription cost.

I’ve mentioned this on the forum at the site but I have stopped charging anyone who has come up for renewal. I don’t offer a guarantee of this sort on the site and I don’t feel like I need to as for the prices I charge, I’m hardly raking it in for the time and effort I put in to the service. However, it feels wrong to charge people who come up for renewal that weren’t about when I made most of the profits and therefore, I don’t mind people staying at the site free of charge until I make them a profit. Once that day comes, they can leave with a profit or stay and try to grow that profit.

Overall, a disappointing month thus far but it isn’t over yet. I’m hopeful I can turn it around this week and hopefully post a profit on the month and get through the £7k profit mark but we’ll see what happens.

3 comments:

Terry said...

Hi Graeme.

Shame to see you end the year on a bit of a low as you say but nonetheless, I’m sure you would have settled for £6.7k at the outset of your quest.

I’ve been monitoring your progress with the tipping and it does seem tough going for you at the moment but from reading JPs blog, it appears that it is tough going for everyone this year. Not charging people who come up for renewal is a brave thing to do and it means that you are increasing the pressure on your tipping ability even more so. A wise move? Will you ever satisfy these subscribers and will they always want this guarantee?

I assume the point may be reached (hopefully not) where none of your subscribers are paying. How would you respond to that? Would you give up?

I think your admission regarding your limited ability at the tipping game due to time constraints is also brave move. How do people feel paying for a part-time tipster? Would they rather pay more for a full-time tipster?

Only playing devil’s advocate here but it will at least give you something to write about on your next post.

Really enjoyed your blog this year and it’s been an amazing journey you’ve been on.

Good luck for the future and I’m sure you’ll be a success at being a tipster.

All the best.

Steve

Graeme Dand said...

Hi mate.

I've been really busy with other things. I'll reply to you on a post I think as there are some good questions there.

If anyone else has any questions regarding the last 12 months or so, put them on here and I'll pick them up on my next post.

Cheers.

Graeme

Anonymous said...

Hi Graeme.

I've read your Blog from the start and am VERY Impresed with your Progress .

I wich you the best in your Future Indevers and after you Success in The Experiment. There will Be No Object in your Way.

JS