Sports in general would have to top the list of favorite pastimes for the entire world. From crazy US College and NFL football fans, to soccer hooligans scattered across the globe to the friendly cricket match goers, everyone loves sports. Another favorite of most is making money off of sports.
Short of being a multi-millionaire owner of a professional sport squad, options are scanty if you want to profit from sports. A lot of people try to make money betting on sports, but few are good at it. Bookmakers make their fair share, there is that, but you don’t have the time to become a bookie. Another way to make money in sports is to start selling your sports betting picks and advice.
How You Can Become a Smarter Bettor
Like any other business, you need a business plan. How will you sell your picks? Subscription, package, individual or a combination of them? What’s your marketing plan, how will bettors looking for a pick service find you? How will your clients get your picks, how will your send for best results that your clients get them in a timely fashion?
How much your picks will cost your clients is another major element. However, I still haven’t talked about perhaps the most important factor if you are going to succeed in the sports handicapping business. You can’t suck. If you don’t regularly pick winners, all bets are off. This may seem obvious, but I’ve gotten in trouble in the past assuming common sense. This is a tough enough business to break into if you’re not a well-known handicapper, but you have no chance of getting the public to pay for bad picks.
Let’s start from the top. What selling model will you use? A subscription will let users pay a set fee on a weekly or monthly basis while packages will bring you money for a full NFL season or daily MLB baseball. Selling individual picks is also an option, but if it were up to me, I’d have as many options to pay to buy picks as the customer wanted.
Smarterbettor.com – Professional Handicappers and Online Sportsbooks
Marketing, next to a great winning percentage, is the most important factor if you want your pick service to be successful. I can’t stress enough how important it is to market your services to the correct demographic in order to maximize your chances of acquiring paying customers.
Social media is an extremely powerful marketing tool giving you great exposure to a specific demographic for reasonable fee. Here I go assuming again, but you’re starting a website too right? I would strongly recommend creating a website that is easy to navigate and laid out in an organized fashion. Too many bells and whistles turn some off, so just stay modern and make it easy for the customer to find what they’re looking for.
If you have a budget that can afford them, sports talk radio on satellite offer decent rates for airtime, and are hitting the exact population you’re looking for. Driving traffic to your site through social media as well as using SEO (search engine optimization) strategies is a must in order to compete in this game.
5 Things to Look For When Choosing an Online Sportsbook
The next decision is how your clients will get your picks. Through your website would be the obvious start, but if you really want to please your players, something easier for them should be considered. A Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) is a standard way to send multimedia content straight to a mobile phone or any other mobile device, and is readily available. Email and an answering system are options, but who wants to listen to a pick on a voicemail? Not me.
I’m going to leave costing for you, you can figure out your own pricing, but if you are a great sports handicapper, maybe starting your own pick service is something you should look into.
Before I leave, going way back to the top, becoming a bookie is really not out of reach with the help of a Pay Per Head bookie software. Take a look at some of the PPH reviews found here on this site. After signing up with a PPH site, with one small fee per head, you instantly have your own website with a world-class sportsbook. Will you still want to sell picks?
