When I started betting on football it didn't take me long to realise that any romantic notion I had that it would be easy to make money, was totally wrong.
Even though I was well able to pick a winner, it soon became obvious that this didn't mean anything if I couldn't combine it with skills like patience, discipline, and bank management, etc.
For years I have stumbled around losing money betting on football. Trying out a system and not giving it long enough to see if it works over time, before moving onto something else and making the exact same mistake.
Then a couple of years ago, I came across Assured Soccer Profits. Again, I tried it on and off for about six months, before eventually dumping it.
Yet again, I wasn't using a system properly, and my impatience was leading to losses. Then in the summer of 2012 I decided enough was enough and I needed to change my ways. This was when I inadvertently stumbled across football trading.
Pre Match Trading
I started trading pre match in the hope I wouldn't get drawn into having stupid bets in-running. The sort of stupid in-play bets based on nothing other than a misguided hunch.
I started my pre match trading mainly using the Over/Under 2.5 Goals market to see how I did.
Amazingly it seemed to work, I suddenly found a system that I was making money with. And it was also a system that I could be disciplined using.
Any regular readers of this website will know I listed all my results every week. And at the end of the football season I made a reasonable profit (I turned £100 into just under £400).
This is despite the fact I was only learning my trade and didn't really know what I was doing for the first few months.
Assured Soccer Profits
At the same time of my pre match trading experiment, I was also using my new found discipline to try out Assured Soccer Profits again. I soon noticed that this system was also starting to make me a few pounds as well.
And finally I started to take free bets more seriously. Instead of just treating them as a 'no problem if it doesn't win as it hasn't cost me anything' bet. I started to see them as a 'guaranteed way of making an easy few pounds risk free' bet, basically using the matched betting technique.
Just to be clear, this blog isn't me giving you the defined blueprint of how to get rich from football betting. I don't know what that is. What this post is about, is me telling you how eventually I made some money from football betting.
I'm informing you of the systems I have discovered that work best for me. They may not be to everyone's liking, but they work for me.
Persistence Can Pay Off In Football Betting
None of these three methods I use are get rich quick schemes. They are a gradual accumulation of a few pounds here, and a few pounds there. When/if they go wrong, losses are minimal and managed.
I try and aim for a modest target of around 1% profit of betting bank a day. It is a disciplined approach I now take. I now firmly believe it is this sort of discipline that is essential if you want to be successful at football trading, or betting.
With these methods there are no big wins, and there is certainly no adrenaline filled fist pumping wins. Those days are now a thing of the past for me, rare as they were.
Instead, these methods are pretty boring, and just give me mundane, gradual profits.
With Assured Soccer Profits I have slightly modified the text book version to suit my trading. ASP - as it is also known - is a football trading system that trades the Correct Score market on the Betfair Exchange.
I Did Diverse Slightly From The ASP Manuel
The ASP text book basically tells you to sit tight during a trade, and trade out late on - if at all - for a larger win. When I use ASP I get out as soon as I have a profit of around 1% of my betting bank.
Hanging in there longer could give bigger wins, but it could also lead to bigger losses. What I do is no major change from how the system advises. I just take a more cautious approach and trade out earlier for smaller profits. This further reduces the risks.
With my pre match trading, what I look to do is keep it simple. For example, I try and back Over or Under 2.5 goals at 1.99 and then lay it at 1.98. Using a betting bank of £100, that gives me £1.00 profit on one side of the bet. Split that between the two sides of the market, and it's a profit of 0.5%.
I then either try it again on the same match, or do the exact same thing on another match that same day. Giving me my 1% profit for the day.
At the end of a 12 month period, a profit of 1% a day adds up. Starting with £100, you would end up with around £3300.00 after 12 months.
do that twice, and you have 1% profit.
Matched Betting Can Top Up Football Betting Profits Even More
There are plenty of bookmakers out there giving away free bets to new customers. They are also giving away free bets to existing customers (also known as reload offers). Using these free bets, we can top up our profits even more.
You can keep an eye on this website for these reloads. Personally I like to use a subscription service called Profit Maximiser to alert me. This saves me plenty of time. I've written an in-depth review to using the system here.
Yes, there is a downside that a subscription service costs money, but it easily pays for itself with all the time it saves.
The reload offers are listed daily on a calendar, meaning all I have to do is decide which ones I wish to complete. I don't even have to do the ones I don't like the look off. It's that simple.
As I already have said, these are not get rich quick methods. They may not be to everyone's liking either, but I have found using plenty of patience and discipline, that all the above methods make me sustained, gradual profits from betting on football.